| Scammers… gotta love them. (Well, not really, but there’s at least some entertainment value.)
A short while back, I heard of a guy who almost got scammed by a Russian scammer.
The whole story is equal parts hilarious and chilling to the bone.
And there’s a critical marketing lesson in this story.
So here’s what happened. The guy wants to get an NVidia card for his son’s gaming computer. It’s something that makes games run faster. Hey, I’m not all techy, so I don’t know, but I’ve heard it’s good. Anyway, it’s the son’s birthday, so the guy figures he will get it because he knows the son really wants it.
Problem is, he can’t find it in stock anywhere. Every website he goes to is sold out. All the stores he drives to? Out of stock.
He ends up getting desperate. Real desperate. Starts to look at shadier places online.
He comes across a weird site which claims to have this thing... at a price that’s a bit too good to be true.
Something seems fishy though...
First off, the merchant claims to have a store in the United States.
Yet the address they listed doesn’t not exist.
The merchant claims to be based in the United States, yet all the pictures they send have text in Russian.
When he calls the merchant, the guy hears a thick accent, which the merchant denies.
And when he calculated the total cost of buying and shipping… it becomes clear the merchant wouldn't make a profit.
In other words, nothing added up and the whole thing smelled like a scam.
No matter how much he tried to convince himself it was not a scam… his gut kept telling him otherwise. (So he ultimately decided not to buy, which is a good thing!)
This is not different to how your customers “connect the dots” when they’re going through your stuff.
Every piece of proof you give falls into a “proof universe” of sorts.
Like a puzzle your customers put together in their heads.
Trust me when I say this… when it comes to spending money, no stone is left unturned.
We have cases where marketers lied about how long they were in business… and got busted by a curious customer who added up all their information.
Others got busted when their credentials were proven to be false.
Others got busted when some smart detectives dug around, eventually finding out how the so-called “lifestyle” they advertised was fake!
You do not want to be in that position.
Ideally, you want all your proof, all your testimonials and your story points a single, unified image of who and what you are.
This creates an armor of proof so strong your customers will be compelled to believe you.p
Keep it real, Paul Hanson
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