19 Things I Don’t Like about Marketing Today
Got a little inspiration from Bob Bly yesterday when he sent out an email titled “21 things I don’t like about marketing.”
After reading his list (which resonated with me), I decided to put together a list of my own.
Here are 19 things I don’t like about marketing today.
1. Marketers who refuse to run “long” copy because they believe their prospects won’t read it.
2. Google banning AdWords advertisers for life by retroactively enforcing new rules.
3. Marketers who make money online only by selling info-products about making money online.
4. Copyright trolls who seek inflated damages from small online business owners for the innocent infringement of photo copyright.
5. Auto-dialers that leave recorded sales messages on voice mail. (Thankfully, my Ooma Telo allows me to add phone numbers to my black list anytime I want.)
6. The faulty-but-prevalent thinking that any one technique or strategy will make a business successful.
7. Marketers who rip-off their freelance contractors.
8. Marketing seminars that are nothing more than thinly veiled excuses to hard-sell expensive info-products.
9. Sales funnels that feed new customers to boiler rooms that use manipulative tactics to sell “coaching programs” for $10K to $20K a pop.
10. Sales copy that is too trite, too clever, or too confusing.
11. Ads that fail to tell the prospect what to do next.
12. People who (ab)use LinkedIn and Facebook to mass-invite people to webinars and other marketing events.
13. Websites and ads that use reverse type (white font on a black background).
14. Sliders on websites that rotate too fast to read the copy.
15. PayPal and merchant account fees. (Which is why I’m hoping Dwolla continues to gain traction.)
16. Unsolicited canned emails that pitch SEO services.
17. Marketing and wealth “gurus” who publicly brag about their charitable activities. (FYI – this is one of the things con artists have in common.)
18. Businesses that seem to exist solely to enrich the owners — while treating their customers like an unpleasant necessity of making money.
19. Pump-and-dumps.
Anything you’d add to the list?
-Ryan M. Healy
