A few weeks ago many Canadians were happy to hear that the iPhone was finally coming to Canada. I even wrote a post about the fact that I was thinking of getting one. Getting an iPhone would require me to drop my current carrier, Bell, and go to Rogers.
Well, since this blog is about marketing, I thought the recent updates were blog-worthy. First, some background, courtesy of BCTV and YouTube:
The essence of the above clip is that Rogers is overcharging for the iPhone plan, and people are TICKED OFF!
Now, I realize that the purpose of every business is to make money. But there is more than one way to do that, in every business. In fact, there are three ways to do that.
1. You sell to more people.
2. You sell more products to the same people.
3. You sell more expensive products to the same people.
Clearly, Rogers is subscribing to #3. Now, in many businesses it makes a lot of sense to raise the price of your product. I’ve heard a lot of good internet marketers saying that by and large people should be charging more for the info products they sell online, and I think they’re right. There is a degree to which the market is elastic enough to accept the increase, and still respond positively.
However, in the case of Rogers, they are clearly going about this the wrong way. They have over judged the elasticity of the market, and they’re squeezing it for every bleeding red cent they can get.
Now, consider what we know:
1. Rogers knows that they have a monopoly on the iPhone. They happen to be the only carrier in Canada that is technologically capable of running it on their network, so for the foreseeable future, nobody can compete.
2. The iPhone is being hailed (whether you agree or not) as the phone that is revolutionizing the marketplace. It is changing the way people interact with their phones, their computers, yadda yadda yadda. Basically it is tremendously anticipated.
3. Did I mention no one can compete?
Okay, so Rogers can go about their marketing strategy a couple of ways. They can jack the price up really high, banking on the fact that a ton of people REALLY REALLY REALLY want this phone and they’ll pay anything to have it. Assuming people didn’t mind the prices, they would hopefully gain new customers coming over for the iPhone.
Unfortunately, some marketing bonehead totally over estimated the market’s price elasticity on this one, and they’ve crossed the line. Way crossed it. So much to the point that you saw in the video clip, where long time customers are now talking of buying out of their contracts just to get away from Rogers!!! WOW! Party foul!
So instead of gaining new customers, Rogers is LOSING customers! On top of that, they’re losing them by the thousands. If you checkout www.ruinediphone.com you will see that the petition is up to 43,910 (July 6 9pm) and growing steadily. That is 10,000 more than yesterday. So even if they had calculated on losing some customers by hiking the price, I don’t think anyone considered the incredible bad press they’re attracting right now!
Now, consider a second way they could have gone about this. Knowing they had an upcoming monopoly on an incredibly highly anticipated product, they could have come out with some killer rate plan, geared towards JUST the iPhone, and released this with a huge media splash. The media would have been overwhelmingly in favour of it, and they likely would have picked up thousands of NEW customers. We’re talking a lot of three year contracts here. Out of every thousand, I’m sure at least some would hang around beyond their contracts for round two.
I’m on a TON of mailing lists. In fact, a while ago I setup a separate email address specifically for this purpose. I did this for a couple reasons: a) because I have actually purchased quite a few of the best affiliate marketing products, thus I’ve naturally become part of these lists, and b) because I like to see how other marketers do their thing. Every now and then examples come through my inbox of great sales letters, and I like to keep those for future reference. It becomes a sort of “best of the best” toolkit for an email / affiliate marketer.
Anyways, this post isn’t really about my toolkit - today I wanted to rant about the amazing number of underground, previously unknown, rejected by all, newly arrived on the scene gurus. You probably know the ones I mean. “Straight from the underground” and all this jazz - doesn’t anyone else look at this as being merely the default marketing tactic to use if you’ve got no experience on the affiliate product launch scene? Can’t these guys come up with something more original?
It’s a funny thing, marketing to marketers. On the one hand, we’re all supposed to see through the hype because this is our world, right? Wrong. Apparently we’re just as susceptible as the next person - perhaps more so! The very fact that affiliate marketing products are simply everywhere is testament to that fact. Not a day goes by that I don’t receive at least 30 affiliate offers in my inbox. Most are marketing related. My spidey sense has to be on DEFCON 1 all the time, or I could easily buy more of them than I have time in the day to implement all their tricks and tips! I’d be curious, if someone could omnisciently discover the truth, how many affiliate marketers have in fact spent more on affiliate marketing products than they’ve actually earned by using them! Maybe I’m wrong, but I imagine there are masses of people out there who have purchased tons of products and never actually implemented them to their potential.
It seems like everything has to have more hype than the last - each email is more spectacular, each conference has a more amazing lineup, each product launch has more amazing giveaways and bonuses, etc. The sad thing about marketing is you simply can’t sell anything by saying “Another product from X - please buy it.” We all subconsciously crave that hype, knowing that the product we just bought is better than all of its competitors, and knowing that we now have an advantage over our own competition because of it! We made the right choice! This is the ultimate product, and I should be proud for having purchased it!
Yay me!
I realize by posting this absolutely nothing is going to change, and in fact I’m working on a sales letter of my own right now, and no doubt it will contain some of this language. Fact is, that’s what works. It’s also what people expect to see. If they don’t, they somehow become suspicious. I’ve walked away from some perfectly good products because the sales letter didn’t “wow” me. Others do too.
However, this post will not be in vain if the next time you read an uber-hype sales letter you pause, for just a microsecond, remember this post, and consider your motivations. Then feel free to dive back and in hit “Buy Now!” as quickly as possible.
Heck, you didn’t expect me to say don’t buy it did you? It might be one of my offers you’re reading!
Do headlines like these grab your attention? I have to admit, I am a bit of a sucker for these things, and to a degree I think that is human nature. Yet over time, you start to get desensitized to the endless “The Widget To End ALL Widgets” type of claims.
I realize that an effective sales letter is absolutely crucial to the success of a product; however at what point do ethics come into play? Personally, I am trying to learn how to write a better (well, better is irrelevant because I haven’t written one of my own yet) sales letter, in fact I’m attending a webinar this afternoon on the very topic.
You see topics discussed like “Writing Hypnotic Sales Letters.” Now, persuasive is one thing, but do you want people to buy against their will? Do you really want them to turn in their will at the door and mindlessly get your next product? Well, the pocketbook screams a unequivocal and resounding YES!
What if your product sucks. You know it and I know it, however we write a sales letter saying that this thing is going to be the silver bullet that takes away the client’s widget-related misery. Sure, it might get them to buy, and sure, they’ll probably be too lazy to return the thing when it doesn’t live up to their expectations, but they won’t likely buy another from you. Then again like good cattle, once they’re on your mailing list they just might. Is that the kind of business we want to be in?
I guess the place to start is with a great product; then you really can make some serious claims about it in good conscience. However, even for some of the truly impressive products that I’ve purchased, I’ve still been let down after the incredible hype of the sales letter.
Is it possible to “over-wow” your customer? I know that when I see a sales page now, credibility is one of the first things I look for. If I don’t see that in seconds, I’m out of there. Credibility though, is a funny thing. It’s like a gut instinct that I can’t peg down to any one or two items. I can’t say “If the headline is blue, I’m outta there” or “If they don’t have testimonials, I’m outta there” because credibility is more complicated than that.
I guess the whole point of this post is in regards to the ethics of sales letters. I do not seek to dispute what works and what doesn’t in terms of getting the sale. There’s time for that later and plenty of others have done that as well. However, if you can write a sales letter that will make you a cool million, guaranteed, at the expense of violating your morals (perhaps by making unsubstantiated claims about your product) then should you? I know many people do. It is the same argument that led to the creation of the nuclear bomb and pursuing human cloning. Just because you can, does it mean you have to?
I’m not going to answer this question because I can think of all kinds of “what if’s” that make it hard to just say yes or no in such a short space; however I’m interested in having the conversation.
