Outsourcing your online marketing and advertising may save you time and inject a level of creativity to a campaign that cannot be drawn from the resources within your organization. It does not mean, however, that you need not pay attention or are relieved of your role and your obligation of fairness to consumers set forth under the law.
The biggest abuse appears to come from outsourcing to:
- A number of individuals and/or companies who manage pay per click campaigns through Google Adsense and similar
- A number of individuals and/or companies who write "pay per post" content, much of which is
written by those with no practical experience in the structured settlement field, who plant hyperlinks to factoring companies.
Last week I covered and criticized a pay per click campaign by Novation Capital that advertised "cash today". On April 3, 2008 Andrew Cravenho followed up my post with his own comments on the issue on the Settlement Quotes blog.
This morning I received the following email from Robin Marc Shapiro CEO of Novation Capital and President of the National Association of Settlement Purchasers (NASP). Consumers would be wise to read it and understand the message as it relates to the reality that "cash now" or "cash today" means cash in months.
In a message dated 04/10/08 09:10:16 Eastern Daylight Time, RShapiro@encorefunding.com writes:
Mr. Darer:Believe it or not, I'm a regular reader of your blog.While I certainly don't agree with everything you have to say, I do find your writing provocative and, on ocassion (sic.), entertaining.Last night, I noticed your comment about the text of an ad we were running on Google. Apparantly (sic.), it said something like "call Novation and get your money today.""Today?" Wow! You are absolutely right on this one. The "instant gratification" pitch is wrong. And it makes no sense for us because when we talk to prospective customers, we always tell them that the process takes months. We provide a service that allows people to meet life's changing needs; we're not an ATM machine.Yes, we outsource our internet marketing management; but that's no excuse here. I should have reviewed that ad text before it went "live." I didn't. My bad. Thanks for flagging the issue.Robin Shapiro, CEO Novation Capital
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