Nomad Internet Marketing March 2017 Issue 03 | Page 19

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9. Whenever possible, don’t make an income
claim your primary benefit. Let’s say you
teach a course on how to do marketing for
offline businesses. Hopefully that is your
BIG benefit – teaching offline marketing.
Any income claims should be secondary
to that benefit.
You get the idea. You’re being REAL. No wild
claims. Just good old fashioned honesty.
Will you get as many sales this way? It depends.
But the sales you do get will stick, and you’ll sleep like
a baby at night.
Other things to keep in mind, straight from the
FTC’s website:
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10. Can you sell your product without making
income claims at all? That’s terrific – do it.
Very few products MUST contain income
claims.
Okay, I need to talk about #10 – back in the day
if you wanted to sell an Internet Marketing type of
product, you just needed to make some realistic
income claims along with a plausible story of how
it works, an d you made sales.
As marketers we got complacent. We had a
sales technique that worked – making income
claims – and so we used that most every time we
were selling an IM type product.
Bottom line – we got lazy and we forgot how
to sell without income claims.
So let’s say Bob has a nice little method to earn
$1,000 a week. And that’s what he’s earning, too.
He writes up the process he uses and makes a
product out of it. So far, so good. But how does he
market it?
One method he might use is to tell his story
while never revealing how much money he
makes. “I had a good job with a copier company,
but I wasn’t happy. So I tried this and that, and
finally found a method that worked. In fact, it
replaced the income from my job, so I could tell
my boss goodbye forever. Now, I don’t know if
you’ll do as well. Heck, you might do better, since
I’m no Einstein. But if you’re interested, I will show
you step by step what I do and how I do it. Expect
to invest about 10 hours a week doing this. There
is a learning curve – it took me 8 weeks to get up
to the income I currently earn. You can scale it up
if you want to. Frankly, I’m kind of lazy so I haven’t
done that yet, and I don’t know how much that
would earn you. Etc.”
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Disclaimers and disclosures must be clear and
conspicuous. That is, consumers must be able
to notice, read or hear, and understand the
information. Still, a disclaimer or disclosure
alone usually is not enough to remedy a false
or deceptive claim.
Demonstrations must show how the product
will perform under normal use.
Refunds must be made to dissatisfied
consumers - if you promised to make them.
Advertising directed to children raises special
issues. That's because children may have
greater difficulty evaluating advertising claims
and understanding the nature of the
information you provide. Sellers should take
special care not to misrepresent a product or
its performance when advertising to children.
The Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU)
of the Council of Better Business Bureaus has
published specific guidelines for children's
advertising that you may find helpful.
A good rule of thumb – when in doubt, leave it out.
One last thought – what if you became known as
the painfully, brutally honest marketer who always
told the 100% truth? What would happen?
My guess is two things: Initially you would make
fewer sales, but you would also get far fewer refund
requests.
Over time people would flock to you, read your
every word, watch your every video and act on your
every recommendation.
And the FTC would have no need to knock on your
door with one of those nasty warrants.
I think you’ll agree that putting your good name
and honest reputation ahead of immediate profits is
not a bad approach to marketing at all.