For whatever reason, I seem to be running into people lately who are unhappy with their Internet marketing results. They’ve been trying a lot of things, but they are getting tired. They tell me that “a small business can’t break into the game anymore” or “my industry has already picked the winners and losers” or some other rationalization that explains why they can’t change their company’s trajectory. I think they are wrong.
I’m not saying it’s easy to increase your site’s popularity. I’m just saying it’s possible. (Remember, too, that popularity is rarely the end goal—you want to increase your sales.)
It is undeniably true that it is harder to enter the market on the Internet than it was just a few years ago. Just as in any other maturing tactic, as more people start to do it, it becomes harder to stand out. Where a little work in 2002 got you noticed, you might need to do a lot more work now.
But it’s still possible. Yes, companies are much more entrenched at the top of your industry now, but you can dislodge them. Look at what Progressive has been doing in the insurance industry. They have an interesting and different take on what customer-friendly means: showing quotes from other companies—and they’ve used that to get attention they’d have never gotten with a more traditional message.
To rise above the clutter, you need more than tactics. You need to be different. Let’s look at where the competition is the toughest to prove the point: at the very top, at the most popular sites on the Internet.
Matt Tatham of Hitwise kindly provided these numbers to me. Look them over and see if you notice something. Who broke through in 2006?
Looks like MySpace. Why did they break through when others did not? Because they were doing something very different. Social networking was a powerful way to break through the clutter and get noticed. Suppose we compare 2006 to 2007? What do we see then?
This time it’s Facebook. They didn’t have a radically new idea from MySpace, but they have begun to execute it better. Both of these companies broke through in the most competitive arena possible.
Your company can break through in the less competitive bounds of your industry. Start thinking about how you can act differently than the competition or execute better. Tell a better story and follow through. There’s always a way to stand out, and it’s usually not about marketing tactics. It’s about being different, like Seth Godin’s Purple Cow.
