Looks can be deceiving, but your marketing shouldn’t be

As a marketing and communications leader and a former journalist, the concept of “Trojan Horse Marketing” makes me wince.  

We’ve all seen examples of it. Buzzfeed is famous for it.  

It comes in many forms: a click-bait headline that grabs your attention only to take you to a shallow article – or worse, a 50-image slideshow disguised as an article – that inevitably disappoints; an email that overpromises in the subject line and underdelivers when you actually open it to read what’s inside. Some websites even use dark patterns, or deceptive design techniques, to trick users into providing personal information or paying for unwanted products or services. 

If you’re not familiar with the story of the Trojan horse, it originated in Greek mythology, and while it was once thought of as a brilliant wartime strategy, it also represents a gift that turns out to be a trick or a trap. 

Your business may gain some short-term attention using these types of techniques, but at what cost? Using deceptive tactics in your marketing communications can not only generate negative sentiment from your customers and prospects, but it can also harm your brand reputation by eroding the trust that you’ve worked so hard to earn. 

Although there are some merits to testing inventive marketing approaches, you should always strive to maintain the integrity of your brand. One way to do this through your marketing communications is to provide useful, relevant content to your audience. Doing so can increase engagement and can help you with search engine optimization (SEO).  

You should also be mindful of the expectations you are setting with your company’s content marketing. For example, if you publish a blog post or video, the title should tell readers what they can reasonably expect to learn about, and the content should deliver on that expectation. It shouldn’t be written just to get them to click and then fail to deliver.  

It may seem tempting to try to trick your prospects into becoming customers, but is that really the way you want to win business? If deception is not the brand image you want to cultivate, and you’re not willing to accept the risks that come along with that approach, focus on providing value through your content marketing. It will pay dividends in the long run while also protecting the integrity of your brand.