Annoying Online Marketing

I recently experienced an online marketing tactic that I find unprofessional and annoying. No, I'm not talking about spam, bulk emailing or pop-ups. I'm talking about online marketers that harvest names off of classified ad sites. Fortunately, I don't run into too many of these people because I don't market using online classifieds. But I work with people who sometimes do. I get an excited call that someone has emailed them about their ad. The email is my first tip-off that this may not be a legitimate inquiry as most people fill out the form, not email. But, we contact the person who proceeds to ask us if we want to make $10,000 in two weeks or get 100 customers a month. In the past, curiosity had me going through their shpele to see what they had. Now, I tell them no and get off the phone.

One program offered a "unique marketing" system that would have 100's of people in your business each month. It was only $400 and you could sell it too! Only, you didn't get paid on your first 3 sales. What's wrong with this picture? First of all, what is unique about harvesting contacts from ads? Many would call this spam. I think its unprofessional. And of course, its not at all unique.

Yesterday, I left a message for a man with a name like Sugar (that should have been my first tip off that something was weird) who called me back and wanted to know if I wanted to make $10,000 in the next two weeks. I politely told him how I felt about his marketing tactics. Wouldn't you be annoyed if people responded to your ad but were only contacting you to sell you something? He got all puffed up (I'm sure he would say he was posturing) and told me that I wasn't the type of person he was looking to do business with. I told him he was right and hung up. I don't have time for people who try to intimidate me.

Why is contacting people through their ads with an "I saw your ad" email so bad? For one, as I mentioned, many places would call it spam. I believe its completely unprofessional. Its a sign of desperation to prey on people who are already working a business to try and get them in another business. I'm sure they wouldn't like me contacting people in their business to try to get them into something else.

If you are contacting people through their classified ads to try and sell to them, I urge you to stop. If you are using classified ads to market your business, I encourage you to stop as well. There are many great ways to promote a business online that are effective and don't annoy people.