Complaint Review: High Level Marketing

The usage of words such as ‘deceitful’ and ‘rip you off’ prompted High Level Marketing to have a third party evaluation conducted on former client’s or overall experience, website and SEO performance, et al.  The following is a summary of the report provided to High Level Marketing on April 28, 2014.

Comment #1- “They started off with a website for us which I later found out was a templeted web design that they pawn off as a custom website.”

The total cost for former client’s website’s development, including the mobile version, was $795.  The regular charge is normally $2,495, however a deep discount was provided.  The initial monthly fee was $350 for hosting and s****.>

A total of sixty hours were spent developing the website including customized navigation, content, special offers, lead form and rotating homepage banners.  If the website appears template-like to the viewer, it is only because the core information architecture (IA) used is indeed the framework upon which High Level Marketing designs many websites.  Their design approach is usability and best-practice based, meaning only IA’s that have been proven to be easy and effective for every type of user are chosen.  Custom HTML, CSS, PHP and Java code was written and tested, so the website was in fact custom.

Comment #2- “I let these people take over our internet marketing campign in October 2012 with the promise that we would dominte our market and keywords related to our market. Never Happened!”

One of the primary goals of the High Level Marketing business development team is to clearly set clients’ expectations and educate them; especially about SEO given that it can take up to one full year for rankings to ramp up.  Analytics show that ASAP Air was in fact on the first page of Google for ‘Heating and Cooling Houston, TX’ for many months.  Former client should refer to the Sept. 2013 performance report which includes detailed metrics showing #1 positions for 90% of keywords and target cities. This summary was also included on the same Sept. 2013 report:

1. Over the past six months, you've received 21 leads from the website, and that's not even including the phone calls.
2. Right now if you search on Google for "Heating and Cooling Houston TX" you are on page 1! In fact, it's #1!
3. Right now you have 5 rankings in the top 3 spots on Google.
4. Right now you have 60 rankings on the first page of Google.

Every employee at High Level Marketing strives to achieve the greatest ROI possible for its clients.  The former client’s stellar SEO strategy resulted in 1,800 visitors in twelve months- solely from search engines, which are correlated to 50 solid form leads, not including phone calls.  For the HVAC industry, the ratio of calls to lead form completion is 3:1.  Assuming the same amount of phone calls (a very conservative estimate), HLM’s lead generation rate, and ultimate customer acquisition cost, was much cheaper than Angie’s List leads and approx. 20% of the cost of Google PPC.  Essentially, the former client paid $50 for one $3,000 installation job which is more than fair.  In fact, a 2-3% customer acquisition cost is a fantastic deal for any small business. 

Comment #3- “After 6 months I was told I needed to double my budget because it was such a competitve market.”

The former client’s monthly budget was increased from $350 to $600 per month and applied to his SEO strategy.  The analytics clearly show that SEO performance was attained over time.  Additionally, High Level Marketing went above and beyond to appease this former client many times.  Here are a few examples:  

• 3/15/12- High Level Marketing designer added a new ‘Financing’ page including copy to the former client’s website per his request- at no charge.  
• 9/9/13- High Level Marketing designer refreshed two banner ads to leverage seasonality per the former client’s request- at no charge.  Typical cost is $200.
• 9/27/13- High Level Marketing designer updated website content, banners and created new coupon per the former client’s request- at no charge.  Typical cost would have been $250.
• 5/29/13- High Level Marketing refreshed four banners including new calls-to-action at former client’s request- at no charge.  Typical cost would have been $400.
• 10/31/13- High Level Marketing waived former client’s monthly payment of $600 as a make-good because he was not 100% satisfied with his SEO results.

Comment #4- “All they offered was a bunch of stripped down files that were nearly impossible to put back together but we did. “

High Level Marketing provided the former client all requested files on Jan. 2, 2014 at 10:45 am- less than one week within his request.  Nothing was ‘stripped’ or tampered with simply because High Level Marketing believes such actions to be unethical.  In fact, it is not within High Level Marketing operations policy to provide SEO files should a client cancel, however in this case, management did approve the transfer.  Former client was overwhelmed and unable to ascertain which files to upload, so Terri spent at least two hours coaching and walking former client through the process to ensure his success. 

Comment #5- “After being rid of them for 3 months they highjacked our mobile website and redirected it to their website.” 

High Level Marketing includes a link to their corporate site on the majority of its clients’ websites on the very bottom of the global footer.  When the former client’s new website company launched the files originally developed by High Level Marketing, its Quality Assurance testing clearly failed.  Had the QA specialist thoroughly reviewed the site’s pages, he or she would have simply removed the link to HighLevelMarketing.com.  Removing it would have prevented it from appearing on both the website and the former client’s, or any other person’s, mobile phone.  This comment further reinforces the fact that zero files were ‘stripped down,’ as cited in former client’s comment #4 as clearly nothing was removed prior to providing them to former client.

*NOTE: Spelling errors that appeared in the originally filed report were retained in this rebuttal, e.g. 'campign' and 'dominte' in reporter’s comment #2

To learn more about High Level Marketing, call 888-717-4249 or visit www.highlevelmarketing.com

Incorporated in 2006, the primary focus of High Level Marketing’s first three years in business was research and development.  During this period, the company performed comprehensive beta testing with clients to ensure their competitive edge in search engine results and ease of use with MYCE™, HLM’s unique website management system.  HLM helps businesses obtain new customers through affordable, results-driven, website design and search engine marketing.