'Internet Marketers' vs 'Internet Scammers'

Josh, Nilay, and Ross speak with Danny Sullivan of Marketing Land about the differences between "Internet Marketers" and "Internet Scammers". More from The Verge:

[pitbulllovers]

Marketing is marketing. WHY people want to call it "internet marketing" is beyond me. I've been in Direct Response marketing for 15 years. Marketing can be summed up pretty quickly.

Here is the definition: Marketing is getting people to come to you predisposed and already motivated to do business with you or check out your site/blog/article.

[cube]

the caller is perfectly right, you do marketing just like any other company, whether you acknowledge it or not. marketing is just the link between the product and the consumer.

[mtbirds]

Isn't that the definition of a scam? I think the caller's point is valid, but of course if "Internet Marketing" wasn't a reputable title then no one would scam it. As a statistician, I see so much information--marketing, advertising, etc--housed on the internet just waiting for people to harvest it and sell it. If legit marketers really want to combat it they need to ban together and fight it. Not fighting the article that brings it to light.

[DangerVision]

I think this is an important conversation to have, within the marketing community in particular. The article was a reminder that there is a dark side to this business. If you aren't aware of that, it can be easy to find yourself in the midst of a predatory marketing scheme or system.

[VikramDravid]

The new breed of marketers include people like Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi, Chris Guillebeau, Marie Forleo. They don't call themselves "marketers", but many of their core online sales strategies can be traced back to Frank Kern (and to offline pros like Jay Abraham).

[mtbirds]

I felt bad as well, but Josh had a good point. To paraphrase, what is the legitimate marketing community doing to combat this. I feel worse for the single mothers, older women and men being taken advantage of. Businesses that hire people like the gentleman on the phone will know the difference.

[jodomODOM]

i find it really funny on the article page there's an amazon affiliate link for the scamworld kindle book

[MikeyDavis]

Marketing: Getting exposure to your product.
Product: Something that provides value to a customer
Customer: Someone looking to accomplish something, but is limited in a way that someone else has the solution for.
The goal of internet marketing, is to get products to customers.
The PROBLEM with internet marketing, is all of the fluff products out there. Pat Flynn IS an internet marketer, whether he calls himself that or not.He's generally very well respected. I think its all a matter of personal opinion, I can see where people get ripped off buying scammy products, but that's their own fault for falling for scams. I don't think that justifies putting ALL internet marketers in one bag, and labeling them, thats just not fair. The Verge by this definition, is also a scam. Its selling something, that is not telling the whole truth.
You cannot lie about what problem your product solves, but there is nothing wrong with selling products to people who intend to buy the solution to whatever problem it is they have.

[TyRoot]

Granted, I think it's very likely there could be many internet users online who may not be able to discern the difference between a scammer, calling themselves an "Internet marketer", and an SEO Specialist. But I can't help but feel Mr. Sullivan and others like him should try and focus their concerns on the scammers themselves in lieu of sites like The Verge.

It was nice to hear Mr. Sullivan's side, but I definitely felt like he misinterpreted the article, just a tad.

[HugoParedes]

I don't think that a "scammer" wouldn't call someone saying that they are trying to deceive them. Instead of saying "Hi, I'm an internet marketer", they won't say "Hi, I'm an internet scammer".

[ISMasters]

The fact is that there are things people dont know how to do when it comes to marketing online. It doesn't matter what you sell. A true Internet Marketer knows how to....A.) Get massive amounts of "targeted" traffic to their site. That in itself is hard to knowing certain tricks that only help you along the way...SEO tips....Facebook knowing what tools to use to help don't know this, which is why they need real internet Marketers to do it for them.

[HardlineAthiest]

IT'S JUST SCAMMERS SCAMMING OTHER SCAMMERS WITH MORE SCAMS, RECRUITING OTHERS INTO SCAMS, SO THEY CAN SCAM OTHER SCAMMERS INTO OTHER SCAMS.

[itsrelativ]

E-book internet marketers are the biggest scam ever.

[ISMasters]

You don't know what you means there are things you need to know in order to be successful at "Internet Marketing." Making a Youtube Video, or posting a tweet does not make you an online marketer. Over 90% of people fail to make it online because they don't know how to truly market online. Even if you have a brick and mortar business, you still need to know how to maximize leads, and sales with certain tactics, and only Internet Marketers know this.

[OkiDoki]

I think you guys are sort of not getting it. Because indeed, you guys are internet marketers, too. Any company that works on the internet trying to get the word out and making money on their site are doing internet marketing. Just because marketers understand psychology and write salesletters doesn't put them in the box of scammers. It is great you guys pointed out the scams that ARE going on. But in my opinion you are putting everything in a box. It's bad.

[costi]

uploader, please post a link to the oringinal article

[LaurentBourrelly]

The term you are looking for is MMO (Make Money Online).

[JOEMLM]

yeah, you are giving the legit internet marketers a bad name, i am a SEO specialist who also does SEM, search engine marketing for clients, i maintain their adwords campaigns and so forth, just to give you an idea of one field within internet marketing, all the big internet retailers have internet marketing departments, the people in your scamworld piece are scammers first who use internet marketing as their tool or weapon of choice, like a gun, bad guys use guns to rob, scammers use IM to scam

[SirGeneTX]

Love the verge, but really??? You don't do marketing? You guys ARE marketing! All the reports about gadgets which is 90% of the site is marketing! You work off PR releases, product launches, and officially leaked product info.
Why? Well you can say to inform people, but in reality it is to pay the bills. Unless the Verge is run as a charity, everything you do is to generate ad sales...
Oh - and BTW - there is nothing wrong with doing that!

[Updatenewengland]

Why are they pretending not to know what Internet marketing is, when they are owned by VOX Media who is currently looking for a Internet Marketing intern to work for them LOL