Ethical vs Unethical in Marketing

Ethical Marketing:

Ethical marketing is less of a marketing strategy and more of a philosophy that informs all marketing efforts. It seeks to promote honesty, fairness, and responsibility in all advertising. Ethics is a notoriously difficult subject because everyone has subjective judgments about what is “right” and what is “wrong.” For this reason, ethical marketing is not a hard and fast list of rules, but a general set of guidelines to assist companies as they evaluate new marketing strategies.

Characteristics of ethical Marketing:

1. They know there is a process and they are ready to follow the process.
2. They know the importance of trust and are ready to build it.
3. They do care about the consumers and they love to give value than make money.
4. They over deliver.

Characteristics of unethical Marketing:

1. The are stupid! Yeah! Very stupid! They are stupid because they might even begin to abuse and rain curses on you for not patronizing them.
2. They hard sell. I have seen somebody trying to teach newbies how to make money online telling them to build a list and schedule 14 auto responders messages to go out everyday promoting the same offer – How can you promote an offer for 14 days, sending out a promotion email every day – you are triggering the curse of email marketing.
3. They want everything now! Wanting everything now will lead you to doing unethical things.
4. They don’t care, all that matters is the money.

Benefits of ethical marketing :

• It pays.
• You build trust.
• You make more money.
• You build more relationship with people whose lives you are making better.
• It causes about an effect of viral marketing.
• You are happy – because you made others happy.

 Example:

As can be seen, ethical marketing is not an easy way to go, but it gives an impressive result which is worth devoting all efforts. It is a tried-and-true method of sound and effective functioning. Let’s take a look at companies that achieved success through ethical marketing.

• At first view, TOMS slip-on is the very usual slip-on. As any modern footwear, TOMS’ shoes are comfortable, good-looking, and high-quality. However, as distinct from others, TOMS’ shoes are socially useful. Since the moment of launching, TOMS has donated more than 60 million pairs of footwear to people all over the world. The company continually extends activities, providing people not only with shoes but with birthing kits, pairs of glasses, and drinking water.
• Despite the wide variety of cleaning products on the American market, the Dr. Bonners soap considerably stands out from the competitors. The product owes its popularity to the excellent packaging designed by the founder. Emanuel Broner himself was the author of “Cosmic Principles,” 30,000-word tract which can be found on the bottles of the company’s products. Dr. Bonner's business not only distributes information on current environmental and social issues but produces organic cleansers and has wisely organized compensation structures for workers.