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Omnichannel
The Marketing and Business Podcast For Online Entrepreneurs! Learn the best approaches from experts as well as the psychology of what it means to be a human in business!
Omnichannel
Ethical Marketing & Sales Tactics for 2024 and Beyond
Ethical Marketing & Sales Tactics for 2024 and Beyond (BONUS Episode)
Parmees has a unique way to approach the ethics of growing businesses online! What's cool and not cool to do? In this quick bonus episode, you can get to learn Parmees' views on common marketing & sales tactics!
Discover the revolutionary transformation of Parmees a trailblazer in ethical online marketing, who joins us to shed light on her journey from following aggressive sales tactics to adopting a philosophy centered on the human experience.
Parmees articulates her pivotal shift to a moral framework that honors customer agency and builds brand trust, steering clear of the manipulative methods that once dominated the marketing landscape.
Hello, my dearest entrepreneur friends, welcome back to the Omni Channel podcast. I am filming an intro for Parmese, the one and only, and this episode we are going to be covering some of Parmese's core business ethics. Vince Dumb, she has such a great way of seeing the world, the business world, the online world, and this is a bonus session, a bit of a back and forth on her. Take on all the ethics and values that you should also be adopting if you're operating a business online. So here's for Parmiz. Thank you so much for listening. I want to move on to the business ethics side before my camera dies, which will happen in about in about 30 minutes or so. If you have 30 more minutes, then we can cover that and um, before I, because I do believe that you have very strong moral code when it comes to conducting an online business, and if you just can share with me like, like, how, how those internal rules have been created for you to start out with and can go from there, yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:I think, um, like anything that is deeply ingrained in one person, um, a lot of my moral code came from the anger and frustration of strongly disagreeing with many of the common tactics and strategies that are used in the marketing and the copywriting world. And thinking back to my journey, going back to, you know, 2015, 2014, even when I was first getting into the copywriting world without the confidence that I have now, I was also falling prey to many of the strategies around needing to increase perceived value, needing to establish authority in a certain way, needing to instill scarcity, needing to instill urgency, or deploying certain copywriting tactics that made the person feel like they need to invest with you and this is their last lifeline. And back in the day, those tactics were popularized. Luckily, today, there's a lot of people who are outspoken about them. However, my code of conduct has developed from a much more human-centric approach rather than business-centric approach not put your business and your desire to scale the business at the center of the focus of your brand, but rather put the person that you want to help at the center and at the focus of your brand. So we want to make sure that we're establishing an environment of safety, sovereignty, where the person making the decision to buy from you is the one who's in the driver's seat. We're not instilling any sort of codependency with our marketing and making it seem like this is the thing you absolutely need and without it you're going to be helpless. And even in the way that we present our content, I'm very much more focused on helping people, craft messages that captures the tone, that instills that safety within people.
Speaker 2:So even if you're being very bold and polarizing in your opinions and your perspectives, you're not necessarily just taking a us versus them approach. You're acknowledging what is it that the other side does? Well, You're acknowledging you know what is it about. Whatever problem it is that you're calling out, that might still be valid, but then you're holding firm in your own stance as to how your approach differs or how the way that you do things is different than what the majority of people are recommended to do. So when we take a much more human-centric approach, we realize it's less about how do we optimize customer lifetime value, how do we get people into our worlds and get them to continue spending money, and instead we make the client's experience or the human's experience a part of this process.
Speaker 2:I talk a lot about how I don't overcome objections. I don't coach you out of it. I don't have any sort of reframing process that if you come to me and you say that you need a bit more time to think about something, or if the timing is not right, I'm not going to coerce you or twist your arm into showing you why the thing I have is so valuable to you and so needed. I completely leave the agency and the sovereignty to the client to make that decision, and a lot of my messaging also is around. That is around. How do we cultivate that safety with our marketing so that we're? Yes, we want to be profitable. Yes, we want to increase conversions, but not at the cost of our values, and our values, you know ethical standpoint.
Speaker 1:How can we create more trust, you know, and what are the things that you see that are, you know, diminishing the trust in the brands?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question.
Speaker 2:So one of the first things I noticed when it comes to establishing trust in the first place is that we feel that we need to convince our audience of our value rather than simply demonstrating our value, and there's a very, very fine difference between both, and I can very easily tell when I now look at two pieces of copy, you know who's trying to really convince you of why this is the thing you need and what are the pains that exist in your world that are going to be eliminated with this, versus taking a concept or taking an idea and showing how does it fit in someone's life right now, so that we're not, you know, making them feel worse about their situation, but we're just demonstrating that we empathize with their current situation and that the thing that we have might be something that they want to consider.
Speaker 2:So, when it comes to diminishing trust, when I'm looking at a piece of copy and I can tell that the person is using urgency or deploying certain tactics to make it seem like this person is in need of this product or service, that's what a more sophisticated market, which is what we have today, is starting to realize more and more of and is starting to lose trust towards the people who are in that convincing energy versus just simply demonstrating their expertise.
Speaker 1:I love that. So I have a rapid round of the off things that we see online. Yeah, and if you can give me your take and like quick remedy and what your understands on that, that will be awesome. So call the DMs call dms um.
Speaker 2:I think that unless someone has expressed interest in what it is that you have offered, or or it has expressed interest in your expertise or your solution in any way, shape or form, cold dms can can work, however, in today's marketplace. Once again, if we're trying to put the person in that place of sovereignty and safety, us coming to them with a solution without their consent or without their interest first is not likely to work out well for you, especially if you're grounded in what it is that you do. People are naturally attracted versus you having to go out there and hunt and convince people of why they need your thing.
Speaker 1:Featured in or any kind of PR, paid PR publications.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So paid PR publications are great Sorry, no, publications in PR are great. The paid component of that is something I have a bit of an issue with, because it creates a sense of false authority, where it's no longer about being recognized for your actual strengths and recognized for your actual expertise, but it becomes a matter of I want to be seen as the authority rather than actually being the authority, rather than actually being the authority. My standpoint on this is that once you actually have ideas that are innovative, once you provide value, you just naturally become an authority as a byproduct and people will pick up on that and give you that recognition. But if you are actively seeking for ways to raise your authority by paying your way into these platforms, that might already be a sign that there's something within that doesn't feel fully secure in your expertise in the first place.
Speaker 1:Posting your income statements to attract more clients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a super easy way to establish authority, but once again, it's a very surface level way, meaning that if you're posting income statements or Stripe accounts or you know your bank balance to establish authority, you're simply going to be attracting people who are looking to achieve that outcome, rather than attracting the person who is process driven, the person who is willing to put in the work, develop the skill, hone their craft to get to that standpoint. I've always said that I've very rarely, if ever, had to rely on income to establish the authority that I have or to attract clients, and that's only because I've allowed my expertise to demonstrate what I can do for you, rather than dangling the carrot in front of your face and saying you know, you could also make half a million a year doing what I do, and I don't think that just attracts the most aligned client creating urgency or scarcity in your messaging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always say that urgency is not something you create. You want to attract the person who already has intrinsic urgency within them. I think urgency and scarcity is often talked about from the standpoint of having guarantees or having fast action bonuses, or having limited time offers or limited spots, and all of these methods are very extrinsic ways of getting people into your world because it's like, oh, if I don't act now, I'm gonna miss out, or instilling that FOMO in them, versus looking at who are the people who already have a deep enough pain point, that already are motivated intrinsically to solve this. And let me speak to those people, because I don't need to d those people, because I don't need to dangle the carrot or I don't need to give them fast action bonuses. I don't need to give them a countdown timer of when the door is closing in order for them to make a decision. They already know that the problem that you solve is something that is relevant to them and they're intrinsically driven to want to solve it.
Speaker 2:Amazing Selling things you have not mastered yourself oh, this is the bane of my existence and it's funny you bring this up.
Speaker 2:I think I made a post about this maybe two to three weeks ago, about how you never want to make a promise that you yourself haven't mastered.
Speaker 2:Or if I'm ever looking at someone having a conversion problem before I look at their messaging and their funnels and their emails and their you know their the writing behind it, the first thing I ask them is the promise that you're making?
Speaker 2:Is that something that you have established for yourself and have maintained over the years, or is this something, just something sexy and juicy that you've whipped up? And I think what's so interesting is that in this space, going back to wanting to be perceived as the authority rather than actually being the authority, many people have succumbed to thinking that the more juicier their promise is, the more people they're going to get in there. But the reality of it is that if you don't have the congruence and the conviction in the promise that you're making, it's not going to sell. People are not going to get results. The energy behind the content is so important and if that's not present in the first place, even if it works for a short period of time, you're always going to plateau, you're always going to subconsciously feel like an imposter or people will not have good experiences with you because the result that you said you were going to get them is not the result that they ended up with.
Speaker 1:So, no, don't do that Using triangulation like God spirit whatever to convince people to buy from you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think what works and doesn't work with this is that if you're speaking to an audience who already is of that belief and is already indoctrinated in that world, it can absolutely work in your favor. But I do it through. You know, strategic messaging and positioning work, whereas they do it through. Let me channel what your divine message is. So, again, some people might resonate more with my way of doing things and some people might resonate with theirs. The triangulation aspect of it is when you're using it as a manipulative way is what I have an issue with Meaning. When you're using it as a way to bypass any sort of responsibility for demonstrating again your expertise, taking responsibility for how you get people results, and it simply becomes a nobody can argue with me because this was a message from God, or nobody can argue with me because this was something that I channeled. That's what I kind of have a problem with.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for watching this episode. I'm going to put Parmes' links in the description down below. If you want to follow her her social media her Instagram, her Facebook Make sure you get in touch with her. She's absolutely amazing. Or maybe join her program if you think you are a fit. Thank you so much for listening to this one and I see you guys very soon.