Victoria Beckham, otherwise known in our world as Posh Spice from the Spice Girls, was giving a concert for fans in Birmingham when she dropped her microphone by accident. As if by magic, her voice continued to sing from the speakers. But it wasn’t magic: Victoria Beckham was playbacking…

A couple of week later it was discovered that her lip piercing was a fake. Posh has no piercings like many of her young fans who imitate her. She just thought it would be convenient if they thought she did…

Just read this in the latest Ode Magazine in an article from Jay Walljasper about the returning demand for authenticity and integrity in commerce. (The English translation will come out in the next issue.)

Posh’s fans were quite disappointed when they found out she wasn’t very authentic but living up to an image the marketers created for her. And she’s not the only one cheating on her customers…
 

Internet Scams in Abundance…

The internet has opened the door to a spreading of lies on a scale unheard of before. And strangely enough a lot of people find that just because something is posted on the net, it must be true. Though after these people got scammed a dozen times the opposite opinion takes shape: if it is posted on the internet, it cannot be true…

If you fall into the first category: wake up! Everyone with an internet connection can post information online. Opinions, verifiable facts, ficticious stories and blatant lies. You don’t earn your ISP connection because you proved to be a trustworthy authority on your subject. It is just a method to reach a larger audience and you get it when you have the money to pay for it…

Keep this in mind with every webpage you open in your browser. Because this will put you in the right mindset to detect any signs pointing at the siteowner being a fraud.

Next dig out your copy of Mark’s book The Irresistible Offer and look if the site is set up to answer the 4 main questions:

1. What are you trying to sell me?
2. How much?
3. Why should I believe you?
4. What is in it for me?

If the page offers you clear and understandable answers to these questions you are half-way there. But it isn’t a guarantee of trustworthiness just yet! Everyone can order The Irresistible Offer from Amazon and apply the techniques. At first sight they will also work for scams!

At second sight however…

Your next step is to detect any red flags and when you find them, take these extremely seriously. Especially when you are feeling inclined to spend your money on a product or service.

Red Flags

• The site doesn’t contain any contact information.

  People who don’t give you their contact information will be very hard to chase down when you want to get a refund or when you need to sue their behinds. Though not every site without this info is a scam - many webmasters simply forget to post their info - it should definitely make you more careful. Even more so when…

• You can only pay for the product through money orders or bank cheques

  This means your purchase is not eligeble for refunds. Big alarm bells now!

• Order forms are not placed on secured web pages.

  Look for the little yellow lock sign in the bottom right corner of your browser window. If it doesn’t show, the orderform isn’t secured. Meaning that it could be possible your information is being read by somebody you don’t want to have it… (Sometimes you’ll get a warning that some items on a page are not secured. Usually this means that the order page contains an image which is located on a different site. You can find out quickly by not allowing unsecured content. If a little white box with a red cross is displayed, it was an image link on a non-secured page.)

• Testimonials don’t contain full names, images and weblinks to the person testifying the product is good.

  Though it’s not always possible for merchants to obtain an image and weblink, providing enough information that allows you to check if the person is real is a must. Preferably so you can actually contact this person yourself when you are having doubts.

• The offer is not easy to understand.

  That can imply a smoke screen where the offer has been worded in such a way that it is impossible to make out what you are actually paying for. Many people will label themselves stupid for not understanding and assume the product to be even greater. This is exactly what the seller wants them to believe. Don’t buy what you don’t understand!

• Offer consists of anything which will get you rich on autopilot.

  Be extremely cautios of buying any type of software or script which promises you lots of advertisements, high search engine ranking or loads of ‘targeted’ traffic.

  • Lots of advertisements?
    You’re smelling potential spam sent out in your name and resulting in your domain being blacklisted…
  • High search engine rankings?
    You’re at most a couple of months away from being penelized by Google…
  • Loads of targeted traffic?
    If at all most likely not by humans but by autosurf programs run by computers while their owners are having coffee with the neighbors…

• Promising high profits while you work 2 hours a day at most or even less…

  Anyone who has had success on the internet has worked hard to earn their money. Either by having failed and learned a dozen times before they hit success or because they took the time to set up a business. I won’t use the word decent here, cause even scammers work hard to get everybody and their friends take their bate…

  Rule of thumb: if it sounds to good to be true, it usually is!

• Bogus guarantees

  Internet guarantees involve a lot of heavy duty psychology because they are written to persuade the hesitating buyer to at least give it a try. Again they have to be clear and understandable. When a merchant uses paypal they can offer a 45 days money back guarantee which will be backed up by Paypal as they offer buyer protection. When a merchant takes credit cards, you have a guaranteed money back for the period your credit card company allows the charge back. So check out the payment processor guarantees to discover your real risk.

  100% risk-free money-back guarantees which go beyond these periods will grant you a refund only if the merchant is trustworthy…

  With physical products you will always loose the shipping costs. And you won’t receive a refund unless you ship the stuff back.

  Guarantees about you getting rich or an expert or whatever within so many days are all nonsense. There is no way anyone can guarantee you will see results if the results depend on your actions…

And this list only covers the most obvious things to check…

If you really want to dig down, you can also look investigate the authenticity of the contact information. Find out registration information from www.betterwhois.com and check out the place at http://earth.google.com - hint: anyone operating from a trailer is not likely to have hit overwhelming success themselves yet…

Make sure you check out experiences from others with the product or service you are about to buy. This isn’t a watertight method since people can be flaming for numerous reasons or cheering because they are into the deal. But if claims about products are backed up with verifyable evidence, pay attention!

For more information about how you can protect yourself against scams, check out the following links:

www.friendsinbusiness.com
 

How does this affect your internet business?

 
Obviously you will have to work a great deal harder on gaining trust. I’d start with eliminating every red flag you find on your own sites…

Have you read Mark Joyner’s latest book The Great Formula yet? I did. It arrived about 10 days ago and I loved it! In it Mark explains all about how a business becomes really successful. Illustrated with a good number of case studies.

What it all boils down to is that no business truly makes it without cheering customers. Some people will be able to make a lot of money in a short period of time but the business dies soon because they suck with their customer support. Or their product was really lousy. Or they were into scamming.

But if you are here to stay, your customers should have your highest priority. Dazzle them with your content, over-deliver, provide outstanding customer service, have their best interest at heart and you will wake up one day with a legion of loyal fans.

And once you have gained trust, of course you do everything in your power to not lose it again…

We need trustworthy and caring people doing business online to balance out the negative reputation of internet marketing scammers. Thanks for taking this serious.

Have a great weekend!

Patricia

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Posted by Patricia Ritsema van Eck | Print This Post | EMail This Post
Tag: delivery mechanism, marketing message, red alert