Complaint Review: searchmarketme.com - Seattle Washington
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- Author Not Confirmed
- searchmarketme.com 1000 2nd Avenue, Suite 4000 Seattle, Washington United States of America
- Phone:
- Web: www.searchmarketme.com
- Category: Internet Marketing Companies
searchmarketme.com SearchMarketMe Please do not invest in this company's Agency Owner program. Your money will be better spent elsewhere! Seattle, Washington
*REBUTTAL Owner of company: A Response from the CEO of SearchMarketMe LLC
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This company does a very good job of selling their agency owner program. But that's pretty much where it ends. They claim that by buying into their program you will learn everything there is to know about running your own internet marketing agency.
Their training is very incomplete and hard to understand. It is not, by any means a step-by-step guide. It is a jumbled mess of all sorts of different, confusing pieces that are hard to put together into a useful working unit. I don't know of any agency owners that have actually been successful because of the SearchMarketMe program.
Last year they sold the program as a website design/development agency with internet marketing resources. Since then the owner sold the website design portion of the company to 2 of the employees. Then she sold the rest of the company to someone else. The website design/development company went out of business about a month after it was started. The hosting services they were offering are undependable, but getting your website off of there server seems to be impossible. If you had websites you were waiting for them to develop...good luck.
If I would have known then, what I know now, I never would have spent the $23,900 on one of these agencies. Now they are charging even more, $27,900. Many of the tools they offer are tools you can get yourself. You could teach yourself pretty much everything they teach you by going through Google's programs which are free.
I caution you to think long and hard before handing your money over to this company. They are disorganized and unprofessional even though their website and email marketing program might present a different image. If you want to start your own online marketing agency, it would make way more sense to do it by "partnering" with a company that has a cohesive team of professionals that could white label their services for you.
SearchMarketMe has a whole bunch of agency owners in different parts of the country all at very different levels of expertise. Not a staff of experts who can help you at all.
Sincerely,
A very disappointed agency owner
This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 03/22/2011 08:38 AM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/searchmarketmecom/seattle-washington-98104/searchmarketmecom-searchmarketme-please-do-not-invest-in-this-companys-agency-owner-prog-708976. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content
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#1 REBUTTAL Owner of company
A Response from the CEO of SearchMarketMe LLC
AUTHOR: S. Boyd Karren - (United States of America)
SUBMITTED: Thursday, March 24, 2011
I appreciate the opportunity to respond to this negative and anonymous posting. I was very sad to learn that an Agency Owner chose to air negative opinions publicly and anonymously instead of discussing any such concerns with me.
1. We dont claim that as an Agency Owner you will learn everything there is to know about running your own internet marketing agency. The industry changes too quickly for anyone to make such a claim. What we do promise is to teach an Agency Owner everything that we know about running an internet marketing agency. As we keep up to date with changes we share that information with the Agency Owners. Conversely, as Agency Owners gain new and additional information, it is commonly shared with other Agency Owners.
2. Our training curriculum is structured sequentially, similar to courses in a university setting, covering 10 unique topics. We are constantly improving, updating and adding new information into the training portal our latest addition was a module on mobile marketing. As to the availability of similar material online yes, you can find ANYTHING online, but entrepreneurs buy into this Agency Owner program because they know their time is valuable and they cant spend months or years trying to teach themselves ever-changing online marketing best practices through free material found online.
3. There are MANY Agency Owners who are enjoying success with the SearchMarketMe program, and their stories can be found in video interviews on both our website and on YouTube. Just last we posted a new video interview with an Agency Owner who spoke about the increased opportunities he is now enjoying as a direct result of his involvement with SearchMarketMe.
4. Yes, in January 2011, the website design and programming division was entirely purchased by two former employees who were convinced they could run things better than the original owner. They didnt. Their new company, named CTRLbot Studios, went out of business in about 60 days, which has certainly caused problems for Agency Owners who had open projects and/or sites being hosted by the now-defunct company. SearchMarketMe and two other former employees of CTRLbot Studios have volunteered to help to complete unfinished projects and assist Agency Owners in moving their sites to new hosts as quickly as possible. We have spent considerable time and money cleaning up the mess that was created when somebody elses business failed. We had no obligation to do so, but wanted to do everything possible to minimize the impact on the Agency Owners.
5. Every person who is thinking about buying into the Agency Owner program has ample opportunity to investigate, and before being invited to join, is required to speak with at least three existing Agency Owners and can ask them whatever they want to ask. We provide full and complete transparency throughout the process. Im sorry to read that this anonymous Agency Owner experienced buyers remorse.
6. I do take issue with the statement discrediting the ability of our in-house team of experts to help. Between the three-person core of experts (myself, Jenny Dibble and Will Rak) we provide a robust and well-rounded framework of support, coaching and ongoing assistance in online marketing, technical topics and small business management topics. Our success depends upon a thriving, happy network of Agency Owners, and we spend significant time and money keeping our own skills up to date, providing ongoing training and support for the Agency Owners, and keeping apprised of the next big thing that can help Agency Owners make more money.
Since 2007, we have helped 96 Agency Owners start and grow their online marketing agencies. This is the first complaint of this nature I have encountered.
Yet, I invite anyone (especially the anonymous author of the complaint) to call me to discuss this or any other matter pertaining to this company. I am the CEO, and our contact information is on our website, www.searchmarketme.com
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