The Infomercial Reborn
And it is the worst.
Excerpt from my essay The Empty Promise of Internet Entrepreneurism
I used to be in an MLM. For a few years, I was an extremely inactive “coach” with Beachbody. I was one of those who signed up for the discounts, but I rarely participated in any of the group rituals and practices.
I will say that my Instagram where I ran my “business” was lousy with cringey motivational posts that ended with a “call to action” to inquiry about my services.
Needless to say, I had no follow-ups and thank goodness for that.
Because of the type of content I was consuming and producing, the groups I was a part of, and the links I would click on, my targeted ads were very much calibrated to a specific audience that I had become a part of algorithmically.
I would see these ads mainly on Facebook. And it is not my favorite platform, however, it does offer some pretty great tools for businesses and brands to hammer hard on their targeted audiences.
The ad in question would be a video with a promise to reveal all the secrets you could ever want to learn to do whatever it is this random entrepreneur does if you signed up for their free training.
Sometimes it would be about drop-shipping. Other times it would be about building your own coaching business or how to have your first 10K month. Once, I even saw a free webinar for becoming a script reader.
It goes to show that this approach isn’t exclusive to the vague entrepreneurial, motivational niche, even though that is where I will be focusing my discussion here.
I rarely saw the same ad twice and the production quality would vary from totally DIY to full-blown budget production. Because I’m curious and, more often than not, a chaotically neutral person, I signed up for a handful of these free trainings. Inexplicably there would be one starting in the next day or, better yet, the next hour.
To save you a lot of time and satiate your own curiosity, these free trainings or webinars would all follow the exact same formula:
You click a link and hop into the “live” video presentation where the chat would be disabled. You might be told that any questions would be answered at the end of the training. Then, the entrepreneur extraordinaire would then lead you through a PowerPoint presentation covering exciting topics such as:
Their origin story. A modern retelling of the Americana rags-to-riches classic usually involving living at their parents’ house to start their first business with nary a penny to their name.
Their “success” story. This will be about as vague and broad as possible with a few dangling carrots of 5 or 6 figures in revenue each month.
Testimonials. So. Many. Goddamn. Testimonials. This is to showcase the fact that anyone can do this too. See! I’m not the only one! You can trust me to make you a success.
And finally — the sales pitch. Not only did you learn nothing valuable today, but for a limited time, when you buy a course that is “normally” $5,000, you’ll also get another mini-course, a digital download, access to a poorly moderated Facebook group called a “mastermind,” and certificate of completion — all for the low, low cost of $799.
But wait! There’s more…and it can be whatever hat-trick they can pull out of their ass.
The name of this rando-expert will change. The business, the package, the offer, the niche…the details will change, but its nature won’t.
What I just described to you is the evolution of the infomercial.
Except, it is much more fruitless and way less entertaining.
I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but even though I hate ads on every video I watch (especially the non-skippable fuckers), I can sit through a commercial with no problem.
Maybe it’s because the only screen time I grew up with was a basic cable TV.
And as a small child, I lusted over amazing kitchen gadgets demonstrated in 15-minute-long infomercials late into the night.
While sales funnels are not new and these supposedly live, free trainings and webinars will pop-up from time to time, the principal behind this kind of marketing points to an ongoing trend that may be another casualty of a post-pandemic culture: Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur Marketing and Sales.
Check out the entire essay on Medium.