Here’s a question – if you really have nothing of quality to say, yet can get tons of people to purchase your marketing pitch, are you a marketing genius?

How do you measure quality?

Is it measured in new sales? More traffic to your website or blog? Is it simply perception based on marketing script?

Controversy

Can you use controversy to increase your sales? This is actually used quite frequently, especially in titles, to draw attention to the intended product or service. Books, magazines, websites, forums and blogs are great at tapping into controversy. Right way – wrong way. What it can do – what it can’t do. What’s expected – what’s not expected. What works - what doesn’t work.

Marketing vehicles

An example: For blogs to be an effective marketing vehicle, do they need to be relatively free of marketing material? My take is that even if prospects are searching to buy, they don’t want to be sold to. Does that make any sense? Blogs should contain useful and relevant content, with minimal hype or sales talk.

Content

First and foremost, content has to be readable. If you write marketing material in long, unbroken blocks of text, 99.9% of your prospects will either fall asleep halfway through your presentation or move on to your competition. And color contrast is HUGE!! Who designs marketing materials with blue text on a purple background?!! Or uses 13 different fonts and point sizes on the same page?

Clarity

I think clarity varies by whatever marketing vehicle you pursue, but there should be a common thread that transcends your effort – rather it’s in terms of ROI, branding or whatever. Marketing campaigns should be a blend of persuasion, advertising, marketing, writing and knowledge in a manner that CALLS (your prospect) TO ACTION.

All valid points! The color and fonts are a huge pet peve of mine. Marketing pitches should be just like a billboard on the side of a highway - you have MAYBE 3 seconds to pitch the general idea. If it takes longer, you need a new marketing guru. This is not to say that you have to DELIVER the message in 3 seconds, but that's your call to attention timespan.

Controversy has it's positives and negatives You can turn people off a topic/product quickly when you use negative statements. In sales pitches generally "not" and "no" are avoided. Talk about the positives, negative often leaves a bitter taste.

The measure of success is always rough. Knowing what you want to get out of the campaign is going to be the measure of success.

I'd recommend avoiding controversy if you're not familiar with such a tactic as it's probably the toughest one to tackle as even the big shots sometimes screw up.

The rest of the points should be implemented by everyone though. Also, it's much easier said than done but good advice nonetheless.

They are the complex. That is impossible to say something more important or something less

Controversy can draw the attention of many BUT can drag you in legal problems, so if you are using this as tactic be careful.

How is that? Allot of the big companies use it and in a blatant way as well .

I'm seeing a ton of controversial ads on television, especially with cars and trucks, and beers. I'm wondering if anyone has seen any in web hosting ads?

Does Godaddy count? Obviously they're controversial, if by "controversial" you mean "boobs."

Haven't really seen anything in the web hosting world. There's any number of sites that will say "X" is better than "Y" and hosting companies will give comparisons of their services to another - but beyond the normal slamming of Unlimited Hosts and some of the freebies, there's not much that I've found for controversial advertising in web hosting. I'm open to exploit it though if anyone has any ideas hehe

The latest controversial thread I commented on in another forum was about providers using sex to sell their services, specifically GoDaddy. But I don't think slamming those providers will get you even one more client. And the bottom line should be ... how can MY BUSINESS get MORE clients.

It's a fact of marketing - sex sells. And Hallmark knows that cute puppies or kittens on a card will sell too - it's all about target demographics.

And I'm with you on the point about downplaying other companies in order to boost sales. You can draw a comparative line between places, but at the end of the day it's what YOU can do better than the other places. Up-talking your strong points while down-talking the competition is standard marketing (for most places). I wouldn't call it controversial though.

I agree, however using sex to sell webhosting brought out extreme opinions on each side of the table.