My personal morals and business ethics have significantly shaped the corporate culture of my business. They determine who we work with and how we interact. As a result, my employees, partners and clients have an unusually high level of personal integrity. Unfortunately, sharing common values did not prepare us for a client that requested help repairing his reputation online.
As a boutique search engine marketing (SEM) agency, my business, Anvil Media, pushes the e-marketing envelope for our clients. A few years ago, we developed an online reputation management (ORM) service. In a nutshell, ORM is the art of combining fundamental SEM strategies and tactics to mitigate negative or undesirable listings in search results for specific keywords.
Last year, we were referred to a high profile CEO at a wealth management firm who had received a bout of bad press in The New York Post. While the article itself didn’t appear in the top 10 online search results for his name, a blog post abstract did. It made sense that he wanted it gone. Our work with other ORM clients (including an EO member) convinced him he was in good hands.
Unfortunately, we did not heed our gut instinct that he may be a difficult client, due to his high profile in Hollywood, finance and political circles. Sure enough, we had challenges out of the gate with his lack of responsiveness and inability to implement our recommendations. After a few months of working together and making minor progress, it was clear that we were not considered strategic partners. We agreed to part ways.
While we ended the engagement on good terms, his delinquency in paying the final bill bit us hard. The day he was prepared to cut the check, he did a Google search for his name and found the original offending blog post back at the number one search rank.
Frequently, untrustworthy people lack trust in others, so he assumed we had “worked our magic” to alter the listings due to his lack of timely payment. Although I was completely offended, I kept my cool and tried to reassure him, without success, that we were not that kind of firm. It took a few weeks of negotiating with the client and his lawyer to create a legal statement stating we had no hand in influencing the search results in order to receive final payment. I signed the statement, he mailed a check and, thankfully, it cleared.
In the end, I learned a great deal from my experience with this client. First and foremost, if someone comes to you needing help with reputation repair, there is a good chance they did something wrong and it may be a fatal flaw in their character. As such, we’ve agreed not to take on any new ORM clients that do not come with positive references from trusted sources. Similarly, we’ve learned to trust our gut and not the promise of a big paycheck or high profile case study.
More importantly, I learned to stick to my principles morals and not let someone strong-arm me with threats. I also learned not to fear legal action (or at least negotiations) in order to come to an amicable solution. I do believe my company is better off for having this experience, but it could have been a very expensive mistake if it wasn’t handled properly. Thankfully, I kept my cool.