An Annoying Marketing Trend Among Paleo Experts

Photo Credit: Marja van Bochove on Flickr

I don’t normally like to whine, but I’ve decided it’s time to share my two cents. Of course, that is exactly how much it is worth. :)

Note that I work in marketing communications and have been in this business for 20-ish years. That doesn’t change the fact that this is my personal opinion, not an attempt to build a case for certain landing-page methods over others. This is my perspective as a consumer, first and foremost. 

//start rant

I’m a big fan of health podcasts (especially ones with a primal/paleo theme), and spend a lot of time listening to them, usually during my drive to and from the office or during one of my long walks.

Once in a while, I hear a GREAT interview of someone who has a new program or book or exercise DVD, and after the interview, I decide to check it out online.

Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that most of these authors and hosts are using a marketing company that uses the same %$#^@ technique for every promotion: the extra long, extra annoying landing page.

You know the kind of landing page I am talking about - if you start scrolling, the page appears to keep going and going - with a lot of text but not a lot of useful information.

Don’t these marketing writers know that busy people like me skim web pages? I don’t want 2000+ words of the same three ideas repeated over and over. I want to read a short summary of the product benefits, the price, items included and delivery info. And, if you didn’t describe these ideas items very well, maybe a link to FAQs.

Instead, these landing pages seem to try to squeeze a bazillion concepts on a single page, most of which is “below the fold” (if you’re old enough to know what that means).

Even worse, they use longish prose instead of bullets. Of course if you actually needed all of that information, the format makes it impossible to spend less than 30 minutes to read all those words.

This is the Twitter world, people. I have no patience for that nonsense.

As if the novel-style landing page wasn’t bad enough, a lot of these pages now include a long, noisy embedded video on the page with no “stop/pause” button! Especially annoying for me when I’m at the office - I don’t need to have a video blaring on my computer speaker.

As I pointed out earlier, I’ve often gone to your landing page based on an interview that already “convinced” me about the product. The landing page did not convince me about the product - the credibility of the person who was on the podcast was the convincing factor.

Which brings me to today: After hearing about what sounds like a GREAT “online web conference” that really interested me, I followed the URL to one of those annoying landing pages.

And I decided right then - No, I’m not going there again. I’m officially avoiding events, products and other items that are promoted this way, no matter HOW MUCH the topic or product interests me. I have to draw the line somewhere.

I suspect these marketing companies have been getting credit for the great “results” they generated for their clients, the podcasters and bloggers. However, in reality it is the actual products, services and ideas that are great. NOT the marketing method.

Please, stop the madness.

//endrant