Local Online Marketing – Straight Talk About the Opportunity For Local Business Marketing Online
Because business demand for local online marketing solutions has risen sharply in response to consumer demand for local business information online, many of the Internet marketing world’s “usual suspects” – in this case, notably Howie Schwartz and Kevin Wilke – have rolled out local online marketing training programs.
They claim that the information products they’ve developed – IM Leadership 2.0 and Local Business Money Machine, respectively – are designed to help students capitalize on a huge opportunity (which is described in Schwartz’s sales letter to be “Freakin’ Huge”) to meet this demand by applying what they’ve learned from previous information products they’ve purchased (from Schwartz, Wilke, and, likely, others) to the marketing plans and efforts of local businesses, whose owners, they say, know little or nothing about what’s possible with online marketing.
IM Leadershiip 2.0 and Local Business Money Machine Promos Make Outrageous Claims
There are many outrageous claims that are common to the sales letters and webinars that both Schwartz and Wilke have been using to promote IM Leadership 2.0 and Local Business Money Machine – among them:
- You don’t need experience in the offline business world (this comes as no surprise as neither Schwartz or Wilke talks up track records of success in local online marketing, presumably because they don’t have one)
- You don’t need a website (kind of ironic, don’t you think?)
- It’s easy to get a local business’ website to rank well for geo-targeted keywords (if it ever was, that went out the window last week when Google launched a new search engine results page whose local search results are now the output of a ranking algorithm that is the consolidation of previously separate local and Web ranking algorithms)
- Clients are easy to get and will be so grateful for what you can do for them that they’ll gladly pay you thousands of dollars every month just to stay on board as one of your clients (at least they appear to have scaled down the income projections that their other information products claim people can achieve)
Those are just a handful of the many outrageous claims made in the IM Leadership 2.0 and Local Business Money Machine marketing materials.
IM Leadership 2.0 and Local Business Money Machine Promos Are Long On Hype
The promotional content for Schwartz’s IM Leadership 2.0 and Wilke’s Local Business Money Machine are both – not surprisingly – long on hype and short on substance. Schwartz’s IM Leadership 2.0 sales letter is filled with “convincing” testimonials from people along with, in some cases, images of “actual” checks people supposedly received from businesses they claim to have consulted with after taking IM Leadership 2.0.
In light of this hype, it’s worth noting what the disclaimer at the bottom of Schwartz’s IM Leadership 2.0 sales letter says:
DISCLAIMER: THE PERFORMANCE EXPERIENCED BY THE USER COMMENTS AND TESTIMONIALS ON THIS PAGE AND/OR OUR WEBSITE IS NOT WHAT YOU SHOULD EXPECT TO EXPERIENCE. COMPANY HAS NOT INVESTIGATED OR SUBSTANTIATED ANY OF THE USER COMMENTS OR CLAIMS. SOME OF THE USERS MAY, IN SOME CASES, BEEN INCENTIVIZED TO SUBMIT THEIR COMMENTS, AND COMPANY HAS NOT VERIFIED THE FIGURES QUOTED IN THEM.
Two lines from the disclaimer (taken directly from the IM Leadership 2.0 sales letter) bear repeating: “Company has not investigated or substantiated any of the user comments or claims. Some of the users may, in some cases, been (sic) incentivized to submit their comments and company has not verified the figures quoted in them.”
Kind of knocks the wind out of all of the testimonials, doesn’t it?
Wilke’s sales letter for the Local Business Money Machine appears to be down at the moment, claiming that the registration is closed because all the spots are taken and that they are focused on helping “each of those people turn into amazing success stories” (that’s a direct quote from the sales letter).
The Bottom Line on the Local Online Marketing Opportunity
What’s really disappointing about products like Schwartz’s IM Leadership 2.0 and Wilke’s Local Business Money Machine is that they seemed to be designed to do nothing more than separate hard-earned money (price tags appear to be around the $1,000 and $2,000 levels, respectively) from well-meaning people in exchange for products that are so short on substance that they need loads of hype to generate interest in an opportunity that is fundamentally good – if not great.
Good products that are designed to help people capitalize on an unmet demand do not need hype. They simply need some “noise” about the opportunity and some straight talk about the substance of the product.
