Ugh…
The amount of horrible advertising, online in particular, does a couple of things for me.
The first is it makes my stomach turn.
The second is it makes me VERY confident that I’ll have a competitive advantage when it comes to writing ads for a long time to come.
Here are just a few claims I’ve seen recently…
“16 Year Old Girl Makes $400k In 45 days”. While this COULD be true, it’s not. The website in question isn’t even owned by a 16 year old girl, and with a little bit of digging you can even see that one of the “testimonials” was bought on Fivver for $5…
When you make outrageous (and bogus) claims like this, what are you trying to accomplish?
The nice answer would be that you don’t have an ounce of integrity, you don’t care about the poor saps who buy your product, and you certainly aren’t planning on keeping your customers around for the long term…
Another example is a lot of false scarcity… “This price is ONLY good for the next 24 hours”… Huh, you’ve had it at the same price for 3 months now. Now that you’ve destroyed all credibility, you still expect me to trust you enough to buy your product?
The point I’m making is this…
If you have to lie to sell your product, you probably need a new product.
Marketing isn’t a game of “manipulating the masses”, it’s a game of solving problems and providing REAL value in exchange for money.
And if you ever plan on building a long term business – A business in which your customers are raving fans who buy from you over and over again, you can’t treat them like sheeple…
A couple of quotes from the great David Ogilvy…
“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”
“Never Write an Advertisement Which You Wouldn’t Want Your Own Family To Read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by.”
I’m a firm believer in treating others the way I’d want to be treated…
The guys I buy products from are all enormously successful.
And while they’re not usually “cheap”, universally they’ve been well worth the money.
They didn’t have to manipulate me into buying, but they did have to persuade me, and there’s a big difference there.
They’re selling products I’m already interested in, and usually all it takes is one strong bullet point to hit a nerve with me to at least “give them a chance”…
And when they do (over) deliver the goods, I’ll usually spend a lot more money with them afterwards.
Honesty is the best policy in advertising…
And I have proof to back it up.
I buy a lot of copywriting and marketing material.
The guys who have REALLY made it selling that kind training, they sell top notch stuff…
They don’t lie or lay on the hype too thick.
They do a great job of getting you to drool over the product in the copy, but they do it without being manipulative to the point of lying to you.
And once you cave, they do bring the goods.
And if you can deliver the goods (no matter what you’re selling) without having to resort to being unethical and downright lying, you’ll start landing customers for life.
I think we see a lot of this because people don’t know better. They’ve seen it done before and copied it because they “assume” it works better…
My money is on being honest, even at the expense of conversions (which I believe integrity actually HELPS)…
People aren’t stupid. And generally you can burn them once but never again.
What’s your take on deception in advertising?
-Scott
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Good morning, Scott…
Funny you wrote about that because I just read a thread in the WF that was a rant about how the WSO section “seems” to have been taken over by people selling diet related products, for re-package and re-sell presumably.
Someone replied that people were simply providing to a certain market.
Months ago, earlier this year, a similar rant/thread was posted with the same complaint, but that one was about people offering backlinking services. Again, the reply from people was that a market demand was being satisfied.
My take on all of this is that perhaps a good percentage of people who are guilty of the advertising/copy infractions, or ill-advised approaches, in your post are newer marketers. They have yet to learn the value of honest marketing.
Even for those who do write/offer crap and deceptive ads, I tend to think there is a market because here will always be gullible people, or people who do not know better.
I’m not justifying deceptive marketing, but rather it’s something that will always be here. It’s an age-old battle for truth, justice, and a more ethical way of doing business.
Those who engage in deceptive marketing either eventually learn what they’re doing and re-right their ships, or they know full well and just suffer from misfiring scruples, consciously.
The war wages on…
Ken
Hey Scott,
Great post – and I agree 100%… the deception side is getting ridiculous. And you can go one step further – Internet marketing in general is becoming predictable and very formularic as well.
So if a (lesser) marketer is going to follow that formula (and he/she doesn’t have the talent, life story, examples, product, etc etc etc) then many a marketer unfortunately resorts to bogus claims.
But even when you put the bogus stuff to one side…. there’s stull a credibility question…
Yes, it’s great to have a proven marketing method – However when it gets to the point where every guru follows the exact same steps then you just KNOW what is coming next …and once again, along the route it’s credibilty which is being lost.
(Man, you got me started now….)
The false creation of controversy is also another for the rant pot! Again, the gurus are often the most guilty… One minute they saying something like “Screw Google!” the next it’s “Google rocks!” …Hey, some gurus have had more comebacks than a 70′s rock band! – “I’m retiring from the IM business….” …two months later …”Hey, you gotta get my latest stuff, it’s my best yet”
So yes, let’s get some credibility back.
Best,
Michael