Unethical marketing practices will definitively destroy your credibility. Period.
The Signs
Let’s see what might be some of the signs allowing us to recognize unethical marketing practices:
- Degrading or underestimating the substitute or rival’s product
- Giving false or misleading information on the value of the product
- Failing to give useful information on the possible reaction or side effects of the product
- Being immoral
The Case
OK, after this introduction I would like to present a real case of unethical marketing I stumble across the other day. It has all the signs I was talking about, every single one.
I really don’t know whether the marketed product is legit or scam, in this case this is really irrelevant due to the way it is promoted by this marketer. I’m not discussing the product’s value, I only want to show you an example of bad marketing behavior.
The incriminated page: http://yapster99.empowernetwork.com/blog/partnership-to-success-by-john-thornhill-partnership-to-success-video-review.
I won’t use a link here because I don’t want to drive traffic to it. He, he… 😉
Update December 2018:
The link above is no longer valid now, but the principles covered by this article still remain perfectly valid.
Sign #1 – Rival Product
The incriminated page has “Partnership To Success” and “Video Review” all over the place letting you believe that it’s a P2S review. And is also SEO optimized for these keywords, too, so people searching for P2S are easily drawn to this page.
The author shows that you have to pay for the course and he comes with a solution to this: a completely free system that brings you $400 per day. I wish it would be that simple…
Yes, you have to pay a small price for all that huge value you get, nobody would work for pennies.
So, the sign #1 is satisfied – using the success of a product to drive traffic to another.
Sign #2 – Misleading
OK, you get to a squeeze page, you enter your email and you are instantly redirected to a landing page.
On this landing page you are basically pushed to sign-in to “Instant Payday Network”. What is this all about? You basically are incentivized to fill out CPA offers, meaning you get money for completing the forms.
In the process you will have to give credit card and personal data to the offering companies. I’m not saying that you’ll be ripped off, but you should be VERY cautious.
The ultimate purpose of “Instant Payday Network” is to feed it’s members to “Empower Network”. My advise is: stay away from EN if you are new to internet marketing.
The whole mechanism is pretty well explained in this article.
Sign #3 – Incomplete Info
As I already mentioned, you are not warned about the the possible dangers and side effects, so Sign #3 is accomplished too.
Sign #4 – Being Immoral
This whole attempt to use the success of a product to attract you to another, and then misleading you by presenting incomplete information about it, is by itself immoral.
Conclusion
Wouldn’t be much, MUCH more beneficial for ALL parties if this marketer would promote the very product that he used as a bait in the first place? Or if he thinks it’s too pricey, he could choose another valuable product, there are so many of them out there. Why on Earth use such an immoral method to do marketing?!
In my delicacy I even didn’t mention the name of the marketer, but you’ll find out yourself if you follow the links.
I’m quite curious to know what do you think about all this.
Featured image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net. Photo by jscreationzs. Image ID: 10030624
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