Is Much of Today's Self-Help Industry Actually All About Itself?

As a spiritual growth author I've participated in the self-help industry as both a vendor and a consumer. During the past 20+ years I have purchased numerous self-help books and audio programs, and without questio
I've benefited from content developed by various authors and speakers. In my role as a vendor, however, I have serious conce
s the past few years regarding the manner in which business is being conducted by the industry as a whole.

At the risk of being compared to the film character Jerry Maguire's "mission statement" about the shortcomings of the sports management business, I've written this article because I feel that much of today's self-help industry appears to actually be more focused on furthering "itself," as opposed to truly helping its customers. From my perspective, many of the aggressive Web-based marketing techniques used today for snaring customers appear to be incongruent with the idea of being 100 percent committed to caring about people, and to helping them in improving the quality of their lives.

Call me a purist, but in my view a key goal of the industry shouldn't be to have content providers focus on "growing their email lists" so they can sell more and more content to essentially the same segments of prospects. Moreover, of bigger conce
is that in many instances the marketing appeals being used are fundamentally rooted in fear. These include:

• Limited time offers that require the prospect to purchase within a predefined period before the price goes up.

• Marketing copy that features the same Web link multiple times within a given email or Web page, at times with each successive appeal using negatively oriented motivation (e.g., "PS: If you really want to change your life, be sure to click here now.")

• Tracking of each individual email recipient so that whether the prospect clicks through or doesn't, a different marketing appeal can be used the next time.

Rhetorically speaking, if the self-help content provider truly is dedicated to being of service to buyers, why offer a special introductory price at all? Why not simply establish the price point and, applying a spiritual growth principle here, just trust that if it is for the highest good of the prospect, they will purchase the product/service at the price stated? As for the use of multiple identical links within a given email or Web page and the application of different appeals based on prospect responses, if what they are selling really has merit and comes from the heart as opposed to the head, why is it necessary to be so pushy? Does anyone else see incongruence here between the content providers' supposed altruistic intentions and the methodology used to sell their wares?

Another common tactic features the use of excessively lengthy Web pages that typically don't even mention the price until the prospect clicks on a link at the very end of the page. Apparently the volumes of copy are designed to "soften up the prospect" prior to going for the close. Should the page visitor choose at any time to close the browser window prior to clicking on the call to action link, it's also quite common for them to see a pop-up box with a warning that says "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?" In some sense this is an insult to the visitor, as it questions their decision, and is seemingly designed to plant a seed of doubt (or fear) in their mind.

Yet another strategy used by marketing organizations is a formal "book launch" that offers prospects an assortment of numerous gifts from other content providers if they purchase a given book on a particular day. As part of these launches, authors are sometimes assured that their book (i.e., a new release or an existing title) will achieve best-seller status in a given category (or two) on Amazon.com, which is not formally or directly involved in the promotion (they merely fulfill the sales).

While this concept of offering gifts/bonuses is a reasonable marketing tactic, in the vast majority of cases buyers are required to enter their email address to actually receive them. So, in the strictest sense this is not a gift because the buyer has to give something of value up in order to get it. And, should they choose to download all of the bonuses, they open themselves up to being bombarded by emails from a host of other content providers who used the promotion to "build their lists." While I'll admit I've participated in several of these types of events in the past, in my case I don't require prospects to enter an email address to actually receive the gift. Perhaps it's just a case of semantics, but in my view if one offers a "gift" one should not ask for something in return.

As for the pitch to authors that their book will become an Amazon.com best-seller in a category for a day, on the surface it appears innocuous enough. However, when some authors then take the liberty of continually promoting their book as an "Amazon.com best-seller" based on just one or two day's sales figures, one could make the case that such claims appear, in a way, to be disingenuous. And yet, I've seen such assertions prominently displayed on authors' websites whose books have long since returned to their previous elevated sales ranks on Amazon.com. Perhaps their material does have indeed solid value, but the purity of its essence is tarnished when such promotional tactics are employed.

It's likely that many self-help industry content providers will take serious issue with the views I've expressed here; claiming that all they are doing is applying prove
Internet marketing approaches used successfully to sell a wide variety of products. Some might say that it's not their preference to use such tactics, but the reality is they work, and in the end if buyers benefit then the end justifies the means. Not an unreasonable position, but at the risk of sounding overly idealistic, it's my contention that anyone selling a self-help product or service should hold themselves to a higher standard than someone selling a traditional consumer product.

It also is my sincere hope that at some point relatively soon self-help content consumers will see through this type of manipulative marketing, and refuse to purchase any product that is presented to them using approaches such as some of those described in this article. In my view it is high time for the self-help industry to rise above such calculating tactics, and instead choose to only sell its products and services using methods grounded in love and genuine respect for its customers.