Meet Tim and Linda. The two entrepreneurs met in a growth hacking mastermind group, designed to help them level up in their businesses.
Tim is a life coach. With barely three clients under his belt, he’s creating an online course to start earning the infamously oversold “passive income,” instead of trading his time for money.
Linda runs an e-commerce store selling custom designed phone cases. Her orders are picking up, but not fast enough for her taste. She can’t wait to quit her 9-5 and start traveling, all supported by her online businesses.
The approach to marketing that Tim, Linda, and so many other entrepreneurs are taught has one goal: Attract as many new customers as fast as possible using any means necessary.
Don’t have an audience yet? Just let Facebook ads drive traffic to your offer.
Don’t have satisfied customers yet to write testimonials? Just hire freelancers on Upwork to hype up your products.
Don’t have a proven product yet? Just offer a discount. But don’t forget the countdown timer to show that your offer is “expiring soon.”
The thing is, Tim and Linda are thrilled with their results. From one day to the next, they have paying clients. There’s one caveat, though…
This approach is unsustainable
Let’s be honest, who doesn’t want to grow fast and get rich quickly – ideally without hard work involved. Wanting to expand your business to serve more people isn’t bad. And using marketing to do so obviously isn’t bad either.
The problems start when growth is valued higher than honesty. When more customers are better than the right customers. When money is more important than relationships.
That’s when business owners resort to cheap gimmicks and hyperbole to trick people into buying their products. But, this approach comes at a cost that isn’t immediately visible. Blinded by short-term success, business owners easily underestimate the long-term implications.
Tim and Linda are caught in a deadly cycle where they constantly need to bring in new leads because they can’t retain their clients. Once customers notice that their products aren’t as good as advertised, they leave. Ultimately, their brands lose credibility, and the relationship with their audience suffers.
Here’s how I lost trust in a business: A few years ago, I landed on the email list of a marketer selling online courses that taught people how to start a freelance business. Sounded intriguing. So, I diligently read all his emails and even considered investing in one of his classes. Then I noticed that he only emailed when he had something to sell. In between launches, months would go by without hearing a peep. That made his ultimate motive crystal clear – make money when it was convenient.
Consumers experience this type of deceptive marketing constantly online. No wonder that they become increasingly wary of what’s offered and start to mistrust all marketers.
What does the alternative look like?
In a sea of gimmicks, false urgency, and hyperbole, some creators have taken a different route. Instead of pushing their products out into the world, they’ve started listening to their audiences – with resounding success. Here are three examples:
Tiago Forte and David Perell
Tiago and David run the hyper-successful online courses Building a Second Brain and Write of Passage.
In an episode of the North Star Podcast, the two discuss how they’ve grown their audiences organically and launch their courses every year without paid ads. A simple system of tweets, live workshops, and email sequences draws in hundreds of students and has catapulted them to the frontier of online learning.
How do they do it? By listening to what their audience has to say. By doing things that don’t scale at first. And by consistently overdelivering on the experience they provide to their students.
For example, I don’t think you’ll see many course creators adapting the curriculum on the fly based on students’ feedback. Or schedule extra live sessions for attendees in different timezones.
Having taken both courses, I can confirm that their strategy works. Feeling deeply cared for at all times and being part of a community turns customers into raving fans. That, in turn, makes marketing effortless.
Seth Godin
“What actually works in marketing is setting up shop and staying there. Not finding new people for your product, but finding new products for your people.”
Seth Godin
As an author, entrepreneur, and teacher, Seth Godin set up shop decades ago. He’s built a deep connection with his audience via one main channel, his blog, over 7,000 posts strong. His latest thoughts are delivered daily to more than a million readers. It’s the one email I read for sure every day.
Seth promotes a purpose-driven instead of a profit-driven approach to marketing. By focusing on a narrow audience, businesses can create a community around their brand and form genuine connections with their customers.
Chris Orzechowski
As a former school teacher turned copywriter, Chris helps e-commerce companies make more sales with emails.
But not by adding flash sales, coupons, or discounts to the mix. Not even by designing flashy graphics that pop out in the inbox.
His approach is simple: Have a brand show up consistently in their audience’s inbox with short, plain text emails that talk about the stuff people actually care about. Every key message is packed into a fun, engaging story.
This turns brands from anonymous entities into trusted friends. Unsurprisingly it works really well.
How to succeed in the long run with honest and transparent marketing
When Tim and Linda’s Facebook ad budget became unsustainable, they had the option to quit on their dreams of making money online or shift gears. They decided to put in the work. And that meant applying these five principles of honest and transparent marketing:
- Don’t lie. Period. Sounds easy, but sometimes we tweak the truth without realizing it. Like calling us the #1 solution for X problem, when in fact, we’ve “only” been rated #1 by one blog. Or when 185 satisfied customers suddenly turn into a rounded 200.
- Focus on the long term relationship with your audience even if that means fewer sales in the short-term. People become true fans by engaging with you and your content over and over again. This has to happen organically. It can’t be faked.
- Listen to your audience. As much as possible, have real interactions with real people. A single meaningful conversation can profoundly impact the way you’re approaching your next campaign, launch, or marketing in general.
- Say no to shiny new things. Marketers love to hop on every new channel that pops up and try out every tool. But, this divides your attention. You have to get comfortable with saying no to the majority of options so you can nail the few you’ve decided on.
- Follow honest marketers, instead of the next growth hacking guru. Everyone Hates Marketers podcast hosts conversations with marketers and entrepreneurs who vow to “fight the marketing bullshit.”
The bottom line
Getting rich instantly by starting an online business is a lie. Sorry. The quick high when cash pours in won’t last long as your customers simply don’t stick around. And having to convince a whole new set of people every day to buy your products is unsustainable.
There are no shortcuts to business success. Honesty, transparency, and authenticity is and will always get the best results. It takes more time for sure, but that shouldn’t be a problem for an entrepreneur playing the long game. And that’s you, right?
