I’m sure you’ve seen in one place or another someone offering a free guide to finding clients or a free video to know how to do this or that or whatever. I have fallen prey for these for far too many times before I realized that I was being manipulated and tricked. I would always feel disappointed at the end of that free stuff, whatever it was, because they would ask you to buy something that has the information you TOUGHT you would get in that free stuff and while the price was reasonable in many cases, I didn’t have a way to pay online for anything, so I never followed through on any of these and through repetition of these incidents, I realized that the technique is all the same and I was being manipulated.
First, they throw the bait by telling you something like “get my free guide on marketing ‘Top marketing tips from the top marketing experts’ ” or “watch my free video to know how to increase traffic to your blog” …etc. They make you think that you will find what you came for in that free stuff they’re offering.
Then, they will hook you emotionally by telling a story because stories are known throughout the ages to connect emotionally with people and keep them hooked, a good story that is, and it’s usually their own story to how they arrived at the place they are right now.
They keep babbling on an on until at the end of that free stuff they offered, they will ask you to buy their product or service so that you could “complete” moving towards what you want. By buying from them, you obtain that missing piece that they left out from the free stuff which you came for at the first place and thought you would get by reading or watching it.
They lied to you by telling you will get something for free but you discover that it was a dirty marketing technique that manipulated you into getting their marketing material, the free stuff, and used it to sell you their product that has the information you TOUGHT you will get in the free stuff, because it was titled in a way that would make you think so. That is downright manipulative because it’s falsely promising people of something only to find that they need to buy something else to get it and the free stuff was just a marketing technique, only an introduction. This technique is called cross selling, watch out for it.
It feels fishy that they resort to something like this to sell you their product. It makes me feel like they are desperate and that they are not doing very well and that’s why they resorted to such a manipulative technique. I would rather be sold something clearly without tricking and manipulating. Or at least they should tell people that it’s an introduction not the whole thing they want.
I wrote this post because I don’t like being manipulated and I’m sure nobody does so I wanted everyone to be aware of it if they are not already.
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