DoIt Marketing
Complaint 130847 Details

With all the buzz about “Social Media Marketing,” you can understand why I was intrigued when a fellow speaker, David Newman who promotes himself as a marketing coach, called with a pitch for his new venture, DoIt Marketing. He had assembled a crack team of experts who, as I understood their promise, could improve my SEO and make my phone ring.

No stranger to social media, I’ve been teaching “Social Media as a Guerrilla Marketing Weapon” for years. I just lack the bandwidth to manage it for myself. So I made a few calls, and his references were for-the-most-part, positive. After meeting for lunch, I was skeptical.

Then, one afternoon David called in a panic; “Can you cover a keynote for a group of financial planners, in Denver, at noon? Tomorrow?” The speaker he had booked for this event was grounded in D.C. by thunderstorms. The fee was less than rack, but I agreed to help him out, delivered the speech, and the client was thrilled.

But then David didn’t want to pay the speaking fee. Instead, he insisted we put it in my "bank" and use it (after deducting a 25% “bureau commission”) to fund his proposed social media campaign. And lucky for me, they had one slot open.

Instead of a check, I got a 10-page questionnaire, asking all about my books, my business, my clients, and the passwords to all of my social media accounts, website, and blog.

As instructed, I sent DoIt Marketing everything they asked for: market analysis, book manuscripts, articles, audios, videos, top-performing keywords, and passwords for my blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and other accounts. I should have known better.

My understanding was that the DoIt Marketing team would take clips from my books and other material, and systematically post them all over the web: multiple daily Twitter tweets, multiple daily Facebook updates, article submissions, new LinkedIn groups, two blogs a week, and more.

I thought it was expensive: $1,500 just to "set it up” (never mind that all these profiles were already set up and optimized, with thousands of fans and followers.) Add another $1,800/month to launch, with a minimum commitment of three months. Just enough in my “bank” to cover the setup and two months in advance.

Maybe my expectations were unusually high, given my background as a Guerrilla Marketing author, but I felt disappointed right away. Like when they couldn’t spell my NAME correctly, let alone, “Guerrilla”. The first (and only) blog they put up was a duplicate of one that had already been published. They signed me up for five article hubs, two of which I was already writing for. I believe I could get this level of work from a college intern! The only results I noticed was a dramatic increase in SPAM.

I sent David an e-mail with detailed feedback and branding standards, and agreed to give his team a chance to prove themselves once the campaign rolled out. I should have known better.

I felt that the work was not only sloppy, but in some cases, downright inappropriate. Most of the Facebook postings were dead-ends with no breadcrumbs. One tweet that I felt was very inappropriate simply read, “24 Reasons Why Sales is Better than Sex.” And the last straw, a book review I hadn’t written, of a book by ANOTHER speaker, with a link back to HIS bookstore. Sorry, but I thought I was paying DoIt Marketing to review MY books and drive traffic to MY website and MY bookstore, thank you.

So, I complained directly to the young woman assigned to my account, pointing out examples from specific posts that I felt were wanting. Within minutes, I got a call from David Newman, not to apologize, but scolding me for being "abusive" and “impossible to please.” Deaf to my complaints, he threatened to just drop the whole project, in effect, chopping down the tree before it could bare fruit.

My response was, “In that case, I want a full refund.”

“That’s not even on the table.” Instead he sent a check for the unspent balance of $1,800. He did NOT, however, keep his scheduled appointment for a reporting call, send the promised written reports, or do any of the setup work for which I had already paid so dearly. When I repeated my demand for a full refund via e-mail, and threatened to take my story public, I got a letter from his lawyer threatening to sue for libel. That’s certainly ONE way to discourage customer complaints.