DIGITAL MARKETING TECHNIQUES
Dotto Tech is bringing up a few topics that give online marketers a bad name. Now, first, let us open by stating most online marketers do an excellent job of being honest and look to build a genuine relationship with their community. To provide valuable content without utilizing sketchy sales tactics. Then there are the other online marketers. There are a few tactics that seem to be floating around the online world that don’t sit well with how Dotto Tech looks at honest and fair business. We wanted to discuss three ways that some marketers try to pull the wool over our eyes. Again, this is not the majority of online marketers, but there are enough to make us call the bluff.False Scarcity
False scarcity is when an illusion that some offer or product is going to go away if you don’t buy now. Creating an urgency to make customers take out their credit cards and purchase now. Scarcity can cause people to buy; we are all in fear of missing out. Additionally, there is nothing wrong with creating scarcity if it truly is a limited time offer or a product that isn’t available past a particular time. It is the offers that state this, and you go back to find the same offer open way past the date it was supposed to go away, many times with a new “end” date being promoted. Another false scarcity is on webinars, many times they are marketed with “limited seating” when in reality there is unlimited room on platforms such as Google Hangouts or WebinarJam. False scarcity is flat out lying to customers and is wrong. There is a purpose for creating scarcity, yes TRUE scarcity. Creating a sense of urgency in a sales cycle is a great technique! Just do it honestly….thats all we ask!Forced Upsells
So many marketing “gurus” online teach and promote using forced upsells. Forced upsells the technique of offering a lower priced product up front to get your customers to open their wallet, only to then layer on additional products that they “need“. Usually these “upsells” are a necessary part of what the customer is purchasing. The mindset behind this is that once the customer has their wallet open,ad a reduced price, then it is time to strike while the iron is hot, and extract full value! Again, upsells do have a legitimate place in the sales cycle; we are not discounting offering additional products when there is an legitimate reason behind it. We do not agree with trying to get people to open their wallet for a small price and hit them with the higher price product immediately after, which are really a necessary part of the innitial offer!. Offering a course to the public and offering an additional option for your customers to purchase a bundle of your courses, for instance, this could be a legitimate offer. But saying here is a product A for $10 and then immediately saying, oh yeah, and to get the details you will need to purchase product B for $300, this is wrong.Faux Webinars
Faux webinars are webinars marketed as a live webinar when in reality it is a pre-recorded webinar. This is my number One thing I currently hate about online marketing! If the first introduction to you and your product is you lying to your community about whether or not your webinar is live, how is this building a good relationship? You can use recorded webinars for good, we do not think all webinars have to be live, but just be upfront and honest that the webinar is in fact recorded. Additionally, not mentioning whether it is a live or recorded webinar is just as sneaky as the previous, do not try to leave it up to the potential customer to determine whether you are in fact interacting with them live or they are watching a pre-recorded webinar.
The reality of it all comes down to conducting business honestly. We do not want the world of online marketing to be tainted by a few shady practices; we can all build a stronger business by being honest in our interactions with our community. We are not calling anyone out, in particular, just bringing attention to the industry and standards that if we all held ourselves to, could increase the trust of our audience and in the end, help business flourish for everyone while still providing genuine and honest value to the customers.
Until next time, have fun stormin’ the castle!