Archive for the ‘attitude’ Category

Hi. Yes — all sorts of unexpected troubles — but I’m back.

I want to begin by letting you know that since my initial foray into this subject (Is Honest Marketing An Oxymoron?), I’ve done a lot of listening, a lot of reading and a fair bit of thinking. And I believe I’ve not only reminded myself of some various understandings I’d nearly forgotten, but have become aware of a few new nuances as well.

Now, with your permission, I’d like to share some of it with you.

So let’s dive right in:

What is all this outcry about a lack of honesty in internet marketing anyway? What’s it about? Why do so many marketers say they are being honest while so many consumers say they are not? Are internet marketers simply crooks? Are consumers simply whiners with unrealistic expectations?

Well, there’s no doubt in my mind that the above posits explain some of it, i.e., some marketers are crooks and some consumers are never satisfied. But as I suggested in a recent post, maybe honesty per se isn’t what the complaints are really all about.

Hopefully I established to your satisfaction in my ‘Dream On‘ post that what people actually buy is a feeling, not a product or service. So if you accept that that is true, then what is it about selling a feeling that can be construed as honest or dishonest?

But wait, rather than address that question directly, let me encourage you to draw your own conclusion as I meander toward some understandings that I hope all, or most, of us can agree on.

Let me begin by establishing a few facts:

First fact — we are all marketers. It’s true. Pretty much every person on the planet is a marketer in one sense or another. When you flirt, you are marketing yourself. When you go out on a first date, when you go on a job interview, when you ask someone to marry you, even when you try to convince someone else that your religious beliefs are where it’s really at — in one sense or another, that is all marketing.

In all cases you are promoting something. You’re promoting yourself or your sex appeal or your personality or your skills and can-do attitude, or maybe even what you consider to be the ultimate cosmic truth.

And in all cases, are you convinced you are being 100% honest?

When you flirt, do you make sure the person you’re flirting with knows that sometimes you can be a clueless klutz?

When you go out on a first date, do you make sure the person you’re dating knows your last relationship ended badly because you got a little too selfish? Or because you exhibited very poor judgment by letting yourself get into a wrong-for-you relationship in the first place?

And when you go on a job interview, do you tell the interviewer about all the things you can’t do well and have failed at?

And how about we just wisely omit any queries regarding the marriage and religious examples for now… ?

The point is, unless you’re a very unusual and socially dysfunctional person, I would guess the answer to all of the above questions (or some similar set of questions in the same spirit that would be more appropriate to you) is “No,” and if that’s the case, are you still convinced you are being 100% honest?

Hmm…

Okay, then, second fact — we’re all dishonest marketers…

Whoa!, now wait a second, sometimes our behavior is designed to spare the feelings of others or to avoid conflict or avoid doing harm to others or ourselves, and after all we’re just “putting our best foot forward” and … even for the sticklers, isn’t it a little much to find fault with that? And besides, there’s a big difference between being dishonest and withholding certain information, right?

Well, yes and no. It does depend on the context. How integral is the information? Does the information you are withholding better define what you are marketing than the information you are disclosing? Or another way to put it, in terms of flirting: are you a clueless klutz 2% of the time or 98% of the time?

If it’s 98% of the time, that is integral information, my friend (if you’ve ever been on a date with someone who is a clueless klutz 98% of the time, you know this!), and if you are withholding that kind of information, you are not marketing with very much integrity. Ah, but if it’s only 2%, well I think we might just let that go… that is, as long as you’re cool and slinky and sexy the rest of the time…

;*)

So what I’m getting at — what I said before, is that honest marketing may actually be the wrong terminology; what customers want is marketing with integrity.

So what does that mean, exactly?

Is my meandering starting to make sense?

If you think so, then this is one of the distinctions, or tenets if you will, of marketing with integrity: consumers — all of us really — expect the promotional information divulged about a product or service to better define that product or service, by far, than any information that is not being divulged.

But that’s just one of the distinctions.

As I see it, there are actually four basic distinctions that define marketing with integrity:

• you have made a sincere attempt to inform yourself about the product or service before recommending and promoting it;

• what is revealed in your promotional material is essentially true to the best of your knowledge;

• what is being said in your promotions (already mentioned) better defines the product or service, by far, than what is not being said;

• you are, in good faith and to the best of your understanding, promoting to your customers only those products and services you know to be appropriate to their needs.

Customers really are not expecting some rigid, pedantic standard of honesty; well, most of them aren’t. You are after all trying to sell something, and customers know this and even, on some level, want to be sold. Nevertheless, if you want to build a reputation for being “honest” — or better, being a marketer with integrity — the bar is still fairly high.

What most of your customers really want is to know that a), you actually know what you are selling; b), you are being essentially truthful about what you know; c), you are not withholding vital, game-changing information that they, as potential buyers, need to know to make an appropriate decision; and d), you are not using your selling skills and strategies to sell them trash or something completely inappropriate to their needs.

Most of this is completely within your ability and under your control, so much of it is really up to you. It takes some effort and can be time- and energy-consuming sometimes, but you want to do this work to build your reputation and be of real service to your customers. It is what anyone who is in this or any other business for the long term should be trying to do.

So… let’s assume we all want that reputation, and so we can and do inform ourselves about the products and services we’re selling, and we do speak the essential truth that best defines those products and services, and we don’t sell trash…

(I hope I am correct in assuming no one who has read this far wants to sell trash. I will assume this as my conviction is that most of those guys wouldn’t take the time to read a post of this length, and certainly not on this subject.)

So… inform self, speak essential truth that best defines, and no trash… But wait, that still leaves the inappropriate-to-their-needs portion, and that is a tall order.

How do you know that what you are selling is appropriate to any particular customer’s needs? Well, you really don’t. To some extent, you can try to get to know your customers, but it’s unlikely you can get to know them all — especially as an internet marketer.

So as internet marketers, since it is impossible to know what all our customers’ needs are, we’re all doomed to sell with a deficient degree of integrity even if we’d prefer to do better, right?

Right. Er, no. Not right. Not exactly.

There are some essential things we all can do — even as internet marketers with massive lists — to establish and maintain a high degree of integrity in our marketing practices.

I’ll talk about some of them in my next post.

I also hope to talk about why it is all important that you understand these distinctions and why there has never been a better time to understand them than now.

Thank you for your attention, and I hope you’ll consider signing up to my list before you go.

To your success!,
Richard D. Farley

Hello again.

I’d intended to post something more, ‘ere now, on the subject of honesty in marketing.

It wasn’t my intention to simply leave it where I left it. In fact, in case you couldn’t tell, I actually had a strategy, or triad of posts, in mind when I began with the question ‘Is Honest Marketing An Oxymoron’ and then confirmed that it is. But I’ve been writing all my posts here myself, and some family health matters have come up that have delayed the intended third post.

Yes, I could have hired it out, but it’s just not my wont these days.

So… I’m just posting this as a notice that I still intend a few more words on this subject, as I believe where the confusion lies is that honest marketing may actually be the wrong terminology, and not exactly what customers are looking for anyway.

What your customers and my customers want — and what we all want as consumers — is marketing with integrity.

So if you’re not sure why I’m making that distinction, what I mean by it, what the difference is, or why it’s important to understand, I hope you’ll stay tuned and check the blog again sometime soon.

Thanks.

Okay, this post is for those who are wondering what the last post was really all about. (BMinto, you were ever so slightly warm, but no cigar.)

First, I apologize for the fact that one of my WordPress plug-ins was malfunctioning and keeping a lot of folks from commenting. (Believe me when I say this annoyed me as much as it did you!)

Second, I probably should have given a little more information upfront about the recent experience I had.

Third, there’s a product launch right now that is lying to us (a lot) and doing so in the name of honesty. The guy behind it is making a whole lot of noise about honesty being the answer to untold riches, and (among other things) I’m here to tell you he is not being very honest about that.

What? Okay, first let’s get back to the original question of the last post, Is Honest Marketing An Oxymoron? — my answer, the only valid answer, and maybe this will surprise (and even dismay) some of you — yes, yes, yes! Honest marketing is an oxymoron! It is an out-and-out contradiction!!

Now before too many of you start to reach for a handful of fruit to throw at my blog, let me explain my meaning.

Why do people smoke? Yes, I’m starting my explanation with another question. Sorry about that, but I do have a point. If you ask people how or why they got started smoking, about eight out of ten will tell you they got started smoking because they thought it was cool.

Surprisingly, smokers don’t generally tell you they started smoking because the smoke tasted so good, or because they enjoyed the initial dizziness or all the initial coughing (i.e., their bodies trying to tell them they were putting poison into their lungs).

Okay, not so surprisingly.

So, even today, after all that has occurred and all the government regulation and all the people who have suffered and died from smoking, is the average cigarette manufacturer always and completely honest about their product?

No; and yes I can imagine some are thinking right now that the tobacco industry is an extreme example and that you don’t want to be that kind of marketer, and good for you. But the point is…

People don’t buy a product, or a service for that matter.

We buy a feeling.

Okay? If you disagree with that premise, I can’t help you, but if you see that it’s true, then what is a marketer selling? Products? Services? Or feelings?

Feelings, of course.

And the experience I was not talking about in the last post was a big wake up call. It drove this home for me, and I’ve been mulling it over ever since.

It’s an experiment you can try yourself if you like. After a brief discussion with another marketer, we decided to set up two email lists under two pseudonyms. For one list we wrote upbeat promotions of various products and services, mostly in the online marketing niche. For the other list, we wrote very matter-of-fact descriptions of these same products and services, pointing out what was worthwhile about them and what wasn’t so worthwhile.

Can you guess what happened? After three months, not only had the second list performed abysmally, most of the subscribers had unsubscribed! Meanwhile, the first list had performed rather well, and most of the subscribers are still subscribed.

So what does this tell you? While people complain constantly about marketers not being honest, what is our behavior saying? Well… it’s kind of saying, all that honesty isn’t really what we’re looking for either.

Now this experience was a harsh reminder for me. I kinda already knew it, but I’d drifted considerably: people don’t buy a product or service; we buy a feeling.

So what feeling are buyers looking for? Are we wanting to buy something that makes us feel like we just bought an inferior product? How about something that makes us feel like we don’t have much of a chance to make it work?

No? So what is the feeling we’re looking for?

It’s the dream. The dream, the dream, the dream. I’ll say it again, the dream — the dream that, if I buy this product, it will renew my life’s experience in some significant way, e.g., it will make me invulnerable to disease, it will make me fabulously rich, it will make me look like a movie star, etc., etc.

So yeah, honest marketing is an oxymoron — at least entirely honest marketing.

Because as marketers we are not going to sell anything by dwelling just as much on the drawbacks of a product or service as on the potential benefits, which would be the truly honest approach.

We are not going to sell anything if we don’t communicate the dream that everyone is really buying.

No matter how many people bitch about this or that marketer being dishonest about this or that product or service, the fact is they bought it from that marketer, and the reason they bought it was because that marketer sold them on the dream, and any time you do that, you will be subject — at least occasionally — to accusations of dishonesty, and any time you don’t, you won’t sell.

Now initially, when I was so harshly reminded of this, it was a little depressing — and not just because I started wondering if maybe I’d been a little too honest lately.

But after a little more thought, and a couple of discussions, I began to realize that it’s not a bad thing at all. Yes, we are all addicts of hyperbole, but no matter how much we complain, our behavior says most of us are fairly happy to be so addicted, and that yes, despite all protestations, on some level we actually want to be sold to, so long as it isn’t a hard sell and so long as what’s being sold is that special feeling…

So yes, honesty is the best policy, and I encourage everyone to be careful not to build expectations too high, and to be as honest as possible, including me — but…

… if you hear from a guy making a lot of noise about plain ol’ honesty being the answer to untold riches… keep in mind that he’s lying.

There is a reason this is called marketing, people!; what marketers are really selling is the right to dream, and… we all want — and I think we even all deserve — to dream.

I had an experience recently that called into question much of what I've believed and tried (increasingly) to practice over the years, and I decided I should blog about it, and maybe even ask for your thoughts.

First off, let me 'fess up and say that I can't claim to have always been 100% totally transparent or hype-free, and I'm certainly not trying to imply otherwise with this post. The lure of easy money has a very strong appeal, as the song says, and I've given into temptation on occasion. I've also been just plain ol' lazy more times than I care to admit.

Even so, I have consistently worked harder at it over the years, and I feel like I have a pretty decent track record at this point — even though, at the moment, I'm starting to wonder if it was all for naught.

Okay? So with that said, I suppose the best way to proceed (or the best way I can think of) is with a few questions, as I have more questions than answers right now, and it is these questions, just lately, that are keeping me up nights.

• Are we, as a society (or as consumers, if you prefer) now completely addicted to hype?
  

If someone tries to sell us something without exaggerating the benefits and without downplaying the drawbacks, does that necessarily mean there is no way in hell we are ever going to buy?

• Do we now assume that any honesty in marketing is just another cynical ploy?
  

Is there really any room for honesty or transparency in marketing any more? I know plenty of marketers and consumers talk about it, incessantly, and claim to practice it, and claim to want more of it, but is there really any room for it if the assumption always is going to be that it doesn't really exist? Or that to the extent it does exist, it is just another tactic?

• If a marketer or salesman comes on as honest, is your first instinct to distrust him (or her)?
  

Maybe this comes down to how many times you've been burned by those claiming to be nothing but honest. But does even making the claim that one is honest actually work against a marketer now as so many who have not demonstrated anything in the way of honesty contantly make the same claim?

• How honest is too honest to be believed?
  

If someone actually tells us some of what to watch out for, and how we might be able to make better judgments about when and whether we are being bamboozled, and begins to reveal some of the psychology and methodology by which we are being taken… is that an insult to our intelligence?

Are we to assume that we are all (even the inexperienced) always cognizant and fully informed of, and about, such matters? — that we would never fall for such manipulations? And are we to assume, also, that any such 'educational' effort is simply another cynical strategy to win our trust so that we will be vulnerable and get burned yet again?

As for why I'm asking these questions, I won't go into all the details — at least not yet. As I said, it was a recent experience that brought this on, and it has caused me to question whether or not we are all addicts of hyperbole now… and whether there is really any point anymore in being honest.

Of course, there is always the ethical point that honest is the right thing to be, but if customers are always going to conclude that any such honesty is just another ploy, and if customers are always, or mostly, only going to buy into the hyperbole anyway, then is the concept of honest marketing an oxymoron?

And if so, why not just give it up… and get with our deliberately deceptive times… and run with our hyperbolic brothers and sisters… and possibly make more money by simply giving consumers even more of what they seem to want and expect?

I mean, yeah, of course that would be wrong from your average moralist's or ethicist's point of view, but wouldn't it also be giving a whole lot of consumers exactly what they demand? (And isn't that kinda sorta a marketer's raison d'etre?)

This recent incident — well, I guess I've said all I'm going to say about it. I guess, maybe because I'm in the planning stages for a product launch, it just threw me off my game, and I'm just kinda struggling with all these questions right now, so… if you have one, I would really appreciate your helpful comment.

I've received quite a lot of flack since my last post. It has been made very clear to me that it wasn't appreciated by many. But rather than apologize, let me explain a couple of terms and add a clarification or two. When I said "that just about everyone in this business that has done well has had to work very hard," what I meant was that… Well, I define doing well, or success, as being in it for the long term and to me that means whatever you're doing is legal, honest, ethical by the most widely accepted standards, and that you make a sincere effort to add at least some value for your clients, customers and fellow marketers — at least whenever possible. So when I said what I said, I guess I was revealing that my definition of success, or doing well, doesn't just mean making money, or just making money for now. It doesn't jive with everyone's definition. I know that. Certainly not with some of the quick-and-easy-buck types. So yes, I'm wrong. It is possible to make a quick buck, but if you intend the above, i.e., legal, honest, ethical, and added value, then you almost certainly will:

• have your own unique and valuable product to sell; and/or
• have all the right connections within your particular industry, and/or
• be one of the very first to find out about and implement a new and effective methodology, and/or
• have at least $10,000 to invest upfront with previous and up-to-date experience in marketing, and/or one or more valued information technologies, and/or
• just luck into something.

But not very many of these things tend to be very true for those who are brand new to the game. That's all. That's all I was saying. I wasn't trying to discourage anyone. I was trying to tell those who need to be told that it's a business, like any other — except that it's been rather like the wild, wild west so far — but that's changing some already and likely to change a lot more in the next few years. So if you are in it for the long run, if you are going to stay legal, ethical, honest, and add value for your customers — and there simply are too many out and around who don't act as if they understand that — then it most likely will take work, lots of it. So, yeah, maybe you can figure out a way, as a still-wet-behind-the-ears newbie to make a lot of money fast and easy. What do I know? It might be that very next product launch that will make it happen. But if you compromise on the long-term strategy I've laid out above, as far as I'm concerned, you might be a rich crook or a rich con artist, but you are not a successful marketer, and anything you do that doesn't pass the smell test probably will come back to bite you sooner or later. Well, that's my take on it anyway. Regards, Richard D. Farley