The Marketing Viking

If you’re signed up to the email lists of a lot of online marketers, you’ll know what a “product launch” is.

It’s when all these marketers send you emails about the same marketing course/coaching group and tell you it’s “essential” and a “breakthrough”.

Is it honest? Or are they just saying what they need to say to earn an affiliate commission?

Perry Marshall, who doesn’t tend to join in these launches, recently wrote:

Maybe a pragmatic marketing pro like me shouldn’t
knock something that is often so effective, but I basically
hate big product launches.

You know, the ones where you get hammered on the
same day by 10 or 20 different people who are all
affiliates of the same ‘deal.’

It’s just obnoxious.

Plus there’s all the made-up theatrics.

“Oh no! The stampede took our servers down and we
can’t take any more orders now! So…. we’re extending
the deadline another 24 hours so everyone who wants
to can take advantage of this absolutely unique,
once-in-a-lifetime offer. But act now because after
that we’re taking this off the market and it will never
ever be seen again…”

Surely you know the schtick by now: ‘Buy this from
my link and I’ll give you all these extra-special bonuses’
and all that.

Perhaps you could buy a Time Share to go with that as well?

I rarely participate in these. The occasions I do, only with
limited portions of my email list. I think the whole giant
push just commoditizes the people who are promoting
said offer. After all, what use is being on 10 different
email lists if they’re all trying to sell you the same thing?

Erodes trust too, because of all the ‘fake scarcity.’ They’re
selling 1’s and 0’s and they’re trying to sound as though
there’s this very very limited supply.

Yeah, dude, like… sure I believe your server went down.
A good web server sure is hard to find in 2008, isn’t it?
Remember the good ol’ days when you could type
“dedicated server” into a search engine and buy some
extra capacity?

A relationship that starts with a lie usually ends with one, too.

 
I agree 100%.

I find these endorsements tedious and, when every product gets a five star review, the endorsements become meaningless… and the endorsor ends up looking like a whore.

Steve

P.S. What saddens me about the “product launch affiliate frenzy” is that two of the world’s best copywriters have recently jumped on the bandwagon.

Surely no good copywriter is hurting for money? So, that begs the question: if the money isn’t that important, why is it more important than your reputation?