It’s been four months since Mark Wright became Lord Sugar’s new business partner, and their internet marketing company, Climb Online, still seems to be off the ground.
Part of the problem was that Poor Mark seemed to go against every conceivable fallacy of his internet marketing student days.
1. Choose a domain name that is already in use by your climbing blog http://climbonline.co.uk/
2. I don’t have a personal Twitter account and after the final aired, I was able to use the account name climb_online (climbonline was already in use).
3. Aims to provide a personal, hands-on service to its clients, but at the same time has a flawed business model that outsources all technical work to a third-party provider.
4. You haven’t had a website in almost two months, so you can’t capitalize on potential momentum.
So, after an initial rocky start (pun intended), why hasn’t the website gained momentum yet?
Spammy Black Hat Links
Mark Wright claimed that Climb Online uses white hat SEO techniques.
It was early January. Not long after Mark (or whoever he outsources his SEO to) started building thousands of low quality garbage his links.
Here’s an example of a Climb Online backlink:
Is that what you call a “white hat” mark? Thousands of links on spam sites full of payday loans, Viagra and porn links?
the website is terrible
A £250,000 investment could have set up a suitable website within 24 hours. And after stalling all the time, this is what they came up with:
A picture a 5-year-old could draw in 5 minutes…
“Would you like to increase your leads with paid advertising?”
“No, I want something else.”
We are looking for a marketing agency to actually do IE paid search marketing.
Climb Online doesn’t even bother to protect their brand name in paid search results.
focus on PR
Mark Wright’s focus is very clearly on public relations.
So Climb Online has a PR team, but not the next one.
- Web Developer – Site building was outsourced to http://madebyshape.co.uk/ (notice the similarities in theme?)
- SEO – With a dedicated SEO, your link profile wouldn’t be so cumbersome.
- We have already confirmed that SEM does not do PPC.
A True Business Model: Selling Snake Oil
Climb Online does not appear to have the ability to offer online marketing (as it does not appear to market its own website), but it does appear to actively promote through other forms of media. increase. About the new Account Manager:
Mark Wright is a salesman. He sells his SEO. But selling SEO is not the same as providing SEO.
Here are two customers that Mark got in January.
Let’s see how their site works now:
wait! 3 links in 3 months – It sounds about right.
But wait, they got a photo of Mark on their website:
It must be worth £600 or the monthly fee they are paying.
nothing new here
Mark Wright said his SEO product will “change the way SEO is done in the UK”. It should not be different from the truth.
There are countless SEO agencies that are better at selling than providing SEO. There are probably more such agencies than agencies that can provide quality service.
Their business model is by hiring clever account managers who have little knowledge of how to acquire new customers and rank websites, but have enough gab to keep clients on long-term contracts. , based on their ability to retain customers.
Ultimately, this type of business model may prove more profitable than actually providing good service. Ultimately, Climb Online is a smart investment choice for Alan Sugar.
