Internet Marketing has Become a Fraud

If you thought Wall Street was a den of thieves, then welcome to Internet marketing. I just attended a jam packed conference in Central London with over 500 people. Now hold on tight to your selfie stick 'cause you'll want to hear this…

Takeout 1: Internet marketing has become a fraud.

Let’s start with the doom and gloom, then we’ll get to the positive bit.

Until last night, I had been an Internet Marketer for 20 years. Now... the term sickens me. While I have always known that ‘click fraud’ was an issue, it breaks my heart to say that the extent of this awful practice is rampant. Put simply, there are teams of people out there in Internet land who are stealing traffic, hijacking clicks and ultimately creating legal (and often illegal) ways of building their own networks at the expense of others. This traffic is sold to a higher bidder (who could even be you, only you don’t know it).

I was then exposed to dozens of free tools available on the web to help one become a traffic thief, if one so desired. The presenter put a slide up that summed it up perfectly: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” Some of the audience actually cheered.

Takeout 2: Social media traffic is dodgy at best.

At one point in the presentation, the speaker put up a photo of an Asian worker standing in front of row upon row of mobile devices. She was opening fake accounts, clicking, liking and sharing, downloading apps, commenting and writing reviews. These hired guns spend all day replying and sharing online posts, showing false traction and driving higher rankings for their clients. They even go so far as to host your adverts on their carefully optimised pages and then hire “fake” people to click them. They get their commission and you get dud traffic... and the bill. The more fake traffic they can pull, the higher Google ranks them and the more "real" traffic they can pull.

Now watch this live scam happening right now. Ever seen a social media post, and underneath it there is a string of arbitrary comments like “Great post” or “That’s useful?” Well, I have news for you: it’s probably that Asian worker in the photo. Here's an example of a group I commented on right now as I write this:

These comments are just plain bizarre. Clearly they are written by non-English speaking people who haven't even read the original post.

I am gravely concerned that much so of our social media following is fake. And how much of our web traffic is equally dubious?

Then there’s Google. Although the giant corporation is trying really hard not to be like this, they have become a feeding ground for "Internet Marketers" (who are they?) They place just enough half-decent content on a landing page so Google sees them as legitimate, then they work their magic. However, this content is a watered down version of very little use to anyone. Oh... but look here! ... there happens to be an advert for a product or an online course that will solve your problem. Click here to buy it.

No, I've not yet finished my rant.

My pet peeve right now: a superb headline that captivates me, then delivers sub-standard content. It's happening more and more. You see, these "Internet Marketers" (apparently that's what they are called) will do just about anything to get you to click because that click turns into a statistic and a statistic convinces someone to either advertise or invest. Their aim is to divert your click and earn from you. It's click cannibalism.

Almost finished my rant, but not quite.

Finally, there’s the mighty LinkedIn. Anyone who's felt the heartbreak of spending hours and hours writing a great LinkedIn post, only to get 12 views, knows what I am talking about. Yet a stupid, annoying maths puzzle or a woman flaunting her cleavage gets shared thousands of times. Last night I learned that LinkedIn has millions of fake accounts, all using photos of pretty women to entrap you. It's just another tactic to steal your click.

Sadly, this deviance is working. The list of great companies that made it big from using unscrupulous methods is astonishing. AirBnB (which I use all the time) was mentioned as one such company. Sadly, smaller businesses are getting taken for a ride. It has now become so difficult to prove ROI from social media, SEO or PPC.

We all knew that Wall Street went rogue a long time ago. And now Internet Marketing has too.

Now for the good news. There are some good Internet Marketers out there.

Takeout 3: Email rocks and social media actually can work

When the audience finally finished applauding "a genius" who secretly stole DHL click traffic and sold it to their competitor, a kicker slide came up saying: Email is more effective than social media.

Bingo!

Every Internet Marketing expert of any value will tell you this fact: email will give you more results than all the other social media combined. This was echoed at the end of 2015 by Forrester Research who specifically stated that email is 40 times more powerful than all other social media combined. (Of course if you are a fashion brand targeting 19 year old girls, then Instagram is probably better than email. It’s horses for courses.)

Someone once said: "never build on rented land." So why build your social media following when you don't own it? Ignore your email database at your own peril.

So what’s the solution?

The solution to this ‘Internet Marketing’ dilemma needs to involve three things: 1) a company needs personal, authentic communication, 2) this communication needs to be sent out regularly via email, 3) it needs to establish human credibility / trust and should not be sales-pushy.

What marketing methodology has all three of these? Email Journeys.

According to a LinkedIn Group dedicated to the subject, Email Journeys, are not sales pitches. They are a series of non-sales pushy emails that connect to each other like a story. They are sent by a real person to build their reputation. Responses from Email Journeys are 2000% higher than industry average and guess what: real people respond, not robots and certainly not Asian workers.

In other words, the solution to this Internet marketing dilemma is YOU. You the business owner, you the brand ambassador. Yes, you need to come out from behind your shell and start delivering real content and start telling real stories. Your delivery method should be:

• one part social media (let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet)
• one part blogging
• one part SEO/PPC/paid ads
• three parts Email Journeys.

Do you agree? Disagree? Join the LinkedIn Group and let’s take this discussion further: https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/8573436/.