Exploratory topic: Are clever ways of marketing events online ethical?

Posted by writer | The age of content overload: how your events can stand out in the crowd »

This is more of an open discussion, rather than my thoughts. There has always been an endless debate about ethics in marketing - and I feel that it very important for all of us to draw a line between whats right and what can be considered manipulative.


I actively advocate good practices for online marketing and sometimes come across people who have very different opinions about internet marketing. If event marketing is about; creating a brand for your event, telling the brand story to your community, finding ways of using social marketing tools to increase the outreach of your message - it seems ethical.

But what about things like creating scarcity to increase the sales of tickets? Or using emotional triggers to help people make go-no-go decisions? I feel that if these things are done properly, without the intention of manipulating your audiences, then they are good internet marketing practices. By ‘good’ here, I mean that they really work!

An example of this is how certain companies send out emails to their lists asking for testimonials - except that they subtly write out a carefully worded sample testimonial with it to lure them into saying the same kind of things. Should that also be considered unethical, or just simply careful planning? I’ll leave this prerogative to you. It will be great if you can share your thoughts on this.


| Social Marketing

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