Unethical Advertising and Poor Marketing Strategies
I spend several hours online everyday so I see a lot of people who need to take a serious look at their advertising and marketing strategies. I am going to provide you with some of the common unethical advertising and poor marketing strategies I see social media sites, email campaigns, and what I experience on my site by some visitors.
Choosing unethical advertising and poor marketing strategies might appear to be effective in the beginning, but eventually people will avoid you like the plague. Being unethical is a choice. Below are some descriptions of unethical and poor marketing strategies I see on a daily basis.
Posting comments can be an effective marketing strategy if it is done correctly. When leaving comments to promoting a product, service, website, or social media page you should understand the need to provide information that will help others. Give people a reason to click on your link or want more information. Make sure your comments are relevant. If you are going to leave a comment for the purposes of promoting something such as ‘making money online’, posting a comment on a site that is about recipes will not get you many visitors. Just leaving a referral or affiliate link is not effective, it is considered SPAM.
Spamming Website Comments
If you have a website, you definitely need a tool to protect it from SPAM comments. I get SPAM comments everyday. I also strongly recommend that you moderate all comments. It will require you to approve each comment, but it will help keep your website free of SPAM. An anti-SPAM tool will detect whether a comment is from an IP address is on a blacklist. If it is, the tool will put the comment in the SPAM section of your comments. The tool will not detect SPAM 100% of the time, but it is still something I recommend.
Spamming Social Media
Some social media sites have groups and communities members can join. For example, I belong to several communities and groups related to business opportunities and making money online or making money from home. People are really bad about SPAMMING other members’ postings with their own referral and affiliate links.
If you want to promote something, be considerate and make your own post. The only time I post a comment on someone’s post is if I have a question, if I know their post involves a scam or if I see someone else commenting on the post with their scam.
I get a lot of SPAM comments on my YouTube videos. I moderate all comments on my channel. I also block the spammers and report them. When I go to their channel most of them don’t have any videos posted. They have no idea what they are doing or that spamming comments section will get them no where. YouTube can be a great traffic source if it is used correctly.
Email Campaigns
Email campaigns can be very effective marketing strategy, but I see a lot of people sending way too many emails to their subscribers. It is not necessary to send your subscribers several emails everyday. I belong to several email lists related to affiliate marketing and making money online. I have unsubscribed to several email lists because of excessive promotions. Some people are sending me 3-5 emails everyday, trying to get me to buy something. It’s ridiculous and in my opinion it is a very poor marketing strategy.
Another issue with opting in to an email list is that some people violate their own email policy. They may state in their policy that they will not share or sell your email, but in reality a lot of them do. In the USA, if it can be proven that an email policy has been violated, it can lead to extensive and costly fines to the parties involved. If you collect emails, by law you are supposed to have an email policy that describes what you will do with that information and you need to follow that policy.
Bait & Switch Advertising & Marketing Tactics
Another unethical advertising strategy is the bait & switch tactic. For example, promoting an opportunity as a zero cost investment to spark interest and then when someone clicks on a link, they find out there is an investment required. That is huge problem. I see a lot of posts and ads about ‘work from home jobs’ that are actually ‘business opportunities’.
This a huge problem on YouTube videos and other social media sites, classified ads and emails. This type of poor marketing strategy is definitely one way to establish a bad reputation. I’m seeing more people take a stand against this type of strategy, but I do not see any decline in the occurrence of the strategy itself.
Another problem I see is people promoting something that they do not fully understand. I’ve seen a lot of people promoting a legitimate opportunity called Yoonla – Create Your Digital Lifestyle. Some Yoonla members fail to differentiate between the free membership and the CPA affiliate program. One is free and the other does require an investment. This leads to confusion for those who are interested in becoming a member with the desire to make money by getting paid for qualified leads. They may not be intentionally trying to mislead people, but their lack of understanding is doing just that.
Conclusion
If you want to build trust and establish a good reputation, avoid the unethical advertising and poor marketing strategies mentioned above. Don’t have a mindset of doing whatever it takes to make a buck. That a reckless way to think. Establishing a good reputation and building trust takes times and effort. Be honest, upfront and transparent with your advertising and marketing strategies.
If you are guilty of any of the unethical advertising and poor marketing strategies mentioned in this article, I strongly advise you to consider adopting a more ethical mentality. Don’t continue to be part of the problem.
Additional Information:
Beware of Facebook Business Opportunity & WAH Groups
How To Avoid Work From Home Scams