Saw this post on a friend’s Facebook page the other day:
“Tired of the frustration when it comes to marketing your home business? If you’re hurting for leads, but don’t have a fortune to spend on the training to learn how to get leads…then you’ve got to see this…
You may not know it but there are actually weekly training webinars from six and seven figure earners where they give up their best secrets and techniques.
These are no-holds barred, PURE MEAT and NO FLUFF webinars that will have you profiting faster than you can believe. Oh yeah…and they’re FREE!…
GO CHECK IT OUT NOW:
= => (link goes here)”
I see variations of this kind of canned marketing message all too often on Facebook. Well-meaning home based business owners cast out their nets, hoping to catch a few fish that are drawn to the bait being offered in the post.
The problem is, this kind of marketing rarely yields the kind of results the poster is hoping for. These days, branding and social media are tied at the hip. It is more important than ever to pay attention to how what you put on your social media tables is congruent with the brand you are building for yourself and your business.
SPAM Affects Branding and Social Media
Canned messages (like canned processed meat) are uninspired and reek of desperation. They offer the illusion of making life easy for the small business owner – just copy and paste and watch the magic start! But there are so many things wrong with this approach; everyone is left with a bad taste in their mouth and an upset stomach.
Here are the top 4 problems:
- This message is completely out of alignment with the person posting it. I want to know who abducted my friend? He doesn’t talk like this. “Pure Meat” and “No Fluff” are not his words. Note to anyone marketing on social media channels – BE YOURSELF. Write messages in your own words. Don’t just copy and paste some canned message from a system you bought into. It has the opposite effect of what you want to happen!
- Using six and seven figure earners as a baseline for training newcomers is very popular among online marketers, but it’s very dangerous. Here’s why. Most home based business owners have never earned that much money from their work, let alone the business they’ve started. A growing body of research shows it’s hard for most people to relate to these big figures. Best to have realistic benchmarks and trainings from people in the risers who are on their way toward those big dollars. More relatable, more chance of greater success for those just getting started.
- If you’ve been around the internet marketing block long enough, you know that nothing is free. While these promised “pure meat” webinars may indeed have some value, chances are very good they are merely a stepping stone toward a paid product that offers the “REAL” solutions to the viewer’s problems. That’s simply the way things work online, but for the newcomer who doesn’t know any better, he can end up spending a lot of money on products that aren’t suited for what he really needs to learn.
- Finally, leads aren’t typically the challenge for businesses that know who they want to work with, i.e. their target market or ideal clients. You can get leads all day long when you know these things because people will be naturally attracted to you and what you offer. The real question is, can you convert enough of those leads to make a decent living? Conversion is often more of a problem for the small business owner and is why so many never become profitable. Yet most of these “systems” focus only on getting the leads, not on what to do with them once you have them.
No matter where it shows up, SPAM has the same ickiness factor as used car salesmen of days gone by. It feels sleazy and underhanded. I’m afraid my friend has been sold a lemon and won’t move ahead in his business until he takes the time to develop his own, genuine approach to letting people know about what products and/or services he is marketing, even if it costs him more time and money to do so. In the end, it’s the only way his branding and social media efforts will take him where he wants to go.
