The question sounds so simple that the answer should always be yes.

After all, if you promised to do something in real life, there’s a good chance you’d either do what you promised or you’d feel so guilty about not doing so that you’d either work away until you delivered on your promise or you’d grovel and apologise to the person you’d let down.

But so often things online don’t live up to the original promise. And there appears to be no guilt or remorse.

I was recently on a 90 webinar from a UK marketer who I’d previously thought was OK.

I’ve even spent money attending their courses.

So when I was sent an email promising a live training webinar I thought it would be worth attending.

Sure, I was expecting a pitch.

But not the amount of pitching that it turned out to have.

He announced at the start that it was going to be a 90 minute webinar.

Then he spent the first 40 minutes introducing things and pitching the event that it was promoting.

Oh and during that first part he went off to get a glass of water because he hadn’t even bothered to prepare to the extent of making sure he’d got a glass next to him before the webinar started.

Hmm.

No mention of the webinar being two thirds sales pitch from someone who didn’t care enough to be prepared in the sign-up email.

But he kept promising lots of golden nuggets, so I kept half-listening whilst browsing other things.

Eventually, the “information” arrived.

Five bullet points that he quickly listed and then claimed he was going to expand on.

Well, that was half right.

He did list them.

And he did kind-of expand on them for about 4 or 5 minutes each but with no real detail or examples. A thinly disguised sales pitch really.

Then the remaining 30 minutes or so was pitch for the live event again.

Which means he’s gone down in my opinion – a long way down.

And it means I’m unlikely to buy anything from him again.

Or attend another webinar because I’ll be expecting it to be just a pitch fest,

I’d have been happy with the usual 10 to 15 minutes of effectively talking about the weather whilst people joined, followed by about 40 to 50 minutes of real information and then 10 to 15 minutes of pitch.

But the sandwich was inside out and the content got lost behind the “you have to attend my live event, it’s the best thing you’ll ever do” pitch.

Especially since the live event was a 3 day event that was going to be the lead up to a longer, more intense, more expensive event.

Which put a big question in my mind as to whether the 3 day event would be equally light on information with a massive pitch for the longer event.

If you’re consciously or unconsciously doing that to your readers and subscribers – whether it’s via a webinar or your website or your email list or your reports and videos – then the same questions will be running through the minds of your potential customers.

Maybe they won’t be as up-front about it as I’ve been here. Although I’ve not told the person directly and I’ve deliberately not mentioned their name here so I’m not being very open about who was responsible.

More likely your potential customers will just mutter under their breath, possibly unsubscribe, probably read less of your emails and generally file you in their mind as being full of promises but not delivering.

Which is closer to what I’m doing with this person.

It’s very easy online to ignore someone or remove them from your life completely.

You unsubscribe from their list.

Or, much more likely, you just delete their emails without a second glance because it’s easier to do that than to click the unsubscribe link.

So you may never know why people aren’t responding or buying via you.

Go back through all your current things – use your stats or analytics to help with priorities – and read or listen or watch as though you were a new customer.

Would you be impressed?

Or would you be put off?

Then adjust accordingly.

It may be a pleasant, uplifting exercise.

Or it could be an eye opener.

I’m sure if the person pitching watched the webinar replay as though they were an attendee they’d be shocked.

Or at least I hope they’d be shocked.

But maybe not.

Maybe they’re just too focused on the money and not the results their customers get.

But it’s the tip of the iceberg – take your eye off the customers for too long and they’ll vote with their feet (ask Tesco about doing that here in the UK) and you won’t have a business.

It would have been very easy for the webinar to be mostly content.

My gut reaction is that it would have got more sales – I was taught by Ken McCarthy to give as much information as possible away in sales letters because it people got value and felt they’d get even more value from the full product.

That works.

And it also works in reverse as you can tell from this rant!

If you’ve got any thoughts on this that you’d like to share (just don’t mention names please) then please use the comments box below or drop me a message.