Pitchforks at Your Digital Doorstep
How the Rallying Cry Against Fear-Based Marketing & Other Sales Tactics Backfired, Creating Paranoia & Worry in the World of Online Business
“Just like every powerful tool, the impact comes from the craftsman, not the tool. Marketing has more reach, with more speed, than it ever had before. With less money, you can have more impact than anyone could have imagined just ten years ago. The question, one I hope you’ll ask yourself, is What are you going to do with that impact?” -Seth Godin, This is Marketing
This post has been percolating for some time. The only thing that stopped me from saying it before was fear, if I’m being honest. And I’m ready to be more honest than ever before. (And if you’ve been in my orbit for awhile, you know I go pretty hard for honesty on the regular.)
It all hinges on something that’s been simmering under the surface of my mind and spirit for months:
“Ethical marketing” is now causing more issues than the practices it rallies against*. Specifically, in its attempts to shut down “fear-based marketing” it’s now made integrity-driven entrepreneurs more fearful than ever.
(*The exception being anything that continues to marginalize those already pushed to the margins by the harmful -isms I’m assuming you, like me, are working to dismantle.)
Why is this my theory? Because I’ve seen it in my community, and lived it personally. It’s part of why I’ve been hesitant of saying too much about it until now.
I’ve listened to clients, friends, and my internal monologue express concerns about doing the “right” thing when it comes to running an online business. “Right” in the sense of doing right by the people who both consume free content and invest in paid programming.
This unto itself isn’t a bad thing. It shows an important culture shift in the world of business as people strive to be more humane and responsible in their approach to making money. They want their impact as an entrepreneur to be positive everywhere they’re showing up. Through that lens, the concerns are valid.
But what I’ve seen start to happen is that it’s become less about simply not causing harm and more about a growing fear of being perceived as genuinely harmful. What started with really good intentions has now spilled over into something else entirely. Something that’s preventing brilliant, compassionate, honest people from truly showing up, growing their businesses, and being able to serve people well in the way they do best.
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As online entrepreneurs, what we do is so public and available to be picked apart and scrutinized, many of the loudest champions of “ethical marketing” have started using specific individuals as examples of an “us vs. them” mentality; calling people out as harmful in their own marketing, as a way to rally their audience and create engagement with their content. (If they’re making money from it, I truly don’t know.)
And quite honestly, most of their targets are easy to hold up as “problematic” because they’re so successful, and so well-known, there’s less of a chance that the person calling them out would ever have to confront them face-to-face with their gripes. Unless there’s true slander or libel, in which case the “gurus” and “celebrity entrepreneurs” would just send their lawyers, they don’t actually have to worry about an awkward confrontation. It also doesn’t help that in the past couple of years some of the people being ridiculed have aligned themselves with the QAnon/MAGA crowd either. Being aligned with harmful ideologies like that makes it even easier to publicly criticize them.
This might be overly generous but I think initially these public critiques came about with good intentions. I know for myself a lot of things I’ve spoken about in the past were me responding to my frustrations over talking to business owners at their wit’s end with their business growth. They were busying themselves with things they were told they needed to do but weren’t necessary at that growth stage, if ever! This was often happening because they weren’t given all of the information needed to make the wisest purchasing decisions at the moment. Or they were choosing to not do things they were told they should because those practices felt unaligned with their values or who they are as a human. Thus causing them to feel like they would have to either suck it up and do them anyway or lower their growth goals.
From the beginning though I’ve never wanted to simply point out a problem and not follow through with some options on how to solve it. Not because I’m somehow a better person, but because it has always felt pointless and kind of cruel to leave someone worse off than when they found me. Because it might feel validating in the moment to realize your frustration and anger are seen and heard, but if you don’t know what to do next, now you’re just stewing with no path forward. That doesn’t feel like being of service, as much as it does being a critic in the Peanut Gallery. Sure, people might feel less alone in their struggles, but the end result is that they will still be struggling.
I think what ultimately happened though is that the people who were shouting the loudest about “unethical practices” started to get a lot of traction on their posts. While I’m not sure if it was converting into anything financially, I think it created a feedback loop that went something like this:
Complain about something “problematic” in your content —> rally people who are hurting and give them a scapegoat—> point fingers at said scapegoat and tell them where to shake their pitchforks—> now that they feel validated they’ll share your content with their communities organically—> this brings fresh followers to the content/business owner—> since the new followers feel vindicated too, they engage as well—> this makes the creator feel validated and like the best move is to keep this cycle going!
However, what I’ve seen happening because of this is that it’s planted a silent fear in their followers because they worry they might be next on the chopping block. “Silent” in the sense that those followers certainly aren’t admitting to this publicly, but are agonizing over it privately. They have gone beyond being intentional about showing up around their values, to being so paranoid they’ll do something “wrong” that they didn’t know was “wrong,” and then the pitchforks will suddenly be at their digital doorstep too.
This isn’t just my assumption either. Not only have current and former clients of mine come to me to receive what feels like permission to make certain choices in their business, but even after they are so worried someone still might tsk-tsk about it. To be clear, this isn’t a criticism of them. I love it that people feel they can come to me openly with these asks, and that I’ve built up a reputation around my own values that they trust me. What it made me realize though is both how prevalent the worry is and also how I never want to be the gatekeeper of “right” and “wrong” in marketing. That’s not a throne I desire to sit on.
While I’m always delighted to coach or strategize with a client through a decision making process, ultimately I want them to understand why they’ve chosen to do or not do something, and feel confident about it. I want them to feel empowered in their own values to do what feels right for them, and also know that as the CEO they can change their mind at any time. I would rather we all think through why we’ve made a certain choice, than check every choice against some arbitrary list of “rules” someone has decided everyone needs to follow to not cause harm.
And let’s be super clear: humans are harmful. Not always intentionally, but we are. Because of this, even with a well-intentioned choice, someone won’t like it. Or we’ll misstep. We’ll need to adjust something, and perhaps apologize too. Does it sting sometimes and feel embarrassing? Of course. This is the messiness of culture change, but it makes it worse when we feel like messing up is no longer an option.
This is the messiness of culture change, but it makes it worse when we feel like messing up is no longer an option.
Let’s step away from the world of business for a second and look at family relationships to get a different perspective on this. Parent/child relationships are chock full of harmful moments even when there’s a close, loving relationship. Why? Because sometimes at the end of a long, stressful day you snap at your kid because you’re not at your best. And while you wish you could take it back, you can’t. You’ve caused harm and now you’re met with a choice of how to proceed.
For most parents that I know, we are trying our best to try to change the culture of parent/child relationships. We’re trying to not repeat behaviors we experienced that felt harmful. This looks like trying to be more patient, yell less, listen more, and be understanding. But we are human and we falter. We cannot possibly always get it right. Even inside a family, different children require different approaches. While a binary of right and wrong might feel “safe,” few things in life are ever that clear cut. Mostly there’s a lot of nuance we’re constantly navigating, and sometimes we don’t realize something wasn’t the best choice until we’ve made it.
But back to business…
In the past few years the world of online business has created an entire culture around finger pointing that relies on that binary of right and wrong except it’s more extreme than that. It’s either “the ethical way” or it’s “the deeply problematic, inexcusably harmful way.” How wouldn’t a dichotomy like that make you feel paranoid?! My god. No wonder people are so scared of getting it wrong. That feels like something there’s no coming back from. I mean one innocent misstep and suddenly everyone could potentially despise you.
I’ll give a few examples of this binary to illustrate some of the examples of no-win situations I’ve seen in people’s marketing content:
You either must be a trauma-informed coach OR if you list yourself as a trauma-informed coach it seems like a marketing ploy. (This doesn’t even touch on the debate around what it means to be “informed” vs. “aware” vs. “certified” either.)
You should never use countdown timers on something with a deadline because it can pressure people to buy who otherwise wouldn’t OR you should always use them because they’re helpful reminders for people who struggle to conceptualize time. (Often neurodiverse people are used as reasons on both sides of the argument. As someone with ADHD I need and appreciate reminders for everything.)
You shouldn’t offer pay-in-full bonuses but you can do Early Bird Bonuses OR the complete opposite. (There’s so many reasons a business owner would choose either option, it can’t possibly be reduced to a single “right” answer!)
And while these various things can certainly make for interesting discussions and decisions, I’ve seen that the most common outcome is fear of getting it “wrong” and then being labeled as a problematic person.
And if you pay attention and poke around just a tad you begin to realize a couple things about the people championing these binaries:
They aren’t actually offering much in the way of helpful, supportive suggestions, it’s just ranting.
Or when their way of helping ends up behind a paywall that you can purchase, you’ll notice they blatantly do a lot of the things they rally so hard against when it comes to selling.
Hmmmm…puzzling.
So what I’ve surmised is that it’s not really about care and concern over what’s truly “right,” as much as it is about building themselves up as the ONLY right path so you feel obligated to a) follow them and b) invest in them. Because if you don’t…watch out!
Not only will you run the risk of doing something “wrong,” but you might be the next “bad guy” they need to “take down” publicly.
Which leads me back to my theory…in an attempt to get away from fear-motivated selling we’ve driven kind, integrity-driven people deeply into a place of terror.
And from this place not only are their own businesses suffering, but their potential clients are missing out on an opportunity to get help from exactly the kind of person they’d be delighted to work with. Why? Because the business owner isn’t showing up in the way they need to with confidence to land those dreamy clients at a really supportive rate (both in frequency and investment).
Obviously ethics are important.
Giving people honest information is important.
Giving them agency to make a decision is important.
Respecting their investment is important.
Consent is important.
There are so many ways to market and sell where integrity is interwoven into the entire process, but ultimately it’s important to remember that there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism and what’s right/wrong is subjective and evolving.
For instance, I’m writing this on a computer that’s 3 to 4 times more than some people’s monthly rent in the US and was built by a multinational corporation that uses questionable practices to fabricate its products. But guess what? Basically everything that operates with microchips relies on multiple kinds of extraction. We couldn’t run our online businesses without using these tools.
This isn’t to say we should toss our hands in the air and do nothing to change what we don’t like in the world, but it’s important to remember that ultimately if our businesses have any hope of thriving we can’t just be working for free 24/7. That also doesn’t mean we’re doing anything wrong by selling services or products to people who want them.
To be totally honest I love spending money with people and businesses I love. I’m glad to do it and don’t feel weird about being sold to.
But I digress…
I have zero desire for this to be another finger-pointy, “tsk-tsk,” hot take-style piece of content. I don’t want it to be a rallying cry against the people I used as examples either. Because again, that gets us nowhere. It’s also specifically why I didn’t bother to name any of them.
I’m not trying to have a “meet me at the park after school so we can fight” moment. In fact, I never want anyone to feel like they aren’t allowed to change their mind or change their heart. It’s normal to evolve and I don’t think it’s productive for people to worry they’ll be seen as hypocrites if they shift their beliefs around something and choose to go a different direction in their messaging.
What I want most of all is for all of us, myself included, to think about the impacts we have in our marketing. Not through a lens of arbitrary “rules” of what’s permitted and what’s problematic, but as created through the lens of our own personal values and with a deep desire to serve others well.
We cannot control how everyone will feel when it comes to our marketing. Even when we mean well, someone could have an intense reaction to something we said because of their personal history, even if most other people wouldn’t take issue with it at all. Of course we can always be mindful and working to improve our approach, but I don’t see living in constant fear of messing up as a helpful, productive benchmark.
I don’t have a prescriptive takeaway of what I think you should do going forward. That’s for you to decide.
But I hope this is a reminder of what you choose to consume, of who you choose to learn from, that you can likely trust your gut to make good choices, and that you’re the kind of person who’ll make things right if you feel you’ve made an error.
You get to write your own permission slips. You get to learn, grow, and evolve.
And like fire needs oxygen for fuel, this bombastic content thrives on attention.
Whether you choose to give them that is up to you. But if it’s making you feel a certain way, you can also choose to stop paying attention and engaging.
This post is a further continuation of a podcast episode I released at the end of 2021. In that episode I explain why I decided to stop using the phrase “ethical marketing” in my own messaging. My biggest fear around speaking about all of this comes from the fact that I never want people who trusted me to feel misled. My values are still my values, I just no longer want to be aligned with this “movement” because it’s changed in ways that aren’t aligned with my values. I’m always open to respectful, productive conversations though.