Which animal do you find scarier: a shark or a cow?
Chances are, you answered "a shark". After all, those sharp teeth and serial killer eyes do look kinda intimidating. But would you believe that way more people are killed by cows than sharks? And we haven't even mentioned mosquitoes...
We're designed to judge a situation by the most overt signs and let ourselves be fooled without taking a closer look.
This could be even more challenging when we're about to spend our money online.
We're trying to avoid scam so desperately that we boo anything slightly salesy while falling prey to the real predators.
In today's episode, we're asking the question: what is ethical in marketing? What's the deal with marketing tricks and weapons of influence? Where is the line between a clever sales hack and a dirty scam?
How can you make money online and keep your conscience clear?
This and more is waiting for you in this episode.
Listen in!
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Episode Transcript
Shane Melaugh:
Hello, and welcome to the Active Growth podcast. In this episode, I don't know what number it is, but in this episode we're going to talk about ethical marketing. This is a topic that was brought to my attention by one of my students in one of my courses, and it relates to, it is inspired by a different podcast. There was a podcast called the Gray Matters podcast with Steve Dotto.
In episode six, he talks about ethical marketing. One of my students listened to this episode and had some questions about it and asked me for my take on it. I listened as well and I think it's a very interesting topic, in general, not just ethical marketing but ethics in general. It's something that interests me, and so I wanted to make kind of a response or just an inspired by, whether it is basically my thoughts on this topic. Of course, I'm going to link to this episode. In the show notes I'm going to link to the Gray Matters podcast episode which you can listen to. You can go and listen to that first if you want. You can also listen to it afterwards. It doesn't really matter. I'm not assuming that you've heard that episode.
Shane Melaugh:
The one thing that I want to say here to introduce this is that, I think, in this podcast episode the host, Steve, makes a very important point early on which is he says that there's a difference between things that are annoying, that we find annoying, and things that are actually unethical. I think that is a very important distinction, and I think he misses the mark later on. That's one of the reasons why I'm making this episode. I'm not just pointing to, oh yeah, that's my opinion, what was said on this podcast episode is what I agree with, because I see things a bit differently, and also, like I said, it's a very interesting topic so I want to get into it.
Shane Melaugh:
And to introduce this I want to give you kind of a metaphor or an analogy for this which is concerning the fear of sharks versus the fear of cows. How afraid are we of sharks and how afraid are we of cows? The reason I bring this up is because, actually, if you look at the statistics, more people are killed by cows every year than by sharks. The reason this happens, of course, is that both incidents are extremely rare. Nobody is in real danger of dying from a shark attack or dying from a cow-related incident. What happens is that very, very rarely someone swimming somewhere gets attacked by a shark, very rarely. Almost never happens. And also very rarely, but less rarely, someone working on a farm, in a slaughterhouse, whatever, someone interacting with cows also gets in an accident and might get trampled to death or something like that. Might get injured, stabbed by a horn or something and also dies. Both of these things happen extremely rarely, but of course, nobody ever thinks about being afraid of a cow because a cow seems harmless and a shark seems terrifying and so we're afraid of sharks.
Shane Melaugh:
And similarly, we tend to kind of worry about the wrong things. We have irrational fears and irrational concerns based on kind of our emotional responses to things, based on our gut responses to things that sometimes, or often, have absolutely nothing to do with the reality of the situation. I think that ethical marketing question is exactly one of those things. We have a gut response to certain things. They annoy us, they make us angry, and sometimes it doesn't feel like a strong enough thing to say, "This makes me angry," or, "This is annoying." I don't want to say, "This is unethical," or, "This is a scam." But I think we have to be, I want to show a perspective, kind of a shark deaths versus cow deaths perspective on this because I think we often direct our outrage in the wrong places.
Shane Melaugh:
That is the topic of today's episode and you'll be able to find show notes, including a link to the Gray Matters podcast episode on this topic in the show notes, which you can find at activegrowth.com/ethical, activegrowth.com/ethical. Also, if you have any kind of comments, if you have a question you want to ask or anything like that, you can also go there and you can leave a comment or a voice message on that post. So with that, let's get into it.
Shane Melaugh:
I'm going to talk through several examples of things that typically are kind of a question of, is this ethical to do? We'll talk about pop-ups, our light box opt-in forms that interrupt the visitor. Is that ethical? Is it ethical to use countdown timers and fake scarcities? Is it ethical to use prerecorded webinars, auto webinars? Is it ethical to do presaleing, so to sell a product you haven't created yet? I'm going to talk through some scenarios.
Shane Melaugh:
Now, first, I want to, to put this in context, let's talk about what does it mean whether something is ethical or not? Of course this is a very complicated question. You can read libraries worth of books on this topic where many people have spent their lives thinking about what is and isn't ethical. Now, I want to make this very simple. I'm just going to give you a very, very simple model of what I think is useful to apply to this case which is, basically, two questions. Number one, how much good does it do? And number two, how much harm does it do? Of course, good and harm, again, can be very complicated to try to define that, but, again, to keep this simple, let's look at good done to and harm done to human beings, and let's define good as increasing someone's quality of life, increasing someone's happiness, increasing someone's sense of fulfillment, so the kind of thing where people would report, "Yes, this has improved my life." If it has that effect, if something you do has that effect on people then that is good, it's doing good.
Shane Melaugh:
And harm is the opposite. Harm is decreasing someone's life quality by putting someone at risk, causing problems for someone, causing any kind of suffering for human beings. That is harm done. All right? I would say that a very simple model of ethics is where you can look at how much good does it do? How much harm does it do? Kind of put that on a balance, put that on a scale, and anything that does clearly more good than harm can be qualified as ethical, and anything that does clearly more harm than good can be qualified as unethical.
Shane Melaugh:
Then, the final question here, another thing that I want you to keep in mind and I'll talk about more later as well is, we also have to think about how much, to what degree, does something do good or harm? This is basically a question of leverage as well. So there's certain things. You can make big moves that effect many people in a big way, or you can make small moves that effect very few people in a small way. That matters.
Shane Melaugh:
One of the reasons why I'm defining this as a framework to think about the question of ethics is because I want to get past the gut reaction thing. Past the thing where something is annoying and we go, "This is unethical", "This is a scam," because we feel annoyed. It's an expression of anger. But our emotional response to something is not a good indicator of whether something is ethical or not. Anything that causes this kind of annoyance causes a mild amount of suffering. Being annoyed is a form of suffering. If you do something that causes people who encounter it, let's say the pop-up on your website, it causes them to suffer, it causes them to suffer annoyance. That is harm being done but it's a small amount of harm being done, and probably not to that many people. All right?
Shane Melaugh:
With that let's go into examples. Let's go into a bunch of examples before we kind of go any further on this. Let's start with a typical thing that a lot of people get very annoyed about and people in the internet marketing space often get quite emotional or heated about, is the question of what's often falsely called pop-ups which is actually a light box, a light box opt-in form where someone clicks through to your blog post, they want to read the blog post, but then this thing pops up in their face that says, "Hey, sign up for this thing." It is interrupting the visitor. They wanted to read the article and now you're pushing something else in their face. Many people are very annoyed by this and would then call this unethical.
Shane Melaugh:
But this, again, if we think about how much harm does this do? How much harm does this do? Well, not much because the suffering it causes, the harm it causes, would be this kind of annoyance, but there's a very, very simple and easily accessible option out of it. Right? The thing pops up, you can click on the close button and it's gone. Then, to some degree, how much you choose to be annoyed by that is up to you because it's perfectly possible and perfectly reasonable to visit a website, pop up comes up, you close it and just keep reading and you're fine. Right? It is reasonable to expect that this won't ruin anyone's day and won't cause a big amount of suffering for anyone. All right. And that's why I would say that. It's just not that harmful. Right? It's just not a big deal. So even if you find it annoying, calling it unethical, I think, is an abuse of the term. Bringing ethics into this seems exaggerated.
Shane Melaugh:
Also, another thing which I also kind of steer towards here is the pop-up itself, the light box, the interruptive thing itself, I think is not unethical. The contents of it could be, but nobody ever complains about that. The complain about being interrupted, but really it's like we're looking at the wrong thing because depending on what's in that pop-up, I think it can be ethical or unethical. I'll get back to that in a bit, but let's go through more examples. What about scarcity? What if you use scarcity in your process, in your funnel on your sales page, or wherever on your website? Let's say you have a countdown timer on your sales page so you have a limited time offer. Is that ethical? It puts pressure on people. What if you have limited quantities? If you say, "There's only 500 copies of this thing," even though it's maybe a digital product and you could sell unlimited of them, but you officially limit the quantity, is that ethical?
Shane Melaugh:
Or what if it's even automated? What if it's like evergreen? You tell someone, "Hey, look, there's only two days left to get this offer," but actually it is that individual is seeing a two-day limit and someone else who signs up next week will see an individual two-day limit again. Again, it's not really real scarcity. You could absolutely just sell it to anyone without any time limit, at any time, but you have set up a system that creates a time limit and that creates this pressure. Again, this is something, of course, a lot of people find annoying, but it's also very common. It's something you very commonly see because it is a huge driver of sales. You'll see that if you basically threaten to take something away, you'll see a huge spike in sales from that, so of course many businesses do that.
Shane Melaugh:
Is that unethical? Well, I think that one thing that depends is whether it is deceptive or not. I think that deception, lying essentially, is unethical. It's mildly unethical. And it's mildly unethical because the more people do it, society-wide, the more people are deceptive towards each other, the lower everyone's life quality becomes. We'd all be much better off to live under circumstances where everyone's always being honest. That would reduce suffering overall. Of course, everyone wants to be the only liar. This is how we end up in the world we live in. I do think that lying, deception, is mildly unethical because it does do some harm, but it does harm on a relatively small scale. Making people believe that this is a live, counting for everyone, countdown when it's actually an individualized evergreen countdown, is mildly unethical because you're deceiving people.
Shane Melaugh:
I think it could be just as effective if people basically know that this is an evergreen thing. If you say, for you, this is a special offer for you right now. You have two days to decide. I think that wouldn't lower the effectiveness of it at all. You could do that. And then again, it becomes basically annoying, but it doesn't do any real harm. One of the things, the gut reaction we get to saying, "There's something wrong with this. I don't like this." I think it comes from pushing people off the fence, which is something that you have to do a lot or that's basically one of the things you would be doing in most marketing, especially in direct selling, is that anyone who comes to your sales page, let's say, where you offer your product, most people will sit on the fence. Some people will be like, "Yes, I want this right away." Maybe the read some of your copy for a bit of extra convincing, but they're basically already onboard and they're going to buy. Some people are going to see it and they're just going to be like, "No, never. I'm never going to buy this," and they're going to leave.
Shane Melaugh:
But most people are going to sit on the fence. They're going to look at the product and say, "Well, yeah, this might be really good for me. This might be exactly what I need. But should I buy it now or later? Should I spend this amount of money? Is this in my budget? Maybe I could save this for something else." Whatever. They're sitting on the fence and simply not making a decision. And so a lot of copywriting and a lot of things like scarcity are essentially pushing people off the fence saying, "Make a decision. It's now or never." And that feels, well, it's pressure and it feels like, well, that's not really a nice thing to do to someone and I tend to agree.
Shane Melaugh:
But again, I think the amount of harm that does is minimal. It's a very, very small amount of harm that does and it's not the biggest leverage point. If you push someone off the fence to buy a crappy product that they're going to be disappointed in and that's going to cost them a lot of money, that's unethical. That's where the real damage happens is because your product's crap and it costs too much and you're essentially doing financial damage to someone. That's bad, but whether or not there was a countdown timer on the page, that's not really the point because if you push someone off the fence to buy a thing that's really useful for them and they enjoy it and it's reasonably priced, then what harm was really done? The actual harm that was done is that you made them feel slightly uncomfortable by putting pressure on them. That's very little harm done.
Shane Melaugh:
Now, having said that, this brings me into the territory of a very common excuse or a very common thing that, I don't know, you hear with copywriting and marketing and stuff where it's like, "Oh, you know, you're doing people a favor. You're doing people a favor by basically pushing them into buying your product because your product is so great and they'll be happier by doing this." I think there's some validity to this because, again, if you take the model I presented, if the product brings real value into people's lives and all you're doing is, you're putting a little bit of pressure on them, you're doing this much harm and then you do this much good through your product, I think that is valid, at least in this simple model that I presented. You could say, "Yes, this is a good thing to do. You should do it."
Shane Melaugh:
But I also think that the more that you feel like you need to justify your actions with such thinking, the more I would examine what the hell you're doing. Okay? Because, I have to say, I often see people talk about this where it really feels like they're trying to make themselves feel good because they actually feel guilty about what they're doing and what they're selling and they're trying to convince themselves with this story. My note about this would just be, the more you cling onto a story like that, the more you should examine what you're doing because it's clearly a feeling of guilt there and maybe that's a sign that something should be done differently.
Shane Melaugh:
Now, let's go, next example. What about fakeinars? Where someone signs up for a webinar and it's like, this is a live webinar, but actually it's a pre-recorded webinar. It seems like they're joining a live webinar maybe even with chat and things like that and the host on the webinar is pretending like it's live, but actually they're just watching a video. Okay, is that unethical? Again, I think that this is a really clear example of something that's annoying that, if you join a webinar like that, you get really involved. Maybe you enter stuff in the chat, you don't get replies, and you say, "Oh, my god. This is a last minute offer," and you buy it and then you learn, oh, this is just a recording that runs all the time. You can feel really deceived and betrayed by that. It feels really bad.
Shane Melaugh:
Again, that causes a bit of suffering because of that and also it's deceptive. If you make people believe this one thing when it's not a thing, you're part of the problem and, like I said before, the more people that are being deceptive, the more people are lying about everything, the lower everyone's life quality becomes. So, yes, deception is unethical. Just like with the Evergreen countdown, I think that there is a solution to this, which is, you can use pre-recorded events and just tell people. You don't have to pretend like this is live.
Shane Melaugh:
You can say, "This is a limited time available recording." Another thing that I've seen done is that people will do webinars and they will make recordings available, but they will say, "Look, this recording's only available for the next three days and after that I'm going to delete it." Again, you can say, "Well, they don't have to. They could keep it available," and so on, but I don't see the problem with that. I don't see the problem with saying, "Look, this is a live thing or you can catch it in the next few days, but if you don't it's just over." There's nothing wrong with doing that even if people might be annoyed by it.
Shane Melaugh:
Now, let's get to an example that I think is a very important, which is, is presaleing a product that you haven't created yet unethical? This is probably why I was asked about this. This is probably why I was asked to give my opinion on this, because this is something that I do and that I teach. I have done this many times before. I've done it twice this year already where I sell a course and when the marketing for the course starts, the actual course doesn't exist yet. By the time the course kind of opens up, by the time people can buy it and get in, some of the course exists, maybe 20% to 30% or so of the course exists, but then the rest of the course will be rolled out over the coming weeks.
Shane Melaugh:
There's two versions of this. Let's quickly distinguish. There's presaleing where you basically say, "Listen, I'm going to make this course and you can pre-order it right now at a lower price and then once it starts you get in." That's one thing. The other thing is that you start to have the course and part of it is available, but not all of it. All right? Is that unethical? I think that the presaleing example is actually the simpler example because it's very clear. You say, "This is a presale." You're placing an order for a thing to get it once it is ready. And the other thing is, it's mainly about clear communication. This is actually something that happened with the two courses I launched this year. There was a communication problem because the first one, I launched it as a presale, so people knew I am pre-ordering a thing and I am going to get access to it in two weeks or something like that.
Shane Melaugh:
The second one was a, you could buy it and you could access it immediately, but only the first module was available out of three modules. This wasn't communicated very clearly. Not intentionally, we didn't try to deceive anyone, but we realized afterwards that, oh yeah, you could actually go through the sales page and it was easy to miss the fact that you were buying something that would be released over the next few weeks. We did get some people who felt disappointed because of that. I think that clearly illustrates kind of the ethical question here that if you're clear about what's happening, if you clearly communicate what's happening, then there is no ethical problem with that.
Shane Melaugh:
What we should have done in the second course, ideally, we would've been better at communicating, "Hey, buy the way, you can buy this right now and you can access module one right now, but all the stuff will be released over the next three or four weeks." But clearly that's not a problem because if you tell people straight up, "This is what's happening. You're pre-ordering a product. You get access to it later," they still buy it. Given the choice, as long as people aren't being deceived, it is not unethical to presale. Now, there's a specific reason why I do presaleing and why I also teach presaleing and that is that it is a way to develop better products. This is especially true with online courses.
Shane Melaugh:
With both courses I've done this year, these courses are better because I rolled them out like this. Because what happens is that people start accessing the course, they start accessing those first 20 to 30% of the course and there's comments. I interact with people and people ask questions and so on and based on those interactions, that shapes some of the rest of the course. In both of these courses there are parts of it that really were informed by the feedback I got from my customers. If I'm simply sitting by myself and trying to build the entire course, trying to build 100% of the course, kind of in my head and then I release it to customers, I will then find out that I missed the mark on some things or there's some questions that people have that I wasn't anticipating and things like that and so then I will have to maybe go back and make corrections and so on.
Shane Melaugh:
For me, doing a presale on a course is a way to kind of do a lean development of the course and I can course correct and I can change my structure slightly and in some cases I've had examples of this where I make fairly large changes based on, once I get customers and once I interact with customers and see, oh, there's something here that I didn't consider. That I didn't consider when I was planning the course and writing the outline and so on and it makes a big difference to the course and it makes a big difference to the quality of course that people get. Ultimately, this makes a better product and a better products helps more people achieve the desired outcome and that is good. That is doing good.
Shane Melaugh:
If you do a presale without deceiving anyone about it and you do it in order to build a better product for people, then it is an ethically positive thing to do it. It does no harm and it does more good. Here comes what I think is an important factor in the ethical question which is, are you acting in good faith or in bad faith? If you presale a course and you're doing it in good faith, which the intention is, presaleing the course will help me make a better course for my customers and I fully intend to do that. I fully intend to deliver on all my promises and I fully intend to work to make the best course possible. Then this is not a problem. You don't deceive people and you're acting in good faith.
Shane Melaugh:
If you act in bad faith, if you're basically saying, "You know what? I could presale this thing and get a bunch of people's money and then, whatever, maybe I'll just not deliver the course at all and like 20% of people will forget to ask for a refund or I'll just make people jump through a ton of hoops to get a refund and I'll still have some money left and I don't have to make an actual course." That's a scam. That's deception and that is acting in bad faith where you're basically doing something motivated by greed and you're intentionally looking to do harm to people for your personal benefit. That's a completely different story.
Shane Melaugh:
But again, note that you have to look at the right thing because the question of whether it's ethical or not is ultimately not dependent on whether you presale or not, it's dependent on what you do. There are many things that you can do in the course of a product launch that make it either ethical or unethical, but whether or not you presale isn't one of those things. It's not one of the indicators that tells you whether this is ethical or unethical. Now, another question here is, what if you're a beginning? What if you've never made a course before and you presale a course? Even if you're acting in good faith, what if it turns out that you're not capable of making the course that you promised, that you wanted to make? That becomes a problem then.
Shane Melaugh:
Again, it depends on whether you act in good faith or in bad faith. There's actually an example of this where I'm not going to name names, but recently there was a scandal that I kind of heard about where an Instagram fitness influencer was selling some kind of a fitness program or fitness coaching or something and she made tons of sales and she didn't deliver a product. Obviously people were very angry about this, but the thing is that her response to it was that she was basically saying, "Well, we were just overwhelmed. We couldn't handle all these orders. We were trying our best and we just couldn't." As far as I know, this is one of the reasons I'm not naming names is, I don't know if this situation has changed since, but when I heard about this, she was basically playing the victim, but she wasn't offering any refunds to anyone. She was basically saying, "Well, you should feel sorry for me because I was so stressed and so on. It was just a mistake I made, but I'm going to keep your money and I'm not going to deliver a product."
Shane Melaugh:
Well, that is acting in bad faith. I think the concern is, well, what happens if I fail essentially? What happens if I fail? Well, again, I think if you're not being deceptive and you're acting in good faith, it's not going to be a problem. Of course, if she was just honest and said, "Listen, before it's a scandal," the moment she sees, "Oh, my god, I can't deliver this thing," if she closed the cart and said, "Listen, update to everyone. I'm sorry. I'm totally overwhelmed. I can't do this. I'm sending out refunds to everyone right now." Of course, that wouldn't be great for her brand, but I think most people would forgive her.
Shane Melaugh:
Most people would be a bit disappointed, but I think a lot of people would say, "Yes, I get it. You tried this thing, it didn't work out. You just got far too many people or you got stressed or whatever, maybe some some personal issues got in the way. I'm disappointed I didn't get the product that I wanted, but I get it. You're a human being." I think most of her fans would not abandon her because of that. I think we tend to be forgiving when someone is being honest and vulnerable. But the way she reacted was basically to try and not mention it until people got super angry and then make an excuse and still not give people their money back. That's deceptive and that's unethical because you're doing financial damage to people and you're doing financial damage to people that you could easily avoid.
Shane Melaugh:
If that's a concern that you have with presaleing, then I have two recommendations. If you're new to making a product and you're concerned about presaleing, as long as you're acting in good faith, my two suggestions are, number one, make about a quarter of the product before you start selling it so that you can see, if I've done one quarter of the product, I can see how long it took me, I can see what it's like. If I can make 25% of this product I can make the other 75%. That gives you some safety against kind of this risk of catastrophic failure, if you will. The second thing is, if for some reason that still happens, if you still can't deliver, well, then give people refunds and don't spend the money that you're making on selling your product until you've finished the product. I think this is really not something that we have to be concerned with. As long as we are willing to do the right thing, as long as we're willing to act ethically, then I don't see this as a problem at all.
Shane Melaugh:
Now, I want to get deeper in to this because, like I said, I'm really interested in the topic of ethics. Let's have a quick interim summary from the examples we've looked at so far. My point is, I think it's important to ask the right questions and to look at the right things because looking at these things like countdown timers, prerecorded webinars, presaleing a product, looking at these things and trying to make a judgment of, is this ethical or unethical? That's kind of the gut reaction. We feel bad about something maybe and we try to say, "Well, this is unethical. It ought not be done." But the point is that we're looking at the wrong things because a business can do all of these things and be ethical or a business can do none of these things and be unethical.
Shane Melaugh:
In fact, let's go through a hypothetical example of just that because I think the actual levers of what makes something ethical or unethical in marketing and in business lie elsewhere. Let's take two example businesses. We have the photo gear business. Okay? Business one is photo gear business and what they do is, their product is a device that you add to your camera and it's made for professional photographers. This device adds a bunch of advanced features to your camera, maybe like advanced time lapse features or motion detection features so you can set it up and photograph wildlife when something walks by and whatever, advanced stuff for professional photographers. Let's say that this piece of hardware is very expensive. Maybe it costs $500, $1,000, $2,000, whatever. Camera Gear can be very expensive.
Shane Melaugh:
Let's say it costs $1,000 and this product does exactly what it says. You buy this product, you give this company $1,000, they ship you this thing, you attach it to your camera, it comes with an app, and it does what it says. It gives you the features that were advertised. Let's say this company does a lot of stuff that is potentially annoying. You go to their website and immediately there's an interrupting light box where they try to get you to sign up for something. Maybe you can get an app for free that has some functions that are useful for photographers and when you get it, it always tries to upsell you to this expensive device they have. On their email list they hammer you with emails all the time. They run webinars that are prerecorded webinars. There's countdown timers everywhere. They do all this stuff we talked about.
Shane Melaugh:
The do all this stuff. They push hard on their marketing, but you can opt out and you can choose not to buy the thing. You can uninstall the app. You can leave and it's no problem. like I said, if you buy the thing, you get exactly what you were sold. This is an example of an ethical business. I don't think that any form of pushy marketing makes this unethical because they have this product, they're pushing hard to get the right people to buy it, and more on that in a bit, and it's fine.
Shane Melaugh:
Example two is the Forever Slim Company. Okay? Forever Slim Company. They sell a miracle weight loss pill. All right? In terms of marketing, it's very simple. They only have a sales page and on their sales page, they don't have interruptive pop-ups, they don't have countdown timers, they don't have fake webinars, they don't have anything like that. All they have is sales copy that makes anyone who reads it feel like they're worthless as a person unless they lose weight and makes them feel like everything else doesn't work. "You've tried exercise, it doesn't work. You've tried diets, doesn't work. This doesn't work and you're a piece of shit if you don't lose weight."
Shane Melaugh:
"The only solution is this pill. We sell the weight-loss pill. You take this pill, it solves all your problems. You'll lose weight, you'll be worthy as a person once again. You'll be attractive," and so on and so forth. It also costs a lot of money and of course, it doesn't work. Of course, it doesn't work. You get a bunch of pills that have either inactive ingredients or maybe some ingredients that potentially do some harm because it wasn't properly tested and this business, like I said, they don't do any of the annoying marketing stuff, all they do is, they sell a product in bad faith that doesn't work, they take people's money, they make it very, very different, near impossible, to get a refund, and they target people who are essentially victims. They poke the wounds of those people. They basically target desperate people. They poke the wounds of those people and they get as much money as they can. This is an unethical business.
Shane Melaugh:
The reason I'm contrasting these two businesses is again, to just highlight that the technicalities of whether there is pop-ups on the website, whether there's a prerecorded webinar, and so on, it just doesn't matter. That's not what makes the big difference when it comes to, how much good does this do and how much harm does this do because our Camera Gear company, on the whole they're ethically relatively neutral leaning towards positive because they don't do any real harm and they deliver a bunch of features for professional photographers which maybe gives them some enjoyment, makes it easier for them to do their job. It brings something positive. On the whole, they do some good. They don't do dramatically good. It's not like making the world a better place, but they do some good and they do almost no harm. That's ethical.
Shane Melaugh:
Whereas the Forever Slim Company is targeting people who are victims, making them feel more like victims, taking their money. Basically, making them feel bad, that's doing harm. Taking their money, that's doing harm. Making it impossible for them to get their money back, that's doing harm. They're not doing any good. That's what matters. That is what matters when it comes to that question of ethical marketing. What does that mean? Well, for one thing, obviously scams are unethical. Scams are the ultimate acting in bad faith. But another thing that I think is very important for marketing is, who's your target market? Because the thing is, if you have our Camera Gear example, they are targeting professional photographers and really, they can only target professional photographers.
Shane Melaugh:
It's the nature of their business. They can't go and go to the average person who is not a photographer and try to sell them this thing. No matter how hard they push, if you don't even own a DSLR or a professional-level camera, then you can't use this device. Naturally, their entire target market is going to be people who this product is useful for and who already spend probably thousands on Camera Gear. The buying power is also there. They're selling an expensive product to people who are in the habit of buying expensive products. Professional photographers, they use their gear to make their money, so it's basically a business investment. Because their product delivers on the promise, there's no problem there.
Shane Melaugh:
The question of the target market is very important because unfortunately there is often a lot of money to be made by targeting desperate victims. You get people, think of it, the more desperate someone is, the more you can kind of victimize them in marketing. This is all something you are probably familiar with if you study copywriting and marketing, is that you want to be familiar with, what are the pain points and the frustrations of people in your target market and you essentially want to amplify that pain. All right? You want to understand, what is it, what are the problems that plague people in my target market, and you want to remind them of those problems and that primes someone to buy something as a solution because in my everyday going around I might not be thinking about this problem right now, but if I see your marketing that reminds me of that problem, reminds me how annoyed I am about this, that makes me ready to buy a solution.
Shane Melaugh:
You can do this. Basically, the more pain someone's already suffering, the more desperate someone is, the more of a victim someone is, the more you can push those buttons to put people in a desperate situation where they're like, "Anything. I'll do anything to solve this horrible problem." You can amplify their problem for them. You can make that problem worse and then sell them a solution that isn't a real solution. Unfortunately, a lot of consumerism, a lot of marketing, essentially functions like that. Interestingly, we like to look at a seedy, make money with four times trading, type of sales page and say this is the example of unethical marketing. This is bad, and it is, it is bad, but the most mainstream kind of advertising works exactly like that. The most mainstream stuff that we see everywhere basically makes you fee like crap for various things. Your life is not as good. You're not slim enough. You're not attractive enough. You're not rich enough. You're not successful enough and so on, shows you examples of people who are younger and fitter and better looking and happier than you and associates a product with it, often unrelated.
Shane Melaugh:
It's like, oh, you see a bunch of people having fun and then it's an ad for a mobile phone company. Like, what? But that's what they're doing. Basically, they're creating a problem, they're making people feel inadequate and they're saying, "Hey, this hole in your heart, you can fill it with my product." Unfortunately, that is a common way to do marketing and I think that is often with mainstream stuff, the more mainstream something is, the more likely it's doing something like that and the more niche a product is, the more specific a product is, kind of a micro-business, very rarely does anything like that. That's also one of the reasons why I think this kind of business, you make a niche online course that teaches something useful, that's a great business. If you kind of widen the scope and you go, like I said, with weight loss, you make people feel miserable about their weight and then you sell them some solution that's not a real solution, that goes into unethical territory quite quickly.
Shane Melaugh:
That's one of the questions I would ask that I think matters. Who are you targeting? Are you targeting victims? And also, how much are you charging, how pricey is your product compared to the buying power of people in your target market because that's another thing. It's one thing to sell an expensive product to people who have money to spend. It's another thing to kind of squeeze someone who's desperate for their last penny. Again, that's often the case. Often the worst offenders, they work like that. They go after desperate people's money. Encourage them, typical MLM type thing, encourage people to go in debt to get in with a promise of making it up later and stuff like that. That's horrible. The question is, who are you targeting?
Shane Melaugh:
Another thing is, that I often think is totally overlooked is, are you participating in the problem by default. There are things that are problematic, but normal. There are things that are unethical, but everybody does them. As an example, I think that most social media use is clearly being shown to do more harm than good. There's been various studies to show that people are less socially connected, ironically. Spend less time in real-life interactions or are more likely to be depressed and suicidal and so on, the more they use social media.
Shane Melaugh:
I'm not going to go into great detail on this. I'll link to some sources in the show notes if you want to do further reading or if that sounds suspicious to you, but the idea is that basically, the more people use social media, the worse off they are and if you're participating in this problem, if you are participating in the thing of trying to post pictures of yourself that make your life look amazing and kind of curate the, "Oh, my god. Look at how happy I am and how great everything is," to get more likes and whatever, if you're participating in that, even though it's completely normal, that's unethical. You're taking part in one of the problems that is plaguing our society.
Shane Melaugh:
I know that this is probably going to trigger a lot of people that I just said that because it's all well and good to talk about some scammy weight-loss pill thing. We can all feel superior. Feel, "Well, I wouldn't do that." But that's the thing, we have a blind spot for things that are normal. But if you're participating in something, another thing is rampant consumption where we have the ecological footprint of people who are relatively well off in developed countries is a catastrophe. When we are participating in the problem of the destruction of our environment and that's unethical, but it's normal. Everybody does it, so nevermind.
Shane Melaugh:
This is another thing I wanted to point out because often, this is the sharks versus cows problem. The thing that looks scary, the shark looks scary and it attacks you and there's blood and stuff. It's terrible. That's what we're afraid of. That's a gut response. It doesn't mean that that's the thing that we should be afraid of. Rationally, we also shouldn't be afraid of cows because cows kill almost no one, just like sharks kill almost no one. We should be afraid of hamburgers. Hamburgers and deep-fried food because that actually kills so many people very slowly without blood. It's not scary. It doesn't stalk you at night. It doesn't hunt you down. But the food we eat kills a lot of people but we're not scared of it because it doesn't look scary. It's the sharks versus hamburgers problem that we also have when we look at the four times trading product or the whatever product on a scammy-looking sales page.
Shane Melaugh:
That's what gets us going, but then if I start pointing out, maybe hamburgers and social media are the problem, now I've made everyone my enemy because we like to point at other people and say, "That's unethical." Nobody wants people to point at us and say we're unethical. This is also one of the reasons why I don't like the misuse of a word like ethics, kind of to vent about things that annoy you, because I think ethics, it's an important topic and it's a very unpleasant topic, for most of us, a very unpleasant topic. It's very difficult to live in our world and be ethical because the default is not ethical.
Shane Melaugh:
And talking about this, there's another problem that I think is also a sharks versus hamburgers problem, which is that certain topics and certain industries just automatically seem more suspicious and are just more likely to attract people's ire. Anything that is related to making money online, that automatically seems like, oh, really? That seems fishy. Of course, this is something that I notice a lot because the products I sell are always kind of related, not always, but often, kind of related to this. I make sure never to frame a product as kind of an easy making money opportunity. But still, I sell marketing software. It's supposed to increase conversions on your website. It's supposed to make you more money, and that automatically is kind of suspect. It's automatically, is that a scam? Because of course there's a lot of, it's very easy to scam people I think. "Oh, you'll make so much money. Just give me some money and then you'll make so much money." That is a common scam. That's an industry, anything related to business opportunities, making money, this kind of thing, is automatically kind of suspicious and feels a bit scammy.
Shane Melaugh:
But then, if we look at all the criteria we've looked at, let's say you buy my course. My most recent course costs a few hundred dollars and is, yes, supposed to help you build a business that generates income, so right away it's like, hold on, is this a scam? But then we have something like college degrees and what is that? Unfortunately, in increasing numbers of countries in the world people are getting into debt to get college degrees. America is the worst example of this where people get horribly indebted in order to get a college degree, and why? What's the reason given? Well, it is to make money, essentially. Get this degree so you can get a better career, you can make money, and give us all this money to get the degree because you'll make more money afterwards.
Shane Melaugh:
But what's the reality? There's so many people walking out of universities with degrees with no useful skills at all and they've been scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they're saddled with this crippling debt and they've had their years stolen from them. They've had several years stolen from them for something, the economic value of which is dwindling rapidly and for something where, even if they start in a job, they have to basically learn from scratch because they didn't learn any actual practical skills.
Shane Melaugh:
Now, that, if we think in the frame that I laid out here, even if you buy my course for a few hundred dollars and even if it's not that great, how much harm did that do because it took very little time and it took a relatively small amount of money. How much harm does that do versus a college degree that steals several years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars and does nothing for you? But basically, nobody bats an eye at society at large pushing college degrees on people because that's just accepted kind of as a social norm. It's fine. No questions asked. But in terms of the ethicacy, in terms of the financial damage it does, in terms of the opportunity cost, it's ethically far worse, it's ethically far worse what a lot of colleges are doing.
Shane Melaugh:
It's not to say that I'm obviously not against education. I'm all for good education and I think it very much depends where you get a degree and what degree you get, but I've seen this myself. I know people who have marketing degrees and it's just shocking to me how little practical ... I've met several people with marketing degrees where I was really shocked at how little practical skill they had in doing marketing. In other words, they have to learn marketing strategy if they actually want to work there. And the cost of that, that comes at such a huge cost that's absolutely insane. That is far more of an ethical issue, in my opinion, than someone selling a make money online course.
Shane Melaugh:
But once again, it really depends on, again, how much harm does it do, how much good does it do, and are you acting in good faith, and by that, let's go into what I think, if we bring this back to just online marketing, I've kind of taken a very broad view here, but if we bring it back to, okay, you have an online business, you're doing marketing for your business, you're concerned about what is ethical marketing, what are ethical business practices here? Here's what is to me are like the keys of doing this right.
Shane Melaugh:
Number one, make a good product. Base your business around a good product. That's the main thing. Anything where you're trying to wiggle out of that, anything where you're trying to get around that, is more dubious. If the core of your business is, "I have a product that solves a certain problem, that basically does what it says on the tin, and I'm selling that," that clears so many problems out of the way and it puts you in that situation where it's like, yeah, whether you put pop-ups on your site, whether you have countdowns, whatever, you sell a good product that does what it says. Number one basis for ethical marketing.
Shane Melaugh:
Number two, act in good faith. Don't deceive people. Don't pretend like you want to do something good for your customers when really you just want to steal their money and get away with it. Act in good faith. Number three, don't target victims. I think the best way to do that is to target a very narrow, very clearly defined niche of people who can ... Try to appeal to exactly the right person who can make use of your product and don't target victims. If you follow these three points, if you follow these three keys to ethical marketing, then all the stuff, upsells and click bait and fake webinars and so on, all the stuff that people get annoyed with in marketing, are not really an ethical problem. That doesn't make them good practice. Personally I don't do most of those things. I do some of them, but I don't do most of them because I just don't want to do that kind of thing. But, like I said, I wouldn't call it unethical to do them.
Shane Melaugh:
So there you go. The three keys, create a good product, act in good faith, and don't target victims with your marketing. All right, I've been rambling on about this. I would really love to hear your thoughts on this. I'd really love to hear your questions about this and your take on this and what makes something ethical or unethical and even if you disagree with what I said and, in fact, especially if you disagree with what I said, I'd really like to hear from you. Now, you can go and leave a comment, you can interact, by going to activegrowth.com/ethical. That's activegrowth, one word, .com/ethical. You can leave a voice message there, you can ask questions or leave your comment there, or you can just write the comment in the comment space. I will also link to basically everything I mentioned, everything related to this episode, there. Thank you for listening in. This has been the Active Growth podcast. I'm Shane Melaugh and I'll see you next time.
What You'll Discover in this Episode:
- Why you shouldn't always trust your fears.
- Is it unethical to use the common marketing hacks: interruptive pop ups, pre-recorded webinars, limited time offers that never expire, and the like?
- What does it mean to be ethical? We give you two questions that will help you decide whether you're on the right path.
- Why we often call annoying things "unethical", and why it's far from the truth.
- How to be more honest and upfront with your marketing.
- Examples: comparison of two business models.
- The three key ways to keeping your business ethical.
Resources:
- Listen to the Grey Matters podcast with Steve Dotto (this episode was inspired by Episode 6)
- New studies confirm: social media is bad for our mental health.
- Read the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport to find more radical and effective ways to detach from technology and enjoy the real world more.
Dear Philosophers
In case you're coming to this content and you have a degree and/or deep interest in philosophy, this bit is for you:
I know that you're horrified at how simplistic the model of ethics is, that I laid out in this podcast episode. And I know you can easily poke holes into it and present me with scenarios that would fulfill my criteria for being ethical, while also clearly being undesirable.
Please remember that this content is made of an audience of people with no background in philosophy. I'm trying to bridge the gap between what is usually presented under the term of "ethical marketing" and "real ethics", if you will.
Having said that, I'm still interested in hearing your take on my take on this topic.
Is Your Business Model Ethical?
Do you agree with this episode? What is your opinion on the given examples? How do you keep your business and your marketing ethical and honest? Let us know!
As always, we'd love your feedback, questions, tips and stories. You can leave them in the comments section or leave us a voice message by hitting the "Start recording" button below:
See you soon with another episode!
“Pup-up”? Is that a puppy video that appears? I love it!
Just kidding.
Pup-ups can’t possibly be unethical. They’re too adorable. :D
I use a simple rule in my marketing – “Don’t Lie!” Recorded vs. Live Webinar is an example – let people know it is pre-recorded. In my opinion, a recorded webinar should be better, cleaned up and edited, and I state that it is pre-recorded, and that I will be live in the chat area during the broadcast time. The viewer gets a better presentation and gets me live in the chat to ask questions and get my responses without worrying about all the tech behind the scenes of a “live” broadcast.
That is not unethical. Pre-sale for a course is nothing more than audience research, and if evaluated and incorporated into the course – everyone wins.
That’s a good rule to live by. :)
Totally agree. Marketing is just a means to an end. Its the aim that makes it unethical. Interestingly this is what came up when I typed in means to an end in google:
a thing that is not valued or important in itself but is useful in achieving an aim.
Example: “higher education was seen primarily as a means to an end”
Isnt the example ironic? Higher education… with the empasis on WAS it might be true.
I really like how you put this in a broader perspective of the sometimes fake world we live in. Lets keep it real with some slightly annoying puppies here and there ;-)
Yes, well said. It is indeed strange that “higher education” is used as an example of a means to an end. Although I guess that really is how it’s usually seen. The passionate academic is fairly rare.
FWIW…I like to think of myself as one of those “rare passionate academics” ;-)
[degree in Archaeology/Anthropology doesn’t pay the bills, so I’m a solopreneur in the tech industry — LoL — But, it’s all good because marketing — and human psychology in general — fascinates me!] :D
I disagree. Academics are just people with all kinds of characteristics just like any other population.
Passionate – not passionate, ethical – crooks, smart – dumb, dedicated – lazy … whatever. I have seen the whole bandwidth.
Academic degrees serve two purposes in my mind:
1. Entry ticket – particularly if you’re looking for a corporate job. There are certain things you don’t have to prove to your prospective employer as you have already proved them by virtue of getting that degree.
2. Work ethic/skills – I learned how to work incredibly hard and efficient, how to research and debunk BS, how to acquire knowledge quickly, even a certain way of thinking & approaching problems and to keep pushing when life – frankly – sucks.
The actual content of my degrees (Engineering & MBA) is totally secondary. I have not used much of the content from my degrees out in the work world. But I certainly have used the skills I acquired.
What I mean by “passionate academic” is someone who studies for the love of learning and who usually becomes a career academic. I agree that this is a small subset of all people who pursue an academic education.
Just FYI – author box looks incorrect – says it’s Alexandra. Interesting podcast!
Thanks for the notice, Jake. Alexandra edits the podcast audio and writes the post summaries, that’s why it’s her author box you see. After I stop talking to the microphone, my work is basically done, thanks to Alexandra. :)
Great episode! You bring up so many important points. The distinction between ‘annoying’ and ‘unethical’ is spot on. And I agree that we there are many unethical practices we take for granted because they’re common place. To me it’s about being honest. I’ve pre-sold my courses, but I’ve been clear with people that it’s a pilot and you get a discounted price because it’s a pilot. I also offered a generous refund in case it didn’t work out (no one asked, so I’m happy).
Thank you for your comment, Nata! I’ve done the same. I found that when its clearly communicated, people are happy to pre-order a product in exchange for a discount.
Yes, Shane, I think there are many ruthless underhanded and lying people presenting webinars, which is why I am about done with webinars, most are nothing more than shameless pitch fest, they con you into signing up with a false promise to learn and nothing is further from the truth I’ve never walked away a webinar with useful information!!
Sorry to hear that you haven’t had good experiences with webinars. They were heavily pushed as a promotional and sales tool for a long time. It’s a bit of a shame, because I think webinars are great for teaching and interacting, not just for selling.
I’ve had a similar experience with MOST webinars, Shane!
My biggest complaint, beyond what Marion has mentioned, is wasting my time with needless “chit-chat” in getting the thing started… “too-long” introductions, too much “self-promotion!” General time wasting, as if they don’t know how to actually get going… :-o
The one exception — so far — is yours! You respect your viewers’ time investment and get right to the point! You also educate…way beyond expectations! Thrive webinars are truly beyond useful! :D
I’ve stopped watching any others which probably means I may be missing out…but I just don’t have the time to vet other people!
Which is why your webinars are always “packed” I’m sure! :-)
The icing on the cake is that all the “other” marketing trash out there makes your “real value” content stand out even more! ;-) LoL!
Same here.
So much so that I mostly don’t attend them.
If on a rare occasion I think there might be anything of value in a webinar – I download it (or wait for the replay and then download it). This allows me the control to skim through it quickly to see, if any parts are worth listening to.
I absolutely refuse to waste 1 hr+ on a webinar that may or may not deliver anything of value
Sadly, most of them are hype (I call them screamers – “I am so excited to be here …”) that develop into a lot of blabla with nothing of value. Needless to say I don’t buy from anyone wasting my time and lying to me.
OTOH there are some folks, you Shane for example, that I have no problem whatsoever listening to. You have proven over and over that what you say is packed with valuable, well researched information. And – extra bonus – you are calm. It is a pleasure to listen to you.
But don’t you know HOW EXCITED I am when I do a webinar? :D
Hi Shane
I know you want to hear from those who disagree, lol. But I can’t. I totally agree with what you’ve said.
My philosophy is honesty. I’m in the make money online industry, and I review many lousy product. Their sales pages are full of the usual false scarcity tactics but it’s the outright lies that I hate. They promise the moon and deliver a rock. If that!!
I always tell my readers to protect their reputations because once people lose trust in you, there goes your business!
Cheers,
Suzanne
Thanks for your comment, Suzanne!
“Promise the moon and deliver a rock” – I like that expression. :)
Indeed, that happens a lot. Although I think it happens outside of the “make money” space as much as inside it. Insurance companies come to mind…
Hi Shane,
I’m very happy to see the topic of ethics in business discussed! IMO, these tough issues are often left completely out of any business and/or marketing discussions!
Kudos to you for getting into it! :-)
I agree with pretty much everything you said… I think Miles’ comment and perspective is excellent: DON’T LIE! Don’t misrepresent anything to your readers…and especially to existing customers! :-o
I have struggled internally with many of these issues you mentioned, especially the “sell-before-it-exists” model… I felt it was deceptive…until I asked you about this “post-‘focus & action’ ” and before Course Craft…
Your response explained *exactly* how you would have addressed a case of a pre-sale not leading to a product, being very transparent about the reasons the projected product wasn’t going to happen! That solved this dilemma for me and it no longer looked or felt deceptive. I was very grateful for that honesty & openness!
Note that I have asked countless other online “marketing gurus” about this very issue, and you’re the only one EVER who gave me a direct answer!
I agree that the emotional knee-jerk reaction — at the consumer level (as opposed to “marketers”) — is often personal dislike and NOT truly unethical! It becomes a way of complaining, and calling a Lightbox “unethical” is a bit ridiculous, IMO!
You made many other great points here as well. I think business ethics should be discussed openly and often, especially in online marketing!
As an academic and “lifetime philosopher” myself, I appreciated your addressing a special section to those readers, should you have any in your audience!
Interested in what other readers have to say about this!
Thank you for your comment, Karen!
The pre-selling question is probably the most interesting one because there’s actually some risk involved. And for sure, there are many cases in which pre-selling is used unethically or as a downright scam (Kickstarter and similar platforms are filled with examples).
I’m grateful that this question came up, since pre-selling is something I do and also teach. And as you could probably tell, I’m happy about an opportunity to talk about ethics in marketing. Which, by the way, I see as a separate thing from ethics in business. Ethical business is even more complicated and far more difficult to do, than ethical marketing, in my opinion. Perhaps we’ll get into that sometime as well.
Thanks, Shane!
Yes, when teaching a particular strategy it’s especially important to understand and communicate the realities of implementing it.
The way you asked for reader interest prior to launching ‘focus & action’ was new to me but made so much sense! :D
I was actually quite appalled that several negative comments came out when Course Craft was released!
But, in retrospect, I realized that i already expected your “build it for customers’ needs” approach (from your prior course). Others were not so “primed” for that approach (even though it was in their best interests!) I found that elite “side story” a fascinating glimpse into the realities of pre-selling! The “lesson inside the lesson!” ;-)
I really hope you will continue this discussion, and at some point extend it to “business ethics” as well!
I’m sure it’s an extremely complicated issue, but an important one…possibly more so in our current globally-connected world of commerce than any other time in our history…with so many opportunities for the faceless and nameless to hide behind a website!
It gives the honest online entrepreneurs a bad name and makes it that much more difficult to garner trust! (…and even more important to create a “Manifesto” document! ;-) )
Hey Shane, I fully agree with everything you shared in this episode. And I also agree with what Miles said. I also find it unfortunate that this topic is mostly avoided by business owners and marketers.
Thanks for covering this topic in depth and doing an amazing job at breaking it down into simple to understand comparisons.
As a vegetarian, I no longer participate in the processed meat industry and I hardly use any social media, because I agree that it’s causing more harm than good. To be honest, I’ve opted out of many things in life, because I don’t agree with them or find them to be unethical.
And as you said, the key is to look under the hood or behind the curtain in order to ascertain whether or not something is unethical and always give someone the option to opt-out of the experience. Thanks for the work you do. Your online videos are more valuable that a lot of academically constipated content being lectured at universities. Congrats and keep it up.
Thank you for your kind words, Sean!
Thanks for your thoughts on ethics. I totally agree with honesty in business and in life – apart from the ‘little white lies’ told to avoid causing hurt.
Those that use evergreen videos and an automated system while pretending that all is new and one off, usually get caught out when something in the video is recognized as being out of date. I had a recent case where a video pretended to be new material and the website shown in the video showed an EBay home page that was long out of date.
I have some doubts, I confess, about the use of ‘comments’ which carry no date [ like the ones you use on this site and on Thrive ]. They seemingly give the impression of immediacy while perhaps being long out of date. Also, when they are used by first responders, they often get replies from the owner of the site or his team. But after the initial excitement has gone by for a couple of weeks, the ‘team’ doesn’t monitor the postings so regularly.
For instance, I was an up front purchaser of your CourseCraft course but circumstances lead to my using the course a few weeks after launch. A comment I posted on 2nd or 3rd April is still ‘awaiting moderation’ as of today, 3 weeks later.
This really is of no consequence to me as regards that particular posting but it causes me to reflect on the question of undated comments.
Hello Philip,
Are you making the case that comments without dates on them are unethical? Or are you just annoyed by them? ;)
I don’t think dates on comments add any crucial value. Over at Thrive Themes, we get so many comments that it’s hard to keep up. We strive to answer every question that gets asked and to answer as many comments as possible in general. We prioritize questions over other comments and questions on new posts over questions on older content.
In the course specifically, it’s been difficult to keep up, but there too I’m trying to answer everything that comes in.
Hi Shane,
I would only consider use of undated comments to be unethical if I thought I was being mislead.
I guess they are mostly just annoying to me because I have the feeling that knowing the date indicates some degree of currency which enables me to evaluate any opinion expressed. If the comments were very old, they might no longer be appropriate.
In many cases, even most, the date is probably quite irrelevant. And it is evident that once you take comments, you commit to a fair old workload.
Wowser, another reminder as to why I love your approach to business and “ethics.” You touched on some very specific things I thought about and ran from when I started online many years ago—many of them to my financial detriment.
I had been on the receiving end of so many things that were, at best, shoddy practices (materials not living up to the hype for example) and were truly unethical based on your description here.
When I first moved my business online, I attended an event where the presenter did the same thing…presold xyz and, if there was no interest, he didn’t build that thing.
I was so appalled because I saw that as wrong that I have created many a digital thing that had no buyers and I had no income.
Not a smart move and when I think about it now, I believe I had a feeling of sliminess from this person all the way ’round…and I’m sure that caused a lot of my reluctance to pre-sell, etc.
Truth be told? I didn’t deal with no or opt-outs well either. I’m 10 years older and have made much wiser choices regarding what I do, or don’t, do. Who I do, or don’t, follow.
Amazing how clear things seem when you share them. Thanks so very much for all you do and your willingness to tackle “tough” questions.
Hugs&Blessings. MamaRed.
Thank you for your comment. :)
You make an interesting point, there, regarding that speaker. When we see someone do a thing (e.g. pre-sell) and we don’t like the person, we can carry that dislike over to the thing they did. I don’t like this person. They pre-sold. Therefore, pre-selling is bad. That kind of thing.
Unfortunately, there’s usually an abundance of bad examples, more so than of good ones to learn from.
Yup, that’s it…and from a logical stance, I know that’s ridiculous! That’s one of the reasons I so honor what you bring to the table! Blessings, MamaRed.
I knew you would have something smart to say about this topic, thanks for making this video, I agree with all what you are saying. I agree that the word ethical gets often misused for stuff that is only annoying but not necessarily unethical. (I find a lot of words are being misused these days).
What surprised me on Steve’s podcast was, when he said that his webinar audience was off-put by Amy Porterfield, they found her very salesy when she offered her program at the end of the webinar. But again just because someone follows a sales formula doesn’t mean they are unethical.
So I was wondering if older people (like for example Steve’s audience) are regarding certain online marketing techniques quicker as unethical than younger generations?
I also love that you called us all out and said that we might be participating in unethical behavior because when everyone is doing it so it seems fine. Such a good point also about the food and the cow vs shark.
Thanks for bringing the topic and the podcast to my attention, Conny. :)
Regarding the Amy Porterfield question: I think this heavily depends on the target audience, but I wouldn’t pinpoint the age of the audience as the main factor. I’ve noticed differences in people’s “sales tolerance” in different groups. For example, Americans in general seem to be much more tolerant of sales than Europeans.
Also, if you’re talking to an audience that came to you through a lot of free stuff (free reports, free content, free tiers on a freemium product), they’re more likely to feel entitled to your work for free and might balk at the idea that you’re excluding them from something you created, by charging for it. But if you’re talking to an audience (same age, nationality etc.) of paying customers, that’s much less likely to be the case.
Those are just some examples from what I’ve noticed over the years.
Interesting observation you have shared here Shane, regarding “sales tolerance” between Europeans and North Americans. I have experienced it first-hand, even in the course Facebook group. My perspective is that ‘selling’ is like breathing – we all do it every day. Sales is not the problem – people with bad intentions are. We all need to “sell” our courses, our products or even our services.
That’s a good point, yes. We’re all involved in some forms of persuasion and negotiation all the time.
yes good point about the free stuff. We are all being trained that a lot of stuff is free, that’s not always good. The saying comes to mind (not sure who coined it) if you don’t pay for it you don’t pay attention.
There’s some truth to that, for sure. I think we all tend to hoard free stuff without actually reading it. Like, we “keep it for later”. Adding a price to a product increases that initial enagagement (although still a surprising number of people will buy a course and never take it).
Hi Shane, great video, as always. Just one thing: I am planning on doing webinars for parents of children with ADHD, so my target group ARE victims. From personal experience I know that as a mother or father of a child with ADHD you usually feel like a victim – of society as well as of the experts who are not in unison on what helps those children and what doesn’t … but most of all a victim of people offering all kinds of wonder solutions that will help chase the ADHD away in a matter of days, when in reality it takes 20 EXTREMELY hard years to carry your child into a happy adult life.
So I think with a target group like this it is extremely hard for me to judge what is still ethical and what not – especially as far as the price of my services is concerned (until a few weeks ago I had always given my advice away for free to parents although I am a real expert … I only charge institutions who book me for lectures). Well actually, what it boils down to: I have a problem with asking for money for my services from parents BECAUSE they are victims. I would very much appreciate your view on that. Thanks!
First of all, thank you for what you do. I have mild ADHD and as a kid, it meant I really struggled in school, but all I got was bad grades and people being disappointed in me. Someone who takes my problem seriously and wants to help would have been a blessing, back then.
Yes, your target customer is already a victim of circumstance. And I applaud you for being mindful of that and considering the ethics of marketing to them. Having said that, doing good marketing in order to reach people with a good solution is not unethical. What’s unethical is relentlessly poking their pain points and promising salvation right around the corner (right after they make one more payment)…
Also, if you know that they’re being marketed to unethically and sold snake oil left and right, you can use that as a point of differentiation. You can make it part of your marketing message to acknowledge their pain, acknowledge that they’re desperate for a solution and that they may have been misled by too-good-to-be-true promises.
It’s definitely not unethical to charge for your services. It’s unethical to squeeze them for all they’re worth, just because they’re in pain. But there’s nothing wrong with getting paid for your work. These people in your target market aren’t only victims. Their problem isn’t what defines them completely. And they’re spending money on things. It’s not too much to ask that they spend some of it on you.
Wow Shane, thanks! That advice really helps me. You are right – and my problem was that I could not see the difference through my veil of fear of charging people for something that they REALLY need.
ADHD is so extremely complex but when people know what to do and are willing to implement advice it can make a world of a difference.
ADHD and school? Tell me about it! We saw how much our younger boy suffered in school and encouraged him to quit when he was 15.
We told him he was such a special person with so many wonderful qualities – especially on a social level – and we were afraid that they would get trampled to death by the holy cow of a “good school education”.
We wanted to give him time and the chance to discover his real talents and dreams. It was the best decision ever. Today at 19, he is living his dream of a fitness trainer, is extremely good at what he is doing and absolutely loves it.
Thanks again for everything, I absolutely LOVE your podcasts!