🔊 Leo: Ok. Let's just talk about marketing tricks. Let's talk about the mattress store, that's going out.

🔊 Michael: Right.

🔊 Leo: And they have this liquidation sale that's happening right now. It'll work on some people, some people are going to be like, wow, well they liquidate and the prices must be low. I need to go jump in on that. And for the most part, the kind of people that this is going to work on are not going to be very intelligent.

If the product you're selling is aimed at people who aren't very intelligent, then that is a strategy that will work, to a degree. What works even better is when you actually have something that people do want to buy and you don't have to pretend to be something you're not.

If you sell great mattresses and they're actually something that people will enjoy sleeping on, you're probably better off actually telling people about what's so great about your mattresses rather than trying to trick them with the illusion of scarcity.

🔊 Michael: I would agree. And I think you could probably lump up a lot of marketing speak in general as tricks. To what you're saying, basically if you've got a product that actually delivers value to the end-user, then you don't really need to use the tricks. 

For example NLP. Utilizing anchor words, to try to incite emotions within somebody to get them, to buy your product on more of an impulse, rather than on a full evaluation of your product. And if it's actually what they need.

🔊 Leo: I like that you're speaking to NLP. There's a belief that in order to sell, you have to go in the direction of lying and, there are different ways people can lie. 

To me, if you're trying to get somebody to feel an inauthentic feeling then you might as well be lying. It's really not that different. Apple is a great company. 

When I look at how they're selling their products, they get people excited about the idea that they actually build something cool. And then they explain, how is this product going to help you do what you want to do.

The user is the hero. They tell you how you're going to use their products to do something really badass. You can't do that if you don't have a good product.

🔊 Leo: And at the end of the day, the reason they can use this type of technique is that they actually have a great product. 

If you need to move me into a place of some magical imagination where I can get hooked on the idea that this car is going to do something for me. Maybe I have some sort of deep insecurity and it will cover that for me.

You don't have a good car. You're trying to cater to someone's insecurities and the smart people understand that really well. This does not work on them, because they're not dumb. 

You can look at the same thing with Tesla cars, the fact those cars drive themselves. It's fascinating. I think that's super cool. The fact that you can have a car that drives itself. 

Just from an engineering standpoint and it benefits the end consumer. You don't have to come up with some magical, way of wording things you don't have to anchor into people's imagination. 

Say, imagine what it would feel like for you to drive and the car to drive for you.

The car sells itself. It actually does what you would want it to do. At that point tricks become unnecessary.

🔊 Leo: If you need to move me into a place of some magical imagination where I can get hooked on the idea that this car is going to do something for me. Maybe I have some sort of deep insecurity and it will cover that for me. 

You don't have a good car. You're trying to cater to someone's insecurities and the smart people understand that really well. This does not work on them, because they're not dumb.

🔊 Michael: Yeah. This gets into a little bit of how the brain works. For example, the prefrontal cortex is a filter to hypnosis and to persuasion, and to persuasive copy.

When talking about the intellect and intellectual people, smart people typically have more activity in the prefrontal cortex, meaning more of a filter, a boundary with marketing in general.

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@jazzy1022 I 100% percent agree when the tactics are completely dishonest, and  straight up FRAUD.  Fraud is not a business, marketing, or advertising tactic. It’s criminal, and businesses should be held accountable. And @machla yeah, tricking customers will backfire because the business out the gate isn’t credible, and will be labeled as a scammy company.

Catchy title. Trickery in marketing is a bit of a fine line, right?  Because let’s say you’re starting a new business, but you know nothing about marketing and how to bring in sales.  When you surf the web for answers, it’s a lot of articles about the top “tricks” in marketing, digital marketing tricks, psychological marketing tricks and so on.  The articles themselves can be a bit of a trick as a lot of times they attempt to sale a course.  I agree that if you have a good product that the end user needs, you don’t need to use any tricks to sale.

Really great way to pull back the veil on influencer marketing. It can be pretty disgusting when you know the tactics used, and see them implemented where most people have no idea!

Working in the media and in marketing, I've seen these tactics many times. Knowingly promising more than you can deliver to your clients...it usually backfires. Depending on the industry that you work in, there are always some forms of accountability and ways of tracking our products' actual performance. There could be some circumstances where the product fails; but if you know from the beginning that your product is offering more than you can deliver...not only is that dishonest. It is considered FRAUD. You could be sued and even brought up on charges.

Tricking customers into buying your products will definitely backfire in the future. Honesty with customers and a great sales pitch is the best way to market. You want to draw people in and be able to I have a successful trustworthy business.

I was very interested in reading this article mainly because the title really drew me in. As a person who recently started a small business a couple years ago one of the things I struggle with is prices. This article really helped me because I don’t want to lure people in by treating them like they’re stupid by saying you know I’m going to have a big sale or liquidation sale. I really want them to know that the things that I create and make are pretty cool and unique and one-of-a-kind and that’s the reason I have my prices the way they are and these are things that will be good quality and some thing that the family would actually benefit from and they would enjoy for years to come because of how I made them. Thanks for giving me some confidence that I’m doing the right thing and treating my customers like family instead of like they’re stupid.