subject: Ethics In Internet Marketing [print this page] Your actions on the World Wide Web are a direct reflection of what your business stands for offline. Your standards in ethics effect various aspects of your business including your good will, brand image and consequently sales and customer loyalty.
It is important to make sure that your brand is well represented on the internet as much as it is in person and on the phone. While you design your internet marketing strategies, consider the following
1. Are my B2C and B2B marketing initiatives ethical in nature?
2. Are there any governing laws when it comes to internet ethics?
3. Am I abiding by all of them?
4. Is my website perceived to be trustworthy by my target audience?
As a web developer, designer or content writer, there are some of ethical issues that need to be strongly considered
1. Copywriting for Brands
The content that you create and publish on the internet will play a significant role in how a brand is perceived by your target audience. Writing negative or defamatory articles about competitors, other industries, websites or blogs is not only unethical in nature, but can also lead to legal pursuits against your favour.
Be very careful about what you publish on your website, blogs and social media pages. It is one thing to use these platforms to communicate personal thoughts, ideas and information about ones own product or service but an entirely other thing to bring down other brands to shed the so called positive light on yours.
2. Black Hat Versus White Hat SEO
While one may see no major harm in certain SEO practices, exploiting the system by keyword stuffing and other immoral activities can cost you your brand image and bottom line in the long run.
With internet users becoming more and more search savvy, one cannot simply take them for fools and push irrelevant content on the web for the sake of attracting visitors to ones pages. Additionally, search engine technology is also evolving into something much more sophisticated which ensures that website rankings are as accurate as possible.
3. Ownership of Intellectual Property
With information being a lot more freely available on the internet, intellectual property tends to get exploited day in and day out. It is important to ensure complete protection of trade secrets and confidential business information while implementing internet based marketing strategies. Be completely aware of all the vulnerable areas and try to set up robust systems to ensure that you written words, images, videos etc that need not be shared with the public remain to be that way.
Things such as email correspondences with existing and potential customers, quotations etc. should be protected to maintain the integrity of the business.
Ethics in E-Commerce
Additionally, e-commerce businesses also have their own set of challenges with it comes to ethics in conducting business online. Issues such as Electronic copyright, credit / cash policies, international trade policies, privacy of client information, security, etc are just a few of the many facets that need to be considered.
The crux of it all is that irrespective of your role in the entire gamut of online business and marketing exercises, it is up to you maintain honesty, trust and faith with your audiences to ensure long term sustainability.
