Unethical Marketing and the Temptation of Greed

In the 1987 movie “Wall Street,” the main character, investor Gordon Gecko boldly states that “Greed is good.” And yes, unethical marketing certainly seems to be a growing trend. As the owner/founder of Tenato Strategy Inc. and a marketer myself, I understand where Gecko was coming from. But I can only agree up to a point.

Greed (or perhaps, we might call it ambition) to achieve a few of life’s finer things for oneself or one’s family does get us out of bed in the morning to do things we don’t always find to be the most fun. It requires us to stretch ourselves a bit, show some courage and hustle. As a person involved in sales and marketing my entire career, I know this first hand.

I know this career has made me more fearless than average, hence my moonlighting as a semi-pro musician, performing stand-up comedy and riding a motorcycle…for which I seriously credit the thousands of sales calls I’ve done over the years. So do think a little greed or ambition actually makes a person strong.

Unethical Marketing in Practice

But there is a point when greed goes awry, especially when layered into marketing. It can turn dreams and healthy ambition into a dysfunctional cauldron of aggression and scare tactics. Unfortunately, it seems to be getting worse with every decade; much to my dismay. Here’s what I mean, let’s look at how things have changed.

Advertising Standards in the Early Days

Before 1998 or so, it used to be that businesses put up signage, took out an ad in the yellow pages, and if they were really proactive, they did some print, radio or television. Every ad was very expensive, meaning usually only credible companies did much advertising.

It also meant that they would check and proof each ad, and be careful not to offend customers. Advertising had to meet an ethical standard within the professional marketing industry. The result was that marketers used to be creative people, spending real, hard-earned money very carefully. Even if all the ads weren’t easily trackable, at least they usually raised awareness of the businesses and instilled some pride from the employees.

Marketing Today – 99.9% Digital, 100% Unchecked

The internet has taken the unethical marketiing factor up a hundred fold, and flushed the credibility of the industry down the virtual toilet: pop-up ads that scare or insult you, click bait ads that misinform, email spam that comes back no matter how many times you unsubscribe, mobile ads that know where you are, and re-marketed ads that cling like leeches from a bog.

These are marketers, whether in-house or from agencies, that are pushing hard for results and perhaps even getting them – if you believe the data that they are schilling, which is also likely made up. But at what cost?

We’ve got to ask: would you rather get 10 real, qualified visits to your website…or would you like 100,000 visits from people who have no need for your services, but got tricked into visiting you by a misleading ad? If the ad reports look stellar, but your sales aren’t, it’s time to rethink.

An Unethical Marketing Proposal

When we rebranded to our new name, Tenato Strategy, in 2011, we also got a new domain name and launched a new website. An online marketer we were working with told us that we wouldn’t lose ranks from the old site, but instead we dropped like a rock – and had no rankings at all.

He tried for a few months to restore our ranks, but then said, “I can’t get you to rank unless you’re willing to do some grey hat!” For those of you who haven’t heard that term – “grey hat”- it means using sneaky SEO tactics – like building fake sites, overloading pages with keywords, buying fake social media followers, etc. His argument was that if such techniques worked, we had no choice but to jump on the bandwagon.

I had to say no. Because to me, if we have to be dirty to succeed, then we’d have to be just as dirty things to help our clients succeed, and just imagine how that might backfire.

I literally had to write a blog post every day for 3 months – which was difficult, but necessary. In those days there was no AI to help either, they were all 100% original.

But somehow, we stuck by doing things ethically, and hoped the search engines would reward us in the long run. Yes, our rankings took a dip for a while, but we persisted, and at the end of that three months our rankings were respectable again, without using any grey hat techniques.

Since that time, Google’s algorithm has changed countless times, and each time, it punishes and devalues sites using grey and black hat (which are even worse than grey hat techniques) marketing techniques.

As of now, I can’t claim that we’re always in the very top ranks across every key word search we desire, and maybe we’ll never be all the way there, but I’m proud that we continue to grow significantly, and we are definitely visible in the qualified areas in which we are targeting.

Do You Know What Your Marketers are Doing?

So the bigger question is this: if your whole industry is playing in a crowded, bloody pool of unethical marketing, doing absolutely anything and everything for business, why not step out of the mess and be different? Narrow the focus – get only the right clicks. Distribute high-quality content. And only email people who ask for your newsletter. Or, maybe it’s time consider some good old fashioned radio, billboards, or even well-planned direct selling. You might be the only competitor bothering to do so, and that’s a good thing.

True integrity in business today is something to be cherished, and while demonstrating it takes longer, it also lasts longer. Unethical marketing is like pollution, and this world doesn’t need any more of it. And AI is also making it worse, regurgitating facts and muddying citations left right and centre.

If you’re looking to grow your business within ethical best practices, you’ve found the right team. Contact us today, or click the link below to book a phone call or virtual meeting.