Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Internet marketing can be swayed by pseudo-science
Go to any business meeting these days and you are sure to find at least one of the speakers suggesting some kind of psychological backing for their claims. For instance, you may often hear that 55% of our communication is "body language"; it's an oft-repeated claim in business circles. The problem is, there is no evidence for this - and what "evidence" is provided we know was actually made up. Yet the claim is still widely circulated.
Then you may hear that if you "mirror" the behaviour of the people you are speaking with they will like you and trust you more. That's advice often given to sales staff, suggesting that if you adopt the same posture as your prospect, they'll like you more and will therefore buy from you. Sounds nice in theory, but again, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim.
Several scientific-sounding claims are also made in the world of personal development. For instance, there are "gurus" who suggest that online "brain training" programmes can help your memory at work, or make you a better thinker. There are nutritional advisers who will tell you that certain vitamins will boost your brain power in the office. And there are self-styled experts who claim that daily meditation will make you calmer and boost your career as a result. All very interesting, but these claims have no real scientific backing.
We get sucked in to what appears like common sense; we like to think there is a magic "cure" to help us think better or behave in more appropriate ways to achieve success in sales for instance. However, the scientific evidence often shows that there is little backing for many of the claims made.
A famous one, for instance, is the "walking over hot coals" scenario. Here you get "whooped up" into a frenzy of excitement on some personal development day. You are then invited outside where a line of red-hot coal embers lay in the ground. Then you are supposed to use the "mind techniques" provided in the day to show to yourself that you can achieve whatever you want to - including walking on hot coals. Whoopee! What these gurus fail to tell you is that the thickness of your hard skin on the soles of your feet, combined with a paucity of pain-sensor nerve endings in that region of your body means anyone can walk over hot coals. They just make you think it's difficult and then when you can do it they use that as "proof" that their mind techniques work. Tosh.
So what has all this got to do with Internet marketing? Well, similar pseudo-science abounds. There are all sorts of gurus telling you that this technique works, or that they have "evidence" that another method is superior. Don't believe them; much of the SEO information you read is pure nonsense. Vast amounts of so-called backing for particular Internet marketing methods is actually made up. There is little evidence for many of the claims made about Internet marketing.
In the same way that many personal development gurus "back up" their suggestions with what sounds like science - yet isn't - many Internet marketing experts use similar techniques. They make it all sound real, good and convincing. But you owe it to yourself to ask whether the claims really are true.
Take everything you read about Internet marketing with a huge pinch of salt. And if you want evidence - test things yourself. Too few companies online have a "testing" culture. Instead they appear to accept the advice from some guru or another and wonder why they fail to achieve.
Labels: internet marketing, internet psychology
My favourite is 'we only use 10% of our brains' and the self-help gurus' 'people who write down their goals achieve them more often than people who don't write them down' - which Tony Robbins now admits he made up.
I think the reason some businesses are so scared to test their methodology is because it would put people's decisions in the spotlight. Fred says we are doing this way (usually because that's how Fred has always done it) so we do it that way. But if we tested Fred's way we might find it's tosh and there are multiple better ways to do it making Fred look like nothing special.
As ever, Graham, your email has given me hope that there is still intelligent life out there.