New Image MedSpa Blog

I learned a new term this week - "astroturf marketing".  I have never heard this term before.   I learned this term when I received a phone call from the owner of another facility similar to ours, who accused our marketing department of placing detrimental comments on a public forum website about their facility.  The comments, as I found out, were not placed by anyone associated with our office.  In good faith, I did ask the forum administrator to remove the comments because I did not want in any way to be associated with any negative statements toward another facility.  I was saddened to find that the owner also reciprocated by putting negative comments about our office on this same forum.  In his commentary, this person accused our office of "astroturf marketing".  Now this term was quite an enigma to me.  What in the devil is astroturf marketing?  

 

Well, what it means is a false grass roots effort to create (in this context) self-gratious remarks about your own business for the sole purpose of promoting it online.  It is in essense an unethical practice, but one that is apparently practiced by many businesses.  Remember the old saying, don't believe everything you read?  Well, it is true, especially online.  Better, yet - don't believe everything you see either.  Because you see, the same person who was accusing our marketing department of wrongdoing, has several videos posted on his website.  The videos will have you believe that that they have in their busy reception area a bunch of happy clients sitting around waiting for services.  Until you look really close, and find that the owner himself is in the video, and also the same guy who posted the very first review in the forum in question.  So astroturf marketing in fact comes in many flavors, not just text but also video.   For our part, we continue to market based on happy client's referrals and an honest business practice.  It is who we are.  And we stay busy because we offer services that are proven to work, and at a value-price that everyone can afford; and, we back our services with the highest possible level of client services.