Being authentic, despite unethical competitors' "unfair" advantage...
Channel: George Kao
Date: 19/06/2017

Authentic Marketing... is it as effective as Manipulative Marketing?

This question came from one of my viewers -- thank you. He wrote:

"If a buyer has a choice between a product sold with respect, and a product sold with manipulation techniques and fear, they will be more easily attracted by the power and the action of the manipulation...

Sell with ethics and love is OK, with authentic approach is ok...

But how to generate the same power of attraction so that the person does not succumb to the sterns of the fear and the manipulation of the competitor?"

**

When you look at other people in your industry who are using deceptive or predatory tactics -- gaining new clients through unethical practices -- while you are trying to do the right thing, taking the higher road, and finding business results to be slower for you... does it bother you?

How might we think about this?  

I offer you the following 5 actions.

ACTON 1. Expose the unethical practices, without judging anyone specific. 

Enlighten your audience as to what's going on, what is being done to them by some people in your industry, leaving out specific names. 

Your audience will be grateful to have their eyes opened by you. They will start to see you as the more trustworthy source of information within your industry. They will be more cautious about making quick decisions with your competitors. 

Whenever I have posted about the types of predatory practices that are happening in my industry -- my audience love those posts the most.

Examples:

* We don't have to do "lizard-brain marketing!" 
https://www.georgekao.com/blog/lizardbrainmarketing

* When someone says "there's no selling involved!" watch out... www.FB.com/GeorgeKaoCommunity/posts/10155850921539867

* Why we should stop buying expensive business trainings:
www.FB.com/GeorgeKaoCommunity/videos/10155862163594867

What about you? What practices are being done in your industry that you feel sad, angered, or disgusted by? Talk about those tactics. Write about those strategies. Expose that unethical behavior. 

And then offer a better way so that you can uplift your whole industry, while helping your audience make better choices.

ACTION 2: Focus your message for those who are receptive.

You cannot save everyone... at least not at the same time.

You are able to help those who are open to your message.

For example, some people in my audience are still intrigued by my competitors who promise big wealth and easy results. I cannot help those people right now, if they feel called to go in that direction.

I respect the free will of others... I let them make choices even if I think those choices are mistakes. 

I will be honest if they ask me. But most of the time, they don't ask me. And even when they do, they sometimes still go and buy some of those expensive (and predatory) training programs.

I focus my energy and message on those who have *already* been disillusioned by unethical strategies, or who never were interested in those.

Don't be "out on the streets" preaching to everyone... you will just annoy passerbys, and burn yourself out trying to save everyone.

Focus instead on "preaching to the choir". 

You'll be happier that way.  You'll be able to share your message more passioantely -- focused on those who are most receptive. 

And you'll find that as your message gets more effective, people will come from far and wide to watch you, hear your message, and some of them will want to join your choir too :) 

ACTION 3: Care more. Do what's unscalable. 

What your manipulative competitors are not willing to do, is to truly care about the people who come into their audience. 

They might pretend to care, but the audience will eventually know, when they go far enough with them, that they are actually more profit-driven than heart-based.

Observe how your competitors aren't caring enough for their audience, and then DO MORE to care for yours.

Maybe your competitors use lots of autoresponders, Facebook Bots, and other *fake* ways to "care".  Well, you go ahead and "do the unscalable" and care as a real human being, with your big heart, with thoughtful, individual attention. Those people will sense it.

Show them that you care more than the other people in your industry.

Example is Gary Vaynerchuk who talks about "depth vs width" and shows us how he individually cares for his fans on twitter: http://bit.ly/2siJQXZ 

In your content, care more. Be consistent, be helpful, and don't always be making offers and calls to action.

In your networking, care more. Don't wait until you need someone's help, to appear like you care about them. Care consistently for the colleagues in your network. Be helpful to them as often as possible.

**

To read the rest of the article, go to:

https://plus.google.com/+GeorgeKaoCommunity/posts/PtjETnAWqqe