Saturday, January 10, 2015

Is Your Reputation Killing Your Traffic Generation AND Business?


I say dangerous things sometimes.  Well, here goes…

Most people that are in business (especially Internet marketers) are missing this.  This is probably the easiest way to drive traffic to your business either online or off.  However, in my humble opinion it is the LEAST used method that I have seen.  I’m not saying that you’ll get massive traffic from this overnight, because this is kind of like branding your product or service.  It takes time, cultivating relationships and building a list of customers or clients. 

Let me explain…

Your Reputation Is Paramount

If you think for one second that people are going to buy a product or service from you, and not form an opinion of you one way or another, you’re kidding yourself.  Recently, I was thinking of purchasing an online product from a company I had heard of for years. 

A lot of big time marketing gurus were touting it as one of the best courses that had ever been made.

I decided to look around the Internet to see if anyone had formed an opinion of it one way or the other.  What I found was rather shocking.  As a matter of fact, it has changed the way I’ll view almost ANY product online from now on.

If You Suck On The Internet Everyone Will Know It

This business and product, which has been touted as an industry standard by well-known practitioners in the field, was one of the most hated on the Internet.  As a matter of fact, so many people complained in one forum alone, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do business with them.  The rants ran on for pages and pages. 

Suddenly, I felt like I had been taken.   Even though I had not actually bought the product, I felt as though the gurus I had believed in for so long, were out making paid endorsements for one and other. 

As I said before, many experts were praising this product. I thought, “Wow!  I've been buying products from these “experts” for years. Could it be that I’m just an easy mark?  P.T. Barnum could quickly validate his most favorite phrase by watching the likes of me.”

I have to say, the people that were selling the service, were great at selling their product, because it had gained so much traction over the years.  However, the goods were tainted.  Very, very tainted.  And unfortunately, many people felt like they had been ripped off.

The Info-Product Model of Stupidity

If I were at an expensive seminar, some toothy-grinning guru would probably tell me that I’m being negative.  However, reality is reality.  If something sucks and there are a whole bunch of very intelligent people spilling their guts, then what does it say for that product or service?

Buy hey, this is the way info marketing is done over the Internet.  Build up all of this hype, brag endlessly about your BIG PRODUCT LAUNCH, talk about false scarcity, tell everyone that this is a one-time offer when it actually isn’t, and then sell them crap. 

Once you are in their pipeline, you’ll be “invited” to their seminar at $2,500 a shot.  You better hurry too!  The last one was sold out!  Of course, they deliberately picked a smaller conference room where they could have the scarcity principle work for them.  They could honestly say, “…we only have “x” number of seats at this event, so you better hurry and fork over the bucks.” 
Then they give this impressive list of speakers that have all written books, so therefore are an authority on the subject.

 (This is the reason why I’m a firm believer in going on Amazon and buying their books…USED.  Not only that, but if you are an info-vulture like me, you’ll eventually find some of these products on eBay for a lark rather than the $500 + they’ll charge you for an uncomfortable chair at a seminar.  (Any chair outside of my recliner is uncomfortable, especially when I’m reading a good book.))

I’m serious, though.  If Joe or Josephine Blow is giving an expensive seminar,
why don’t you try to find their book on Amazon?  I doubt that whatever they’ll tell you at the expensive seminar will be any different than what they wrote IN GREAT DETAIL in their book.  Plus, you’ll have access to their expertise any time you want. 

Now, these are people that’ll tell you to track everything you do.  Track your sales, track your direct mail campaign, track your Internet traffic, track how many times a day you take a crap…You know the drill.  Well, I have never heard or seen any proof of their attendee’s rate of success.  In other words, how many people made “X” number of dollars after going to one of their seminars?
I have never seen those stats.   They’ll tell you they have no way of tracking that.  

Isn't that convenient? 

It’s kinda like the government telling you it knows every dime you make, so you better pay every cent you owe in taxes, but has no recollection of the fact they had spent 20 bazillion dollars covertly invading Kazakhstan.   Very, very convenient.

 This is Where You Can be Different.

Now listen, I’m not saying that everyone that sells info products is like this is a charlatan, snake oil salesman.  There are some really good info marketers out there that sell well made products.  I’m sure there are some really great seminars too.  I am also positive that you can learn something from some of these resources that will benefit you and your business. 
However, if you are going to charge top dollar for your product or service, then you better deliver

Actually, you better OVER-DELIVER!

And, if you can dredge it up, some honest caring about the people you are marketing to, wouldn't hurt either. Because, so few businesses actually care about their fellow human.  They look at around and all they see are dollar signs, and it eventually will be seen as that by the people they do business with.

However, if you actually care about the people you sell to and service and go the extra mile for them, they will never forget you.  At the very least, you’ll have someone that appreciates you and what you've done for them. 

I just had to get some of this off my chest.


Mark "Elmo" Ellis

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"






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