If I was more ambitious, I’d send that childhood chant to a few websites I visited today.

But I’d better begin at the beginning…

This morning at 6:23 a.m. my telephone started ringing. It took me a few seconds to wake up and realize what that noise was, so the answering machine came on. No one left a message, but the caller ID gave me a phone number.

So I decided to find out who had called.

Do you know that there are dozens of “FREE” reverse look-up sites on the Internet? One of them even gave me the initials of the person who owns that phone number. They all told me it was a cell phone in Palm Beach, Florida.

ALL of them demanded a subscription before they’d give me a name.

I don’t know about you, but if someone tells me something is free and then demands money for it, I’m not buying.

If the ad said “Reverse phone book – Find any name for only $4.95,” I’d do it if it was important. But when they lied to get me there, I wouldn’t consider it. And I also wouldn’t consider clicking on any of the affiliate banners on their sites.

Would you?

What do you think of this practice?

Right now there’s an ad for skin cream running on TV. I’ve been noticing it for at least the last two or three weeks, and every night it says the same thing: “This offer ends at midnight tonight.”

You can see the same false urgency tactic used on Internet sites. Just a small bit of script changes the date in the copy so that no matter when you visit the site, the offer ends at midnight on that date.

If the ads were true they’d be effective. But they’re not true, so they make the marketers look like exactly what they are – liars.

They also make them look like fools – or people who think their customers are fools. Do they seriously think that each potential customer will see their ad or their website only once and hurry to take action?

Another false urgency tactic I’ve seen has much the same effect.

In this scheme, the marketer sends an email offering a special price on their product for a few days – usually a week or so. Then each day they send a reminder email telling you that the deadline is getting closer so you’d better hurry to order. And then – on the last day they come up with some reason why they’re going to extend the deadline.

Maybe it was on Sunday and they know many of their customers only access the Internet at work. Maybe they had some kind of computer glitch. Maybe there was a snow storm in Florida.

But a couple of companies have used this tactic so often that everyone knows their deadlines can’t be taken seriously.

Again, it erodes their credibility and causes people to trust them less and less.

False scarcity is just as bad.

If you really do have a limited supply of an item, scarcity is a good selling point. But don’t make the mistake that one Internet marketer did.

He used scarcity to promote an e-book! Perhaps if he’d used different words it would have worked. He could have said “I’ll only sell 10 copies.” Instead he said he only had 10 copies left to sell. And that, of course, exposed him as a liar.

If you’re selling a physical product that you’re going to ship, your customers aren’t likely to know if you tell them you only have 20 and really have 2,000.

However, they’re likely to be suspicious if you keep advertising the same 20 for days and days. In fact, they’ll either assume you’re lying or they’ll decide that since nobody else wants what you have to offer, it probably isn’t worth buying.

Use urgency and scarcity carefully, and only when its true.

Unless you want a very short career in marketing, your reputation is one of your most important assets, and you’ll destroy it by telling obvious falsehoods.

But I know that isn’t true for all of them, because some of the biggest names in marketing have caused me to develop a hair-trigger “delete finger.”

Here are some of my pet peeves – I hope you’ll share some of yours as well.

#1: Messages that are disguised as ezines (informational) and have subject lines such as: “7 Ways to …(something)” Then when you read the message it tells you why it is vital to your future to know those 7 ways, and you can get them by sending only $29 to…

#2: Sales letters without prices. LONG sales letters without prices. The only way to know what they’re charging is to click the buy button. No thanks, guys!

#3: “The Wait a Minute Tactic.” This one really makes me disgusted. When you do click the buy button to see the price and then try to leave without buying, a pop-up appears. It says “Wait! I know $297 might be a little steep for you right now, so I’ll make it easy. For you, and only right now, I’ll let you have my fantastic product for only $197.” And then, if that wasn’t bad enough, when you say no, another box pops up and now it’s only $97.

My only thought is that if I had decided to buy at $297 I’d have sure been a fool.

#4: Hiding a subscription inside a “free” offering. I saw one like this just recently. They were offering a free CD. I forget the subject matter, but that isn’t important. When you click to say yes, then you find out that you have to pay shipping. Well, that isn’t too bad – $6.95. But then… on reading a bit more, you find out that by taking that “free” CD, you’re agreeing to pay something like $49 per month for ongoing information.

I don’t even know why I saw that – it was in the “small print.”

After I chose not to opt-in I got about a dozen e-mails telling me why my future was in peril… that I needed to come back and join.

#5: Sales letters from about 17 different marketers all using the same letter and claiming to be best friends with someone who is doing a launch. And all saying that they’ve talked this guy into giving a special price to their lists.

Come on… how stupid do they think we are?

#6: Marketing experts who used to be homeless. I know – it’s possible, but not very probable that nearly every one of those guys who now claims to be a millionaire was once destitute.

The stories aren’t all exactly alike, of course. Some lived on a sister’s couch, some had their wives and children in mom’s basement for two years, one had to live on his mom’s boat, some lived in their cars.

But all of them were dead broke and heavily in debt before they discovered the miracle that they’re willing to share with you for only $495. (Or maybe $4,950)

OK – that’s enough of my ranting for tonight.

I told you mine – now you tell me yours!

I’d been getting e-mails about the predictions for 2012. You probably know that something big is supposed to happen on December 21, 2012. Some say the end of the world; others say the beginning of something wonderful.

Anyway, I decided it would be interesting to see what they had to say on the “Free” CD they offered. There was also a 43 minute video to listen to, so I set the e-mail aside to come back to after midnight. (Because of my Hughes Net connection, I can only watch video between midnight and 3 a.m., and then it arrives in chunks.)

I had gone to their site briefly a few days ago, and had seen that there were “only 23 copies left” of this wonderful CD that I needed to order, so I was a little surprised to get the same message again today.

When I went back tonight and found that they still had “only 23 copies left” I naturally realized they were lying, so was already annoyed.

Next I saw that the CD was free, except for shipping. OK, I’ll see how much the shipping is.

$6.95 – that’s not terrible. But wait a minute… I read some more and found that I would automatically be enrolled in a monthly program that cost considerably more than the $6.95.

My attitude toward that kind of marketing is “Phooey on that.”  So I didn’t even stay to listen to the video, I just left.

I would never sign up for a monthly anything without first being acquainted with the company and what they had to offer. It’s simply too much hassle to get back out of one of those programs if you don’t like them.

If they had sent the CD, given me time to listen, and then offered something more, I might have been agreeable. But maybe not. They had already destroyed my trust with the 23 copies lie.

The scarcity tactic should only be used when it’s true.

But what do you think about their tactics?

Would YOU have ordered the  CD for $6.95, knowing that you’d be enrolled in a monthly program that cost more? Would you have still trusted them after seeing the lie about 23 copies?

But guess what? We didn’t find anything for 50% off. Everything was 25% off and a few select items were 30% off – but no 50. When we asked the clerk she said there were a couple of small items – nothing anybody wanted. They only included those little items so that claiming 50% off wouldn’t be a lie.

In other words, the advertising was intended to deceive.

After I got home and looked at my purchases I was disgusted again when I saw that I hadn’t paid good attention. I had purchased several items that were made in China, and I’m trying not to do that!

I’ll have to say, trying to avoid Chinese merchandise saves me money. I nearly bought a new pair of winter shoes in another store. They were a bit pricey, but I really could use new winter shoes. I was thinking hard about buying them until I turned them over and saw: Made in China.

Maybe I’m being unfair to the Americans who are earning a living buying and distributing those goods. But I feel like trying not to buy them is my small way of supporting American manufacturers who hire American citizens and pay them a living wage. It means paying a little more for goods – but that’s OK too, because I really don’t need all that “stuff” to move around and dust. If any of us needed all that extra junk there wouldn’t be yard sales everywhere all summer long.

Anyway… back to the marketing. You can bet that hundreds of drivers turned in to check out the prospect of buying merchandise at half off. Especially the ones who have regularly shopped at that store. Not finding the promise fulfilled no doubt made a lot of people cranky and they won’t go back for more.

That’s OK in this instance – the store is going out of business. But I’ve seen other stores make the same kind of promise, not keep it, and expect to stay in business! Not too smart.

A big promise is a good thing – but only if you keep it!

Then I read the whole article. I read part of it twice, because the truth was buried in the middle and skipped over quickly.

That truth was that revenues are still projected to be higher than the budget for the current 2 year period – the shortfall refers to the increase that the Governor wanted to include in the new budget.

In other words, the cuts aren’t cuts. They’re reductions in the increase.

There’s a marketing message in here – but I’m not sure it’s a method we should try to copy. It is, after all, deceptive.

It’s kind of like selling a weight loss product. If you promise that taking your pill means the consumer can eat anything and everything without gaining weight – but you really mean “Instead of gaining an extra 20 pounds this year, with our product you’ll only gain 18 pounds,” then I think any customers who bought the product might be a bit miffed.

I think in the current economic and political climate we all need to look past the headlines and try to get the truth of the story. I have no idea why the media is pushing fear and panic, but we’ll all be better off if we don’t buy into it – and instead just keep on doing our work well.

Yours for prosperity,

Marte