Are you transparent … enough?
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011It should come as no surprise to anyone even mildly involved in the IM-industry that the US government is starting to crack down on what they consider illegal and unethical practices for anyone selling digital products online. It’s been going on for some time now, and just over a year ago the FTC announced it’s new guidelines that had some marketers go totally bananas. They were upset because suddenly shady tactics became not just shady, but actually illegal. Illegal as in “could cost you your life savings and possibly end your ass up in jail, in deep debt to the government”.
When I started out in the early 2000′s, one of the things that actually struck me with what was considered normal practices in the IM-industry (I’m not talking about the marketing online as a whole, just the marketing of internet marketing materials, otherwise known as the “Make Money Marketing Marketing” industry) was the lack of transparency. When I was involved in offline selling, transparency was the norm – not the exception. If I promised something to a customer, it was because I know it to be true. I never said “some people even experience THIS as a result” just making a new attribute of the goods up. Yet, in the way IM was taught, lying about your products was not only common practice, it was expected. This was especially true when reselling MRR/RR and rebranding PLR-material. The original seller passed along his sales material to you, and you used it. The sales material had outrageous claims about income potential for “fully utilising” whatever the product was about, and you gladly stamped your name on the sales page in effect making you the person who guaranteed results. Most people (myself included) didn’t even read through the crap they were selling, they just stamped their name and whacked up the salespage on a new domain, happily claiming anyone could make six figures within a month, for a one-time investment of $47 (or whatever the price was) with an iron-clad money-back guarantee that was only good in certain circumstances making it “iron-clad” only for the sellers unwillingness to refund.
I’m not putting myself on a high horse here, claiming I’ve never done it, because I have. In the learning process of things, whatever I am taught I do at first. I’m never comfortable enough to start changing the “flow” of things until I feel I have a deeper understanding of the work process. When I started programming, I didn’t adapt my own coding style until I felt confident in the style of my mentor. Same goes whenever I learn a new programming language, I use the style my teacher (or book, or video course, you get the general idea) uses until I feel confident I understand the process, then I adapt my own style. I was taught a lot of bullcrap about marketing online when I started out, and I used everything I learned. You name it, chances are I’ve used it. Two years ago when I pulled my last salespage off the net and started looking for other ways to make money online without lying, scamming and creating illusions, I found out that it is very easy to be transparent about your stuff, not lying and deceiving your customers. You still make sales. Sure, a paid-for fake video testimonial with a pretty girl could probably pull in a couple of extra sales, but it would probably also pull in a couple of refund requests. Something we don’t want.
In other industries, a refund-request-rate of 10-15% would be regarded as a disaster, yet in the Internet Marketing, “Make Money Marketing Marketing”-industry, those are considered good, low numbers.
Imagine that. 15% unhappy customers who are so unhappy with their purchase they actually go through the pain of requesting a refund (which more often than not isn’t so different from attempting to ride a uni-cycle when you only have one leg), is considered good. Now, are those good numbers because you know you’re selling crap and was expecting a 90% refund rate, or is it good because you’re just surprised anyone at all was willing to buy?
You can not be an ethical marketer unless you’re willing to be transparent. About everything. Ok, your family’s health status is not something you have to transparent about (especially seeing as how unethical marketers in the past have used that type of information to pull in extra sympathy sales), but when it comes to your business and the product you’re pushing, tell your customers everything there is to know about it. If the contents of your course is only going to make sense and be valuable to 15% of the general population, tell them so on your sales page. Tell them what distinguish those 15%. Don’t try tricking the other 85% into buying it, because it will come back to bite you. If you send out a mail to your old customers trying to convince them to buy a product you’re affiliated with, tell them somewhere in the mail that you get a commission if they buy from your link. Be open about it, and never assume they understand things you think are obvious. Because 1) they aren’t and 2) they won’t.
This year is marking the beginning of a new era for marketing online. Not only are the US government starting to crack down on shady practices, the rest of the world is following. Some shady figures will be put out of business, and in that process a couple of guys who are not at all shady will fall as well, because they haven’t been transparent about how they make money.
Don’t be one of those guys. Be open with what you do.
Wishing you a prosperous, rewarding and great 2011!
/Björn
