Is it Marketing or a Trap?

What is marketing? Is it the same as advertising? Or is it an activity that urges the customers to buy the product by hook or by crook? Well, the actual meaning of marketing is way broader than what we have seen or assumed. It doesn’t mean bombarding people with advertisements and marketing messages, but in fact, marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services. It includes everything from advertising to public relations to social media campaigns. The goal of marketing is to create demand for a product or a service and ultimately generate sales.

While marketing is a valuable tool for promoting and selling products or services, it is crucial to acknowledge that it can be misused. The broad scope of marketing, which encompasses various tactics like advertising, public relations, and social media campaigns, leaves room for manipulation. When marketing strategies are employed with the intention to deceive or exploit customers, it can lead to traps that exploit their trust and desires.

But what is a trap? How can we, as consumers, become its victim? We could get trapped when a company pulls a bait-and-switch by persuading people to buy something that, in the end, doesn’t fit their needs at all. A trap is a manipulative strategy designed to entice someone into doing something they wouldn’t otherwise do.

This trap can be webbed by using the silk of false promises. Remember the most common instant food that we all are not only fond of, but addicted to? Yes, it's none other than Maggi, or should we say “2 minute noodles"? We are all well aware of the fact that the most famous instant noodles are never really prepared in just 2 minutes but, we still tend to consume them. So, did we just get ourselves caught in a trap?

We were trapped until the moment we didn’t know that its journey of instancy is more than that of 2 minutes, but as soon as we got to know the reality, we started consuming it for its taste and not for the 2 minutes duration of preparation. At this moment, we tore apart the web of marketing traps. This is the most common marketing strategy that induces customers to buy the product for a specific reason that is initially highlighted but after its consumption, no longer remains the sole feature for its increasing sales.

Apart from this, we can get our analytical eye into the marketing trap of visual irrelevance, which simply depicts things or creatures that create curiosity or grab attention rather than displaying their basic foundation or work. This strategy could be seen in the advertisements of brands like Sting, Red Bull, etc

The trapping criteria doesn’t end here, another road to this trap is that of incomplete disclosure. There can be cases where the full disclosure is made on the subsidiary document but its access hasn’t been provided to the customer. The incomplete disclosure, depicting the highlighting features and hiding the key points which could change our purchase decision, would create an emphasis upon the customer to make their mind towards the good. However, till the time they get to know about the laybacks, they might have initiated the purchase.

Marketing traps do not play with the good or the service which is to be offered, th ey instead play with the mind of the customers and manipulate the basic human psychology. We need to remove our blind folds of silky marketing trap webs and develop the acumen to be fair to ourselves and the money that we generate.

Now that we have a trapping marketing strategy, we have learned how we just caught ourselves in it. How do we save ourselves from these silky traps? The expenditure of each penny is totally dependent on our wit and broader viewpoint. Whenever you get your eye on a brochure or your attention on an advertisement, wear your analytical spectacles and check the relevance of the information or features for which you are going to buy that product or service. After the relevance check, there comes the magnifier of minute details or hidden information. Before making any decision, try to detect the efforts or requirements that you have to meet after placing the order. This could be a perfect complement to the good or the installation of any other thing for the brought service to take place. Honesty, ethicality, and revelation are the true features of marketing, and as soon as you are able to identify these traits in the company, you are good to go.