The following is an excerpt from The 7 Keys to Marketing Genius by Michael Daehn

If you read this book, I will give you a million dollars! Not really, but I did get your attention. How do you feel right now? Cheated? Humiliated? Indifferent? Welcome to the world of manipulation. It amazes me how much people hate to be manipulated yet, given the opportunity, think it will work well on others. I had a student in class give a presentation of how he was going to tweak his advertising copy to essentially trick people into buying his product. I asked the class what they thought of his ideas and they thought it was a great idea. I then asked how many people would like to be tricked and would they continue to do business with a company like this? They changed their opinion quickly. It is astounding how quickly people who would not like these techniques used on them adopt these manipulative strategies when given the opportunity to do it to someone else.

A sound marketing strategy does not need nor condone manipulation. To have long-term, lasting success and strong relationships with customers, honesty is the best policy. To vary on the Golden Rule: market to others as you would have them market to you.