Have you read a dose of misleading headline by brands or organizations whose aim is to lure the reader and sign post him or her to buy your product?
For me this is a common thing as I scroll the world of the net. And it’s something I dislike with passion-reason being that its aim is to get the reader to part with their hard earned cash.
I have been scammed about twice by these guys whose trade is deception. They’ve studied the craft of writing exceptional sales letter and don’t give a damn about whose feet they land on. Their sole focus is money.
Such Shallow Thinking
Money as you and I know is a good thing. But money which comes at the expense of one’s hard earned reputation is something we need to stay clear of.
Why?
When we scam people or fail to deliver on promises made, we lose lots of friends and potential customers, even your comrade in arms won’t trust you because they feel that you could swindle them at any time. That why I decide to highlight the dangers of bad content marketing
Dangers of Bad Content Marketing
Bad Content marketing does the following:
- It alienates your readers
When your readers come to a point where they feel you no longer communicate the truth to them or the whole post you write is all about you and how you aim to make money, though the information you provide might be great, you would certainly find that in the long run these customers or audience would just step aside.
The way they rave for your content will take a downward spiral. That’s why there is need for us to focus on balancing sales content as against free content. Our AUDIENCE should be able to see that we offer valuable free content, by so doing we engender loyalty to our audience and customers and they will continue to be our loyal audience.
- It destroys your reputation
There is nothing bad as lying to your customers or audience, and this is what bad content marketing does, it does this by tricking a customer into believing that what is being offered is true, only after use of that product would one then discovered that they’ve been lied to. When this happens your customers no longer trust you and your reputation becomes dead.
- It makes you lose tons of potential clients
Just one angry customer you cheated by providing false information can make you lose tons of customers.
As you know we are in the digital age with platform like Yelp which gives the public the opportunity to write about a particular product, hence a negative feedback on Yelp will likely lead to loss of prospect since must people love to check out review sites to see what others have to say about a particular product.
- They’ll never come back to buy from you again.
When a customer feels that you’ve cheated him or her, it becomes very difficult for you to convince them to buy your product again. In fact you are most likely going to lose that audience forever.
- It harms the reputation of your products
Your product even when good is sure to suffer a hiding if you fail to provide quality information to your audience. For example, you may have a good product but failure to really outline how it solves their problem may make you lose a huge market share.
This is especially true if your competitor is able to outline the benefits far better than you.
A pretty good example of bad content marketing is that of Kroger.
A report by Karen Graham on digital journal said “Kroger” a chicken company deceived the Californian public into buying their chicken by claiming that their chicken are raised in Cage-free environment. As a result of this Kroger has to contend with a class action suit instituted against them
According to the complaint: "Looking to profit from growing consumer awareness of, and concern with, the treatment of farm animals raised for meat production, Kroger engaged in a deceptive and misleading marketing scheme to promote its 'Simple Truth' store brand chicken as having been sourced from chickens raised 'cage free in a humane environment."
However, in actual fact this chicken were actually sourced from Perdue a company that the animal welfare has previously squealed on their not practicing range free system of rearing chickens
The deception referred to in the lawsuit is referenced in this sentence, that "Simple Truth" chicken products were packaged with labeling that stated the animals were raised "in a humane environment" and "cage free."
As a result of this Kroger were able to deceptively win the 2013 Retailer of the Year award.
As the case will soon be judged in court Kroger would certainly rue this act of deception as the lie would not only make them lose customers, but will also destroy trust and brand loyalty
Doing Good Content Marketing is the way Out
Since we live in a world where information spreads out easily, it is important we provide worthy information to our prospects and customers.
Providing your customer with sincere information helps build the trust process and draws them closer to us. When we build this kind of relationships, you turn your customer into brand speakers for you a good example of an organization doing this right is Marcus Sheridan of Rivers Pools.
How Sheridan Did Content Marketing Right
Sheridan had almost given up about is fibre glass company, he was about shutting down the business until he and his partner took to blogging. And not only had that, he also decided to set himself apart from other bloggers.
He decided to literally answer every question a consumer could possibly have about buying a fiberglass pool. By so doing Marcus was able to build customers trust and loyalty. Now Marcus is set to become a producer of fibre glass pool not just an installer and do you know what- he has decided to do something that could shake the pool manufacturing world industry
Can you give other examples of content marketing done right?
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