Mind-Manual

Marketing and Selling: Ethics

Marketing is sometimes the lifeblood of a business, but most people feel uncomfortable doing it. After thinking about it for a while I realized that I, too, suffered from a dislike of marketing but I was able to identify a number of beliefs and ideas that make it a lot more congruent with the rest of me.

The first one is that I had an unconscious belief that, “If my product or service is good enough, then I don’t need to market it.” I also learned that if you do not truly believe in your product or service, you will not be willing to market yourself, because it would be similar to lying. This reminds me of when I used to work at Future Shop (owned by Best Buy, its a computer store) selling and I was fairly uncomfortable selling these things because I did not believe in their value. I wasn’t really interested in purchasing them so I didn’t really sell them that well because I assumed others shouldn’t be either.

By examining times when I felt unhappy with marketing, I can develop a greater understanding of what I call ethical marketing. I don’t like being misled. An introductory seminar which contains no real information and just a sales pitch, for example, is misleading. I don’t like being pushed into something. I also don’t like being made to feel inferior because I do not have the advertised product or service. Things should be pitched as improvements rather than as solutions for some sort of chronic deficiency. I don’t like being treated like a headcount or a sales number. I like being treated as a human being. I don’t like really high claims because they become simply unbelievable.

Ethical marketing, for me, is embodied by Steve Pavlina. Even his ads (such as for Site-Build-It) contain valuable information. I read the ad he emailed me and it just felt like a blog post. While he does create a powerful interest in whatever he is advertising, you don’t feel pressured. He presents it as an option, not as a “have-to”. Pavlina does treat and respect you as an individual and as a human being. Pavlina is up-front about expectations. While most self-help authors would be loathed to say that whatever they do is hard or what have you, Pavlina says on his front page that PD is hard, possibly driving people away, but also screening his readers which is important to do. While its easy to think at the beginning that you just need more customers or clients or what have you, it is also important to have the right kind of customers or clients. All of what Pavlina does is made possible because I do trust and respect him. There is a certain rapport there which he sustains by not becoming another over-promising, under-delivering self-aggrandizing self-help author.

Learning to market effectively is part of my project to develop the mindset of an entrepreneur. A lot of times, the actions themselves are super-easy to take but there is a mental or emotional belief that prevents you from taking them.

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What’s wrong with this ad?

I saw an ad in the subway recently and I thought it was terrible. See if you can tell why:

“The Right Phones.

The Right Networks.

The Right People.

That’s why we’re the #1 electronics retailer in Canada.”

Or something like that. I don’t remember exactly, but I think I captured the essence of the problem. Can you guess what it is?

If you said that it was the font and the background colours were too similar, then you’re wrong (although there was an ad on the subway about the Ontario Child Benefit that had a lot of text and the text was too close to the background, making it hard to read). This particular ad (and I’ll try to get a picture of it, if I can) had a red background and the font colour was yellow.

Nope, the reason why this ad sucked is because its all about the company (who shall remain nameless…for now, at least). Well, that’s not totally fair. They were doing ok (and just ok) with the “Right” stuff, even though that’s not nearly good enough to win my attention. But they totally bombed it in the last line.

I don’t care if you’ve got the biggest hat in the world, I’m (as a potential customer) only interested in ME and what you can do for ME. Here’s another bunch of ads that I just came up with now. They’re not perfect but they’re better than whatever they have now:

Ad 1: Picture someone in low-key, film noir-ish lighting, looking visibly afraid and trying to get back from electronic thing (like a printer or computer or something). Caption reads: Scared of your computer? We can help!

Ad 2: Buy like four ad spaces at whatever station you’re going to buy it at, and create a comic book-like sequence. Knowingly cheesy, like those ads for workplace safety a while ago. First panel – show someone running out of ink or their printer’s busted while they’re trying to print a mission critical document (or a class report or something). Second panel – show whoever it is deciding to run out to the local <insert electronics store name here>. Third panel – show them getting there and talking to one of the sales reps. Fouth panel – They have received the ink or whatever and they hold it above their heads with the customer service reps in like tights and stuff being all hero-y. Insert a small talk bubble of the customer saying “uh…why are you wearing your underwear on the outside?”. Or have a kid in the background saying, “Mommy! Mommy! Why is that man wearing his underwear outside? Can I?” Or something. The reason this works better is cause a) its a sequence. Make each panel interesting enough that people want to know what happens next and they’ll go and LOOK for each panel and notice it). b) it’s about CUSTOMERS being happy.

Obviously these ideas need refinement, but they’re still better than the original ads.

If I was this particular electronics retailer, I’d fire my ad/marketing team and get someone else in. Someone who can focus on the CUSTOMER.

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