Online Businesses and Internet Marketing

Rule 9.
Look To the Words, Keep the Idea


There is a difference between messages and copy. A message is an idea or concept that you communicate to a target audience through a variety of activities. Copy is the articulation of the message for a specific activity.

Copy can and should change frequently. Messages should not. Copy should reflect current industry trends, cultural icons and social phenomena. Messages should focus on a single core idea. This may sound like a contradiction, but in fact it is an important distinction. The core idea your company or product stands for is fundamental to your business strategy. Therefore, shifting this message should be considered in the same league as shifting your business strategy.

Unfortunately, sometimes you get bored with your messages. You spend hours fine-tuning and testing them. Finally, by the time your campaigns launch and the message is out there, it feels old and stale to you. But you have to remember that your customers are just beginning to see the messages and that it takes a while for them to get through. Even though you're bored, your customers are not. They need to see your messages over and over again for them to register. Not necessarily the same words, but the same idea supported by the same brand.

You wouldn't change business strategies just because you're bored, yet marketers change their messages all the time to their detriment. You want to keep the message fresh and alive by changing the copy. This means using unusual language, a clever play on words, or a connection to a current event in your copy that adds life to a message while giving it some "staying power."

Your goal is Make your copy memorable, interesting, and quotable. People can remember It .To becomes a commonly- used phrase that people begin to use in everyday life, and make it always in your mind.

Rule 10.
Involve Your Customers In and They Will Understand


Confucius said "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I'll remember. Involve me and I'll understand." He was a brilliant guy.

There are basically three ways your potential customers learn about your business:

• They hear one of your messages directly.
• They are told about an experience someone else had.
• They have an experience with your company.

Your message and the experiences you create are the common threads that tie these three things together. Think about it. As a consumer of stuff don't you appreciate it when you get to experience something first hand before buying it? Why wouldn't your customers - business and consumer - appreciate the same thing?

Involve your customers in a dialogue. Show them your products, your facilities and your people. Pull them in to something that matters to them and they will understand (and remember).

Rule 11.
Lead the Crowd and Be Different


Differentiators are, by definition, those things that make your company, product or service different. Today in high-tech industries, technology at a product level is usually only a short-term differentiator. In consumer markets things like product design or brand image can be very compelling differentiators.

Differentiation is the way you go about separating your product from the crowd so it is more attractive to your potential customers. Not only do you need to differentiate your product from the competition, but also from your other products that might serve a similar need. The objective is to create a position for your product (or company) that others perceive as unique.

Quality can be a powerful differentiator but only in markets where quality is a really powerful customer desire like Medical equipment, it's heavily reliant on both product quality and brand image. quality ingredients are important factors to some consumers.

Promotional activities and incentives can also serve to differentiate products. These tactics tend to have a very short-term impact on sales figures - purchases pick up when there is a promotion or special. Then as soon as the promotion is over, purchase rates go back to their former levels. Not a bad thing, but you need to understand the dynamics of promotions in order to use them as a differentiator.

Where do you start? What do you do to actually differentiate your products? Well, you can start by summarizing what you know about your customer's problems, challenges, needs and fears. Follow that with a short description of how your product addresses what your customer needs and how it makes their life better. Map this against your customers' alternatives - the competition. This is where you find your real differentiators. They are often not technological, but rather business differentiators like service, quality, efficiency, relationships, and so on.

If nothing jumps out at you, then you have an interesting piece of information. Look beyond the basics. Look for opportunities "outside the box" and you might be surprised by what you find.


see you soon with more new rules.