Quality, Ethical Sales and Marketing Wisdom Mega-Thread

[mmKay]

As I'm learning more and more about sales and marketing, the foundations, Insights, do's and don'ts ,  with the purpose of becoming financially independent in the next 10 years , I'd like this place to be where I share what I find , and for this thread to become massively valuable over the years

You're welcome to share wisdom nuggets as well, but really think through if what you're posting is valuable, as to keep it tidy I will regularly be asking mods to remove irrelevant or low quality posts

 

I want to focus on high quality and ethical sales and marketing to the degree that is possible , but I consider learning and translating lessons from the coldhearted cutthroat real business world as well

 

I started with the Alex Hormozi Podcast. It's around 650 episodes long and I'll be mostly sharing stuff from there for now

The first 150 episodes focus more on a gym owner perspective before switching over to more pure sales and marketing, but it still very valuable for a newbie like me.

 

A little something from today: 

 

Value equation :

Value = Significance of Outcome multiplied  by likelihood of archivement divided by time and effort

 

Your product's value in the customers eye  can be calculated by understanding how deeply they value what you are offering them , multiplied by how likely is it that you can make reality that result  for them, divided by how much struggle it takes from their part .

And that is one factor that's on their mind when deciding if to pay the amount you're asking 

Edited March 7 by mmKay

[Delusion Slayer]

Bumping this because I am interested in this topic myself

[Michael569]

Nice thread idea! As someone who is in the middle of something similar and trying to make sales while being as ethical as possible, I can tell you that it feels like crawling naked and bare footed through thorn bushes. Especially when all you see around you are either examples of unethical marketing or bad practice. I've been exploring ways to do it better as a part of my own rebrand and migration to another platform so maybe this will help someone. 

This mostly relates to website content and writing a copy but that's how you make sales as a small business with relatively low audience and website traffic. 

• Brand consistency - everything you do, write, create and show to people needs to fall under your branding guidelines. Best work with someone who has done this before. This helps the customer clearly distinguish your brand from the 5 other competitors they saw today. 
  • Brand colours - you can't blast random colours across your web and social content. You need to have a blend of agreed bland colours. Also, be clear on how those colours interact and how they work together, test the contrast (you want AA or AAA rating). Agree on font colours, leading colours, accent colours and special colours (for buttons, frames etc). Also make sure your colours pass the colourblindness test (use Adobe colour tool for that). 
  • Fonts, font sizing, font spacing - absolute consistency across all platforms
  • Logo (used everywhere) - colour consistent with your branding colours 
  • Voice & Style of communication - has to be consistent across all platforms. Always know who you are talking to. Personally, I find this the most challenging part of the branding. 
• When writing your marketing copy, focus on description rather than persuasion. Simply tell the story of what your product does rather than trying to convince the reader toi buy from you. Deliberately introduce some vagueness and let the customers fill in the gaps with their imagination  A lot of copies are written in a "push push" way rather than simply describing how your product supports the client and helps you remove their pain. The moment you start pushing them to make a sale through buttons , CAPS and all sort of clickbait techniques, you're compromising your ethics and business integrity, in the future potentially even your Google SEO. Same goes for social advertisement. 
• Not every website visitor is in the transaction stage - some people are just browsing and if you keep pushing them down a sales funnel they will get upset and leave. This is why it is important to have some simple "about" - subpage for those who are just browsing and a more direct sales funnel page for those who are almost ready for a transaction. Transaction page needs to be clear, simple and 100% concise. No bs, no fluff.  
• Content over fluff - remember that every word on your website (unless your website is a blog) is a sales copy. So treat everything you write as such. Make every word count. Clarity, consistency, simplicity, stay away from technical jargon unless your audience is technical or academic. 
• Empathy - if you are offering a service that is supposed to make someone's life better, spend some time, before writing your copy, about what state the reader is in when they read the copy. What do they feel? What do they fear? How easily overwhelmed are they? How easily confused are they? What is likely to discourage them? 
• Create an avatar of your ideal client persona  - self explanatory but not easy to do
• 0.2 - 2 - 6 second rule - the numbers may be a bit off but basically, people make a decision whether an article is worth reading within a fraction of second. This happens subconsciously, especially if you are trying to speak to people who are generally overwhelmed . Then if they decided that it is worth browsing, they may take another 2-3 seconds to photo reading through (keywords, highlights, words they are searching for, "is this for me?". Once they acknowledge that article is worth reading they will spent about 6-8 seconds reading the first paragraph which is why you need to grab attention immediately, in the first paragraph by talking about the client, not yourself. if you lose them there, they leave. Once they are past 6-10 seconds they continue reading unless it turns out that the article is not for them and about them - then they leave. 
• Only talk about yourself through the lenses of the client: "Example: I am xyz and I help people who XYZ"  Rather than writing 5 paragraphs about how awesome you are your education, background and why you do what you do. People generally don't care about you, they only care about themselves and their problems (I don't mean this in a negative way, more from a business transaction way. That's just how it is. ) 
• Always assume that your website visitor doesn't know who you are, what you do, how you do it, why you do it  - you need to be able to clarify these things to them immediately. Spell it out clearly without being too pushy
• Dangerous words & statements in your marketing copy  
  • Patronising - "let me tell you why" , "I'm sure you can do better"  ,  "You haven't seen what XYZ is until you try my XYZ thing" 
  • Being too presumptuous - "I'm sure you've heard , I'm sure you've seen the ..." I assume you've come to this website because...." 
  • Bragging & belittling the reader 
  • Being too rational and too technical 
  • Talking too much about yourself 
  • Trying to sound like an influencer (unless your clients want that) 
  • Mixing tenses between present, future, past perfect, present perfect etc - stick to one 
  • Excessively masculine style of writing (bro language using words like - strategy, tactical, conditioning, workout, dominating, influence, power etc) 
  • Too much fluff & vagueness - turning the sales copy into poetry (Example of a fluff: "I will guide you through a journey of self discovery and recognition of your inner power, helping you rekindle that flame , showing you how to realise your greatest potential"
    • caveat - some softness is good and it helps to empathise with clients and is more accepted by female readers but important not to soften up the entire copy unless your service requires it specifically

Bonus: Don't assume that just because your business is ethical you don't need to master the technical side of online business. Even if you don't plan to abuse it, you need to educate yourself on Google SEO basics and the advertisement standards. 

There is much more but I find these were helpful. 

Edited April 10 by Michael569

[mmKay]

This is pretty damn good general bizz advice that checks all the requirements of this thread .

Starts slow but I got a few very valuable ideas from the vid

 "30 yrs of bizz in 2hrs 30 min "

 

Edited April 11 by mmKay

[aurum]

@Michael569 great list. I especially like the part about description, not persuasion (which is mostly just manipulation in this context). That really seems to be the only way high consciousness sales can exist.

Here's my piece of wisdom:

Drop this idea that simply because a customer is wiling to pay for something, that you are offering them value. This is an incredibly toxic belief that is widespread in the internet marketing community. Rationalization on top of rationalization about why you should just figure out what the market wants and give it to them. Doesn't matter what it is as long as there is demand.

In reality, demand =! true value. There might be demand for cigarettes and drugs, can you honestly say selling those things is a high consciousness business that brings value to people? Perhaps in a twisted sort of way you could rationalize it. But it's obvious to me that people can demand all sorts of things that are not higher consciousness and may even hurt them.

If you actually loved your customers, you would care about what is best for them. End of story. 

Of course it practically may be more of a challenge to sell higher consciousness products. You might be get all excited about how your product is going to change the world, only to discover that people just want low consciousness garbage and get outcompeted. So get too idealistic either. You have to find a balance of demand and value.

Edited April 12 by aurum