Dear Aunty B
One of our health products has just a received a critical review on a review site. What is really annoying is that we paid the website to get a group of people to actually review the product and although we were warned that a few people might not love it, we are really cross that the review site would let a critical opinion like that be published. When we complained we were told that it would not be taken down because it wasn’t defaming anyone, it wasn’t nasty and it wasn’t from a competitor.What do we do?
Hate the haters,
DT
Dear DT,
Calm down. You were obviously excited to be trying this type of advertising and now you are not happy with the result. That comes down to not really understanding the results you were going to get from that type of advertising.
You see, when you go down the social media route for advertising and marketing you give over control of your message. In effect, you take pot luck. The upside is that it seems like a lot of very nice people are spontaneously saying nice things about you, which you think is going to give your brand and message even more credibility.
The best result is that most people like your products. The worst is that most people hate your products. But you can’t expect to have a pile of positive reviews and no negative ones if you go down this marketing track.
So if you want to control your message and be in a brand safe environment then you don’t do this type of marketing.
Be smart,
Your Aunty B
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
