Washtone Media

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CEO of a Marketing start up

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Washtone Media?

Full scope digital marketing:

• Social Media Management (Facebook & Instagram)
• SEO
• Blog/Content writing
• Google My Business Management
• SEM
• Digital + Social Media Ads

What were your goals for this project?

To have the full scope of digital and social media marketing and advertising handled by an experienced professional agency, to launch + market my new business.

SOLUTION

How did you select Washtone Media?

The contacted me privately, claiming to be the number 1 marketing agency in the whole of Boston.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

per the contractually agreed scope of work which we paid for, the agreement was to cover all the scope of works:

1. SEM: creating images, content, adwords + keyword research, ad campaigns,
2. SEO: On/off page, backlinks, content writing,
3. BLOGS: 4 blogs per month, researched with keywords
4. FACEBOOK MARKETING: monthly calendar, 30 posts, images, captions, researched hashtags, daily management
5. INSTAGRAM: monthly calendar, 30 posts, 10 stories, DM marketing, daily management + growth
6. FACEBOOK + INSTAGRAM ADS: engagement ads, traffic ads etc, set up, optimize, manage
7. RETARGETING ADS - both instagram + facebook
8. GOOGLE ADS - setting up the account, the ad campaigns, optimizing + split testing
9. GOOGLE MY BUSINESS: set up, optimize, manage, posts, get reviews
10. BOUNCE RATE/USER EXPERIENCE: Chat bots, live chats, FAQ etc.
11. OFFERS: Managing marketing offers + promotions

What was the team composition?

I dealt directly with the owner herself

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Absolute fail The agreement for the above works was 80% budget for all advert spends and 20% Management fees for Washtone Media who will work on the project as a team of 5 people for 20 hours per week. We paid 2 months management fees and 1 month of ad spend.

None of the works were done over these 2 months due to their repeat missed deadlines - In then end we received approx 20 social media images, almost all full of mistakes even with basic English spellings.

We noticed also the company lied about it authenticity - they actually used fake bots on their own + client social media - so after 2 month delay in even posting on social media, our account got blocked because of they breached Instagram rules on our account by using bots, and lied to us about it

We later came to realize they also write their own reviews, they're not from real customers, the followers on their social media accounts are less than 7% real, they buy fake likes + followers. When we confronted them, they cancelled our project and ran off with oiur complete payment of $4,200

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Horrendous - we were promised a an account access where we can see the daily work + where the budget + hours are being allocated - this never happened - instead the communication consisted on us repeatedly asking why the work is not being done per the agreement and them replying with irrelevant excuses and setting new deadlines to miss yet again

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their ability to lie so well - they really do appear to be great to the average user - but once you look close enough you realize their address is false, their business has not been registered for as long as they, fake reviews, likes comments + testimonials - well basically everything we believed to be true was actually a lie

Are there any areas for improvement?

Yes - this company has absolutely no clue how to do the works that they themselves advised us to hire them for - the entire thing was a scam - I think if we hadn't noticed their fake activity, they would have gotten away with it for longer as they do with other clients