Are There Really Just 82 seats left??...(VERY Sneaky)

Hi Mr2monster,

It might be the same 'principle', depending on how you choose to define a principle - but regardless, it's still not the same thing. Hence your 'Period. End.' assertion is incorrect.

Analogy -

guy a) lies to his girlfriend that he has to visit his mother, in order that he can drink beer and watch football with his mates - he believes it will cause issues if he is honest.

guy b) lies to his girlfriend that he has to visit his mother, in order that he can sleep with his girlfriend's best friend

Same principle - he's lying and deceiving in order to not have to answer for his actions.

Different kettle of fish entirely though - no period, no end.

Hi Ray,

I still don't see how that makes it relevant to this discussion?

I also don't understand why you think that this is relevant, either. As has been mentioned above, some of us feel that by using such a sloppy and obvious tactic (in combination with all of the others who do similar), he is bringing the industry into disrepute and inviting the arrival of heavy-handed regulators.

Regardless, just because something causes a strong motivation to buy, that in itself does not justify unethical practices or taking it to the extreme. There is a world of difference between professional persuasion and amateur deception - we know that you know this! Perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick here, regarding your comments...

No, I actually work at a physical law firm... I'm a paralegal... sitting in a desk (almost) every day. Working for an actual attorney. I use that lead form to help streamline my workload since I'm in charge of the internet based leads for the company. (I reserve the right to change this position, as I'm thinking of quitting)


To me, a lie is a lie. period. A script that changes the date on your page is a lie. A script that changes a number to make people think there are seats filling up fast is a lie. 90% of what's out there on the internet is a lie.. in fact, MOST of marketing in general could be construed as a "lie".

Wal-Mart holding out PS3's in the back to create demand is a lie... Microsoft only making X number of X-Box 360's to drive the price through the roof is a lie..... or is it PERSPECTIVE?

Whatever side of the coin you sit on is fine, but make sure you're not being a hypocrite. You can't be selective in your lies...

Quote from one of my favorite musicals:

Apparent from reading the thread that there different standards for how far to go to tell a good story.

The scarcity tactic is proven for effectiveness, People using similar dynamic countdowns have found them effective.

God help us all if he is getting customers who actually believe the timer...

Assuming they have tested, and they would not be practicing what they preach if they haven't; then the marketplace has voted a willingness to sacrifice trust for scarcity.

Personally I would probably click away unless sucked in by cleaver technology. But I don't matter other than in choosing how to conduct my own business. As long as conversions are better, tactics like this will be deployed.

I attended a TELE-seminar last week and had the same thing happen.

I called in ONE minute before it started and the Automated voice message said "you are the 6th caller" duh!

The moderator a WF member stated in the first minute of the call that he had OVER 200 people on the call. I hung up, called back and now the message said "you are the 9th caller on the line." I know the company he was using and he is only allowed 100 callers.

I knew he was lying so I hung up and Unsubscribed from his list.

I then attended another meeting by another WF member last night. He used gotoMeeting vs gotoWebinar. When I logged in it clearly showed all the Users on the line, about 10. This Bozo then went on to say he had 150 people on the call, duh. Hey Idiot, an experienced IMer like myself knows that gotomeeting ONLY supports up to 15, thats right Fifteen callers.

Please don't insult my intelligence by playing these games.

BTW, Anik Singal is really good. I highly recommend him. It's too bad he played this game. Maybe he will post a reply.

This is ILLEGAL in the US! The FTC has SPECIFIC rules against limited TIME and RESOURCES! If someone found you were lying, and told the FTC, they could SHUT YOU DOWN, FINE YOU, SUE YOU, and FORCE YOU TO REFUND EVERYONE! THEN, to add insult to injury, they can leave the case docket up for the next decade to embarass you.

Steve

i know this is an international board, but...

Which is why I have much better results promoting physical products over Ebooks, where artificial scarcity and price games don't figure.

I suppose I should if I want to join the "elite", but I just can't bring myself to use stuff like this. I don't like being treated like that when a customer, so there is no way I would treat my customers that way.

In the long run, if you're interested in building a long-term sustainable business - avoid tactics like this.

I get a lot of repeat business in my markets and I get a lot of referrals from satisfied customers. I've had emails from people telling me how many of their friends they referred my sites to, so long-term results become that much better.

Would my repeat / referral rates be as high as they are if I used false scarcity and similar tactics? I doubt it.

I don't need to make any fast bucks so I don't use fast methods.

Just my 2 1/2 cents.

Instead of using the "scarcity" model, why don't we just use the good old fashioned "earn the respect of people, one at a time," by example?

Send out "good vibrations" of who we are, keep producing great content, "guide" people to where they want to go, and don't come across so "desparate." I think too many launches are using the "fast in-fast out" method so they can later boast that they made millions in one day online. These are the products that have no real "meat" in it anyways.

Forget that nonsense and build your business one customer at a time. Yeah, I know it may be too slow for most, but if you come to think of it, there is no "get rich quick" magic bullet out there. For those who made millions in a day, I say they were mighty lucky.

Regards,

Bruce

I think all marketers should skip this kind of strategy. Everybody know it's fake, so what's the use. Take action... well I take action when I want to.
If I like the product I'll buy it, if not I don't.
Anybody see the webinar? Any good?

From the time I started learning about marketing, one big piece of the puzzle has always been to get people to buy now.

I have read many material, viewed a lot of video, listened to a lot of audio and always everyone talks about scarcity and how to get people to buy now.

And just about all of them manipulate things to make it appear as though there is only so much of a product left, or that a bonus will disappear if you do not buy now, or that if you wait past a certain date you won't get some deal.

I suppose the launch model of only selling a certain number of an item is the only real type of scarcity around now.

If there is an item I want to buy, but I am told there are only going to be 100 sold, that works on me. And usually, the item is off the market in a few days. So I can believe that scarcity tactic. Of course there is no way to see if the person sold only 100 or actually sold 200 etc.

But, I bought the product because of the value of the product. The scarcity of limited amount of the product in the marketplace helped to get me to buy now, but if I like the product it is because of the value I got from it.

If you don't buy a product because you disagree with the marketing tactics, use of scarcity, when you really could use the benefits in the product, you are spiting yourself just to try and "prove a point"

Something like "Those phony marketing tactics won't work on me and I'll prove it by not buying this product" and that's fine.

But there are many reasons some people won't buy from a particular person.

If someone doesn't like John Smith, for whatever reason they just don't like him...

His style offends them as does his language
They think he is too care salesmen like
They find his teaching style boring
They think he is full of himself

But for some reason Bob Jones just clicks with them and they buy his products.

I don't think not liking "fake scarcity" is the main reason people are not buying a certain product.

I buy products from people where I know there is false scarcity. Basically I just overlook it and even laugh at it. It's part of the game of marketing.

Hey I bought the showtime rotisserie grill in the store. But the infomercial said there was only 20 minutes left.

I think the "slap chop" looks really cool - but the guy selling it tells me I have to buy now because "you know we can't do this all day". It doesn't make me rush to buy it now. But I know the scarcity is fake and I still want the product.

To those people not familiar with marketing, those tactics still work.

But I think this product being talked about in this thread has a lot of info to teach people.

You can find this "unethical, dishonesty, etc in so many things.

Take politics. How some politicians won't give straight answers to a question because they are concerned it will hurt their poll numbers.

Or "reality tv" which is so contrived there is nothing "real" about it.

You could then say, I won't vote because all politicians are liars and then I won't watch "reality tv" because I know they are influencing reality and it's not really "unscripted" like they lead us to believe.

There are more examples, but these are 2 which come to mind.

It is a lie if you are giving the impression that you wrote the letter on said date when in fact, you did not.

The date on business letters bears the proof of the date the letter was written.

I checked the site in question as per the OP and for me, the seat counter starts at 981 then drops two seats to 979.... then I refreshed the page and it went back up to 981 then back down to 979.

It's a similar tactic if your prospect who read your sales letter today and saw today's date, decides not to buy then goes back to your site tomorrow and sees a different date unless.... you are actually writing the letter each and every day then uploading it to your site = not bloodily likely especially when the copyright notice is dated a few years after electricity was invented

I see through stuff like this so at this point, I've become immune to the emotional triggers and have become indifferent to these tactics except when I am the target and choose to buy... then I'll bounce 'cause it shows a lack of creativity on the marketer's part which, more than likely echoes loudly about the product content itself.

Integrity matters to me... follow your own moral compass.

I agree. Actually this is one particular thing that I'm strong on and I often have people complaining that I took away an offer which I said was limited.

I don't use these scarcity tactics falsely, I'm just trying to give Anik the benefit of the doubt since I actually have no idea whether he made the sales page or outsourced etc..

It's easy to string people up but no-one here knows whether Anik is even aware of how his page is done - we can all assume things and use those assumptions to make judgements about him - but there are only a few real elements of truth to the situation right now:

1 - The page uses a script and most IMers will spot it and it's clearly deceptive. I don't think anyone has said otherwise here yet.

2 - We know how the people who have responded feel about it (we're all pissed off by it)

Everything else is speculation.

We can assume that since Anik has made money (this is definitely true) that he would have decent management systems in place and even if he didn't create this page - he would know what went on.

But we don't know that.

Many IMers are inherently lazy (I know I am) and just because they're making money, this doesn't mean they're building their business in an ideal way and putting high quality systems in place.

In fact, most IMers want to make hands-off money and are always talking about how much they outsource, so I think it's reasonable to assume that someone in Aniks position might have a guy (or team) that creates the sales pages.

Isn't that what most people want to do? have someone they rely on to do such things?

Obviously in this case the result was not ideal, but we don't actually know how involved Anik personally was, so while I agree with peoples annoyance at the strategy - I have ZERO evidence to indicate that Anik purposely put that script there.

And since that's the case, I can't bring myself to slander his name.

Maybe I'm just naive or something, but it's easy to take pot shots at people when they screw up but even easier if they're not around to defend themselves.

I saw this page and felt the same as everyone else - but I wouldn't have come here to bitch about him, I just sent someone who knows him better than me a message asking them to inform him about it.

Threads like this that trash someone don't really serve any position purpose and help foster the image many people have that IMers are all lying *******s who are out to rip them off.

/rant

Andy

Absolutely, as any business owner should know, if you lie about your product, YOU are ultimately responsible and will be perceived as the shoddy salesman. It may be a little lie, but it still gives a false impression. We can see this in politics, many "small lies" can lead to wars when those same little lies become big giant ones.

Maya

Unless you've forgotten something, in which case you just did!

You would "guess" correctly Jeff.

Having worked on some minor launches every element is tweaked continually, and frankly even if we put all that aside, and I can certainly appreciate once it's your 50th major launch you tend to get a lot less anal about it but to suggest that a site wide glaring blue banner with customised code sat front and center on their home page "slipped through the cracks" is twaddle. Somebody had to get the graphics/coder guy to create it, that entire feature would have been discussed prior to implementation.

Lets also not forget these guys actually had their own product launch product, that sales funnel of there's did not just get wanged together by accident, not even close, it had like 6 upsells, 2 scripts running and then in addition it's assiging permissions to a members area based on order selection.

Those guys knew exactly what was on their site, and they sure as hell knew what was on their home page at least, expecially when it was almost the key feature.

Sure stuff can slip through the cracks, ie a typo here, some screwed code there , broken link, screwed upsell, I hear you, but this doesn't mirror a mistake, this isnt' something missed, it's something added, and something purposely added.

Even a good quality outsourcer web guy won't be making scripts like that and graphics like that without having consulted with the client , that kind of thing is at the clients behest. Anyway these guys have full offices and internal staff, this isn't some tinpot operation. These guys will almost guaranteed have their own designer web guy doing this work and they will have been working together on the site.

Personally I think the technique comes across as a little tacky to died in the wool IM'ers but I've seen way worse, my only bone of contention is the credit to our intelligence, everybody is already so wary of scarcity BS, but to make such a blatantly bad attempt at it, it's sort of a bit insulting.

Which is ultimately a bit of a shame as having seen the members area, it really is a work of art bar a few flaws, it's probably the best I've ever seen, the scripting and implementation is way ahead of the pack.