Differentiate

Want to bring your company marketing meeting to a screeching halt? Just ask these three simple questions:

1)      Who are you?
2)      What do you do?
3)      Why should I care?

Unless someone comes up with some compelling answers to all three questions, meaning that you and the customers find them irresistible, your company is lacking some raison d’etre.  If someone did have compelling answers to all three, by all means – don’t waste time and money hiring me!

Together, these three little questions provide the underlying principle of what makes your company different, what gives your company its raison d’etre. Now, how do you correlate this underlying principle to Online Marketing stipulations? Simple, lets rephrase the questions:

1)      What is this website?
2)      What does this website do?
3)      Why should I spend 5 sec on this website?

Unless your website has some definitive answers (brand) or irresistible answers (products), it is plausible that your visitors will leave your website and head over to your competitor. This is why you and your company need to understands differentiation. Sight (website visualization) differentiation, touch (website navigation) differentiation, taste (website theme style) differentiation, all must be taken into consideration when building your website.

Human cognitive system acts as a filter to protect us from the vast amount of irrelevant information that surrounds us every day. Multiple the irrelevancy by 10x and add Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) – Squirrel!!!  to the equation and you have the Online Marketing Industry. To keep your website from drowning in triviality, you must build your website to set apart from the rest. Only then they (consumers) can learn to tell things apart, compare to earlier experiences, and put it into a category. Thus they can differentiate between a dog and a cat, importance and triviality, or a sale conversion and a missed opportunity.