Time for Marketers to Clean Up Their Act!Get The Edge Marketing on theedgemarketing.com. Time for Marketers to Clean Up Their Act! topic will increase your understanding on The Edge Marketing. We at theedgemarketing.com only provide news, articles, information in The Edge Marketing. The Edge Marketing at theedgemarketing.com provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
The company envisaged smaller Internet service providers (ISP's) as their main target market for the software. The company president contracted with a sales/marketing person to handle the ISP market. He personally trained the candidate for two weeks, emphasizing all the while that the ISP market is one that needs to be gently handled. "Don't worry," the salesperson apparently reassured his unsuspecting boss. "I know some great ways of doing marketing." At the end of the two weeks, the contractor sought out a number of email discussion groups and online message boards frequented specifically by ISP owners. He created two false identities, and struck up "conversations" between the two ID's. The subject of these chats? You've guessed it - what a wonderful product Maestro is! Before very long, our crack salesperson got embroiled in an argument with another poster on one of the lists. Others became curious and discovered that just one IP address was used with the two IDs. This meant that the two "people" were actually just one person. When he realized that his newly-revealed antics didn't sit so well, to say the least, with the boss, he readily handed in his resignation. All the same, he didn't really understand what the fuss was about. "This is the way the game is played," the president quoted him as saying. After all, he had not misrepresented the product or the company in the postings. All he had said was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! So what's the problem, then? Shaking your head?Are you shaking your head in disbelief? Well, that's an encouraging sign! But you must know - such deception abounds. Many apparently respectable people would write here: "deception" (in inverted commas). I mean, we're not talking here about anything really CROOKED, are we? I wouldn't bank on it. If something's not crooked, it must, by definition, be straight. When I look around the Internet - never mind the brick-and-mortar world - I don't need a builder's plumb line to tell that an awful lot's going on out there that's not straight! But who cares, anyways? In the case we just described, the company president received a number of emails supporting his former salesperson's actions. "Most of them took the stance of "The high road is a bad road," confessed the president. "I don't agree with them," he said, "but I can see their point." The same news source that reported this incident, also cited a story about a leading entertainment company that recently attracted a lot of embarrassing press - and imminent legal action. Two very enterprising advertising reps had created a fictitious film critic, who most obligingly wrote up some rave reviews for the company's promotions. Eleventh CommandmentThe ruse was discovered and the two hapless advertising people suspended. But I think it's reasonable to assume that these two are far outnumbered by colleagues who are a little more adept at fulfilling the Eleventh Commandment: "Thou Shalt Not Get Caught!" We could go on and on. We could talk about the authors who encourage their friends to post glowing reviews on Amazon.com, even when they haven't read the books they refer to. Curiously - or perhaps, typically - this practice is apparently cited with admiration in a recent book on online promotional methods. (Well, if you produce a product and I'm your friend, it MUST be a great product, right?) Should we talk about the well-known writer who received an email with the subject line "RE: Your Story Proposal"? Thinking it must be from an editor to whom he had submitted a proposal that he had forgotten about, he opened it immediately. The message was a blatant ad for a new piece of software. (Big deal! All they stole was a couple of minutes of his time, right?) Or what about the marketers who urge you to take advantage of a time-sensitive special offer that expires on June 30? ("Yes, we should have added which YEAR, but typos do happen!") When your order, don't forget to claim your free Exclusive Report - a $29 value. ("Yes, you can get it free from Acme even WITHOUT an order, but are you telling me I don't know the value of my own merchandise?") Inverted commas?And you still want to talk about "deception" in inverted commas? Is the high road a bad road? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. But I do know one thing. If you're a merchant and I don't trust you, you went get far on any road. And if the consumer body, collectively, loses trust in the collective community of merchants, who will there be to trade with at all? Good road, bad road, what's the difference? As far as I can see, the high road is the ONLY road.
Let me know what you think.
|
Advice Home Business Technology Online Advertising Motivational Internet Marketing SEO Help Online Games Science Articles Happiness More Articles:1. How to Use Marketing Judo to Beat Big Competitors By Douglas Hanna If yours is a small business and you have big or even huge competitors, you may be laying awake at night wondering how can you possibly beat them. You can't out-advertise them, or out-promote them, and you probably won't be able beat to its prices. For example, think about a small business whose biggest competitor is Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Amazon.com or some other huge retailer. Is there any way to compete successfully against these Goliaths?My an… 2. How To Get New Business By Sue And Chuck DeFiore Market, Market and then market some more. So many small and home-business owners do what we call spot marketing. They market hard for their business, get a response then stop marketing. Marketing must be an ongoing process. Let's repeat that...Marketing Must Be An On Going Process. In addition, you should have multiple marketing strategies. For example, we market on the internet through newsgroups, newsletters, press releases, forums, writing… 3. 12 Lessons I Picked Up from Attending Seminars By Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero So you just dropped a tidy sum to attend a seminar or some other three-day event. Now it's over and you're exhausted. Your client work is backed up. You have a fistful of business cards to connect with. And your family would like some face time. Time to get back into the swing of life, right? Wrong.I go to A LOT of seminars. Rubbing shoulders with my colleagues, talking over dinner and debating our hottest industry issues at a live event is hon… 4. Joint Venture Marketing: What and Why By Catherine Franz What is a Joint Venture? A joint venture is an agreement in which two or more businesses work on a project for a set period of time. Usually with a specific project or goal in mind. Joint ventures can be long-term, like promoting a product together, or some can be short-term, like bartering or trading products and services. Ideas on how to joint venture ideas are boundless.Why you want to start Joint Venture Marketing! Here are 51 reasons … |