What Does an ‘Award Winning Web Design Company’ mean anyway?
About 8 years ago, I went to a meeting at a PC keyboard company in Oakland, California for a discussion about KO Websites building a new website for them. The meeting went very well, but was typical, in that there was one person who was trying to trip up the web guy, proving they knew more tech than the web guy did. I was used to this and survived well until the last question was thrown at me…It was, “so how many awards has your company won?”
We did not get the job and I was sure it was because we had no awards. So I was bothered about this over the next few years and entered a couple of websites into the Webby Awards. They took our money quickly and then said nothing, not even ‘thank you’ or ‘you lose’ or ‘better luck next time,’ nothing. You see, for most award competitions, you have to pay to get ‘in’ the competition.
Figuring this out and losing interest, I didn’t think about it again until last week.
Enters- Google Engage for Agencies…
A few months ago we received a bunch of $100 free plays on Google’s PPC marketing opportunities from Google Engage. I.e. spend $100 for free on Google’s PPC coupons. PPC means Pay Per Click by the way.
I received this email from “Google” saying “…you won a free note book” and like most of us would, I automatically thought this was a scam. The email said “…You’re one of the winners of the Google Engage All-Stars competition!”
KO Websites doesn’t normally do a whole lot of PPC marketing. Our thing is ‘Organic SEO’ and social media marketing, among other things. However, we’ve had some clients this year who were in a hurry and had a budget to spend, so we accommodated them with some Google PPC campaigns. After schooling up at the Google Engage website, we did a pretty good job of making our clients lots of sales. What I didn’t know was, Google was watching all this and tracking which marketing agency was getting PPC work, using the coupons and spending money.
“You’re one of the winners of the Google Engage All-Stars competition!” Thank you Google, KO Website is now an ‘Award winning web marketing firm.’
And that PC keyboard company I wrote about before…They still don’t come up on search engines (PPC or organically).
Bottom line is: Award winning is nice, but it shouldn’t be your number one reason for picking a great web design or other type of company. Do your due diligence and check referrals. Actual word of mouth, not just social media, is the best thing you have going for you.
Need an “award winning” Bay Area web design, internet marketing and SEO company? Contact KO Websites today at 510-276-9902 or here.
Posted by: Ken O’Donnell
6/28/2012