Clicksand: How Online Marketing Will Destroy Your Business (and the Unlikely Secret to Saving It), Hardcover

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CLICKSAND exposes how the online marketing industry is destroying millions of businesses in a greedy money grab. From the largest companies such as Google, Facebook and Hubspot, to small agencies and consultants in every city and town, online marketers are convincing unsuspecting business owners that online marketing is a panacea that will solve all of their sales and marketing challenges. In reality, the businesses that fall for the ``pitch`` of online marketers are being lured onto the rocks of destruction by following a siren song of pitchmen who are more interested in making money than helping their clients. Industry veteran Bill Troy shows how the ``snake oil`` pitch works, why so many business owners are susceptible to its allure and how business owners can break out of the trance that online marketers have them in. Bill lays bare the tricks and hypocrisy of online marketers, showing how their sales pitches follow the same recipe used by patent medicine men in the 1800s, and how the ``data driven`` tools they tout are really built like casino gambling to encourage businesses to spend more. Small agencies and consultants flood local networking groups to build in-person relationships and the giant companies sign up local ``certified partners`` to represent their services. These ``partner`` programs are simply badly disguised commission sales positions (local ``partners`` must generate revenue for the parent company in order to maintain their partner status). CLICKSAND challenges the conventional ``group think`` mentality prevalent in business these days and takes on some of the most powerful forces in marketing today in an effort to help business owners avoid disaster.