Posted on Sunday, 28th June 2009 by CopywritingCat
You’ve heard of bait-and-switch tactics? Here’s how they work. You see an ad that promises a ridiculously low price for something you really want. “Large 32-inch Flat-Screen TV for $300.”
So you go to the store, credit card in hand, holding the newspaper ad. When you get there, the clerks say, “Oh, we only had a few of these.” Or they say, “Yeah, you can get that TV set, but frankly, it’s pretty crummy. Here’s the set you really want…just $749.”
Wow. You soon realize the $300 set is indeed a piece of junk. But you also feel cheated. Why did you make this trip for nothing? You got so excited and now you feel deflated.
I call the online equivalent a “Bait and Wait” strategy. You get a promise of FREE glimposes of a higher priced product. Maybe you get the first half of a story and then you get cut off abruptly with, “For the punch line, pay $49.95.” (I think this technique originated from porn sites, which pioneered many Internet marketing techniques. They’ll show you a few wholesome pictures and promise more if you pay.)
For example, a ten-session coaching program offers a free first lesson. The first lesson is about deciding whether you want to be a coach. Now, that may be a useful first step, although I think it should be undertaken long before you get to the point of evaluating coaching programs.
However, this lesson will not help you make an intelligent decision about the rest of the program. Before signing up, what you want to know is, “How good are the marketing lessons? Will they really work for me?” There were lots of promises, but it was hard to evaluate this program.
My favorite “bait and wait” example comes from a site promising to help new business owners with web design. They promised to share “secrets” of learning how other websites are constructed.
Secrets? There are no secrets. The instructor of my $87 HTML course gave us the key on the very first day of our class. If you click on “Source Code” as a viewing option, you’ll see how any website on the planet was put together. If you like a particular layout, you can see how the web designer wrote the code. No cost. No secret. Just do it.
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Tags: copywriting, internet marketing
Posted in copywriting, strategy
