Recently I watched the incredibly long, 2-part, sales pitch from Rich Schefren over at Strategic Profits. Supposedly Rich is a ‘guru’s guru’ (when it comes to internet marketing I guess, not as in a spiritual guru).

So, I made it through the pitch and I have to say there were some things I found interesting. Perhaps even interesting enough for me to join Rich’s personalized training program and see what it could do to enhance Filmamora.com’s sales and profits.

But I had some questions. Principally, had Rich (or his ‘team’) ever dealt with a non-English language focused business. 90% of our customers are Spanish (not surprising, being based in Spain!) and obviously our marketing had to be in Spanish and had to tackle a Spanish approach. Despite what you may have heard, marketing in a different language and country is not just a matter of translating your materials.

So it seemed a valid question.

Now, like almost all of these internet marketing people, getting ahold of them is almost impossible. They want you to buy their product, not waste their time with pre-sales questions. Rich’s company, Strategic Profits, has a support website where you can fill out tickets. So I did. Many days ago. I can log in and look at the ticket progress (none). There is no email address. No way to reach them!

In ‘traditional’ business we focus on getting the customer (and keeping them happy once you have them). I have noticed this trend in online marketing to ‘here’s what we have, like it and buy it or go away’. To them it seems to be all about the sizzle, building anticipation and urgency. That is why they are all in the internet marketing space, and what they sell are courses about internet marketing. It is an incestuous business, creating more people to market competing products.

Or at least that is how it looks from out here.

But the tools are not without merit. And I think that they can be applied to a ‘real’ business… But if you have no interest in answering questions in order to get my money, how interested will you be in answering questions once you’ve got it!