Marketing sets the tone

Whatever you choose to say in your marketing sets the tone for working with you.

Case in point:

I was considering a short course from a guy I’d only just learned about – I went from unaware of him, to reading his landing page, and considering his program in the space of about 24 hours, so joined his mailing list.

Then his emails started. Like, straight away.

Cut from a template we’ve all seen plenty of times:

• I’ve got a once in a lifetime offer
• This offer goes away at midnight
• This offer goes away in 10 hours
• This offer goes away in 6 hours
• This offer goes away in 1 hour
• (at 1am) Ok ok, we had so many requests that we’ve extended it until midnight tonight
• (repeat hourly reminders)
• Ok now it’s closed, you’ve missed out, and I’ll never offer this again

Sprinkled through the emails were links to “live” video sessions starting in 4 minutes (not really live), or actual live Zoom sessions where he’d say “join 5 minutes early because I can’t guarantee you won’t get locked out!”. I joined one 20 minutes late (and ejected less than a minute in).

Even though I saw that this dude has been running this program for around 4 years, has an active Facebook group of current and future students, and all signals indicate that he’ll be running this exact program again (I won’t be in it), he’s still pulling “you’ve missed out” stuff in his marketing.

Good for him – it seems to be working.

(By the way, he uses Click Funnels which is a landing page builder famous for teaching this scare’em crap when you sign up with them. I’m not a fan, obvs 😂).

It’s sad that as dicey as this is, these practices are so common to the point where it’s basically accepted.

If you happen to be in the middle of considering a landing page builder or other marketing tool that teaches these fear-laden tactics (as convincing as they are, because they’re great at convincing people to buy shit they don’t need) – that’s absolutely not the only way to sell.

I’m sure this is obvious and maybe a little woo-woo, but if you make good stuff and are pretty much yourself in your marketing, you shouldn’t need to scare, coax, trick, or otherwise manipulate anyone into buying the stuff you sell ✌️