Hi Ray,

I guess you can also add OTO's to that list

I think it's because they understand the dynamics of each marketing effort. They have seen the "inside" of the marketing machine, and now they are the one experiencing what the machine was built for - to extract money in exchange for a product or service.

Because most of the time the actual Marketers are NOT 'their Market'. We become way too analytical.

A lot of Marketers talk about Squeeze Pages looking sleazy or to spammy etc..etc...

Do you know how many people outside of IMers know what a Squeeze Page is ?


Before I was in IM 8 years ago when I was getting emails for muscle building products, I did NOT know that in each email when they were addressing me by my name.. I didn't know that was automated at all.

I thought they were actually typing my first name in throughout the email. LOL



- Robert Andrew

We also see it so much on a daily basis we get over exposed to it. I hate the sites that don't let you leave.

i think discrat nailed it.

as we become more seasoned marketers, we ignore the hype and emotional triggers more an more. they eventually become annoying because we understand right from the begining why the sales letter is so long or the why the video has a 20 minute intro that talks about the lifestyle you dream of having and can have if you just buy this product i am pushing

That being said, the thread going on about pat flynn right now also proves there is more than one way to make a business out of IM. One poster in that thread asked why he didn't do many of the things you mention. Thats a guy making a million a yr and a guy in wf "feels" like he could be making more if he employed many of the strategies you describe here. lol.

lets face it, Pat doing nearly a million a year is in the top 1% of the top 1% of wf members and yet he employs relatively few of the tactics you mention. I wonder if there is something to that?

probably not. lol.

But the main things i think is that the target markets. Guys targeting mid / higher lvl marketers usually dont employ the things you mention nearly as often and certainly not as aggressively.

when we open a webpage with those pop ups or other monetization methods, we know exactly whats going on and what their purpose is. over the years I have just become immune to all the BS that comes with the internet..

Good thread, I would be inclined to interject the obvious gorilla in the room, just because something works does not mean its a good way to approach the future.

There is always room for improvement, its a great way to look at life as well as marketing.

I have interviewed thousands of small business owners over the last few years, mostly because I see them struggling, most small business owners are busy people, they are struggling to make their business more profitable, they put in more hours because they may not have the capital to invest in a better business model.

They work more hours now doing what they used to have employees doing, but personal time to many of these business people is free, the truth is very different, working more hours often leads to mistakes and lost opportunities for growth.

They are often literally overwhelmed with tasks, to the point that they cannot see the forest for the trees.

As a case in point, I saw two different large automobile auctions, that not only did not have a mobile product but also were using old often inoperative websites that did not fit in with what the buyers expected.

These are not mom and pop stores but multi million dollar corporations, (they are growing but its painful) no IT department, no tech savvy employees and because they are so busy they do not want to discuss it, unless you force them to do it, they will continue right along with the old way of doing things, they view the internet as a side line not worth investing time and effort.

So they throw up a page or two and they wait for the regular sharks to show up and sell cars far below the value they could be getting for those vehicles.

That is the way I see a lot of these internet marketing business models, sad old and tired, do they work?

Well it depends on how you view the obvious.

Work is not Success...

Work is work, success is the product of work certainly, less work more success now that is something that works...

A large majority of self-identified "internet marketers" are not actually marketers at all... they're hyper-engaged enthusiasts.

They compulsively consume a never ending procession of marketing related products and services with a soft goal/dream of putting it all into action eventually, some day in the future that, for many, unsurprisingly never comes.

And so, how better to soothe the nagging anxiety of yet another day, week, month, year of achieving little to nothing than to project all that pent up angst onto an ethical quandary about "spammy marketing tactics" and the vilification of those that use them?

This sounds judgmental, but it's really not - it's just how people behave in the pursuit of earning money online.

In so far as I can, as "only an affiliate", not a vendor/merchant at all, I've actually tested all of those things, over the years, apart from pop-ups (I've been too heavily influenced by too many other people's split-testing results to be willing even to test those, myself ), and eventually abandoned/avoided them all - apart from "long copy", which I like very much anyway - because they didn't work for me.

I'm - literally - "just saying".

Very good replies, above, from Brian and Kilgore, and a very interesting thread, anyway.

I suspect, increasingly, that my own traffic demographics (in all of my niches) may be a little atypical, because of the ways I generate most of my traffic, and that actually in my case the difference between "my own preferences" and "my visitors' preferences" are probably distinctly fewer and less significant than is the case for many marketers.

One more point: it seems to me that when people "test" things for themselves, the exact parameters they choose to measure are really what determine their conclusions. The classic example is perhaps "squeeze pages". If you make the mistake of monitoring/judging according to the proportion of visitors who opt in (i.e. subscriber numbers), then you're more or less bound to decide that "they work", it seems to me. Whereas if you monitor according to the income that the resulting lists produce over a 6-month period, when sent the same email series, you're very likely to come to an entirely different conclusion. People assume what they assume (in this case, that subscriber numbers are proportional to income - which is often nonsense), and they see what they look for.


.

People do not hate what works, people hate marketing in general. Its annoying for everyone. I would pay Direct TV another $1000 a year if I could just skip commercials.

I still feel less a marketer than a salesman, spent most of my life doing sales. Thus whenever I see that someone is "working" me, warmup - presentation - close, I allow myself to have fun with them and act like a interested but hard customer. I run them trough the treadmill of hot and cold, including adapting my facial expression and posture to the "mood" I act, But in most cases, unless I really need the product / service, I dont close the deal.

Long storry short - We know what which element is ment to do, why which color was used, why the expression on the landing page is like it is, why the signup form is where it is. We know the "No" words and the closed question, and look at others marketing effort from another point of view in compare to the regular consumer who is beeing "processed" without noticing it. And this is why we "hate" such things.

In my case I dont "hate" anything - I am still curious and learn from different approaches.

Just the other day I saw an awesome way to get leads for an SEO agency, which was new, unexpected, fresh. So I answered his spam mail just to give him my feedback

Thanks for the thread, I was about to convert my sales pages to video sales pages but reading around the forum found that I lot of marketers don't like them.

So I guess I'll go ahead and try it out and see how it does as far as conversions.

Well... for me hate would be a pretty strong word. I don't really
hate any of those things but there are several that I dislike very
strongly... and it doesn't matter to me that the work for someone.
I think they're cheesy and, in some cases, downright unethical.
I've never used them. I also never start threads complaining about
them... lol

You caught me. I do hate all of them except some long copy. Some long copy is very informative and helpful to me as a possible buyer. Other long copy is just horrendously repetitive and ridiculously hyped up.


What I don't hate is the marketer that uses some of these things. If they have actually tested them (which I suspect is rare) they should use what works. Nevertheless, I do agree with some of the earlier comments that for many products all you are getting is a one-time only impulse buy or a subscriber that never buys anything ever.


I stopped testing all of those things you mentioned except the copy a long time ago. For the niches and products I was promoting I just got inflated numbers instead of actual long term customers/subscribers. I also simply didn't like the way it made me feel about marketing. Just a personal thing.


Many people hate the tactics of some car salesmen. The higher priced and quality of the car the less you see of the stereotypical negative tactics. If you are promoting good quality products and services the less you have to scream, light fireworks and trick people into buying them in my opinion. I think as marketers when we see the things you mentioned it automatically makes us question if this person really has anything worthwhile to investigate.

Nobody really hates these techniques. It's moreso poor implementation of the techniques that marketers find highly annoying.

If you're going to do a popup, at least make it something interesting. Daily email? Fine, but make it worthwhile and not just an excuse to make contact. Long copy shouldn't be 90% fluff. etc........

A really nice thread!

Hate what works? nonsense? It's a mindset problem. Too complex to determite it by just analytics.

What I do? I choose my relationships

I think part of the reason, frankly, is that many marketers know that the techniques they are using are borderline scammy/scummy/sleazy/unethical/illegal/immoral and they don't like it when it happens to them. Putting a gun to someone's head and demanding their wallet works too. For a while.

A couple examples from this very forum.

There are many posts that talk about using throw away emails. These posts are right alongside the ones talking about how you can make millions by blasting away at your list. Isn't there a disconnect there when people suggest throwaway emails yet say you can make big bucks with email? When enough users figure this out and the list dries up, the "marketer" will just buy another list of names or change domain names or change pen names or whatever it takes to make it work.

A lot of times we hear that we aren't our market but I think many times yes we are.

For example, there are a lot of people advertising list building products in their sigs because many or most of the people here want to build a list. So why aren't they the seller's market? And he wants to build a better list too so why isn't he his market?

I think sometimes people spout off one liners that seems to be the truth but in fact it's not the truth at all or is covering up some of that unethical behavior marketers hate. Like when someone complains about being "spammed" and the posts start rolling in about unsubscribing or how it's not spam if you ask for it or just send it to the spam folder KNOWING all the while that many marketers do NOT honor the unsubscribe button because they'll just put you on another list. Why? Because it works. For a while. People learn to not complain - they just use their throwaway email and leave calling everyone and everything here a scam.

Another thing may be that many people know their own situations. They know they've never made a dime online but they are told to publish a WSO promising the moon so they get leery when they see WSOs that may fit their situation. They know they don't know how to get traffic but they have some cool PLR about traffic they can sell you. They know their $212 miracle day in their case study was one time and the average of all the other days is 13 cents. So when they see the same from others, they dislike it because they know/wonder what is going on.

So, in the end it just comes down to numbers. Here, a lot of marketers claim they have tested but they haven't really. For example, there are some that INSIST that the more you email the more money you make and that smart marketers that want to get rich do it this way. Yet they haven't tried a once a month email practiced by some extremely rich marketers, for example.

There are many good marketing strategies that many people should look into using. But don't use something that makes you uncomfortable is my thinking because while in a particular case I may not be my market, I am a fellow human being and my ethics and thoughts about trying to be a decent person towards others outweighs any temporary monetary gain.

For example, I've been in the situation where after a purchase, a video started automatically that had no buttons and when I tried to quickly cancel because others were around that I didn't want to know what I was doing, I was hit with 3 or 4 WAIT offers all out loud too. I wouldn't want to embarrass a customer or put their job at risk or anything just because a particular trick works for now.

I believe you can be a good marketer, make a bunch of money, and not be a jerk or put in the same group as the bad eggs.

Mark

Ray,

The assumption you've made in your thread title . . . WHY is it that marketers always HATE what works? . . . is probably too strong and I know it's not accurate because I'm a marketer and I don't hate what works. Others that have responded to this thread don't always hate what works either.

IMO, the usual sales confrontation has the marketer on offense pushing for the sale (often very aggressively) and the prospect on defense, putting up his/her guard so as to "protect" his choices and his money from being extracted on something of little or no value.

But the tables get turned 180 degrees when all of a sudden the marketer becomes the prospect. Now he is on the defensive. He feels that he has to act the part because he understands what the marketer is trying to do to him.

It's his role to protect himself and to not fall for all the tactics and moves of the guy doing the marketing. The marketer even resents the attempts to get him to buy because he has seen all the tricks and he's not going to give in to any of them - he knows better!

What to do then if you're a marketer?

I like the simple exercise of putting yourself in the prospect's shoes. How do you like being marketed to? Do what you're comfortable doing. Be yourself. It's going to mean that every marketer is different. Some will be super aggressive, some will use lots of tricks . . . others will do it a different way.

There's one thing for sure, IMO. We all have different personalities, different voices, different comfort levels with the tactics we use . . . and that's OK, that's as it should be. What is easy to see through and distrust is the marketer that's not true to his persona and that tries to be something he's not. Fakes are almost always uncovered and failures at marketing.

Just my opinion,

Steve

I think it's because a lot of marketers aren't making any money and seeing someone else use marketing techniques and make money makes them feel sad.

Most marketers who hate those marketing methods are the millions who are constantly trying things that don't work and therefore aren't making much money.

Great thread.

IMO, for many, selling is a dirty word. People have an issue with it. yet nothing happens in life until a sale is made... even starting a family... we all sell at one time or another.

The phrase "internet marketing" should be changed to "internet selling".

So it follows that if I have an aversion to selling then I probably find selling to me as offensive.

That said, I think should not their their underpants in a twist every time they are "sold" to.

If anything, learn from the masters if you want to replicate their success.

Sal

The simple and cruel answer is that they are not really marketers. They are only half marketers.

Sal

I have actually learned to embrace and learn from all the little sneaky, devious tricks and ploys that marketers use online.

Instead of hating it and directing my energy in a negative direction, I have learned to look out for these tactics and adopt the mindset of "what can I learn from this and how can I adopt it to my business, if possible?"

These big marketers have spent thousands of dollars tweaking and revamping their websites and sales copy to increase conversions, and it makes sense to emulate and model some of these tactics if they can be applied to my own business.

So while I may get momentarily annoyed, it doesn't last for long because I'm looking for those little golden marketing nuggets I can apply within my own business.

LOL, this is so true. I almost get annoyed when I get to a site that tries to trick me into getting onto their list -- yet all day, I am using the same tricks and seeking for better ways to get people to my list. What a paradox! Guilty as charged.

In all fairness Ray..we know it's all b*S* and mirrors.

The harder you have to sell something to me...the more of a turn off.

Ridculous headline
Testimonials (often fake and paid)
B*S* facts, hype, inflated income claims
Buy now or it goes up
500% money back guarantee

See how desperate this all sounds? You probably don't

Huge revenues and small profits are what most big business is built on. What people need en mass.

If you go down the road or trying to hype/trick people into buying stuff they can do without you are never going to run a big business. Probably not a long term one either. Clothing, food, energy, telecommunications, web hosting...tiny margins but done on HUGE volume.

I wonder if anyone actually learns anything from these posts or do they shrug their little shoulders and keep doing the same thing?

I would not say, they "always hate"...

Alot of those annoying actions can be a tad irritating, but as was mentioned in the thread, within in the annoyance there is usually a good technique at hand.

As a marketer, I know the tactics. I hate seeing a video showing how easy something works for only $27. Then, when I buy it, I get an OTO for a plugin (required to do what the video shows) for an additional $57 or more. (numbers not necessarily exact).

In other cases, I have found myself more interested in the OTO than the product for sale. It does no harm for a WSO seller to announce the OTOs/upsells, etc. to people familiar with how things work.

What kills me are the number of marketers who get ticked off when another marketer includes an affiliate link in the report they bought, or even got for free. Really??? I understand it when the report you paid for won't work unless you buy under their affiliate link! - that's just a pyramid scheme for sale. But otherwise? Why so angry that someone gets practices what they teach?