Honest Marketing

The Three Laws of Honest Marketing

• Honest Podcasts • Episode 1

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When was the last time you were absolutely honest about your product or service without worrying about what your customers might think? 

It's a hard question to answer. Of course, most of us have been there: trying to decide which angle to take with our messaging when we're trying to sell something. It's a tough line to walk—and sometimes it feels like honesty is out of reach. But if you want to build trust with your customers and a better brand reputation, then honesty is essential.

In this first episode, we want you to join us in exploring the three laws of honest marketing and how they can help you build a better brand and business. Travis breaks down each law with examples from his own experience as a marketing expert and business owner while also offering up tips on how you can make these laws work for you too.

So sit back and get ready for an eye-opening explanation of what the honesty factor means to your brand!

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • Three laws/principles of marketing and how to apply them
  • How to integrate honest branding into your marketing
  • How honesty builds trust and good reputation

Want to give your podcast the boost it needs to stay ahead of the competition? Check out honestpodcasts.com and take the first step toward achieving your podcasting goals!

And if you have a guest in mind who you think would be a great fit for this show, drop me a line at hello@honestpodcasts.com. 

Travis Albritton  0:00  

How can we turn this into a money making opportunity? That was the question that I was asked from a marketing firm that I had hired to help me sell a product. Now the product had nothing to do with making money. It was about teaching people how to lead groups more effectively, groups teams in a church setting. So the question, how do we turn that product, and it's something that people can use to make money belied something that I think is at the core of a lot of the tension that we have to hold as people in the marketing space? How much do we optimize towards performance and profit? And how much of it? Do we optimize towards service and helping people? And how do you hold that tension when you do still have to make money when you do still have to grow your business? And at the end of the day, the only way you can serve people is if you have enough money coming in, in order to pay people and that includes yourself as well. And that begs the question, how do you stand out in a noisy world? Do you have to compromise to get ahead to grow meaningful business? Or can you do it with integrity? Welcome to the Honest Marketing Podcast where you learn proven strategies to grow your business without selling your soul. I'm your host, Travis Albritton. And in this episode, the first episode of the honest Marketing Podcast, we're gonna dig into the unofficial three laws of honest marketing. Now, are these actual laws like laws of physics? No, but I would argue that unless these three principles are at play in the way that you promote your business, and the way that you're trying to reach new clients, and new customers, and turn them into customers instead of prospects, that it's gonna be very difficult in the long run, to grow with integrity. So the first law of honest marketing is to diagnose before you prescribe. I don't know how many times you've gotten to the doctor but it's probably a very similar experience each time you go in because you're either feeling some kind of pain, or you're sick, or you're going in for a checkup. There's a reason you're there, right? There's a reason that you are showing up at the doctor's office, and the nurse takes your vitals to take your weight, your height, they, you know, do all kinds of things blood pressure, and then the doctor comes in, and they ask you a bunch of questions about what's wrong and what hurts. And then after they have all that information, they decide, okay, well, we're gonna diagnose you with this, or we don't know what's going on. So I'm gonna refer you to a specialist who can diagnose you, so we know what to do. And that whole process takes place before you get a prescription for a medicine or procedure, or some kind of therapy. But imagine if all of that happened in reverse, where you show up to the doctor's office and before you said anything, the doctor said "Here's your prescription."

Travis Albritton  2:40  
That's how a lot of companies market their business. That's how a lot of us can we can fall into that trap of prescribing before we diagnose, because one of the things about being an entrepreneur about being a business owner or being in marketing, whether you're a marketing chief marketing officer or director of marketing or something like that at your company, it's very easy for us to to go ahead and jump straight to prescription, before we even diagnose is the person we're sitting across from in need of the service that we provide. And this is especially true in an online sense, where you don't have that interpersonal connection, and you're not having a conversation. It's all automated, it's Facebook ad to landing page to drip email auto sequence. And never as the question asked, "Does this person actually need what I'm trying to sell?" Instead, it's I know that my product is awesome. Otherwise, I wouldn't be selling it to anyone. And I'm convinced that if I just get enough people to go through this funnel, eventually I will stumble on people that either need what I have, or I'm so persuasive, they buy it anyways, even though they don't need it. But in order to create a marketing process and an approach to marketing that truly is filled with integrity, you first have to ask and answer the question, "Does this person does this prospect this potential client or customer actually need what I have to offer?" And if the answer is no, get comfortable with telling them, they don't need it. They don't actually need to buy whatever it is that you're selling, that they don't need it to make their life better. Now, coming back to the initial story that I told at the beginning of this podcast episode, about this marketing agency and saying, "How can we pivot this into a money making opportunity?" That was in an attempt to try and figure out okay, we're not seeing the numbers we want to see. We've prescribed this solution and we're going to keep changing what this prescription is until we hit on something that people will spend money on whether they need it or not. And so when you're thinking through your own marketing and the approach that you take to selling your product into connecting with prospects and designing new clients are you diagnosing before you prescribe? Is that baked into your automations? Is that baked into your ads? Is that baked into the way you position yourself as a brand is trying to identify the problem for people that you solve, and then only moving forward with them. If they recognize that's a problem, they won't fix. So the first law of honest marketing is diagnose before you prescribe. The second law of honest marketing is under promise over deliver. This is not fake it till you make it, this is not convince people that you are an expert, you know exactly what you're talking about. But in reality, you don't. Do not be the wish of your industry. Wish being of an infamous at this point marketplace where you can buy really, really cheap things. But the odds of you actually getting what you asked for are very very low to the point where it's almost become an internet meme. It is an internet meme. When you buy something on wish, it's bound to disappoint you, because it is not going to be what you see in the picture. If you see this really cool outfit, if it's really cool dress or hoodie, or you know, blazer or whatever, and you buy it on wish, it didn't gonna be what you saw on the picture. And that can often be the case with how we position our products. We're trying to market them to people. We're trying to sell them to people is painting this rosy picture of the best possible scenario, only showing the top 1% of case studies and testimonials of Yeah, there was this outlier, where we had one client come in and they 10 extra revenue. And then that becomes a testimony on the websites.

Travis Albritton  6:24  
But we don't tell people that the odds of that happening to you are very slim. Right. And we can get around it with language like. You know, results may vary. And, you know, not typical results, not typical. But at the end of the day, when you're using that as marketing collateral, you're trying to persuade the person to believe that, that is not going to apply to them that little legalese, but really the testimonial, the case study you're highlighting, that is what they should expect from you. And so when that becomes baked into the way that we talk about our businesses and our products, then will become the wish of our industry. We're now over promising results that we can't deliver on. And not only does that leave a sour taste in the mouths of your clients but it's going to kill any word of mouth, Recommendations that you would have, that's going to kill the brand that you are hoping to build. Right branding is what people say about you when you're not in the room. How many people say good things about which? Not very many, they talk about how cheap it is. But they talk about how you're not going to get what you paid for. And so commit to under promising over delivering. Shooting straight with people, right? If you've diagnosed before you prescribe, then you can be straight up an honest and say this is the results you can expect. These are the things that I'm confident I can deliver for you. And here's the price for that, knowing you can hit it out of the ballpark, knowing that you can surprise and delight, knowing that you're going to exceed your customers expectations, because that's how you generate a business that continues to grow, but does so on top of having the value of integrity. And the third law of honest marketing is to take the PETA oath. Now, PETA is an organization standing for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. So I'm not saying that you need to take that oath, but a slight variation of that. So what I would call the PETA oath, and I kind of stumbled onto this when I was getting ready in the morning. And I looked at the back of my deodorant, and it said that it had the PETA logo on it. And it said that no animals had been used for testing on this product. And I thought it was curious that there's a whole organization dedicated to making sure that we do not misuse or abuse animals for the sake of the profit of the company. But very rarely will you see a company go out of their way to say, no humans were harmed in the marketing of this product. Right. So that raises the bar of what honesty and integrity looks like in the marketplace, where it's not just about doing what we say we're going to do, or creating a product that actually helps people. But, in the way we talk about the things that we create your business, your product, your service, your software, in the process of marketing that and promoting that, can you say no humans were harmed in the marketing of this product. And to my shame, looking back at my own history in marketing, there were times where that could not be said of what I was doing. A classic example that I think of is I was launching a new product, or I was launching an existing product, but I was doing it to a new audience. And I was really focused on how do I optimize the immediate return on investment ROI, or more specifically row as return on adspend. So that way, I can do this kind of launch again for the product in the future. And so not only did I have the initial product but I also had some upsells thrown in there as well. And I had a significant number of people sign up. But 4% of people that bought the product turned around and immediately cancelled because of how the sales process made them feel. Because it wasn't just about offering things to, you know, supplement or complement the product that they were buying, which it was. But the urgency that I use, the scarcity I use, the tactics that I used, in an effort to optimize towards return on adspend to optimize towards profitability, came at the expense of the experience of the person buying the products, that rather than coming into it with excitement, and exhilaration, and enthusiasm, it left a very sour taste in their mouth, to the point where they turned around and said, "Listen, I was excited about this, I was excited about buying this product, I was excited about going on this journey. But the way that you sold me on these other things, I want to discount, I want to, I want to refund, not a discount" They wanted a refund, they wanted their money back and I gave it to them.

Travis Albritton  11:12  
But I will always remember that I will always remember that was the way that I marketed the product that ended up creating that negative experience on their end. And so as someone who was trying to honor people, and put people first and mark it with integrity and everything that I do. And if you're listening to this, I know that that's very important to you as well. Ask yourself, when you're putting together an ADS promotion, when you are launching some new content marketing, when you are working on a landing page, and you're writing new copy or a new email automation sequence. Can you say at the end of that, no humans were harmed in the marketing of your products? That whether they buy from you or not, whether you're a good fit or not, for where what they need and what problems they're trying to solve in their life. Can you say, with confidence, when they walked away, they came up with the positive experience of my company, my brand and my relationship to them? We should be able to say yes. If not, we need to go back and look at what we're doing and what we need to fix in order to say yes, so the three laws of honest marketing law number one, diagnose before you prescribe. Before you start selling someone on your product, make sure it's something they actually need. Law number two, under promise over deliver. Do not be the wish of your industry. Set reasonable expectations for what people can expect when they do business with you, and then exceed them. And then number three, take the PETA oath. No humans were harmed in the marketing of this product or service. Now, at the end of the day, why does this matter? Right? If in the marketing space, we're just trying to get more customers grow the business, maintain profitability, so we can support both the people, the employees within the company, continue to service our customers at high level. Why does it matter how we do it? Well, there's two ancient proverbs that I want to share, which I think will really give some texture to that question. Because I think at the face of it, we all know, it matters. Because how you build something matters just as much, if not more than the destination, right? You can build a million dollar business and multimillion dollar business. But if you do it because you're scamming people, then that's not something that you can really go to sleep feeling really great about at night, right, that how you build your business matters. So the first proverb is bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel. And I think what this the reason I think this is so relevant for us as marketers, is because in the moment, when we're in the midst of optimizing things and AV testing things and trying to get something just really dialed in to outperform everything else we could possibly do in the initial euphoria of discovering something that works. We can kind of sideline these laws of honest marketing, and instead celebrate the fact that, hey, we may have fudged the number a little bit we may have over emphasized one particular testimonial test case study, we may have, you know, not been totally upfront about the reasonable expectations people can have when they buy our products. But look at those results. I mean, how do you argue with that? But afterwards, there's that app, that bitter aftertaste of, you know, was it really worth it? Was that extra 1% conversion worth what I had to sacrifice to get there? And that's only something you can answer. But if you're listening to this podcast, my guest is probably not. And then the second ancient proverb want to share with you has more to do with your reputation as a brand. And as a person. A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches. In favor is better than silver or gold. And there's something that I've seen written multiple places. And it's always really struck me, when it comes to branding, when it comes to reputation, especially online, is that it's very difficult to build a great reputation is very easy to lose it. And so when you think about the reputation that your brand has what people say about your company when you're not there. When they're in a conversation with a friend, and they're talking about the experience of using your software, using your product, how you've helped them grow their business, whatever it is that you do, are you creating a good reputation because of the way that you market because of the way that you promote yourself? Because the way you position your product in the marketplace, or not? And so I think how you grow your business matters. Right? That you can grow a business on top of deceits. Not being straight with people. But at the end of the day, is that really what you want your legacy to be? Is that really what matters most? Or is it the people you get to serve?

Travis Albritton  16:01 
That's the question only you can answer. But I think, if we're really honest,  let's go with the one that we can sleep good at night, where we really are serving people, we really are making a positive difference in people's lives with our businesses and at the impact extends far beyond the initial purchase. So how you grow your business matters, it matters to your team, to your employees, to your customers to your legacy. And at the end of the day. If we're gonna market our businesses, we may as well do it honestly. Now, if you want to get more tips, strategies you want to hear from experts in the marketing industry, make sure you subscribe to this podcast, whether it's on YouTube or Apple podcasts or Spotify. Every single week, we'll be releasing new episodes with practical strategies you can implement immediately to help your business grow. And if you have a topic that you'd like me to cover a particular person you think that I should interview and connect with and bring onto the show. Or if you want me to audit your business's current marketing strategy, look at your website, look at your blog, your ads, all that kind of stuff, and get an objective perspective on things you could be doing to shift it into a more profitable, optimized and human direction. Send me an email at podcast at christcentered.marketing. That's podcast at christcentered.marketing, and I'll leave a link in the description below. If you want to click that link and send me an email. Well, I hope you enjoy this first episode. Go ahead and jump into Episode Two with my good friend and founder, Alex Sanfilippo. Thanks for listening and as always, be honest.