Lee McIntyre’s Honest Marketing Blog

Why Faking it Until You Make It Makes Me Feel Sick

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One thing that always winds me up is people having really strong opinions on things that they know nothing about.

I’m pretty easy going generally, but when I hear people pretending they’re an expert on topics they have no personal experience of it just gives me a headache!

Do you want to know my views on Myspace marketing? Well I don’t have any!

Why? Because I’ve never used the damn thing for marketing that’s why.

It would be easy to sit back in my forum easy chair and try to pretend that I was an expert, but what good would that do me?

What good would that do anyone?

It seems to me that a whole science of ‘faking it until you make it’ has grown up around Internet Marketing, and it’s enough to give me the creeps.

Let me explain why this upsets me so much….

Every action has an equal reaction. Do the fakers who relentlessly bang on about all kinds of dribble live in a bubble?

Cripes no!

Every time they try and ‘brand’ themselves with their lies and innuendo they actually have a strong negative impact on anyone unfortunate enough to be caught upwind of them. And it stinks to be ‘upwind’ of some of these cry babies.

Fake it until you make it? I seriously feel sick just thinking about the entire concept.

Since when was it acceptable to lie, cheat, and mislead, in the name of business advancement?

And I already know what some people will say when they read this post. ‘It’s just good business’….’it’s only marketing’….’no one gets hurt’….etc etc etc.

Am I the only one who gets goosepumps just thinking about this?

Let me get this straight….

Marketer Y can go around telling lies in an effort to make people think he’s an online superstar. He can dance around giving bad advice and terrible opinions. He can directly and indirectly tell people to do things based on personal experiences that he has faked.

And he can do all of this and ‘no one gets hurt’?

Am I missing something here? I really don’t care how many JVs this costs me because sometimes these things need to be said.

Is it acceptable to ‘fake it until you make it’? Not by my moral compass it’s not.

Would you ask if it was acceptable to take money by deception? Of course not!

It doesn’t matter if it helps you make more money. It’s irrelvant if it helps you quit your day job.

I can think of many things that would help you quit your job but you don’t want to go sell drugs or hold up banks now do you?

To often in our online Internet marketing world people proudly exclaim that the means justify the ends. That only holds true if you’re devoid of any kind of sense of right or wrong.

What we do in our online business, like we do in life, should be judged by the actions we take, and not the just results they bring.

And if I hear one more person say that bending all sense of morality is fine because they got a big pay cheque then I just might scream!

What do you think? Am I being too harsh? Let me know in the comments below…

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The True Cost of The Desperate Sale?

It’s not just online where certain marketers break the rules and bend the truth.

Today I had a deeply frustrating offline business experience that some of the most slippery online marketers would be proud of.

I’m in the process of changing the name of one of my companies, and for various reasons I wanted this doing today.

I contacted one company who promised this could be done as a same day service.  In return I’d have to pay a premium price and the cost would be £120.

Not a problem I thought….I urgently needed this doing so I was happy to pay the extra although I negotiated this down to £99.

The service was sold on the understanding that the name of the company would be changed today, and I’d document this by digital signature.

I have no idea if that’s how this process normally works…but this is certainly how the company in question got me to part with my £99.

They were VERY clear that the name change would happen today.

So what happens next?

Well an hour after they have my £99 they inform me that I must send them some forms and that this will be processed on Tuesday at the earliest.

What?! There was no mention of this when they were selling the service and the whole contract was negotiated on the basis of a same day service.

Now this was enough to leave me deeply frustrated as the wasted time and confusion had thrown a major spanner in my plans.

Anyway, I rang them to explain why I was upset and to ask for a refund.

The response? Work has already been undertaken and so no refund can be processed at this time.

First they need to speak to the operative who took my call who’s out to lunch somewhere, and they’ll call me back.  I got the deep impression that a refund wouldn’t be forthcoming.

And even if they do return my money I’ve wasted half my morning dealing with the aftermath of shoddy sales people misrepresenting their services.  Is the £99 really worth the damage to their reputation?

Would I shop their again?  Not a chance!

Yes we’re in the business of closing the sale, but never forget that in this business the means never do quite justify the ends.

Sure, they have a measly £99 sat in their account right now, but if they’d have accurately represented their services they’d have had the potential to win over a lifelong high spend customer.

Not now.  Not a chance!

Anyway, there’s an interesting lesson in here somewhere….

If you overdeliver with the sale you can win a customer for a life. If you do the opposite then you can lose MANY customers for life.

People like to talk about bad sales experiences a lot more than they talk about positive ones.  And if they don’t give me my money back I’ll be talking about this to a lot of people!

Shall I name the company in question?  Or shall I just say goodbye to my £99? Let me know if the comments below…

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