Can copywriting be ethical?
And if it is, is it even copywriting anymore?
I’ve asked myself this question a million times in the past few years because, let’s be real, most marketing is sleazy.
Yet, that doesn’t mean that it’s the only effective way to connect with the people who need and are actively seeking our services, products, magic, art, etc.
Hear me out…
A lot of advertising techniques have not aged well. And clearly, the emotional impulse buying we’ve all been trigger-happy with since the pandemic is not doing anyone any favors except for a few billionaires.
That’s why I was so grateful to come across The Ethical Move. It affirmed that I’m not crazy for imagining a world with digital marketing ethics. A place where people can promote themselves confidently and attract people not because of how tricky their language is but because of how resonant their message is with their ideal reader.
Shedding a light on the ethical issues in digital marketing for a new world
I believe changing how we market ourselves is an essential step toward a more just world. What if we lived in a world where we invest in things that actually enrich our lives rather than consuming things that we are told will fill the emotional void dug out by childhood trauma, societal pressures, etc.?
A world with a diverse marketplace of earth-friendly, heart-centered products and services that provide lasting value, connect us with like-minded communities and help us realize our life missions. Let’s call this world Ethical Digital Marketing Land™.
But to get there, we’ve got to get like The Tower and burn the systems that aren’t working.
We’ve got to get clear on what’s no longer serving the masses to make space for new ways of relating. That includes building new digital marketing ethics.
It’s time to reject outdated marketing norms
Manipulation was never cute, and the general public is increasingly aware of every marketing scheme under the sun. Still, we all take the bait every now and then.
We all have innate weaknesses that direct response marketers prey on to drive impulse buys. From page layout to language choice and email frequency, copywriters leverage consumer emotions in endless ways.
If you’ve always felt innately turned off by all that stuff because you are sensitive, empathic, and, dare I say, normal, I hear you.
Here’s my copywriting Burn Book (AKA what we’re not doing anymore):
#1. Using people’s insecurities to sell them stuff
In 2024, we’re not resorting to fear-based marketing. We’re better than that.
Some examples of how copywriters can lean into peoples’ insecurities:
- A skincare brand that promises to take years off your appearance and make you feel like you’re X years old again.
- A self-help coach that claims you’ll never be lonely again with the soul sisters you connect with in their monthly membership program.
- A digital marketing course that gives you FOMO with daily emails about how much money you’re forfeiting by not enrolling.
This has always been a huge red flag for me, but, like you, I am human. I have fallen for the psychological traps because we all have our soft spots. We’re all susceptible to the seductive promise of having our deepest insecurities washed away with a product, service, or miracle solution.
Don’t be that type of business. Be better.
Trust that your product or service offers a value that will sell itself. This doesn’t mean do nothing—rather, don’t do prescriptive things that some Joe Shmoe on the internet told you to do because it’s worked for 1,000,000 of his podcast subscribers.
It means creating a unique, authentic brand voice that makes your audience feel seen instead of trauma bonding and then selling them the solution.
#2. Creating a false sense of urgency
This is another iteration of fear-based marketing that is SO yesterday.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across businesses and service providers who have “X hours left for you to buy X thing at a discounted price,” only to come back in your inbox every other day that week to tell you about how they’ve extended their “exclusive limited-time sale.”
I’m never surprised when mega brands and corporations do this (I mean, Boxing Day is pretty much the entire month of December at this point), but when I see independent service providers engaging in this type of activity, it grinds my gears! It doesn’t have to bet his way!
Still, I’ve learned to approach this with a compassionate lens: We are all just doing what we’ve been shown “works” without questioning it. We mirror what we see “successful” brands doing in hopes of attaining material success without thinking about how we may be exploiting others for their own financial gain.
As someone who has worked some of the sleaziest sales jobs out there, I can confirm that this is a typical sales strategy that tricks people into buying something they don’t need. The perceived sense of urgency causes us to bypass our rational thinking and slip into a “survival mode,” where we buy things because of the emotional pressure and fear of losing out on the deal.
There’s no space for any of that in Ethical Digital Marketing Land™.
#3. Countdown Timers
Another very extreme example of fabricating urgency is made possible with the countdown timer that never seems to actually…count down. You’ll leave the page and come back the next day, and it will still have the same time left for the sale, even though it was supposed to end according to yesterday’s countdown timer.
Sure, sometimes these things actually countdown, but come on. Can we just shop in peace?
This is yet another way to activate that fight or flight response that tells us we should buy even though our rational mind may not consent.
If you genuinely care about your clients, don’t play time scarcity tricks on them.
#4. Straight-up deception.
Have you ever attended a free event that promised it would teach you how to write an NYT best-selling book, only to end up giving you super basic life coach-y information and convincing you that if you’re serious about this, you’re going to want to buy this $3000 course where you learn how to do the thing I just told you you would learn in the free thing?
I have. And Ethical Digital Marketing Land™ doesn’t approve of it.
It’s straight-up deception, folks. Whoever decided that tricking people and wasting their time is a marketing strategy needs a reality check.
And look, I’m not saying it’s wrong to create free offers to promote your paid offers. That’s wonderful. It’s generous. It gives people a taste of what it’s like to go all in with your products or services.
Just ensure you provide some value in your free offer instead of tricking your audience into an MLM presentation.
#5. Lead magnets that don’t deliver
This relates to the above point regarding tricking people by embellishing the value you’re offering them. Lead magnets are a wonderful tool for growing your subscriber list while sharing a little bit of your magic with the world.
However, we have to make sure that the value of our lead magnet matches the value of someone giving us access to their inbox on a regular basis. That means creating lead magnets that provide genuine value and marketing them according to their actual value.
There’s nothing worse than handing over your email for a guide that promises to tell you how to land clients NOW, and all you get is a 2-page PDF with some generic recycled advice you could have Googled or watched in a TikTok.
It’s simple: Make sure your lead magnet offers the value you would hope to get if you gave someone else your email, which brings me to my next point.
#6. Making it difficult to opt out of marketing/emails
Say you end up handing off your email in exchange for a really great free guide or workshop that was 100% worth it, but at the time, you didn’t realize you’d be signing up for a barrage of marketing emails in your inbox every day. Perhaps you were into it in the beginning, but now you’re over it.
You scroll to the bottom of the email to click the unsubscribe button, but it’s not there. Maybe it leads you to another page. Now you’re in your account settings fiddling around with notification alerts, and you’re pretty sure you unsubscribed.
Then, you receive another email the next morning. Sound familiar?
Of course, we all want our emails to get read and our products to get sold, but if you’re not giving your audience the agency to choose whether or not to receive your stuff, you’re doing yourself and your brand a huge disservice.
In the end, you’re better off losing a subscriber than building a reputation for yourself as an obnoxious email spammer.
#7. Pretending like you have the “secret sauce.”
Claiming to have the “key” or “the secret” or the “recipe for___” is honestly just kind of lazy. And yes, there are people who build entire empires off selling “The Secret” because it sounds enticing to the average human scraping by in a capitalist society. Who wouldn’t want a secret fix for money, health, happiness, and love?
But is this really ethical? And if there really was a “secret” to life, wouldn’t we all know by now? Logically, we understand this, but when combined with the other sleazy sales tactics mentioned above, our emotions take over, and we start handing our money over to people who may not truly have our best interests at heart.
So, how do we successfully share our products and services with the world in a way that’s both effective and compassionate? How can we create material abundance for ourselves without succumbing to these unethical copywriting tactics?
I’m so happy you asked.
Building Ethical Digital Marketing Land™ starts with a mindset shift:
I understand this may sound a bit “new age” to some folks, but hear me out—ethical copywriting means thinking less about scarcity and more about absolute trust in the goodness of the earth.
When I say trust in the goodness of the earth, I don’t mean just sitting around and thinking that everything will work out. I’m talking about making sure that every action you take in service of your business is aligned with absolute trust that your offer will reach the right people.
In fact, this is exactly what copywriting did before it became tainted with post-war propaganda and manipulation. This is how people communicated their offers to each other in pre-internet, pre-SEO times.
Seeing as AI is diluting our culture and markets, I think getting back to the basics of communication and our shared humanity is the most powerful way forward. As an intentional business owner, this is the way to future-proof your business, especially as more and more people are waking up to the sketchy underground happenings of the advertising world.
Redefining success is the soil for growing our Ethical Digital Marketing Land™
Capitalism has taught us that “success” results from exploitation, whether paying someone in a third-world country pennies to do your work for you and then cashing in on the profits or tricking people into buying your coaching course.
Once we acknowledge that this type of growth is unsustainable, we can commit to being better and trust that being our authentic selves is the best way forward. We can all win.
So, how can we, as small business owners and creatives, still get our products and services to the people who need them without being gross and cringe?
Let’s get into it.
5 ethical digital marketing tips
While I may not have the answers to solving the corrupt system that is modern-day advertising, I do know that we all have the individual agency to do our due diligence when it comes to sharing our work with the world.
After all, we’re just imperfect humans trying our best to survive in a system upheld by violence and exploitation.
Here are some of the ways that I make sure my clients’ copy is in alignment with their values:
1. Talk to your audience like they are humans, not subscribers/followers.
I know—groundbreaking, right? But in this day and age, it’s something that must be reiterated because a large majority of brands really just see you as a number on a spreadsheet that moves the gross profit margin line a few millimeters up or down.
Talk to your audience as if you were on a stage in a theatre, talking to an audience. That doesn’t mean that every email has to be a TED talk, but it does mean that you should put in the effort to really connect and show you genuinely care about them. Or else, why should they care about you?
And for the love of god, don’t just get AI to write your copy for you without even taking a look at it first. It’s becoming glaringly obvious when brands do this, and it’s a major turnoff!
2. Be realistic with the promises you make about your value.
There are so many ways to get people excited about your offerings without flat-out lying about what people can expect from their investments.
Whether you’re an ethical jewelry brand or a trauma therapist, I’m certain that there’s tangible value that clients have experienced. Talk about why YOU are the perfect person to offer the service or design the product and how your unique background has resulted in this thing that never existed before.
Fun copy tip: One of my favorite sources of inspiration for writing my clients’ copy is their testimonials. No one is better at telling you the impact you have on people than your past clients!
3. Be mindful of your audience’s time.
At this point, we all know that posting regularly is the best way to expand your reach on the internet, whether via blogs to your website or reels for your social media page. However, if you don’t have anything valuable, interesting, or inspiring to share with people, it’s better not to share at all.
This goes against the very individualistic rhetoric that capitalism thrives on, but thinking of others in every step of our process is the best way to ensure that we are building a strong foundation of integrity. I don’t know about you, but I have much more respect and trust in brands that post less regularly but are consistent in the value or inspiration they provide than the ones that have a consistent posting schedule but leave me feeling like I wasted my time swiping through their generic Canva carousel.
4. Be transparent. About what people will get out of your service and how you show up.
This is one of the best ways to build trust with people who you’ve never met before.
I personally love it when people talk openly about their experience, their pricing, and what previous customers have gained from their service. In a world where so many brands list “transparency” as a “value” on their mission page, it’s rare to actually find businesses and individuals who are willing to be open about who they are, what kind of experience they bring to the table, and how ethical their operations are.
Do they give back to the community in any tangible, non-performative ways? What type of educational or professional experience are they bringing to the table? Do they offer a price range before getting my email/contact information?
These are all good things to keep in mind to keep your copywriting as ethical as possible.
5. Ethical digital marketing means being compassionate with yourself, too.
Finally, be compassionate with yourself.
Don’t force the creative monster out of its cave by dragging it by its fluffy collar. Instead, design your creation schedule in a way that is sustainable for you, meaning that you only send out things that you are genuinely truly proud of.
If that means 2 super amazing, inspiring, well-researched blog posts a month, great! It’s better than 4 mediocre, half-baked pieces that end up in the digital graveyard of unread content.
If you simply don’t have the capacity to create anything, because you are so tied up with wearing all the other hats in your business, remember that you’re not alone! All you have to do is call on your neighborhood word witch to help you with any creative marketing and copy needs, ensuring that your business keeps running smoothly and connecting with your dream clients while staying true to your values.
Ethical digital marketing benefits everyone in the long run.
There is no room for exploitation in the revolution, which is what I wholeheartedly believe the world is going through right now.
Scamming people and playing with people’s psychology may make you the big bucks in the short run, but eventually, people will catch on, and it will diminish everything you’ve worked so hard to build.
Luckily, you can still create the abundant life of your dreams without looking like a goof. Ethical copywriting is here to stay, and I’m here to be your better marketing doula, angels.
If you’re dying to see how these digital ethical marketing techniques would look like on your website, blog, or weekly newsletter, hit me up! We’ll create a plan that helps you sprout like a sunflower seed in the spring.
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