Is marketing cheating?

MW seems to think so.

On my blog, she challenged me for saying that my book is an “Amazon best-seller”.

MW didn’t accuse me outright of lying.

Nor should she, considering my book “Persuasive Presentations for Business” (Entrepreneur Press) reached the #2 spot on the Amazon non-fiction best-seller list.

What MW didn’t like is that I used e-mail marketing to promote sales of my book on Amazon.

In fact, you may be familiar with the marketing technique I used, which has become known as “The Instant Amazon Best-Seller Formula”.

Used by many Internet marketers, including Mary Ellen Tribby and Michael Masterson to name just two, this method was pioneered—I believe—by Joe Vitale.

The way it works is simple…

You send an e-mail to your subscribers promoting your book…and get lots of your joint venture partners and affiliates to do the same.

By the way, you can read more about the Instant Amazon Best-Seller Formula.

You offer subscribers a bribe—a bunch of free bonus reports contributed by you and your partners—as an incentive to buy your book.

Here’s the trick: to get the bonus reports, they must purchase the book from Amazon.com on the date you specify.

If they buy it elsewhere or on another day, no bonus gifts for them.

That way, the orders all come in on Amazon on the same day, driving your book way up in the Amazon sales rankings for that day.

MW and many other people I have talked with think that the Instant Amazon Best-Seller Formula is somehow cheating—rigging the system to make our books instant temporary best-sellers.

And it’s true, we are manipulating the system.

But what’s wrong with that?

It’s called MARKETING: using promotions (in this case, e-mail) to promote a product (in this case, our books) to increase sales.

Novels by James Patterson are heavily promoted in radio advertising designed to sell more copies.

Does that mean they are somehow not “real” best-sellers, because they were advertised?

Same thing with Oprah…

If your publicist gets your book into the Oprah Book Club, you are almost guaranteed an instant best-seller.

So why is it perfectly legitimate to advertise your book on radio or in the newspaper or publicize it on TV but a “no-no” to e-mail your subscribers (who have opted into your list because they are actually interested in what you write)?

Answer: Because e-mail marketing is direct marketing.

And direct marketing has always had an image problem with the press and the public.

After all, direct mail is called “junk mail”.

So why aren’t TV commercials called “junk TV”?

It is true that a small percentage of products sold through direct marketing have been of questionable value, quality, or legitimacy.

But that doesn’t make direct marketing uniquely sleazy vs. other forms of sales and marketing.

A small percentage of businesses in every distribution channel and industry are crooked and take advantage of unwary consumers.

For instance, it was mainly Madison Avenue that told us we’d be cool and popular if we smoked cigarettes.

And it is general advertising, not direct marketing, that has our kids growing obese and unfit on fast food French fries and sugar-filled junk food.

Because direct marketing often relies on long copy to make the sale, there are many folks who tell me they find long copy distasteful and sleazy—especially “all those long copy salesletters on the web” as one of my readers puts it.

Again, this is a pretty silly attitude when you think about it.

The longer the copy, the more information you are given about the product.

Is there something inherently unethical or inappropriate about giving prospects more information with which to make an intelligent buying decision?

Of course not.

But the real question for you as an entrepreneur is: despite direct marketing’s less-than-sterling reputation in the minds of some consumers, should you use it to sell your product online and offline?

The answer is easy: unequivocally, yes.

Fortunately for us, the number of consumers who respond to direct response marketing is enough to give us highly profitable promotions.

So direct marketing remains an extremely effective method of selling merchandise and services.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

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