Yin and Yang and the Flowerpot Man
On the web everything is marketing and marketing is everything and, yet marketing is nothing and nothing is marketing.
That’s the kind of paradox that could make a Zen master wobble, but not understanding the basic truth in the paradox is a surefire way to make sure your web marketing will fail (and probably your web site, too).
Everything is marketing and marketing is everything
No other medium so completely combines marketing and message as the web. Web marketing exists even on non-commercial sites without advertising and no thoughts of selling anything. The site provides its own marketing. Your content, your visual design and even your code combine to provide a user experience that is, in itself, marketing. What’s inside becomes the public face, and the public face is always looking inward.
From the moment you conceive your website, your marketing has begun, and each decision you make affects how the site will ultimately fare.
Many people mistakenly believe that a great-looking website is the key. It’s not. Others believe that a great looking website that is marketed like mad will succeed. It probably won’t.
Still others believe that a great looking web site that works really well and is marketed like mad is sure to succeed – and it might. But then again, it might not.
Marketing is nothing, and nothing is marketing
What traditional marketers have never understood about the web — and continue to get massively wrong — is the intertwined nature of the marketing, the page and the web itself.
If everything about a site is a part of marketing, then methods that worked in other media are unlikely to translate well. The in-your-face message that trumpets out so effectively on radio and TV will do worse than fall flat on the web, it will actively alienate visitors.
Traditional marketing and hard sells are worse than useless on the web, they’re counter-productive.
People may come to your site for a lot of reasons — to gather information, to waste time, to be amused, to make a purchase, to learn — but one thing stands true. No one comes to your site to be sold to, even if they came to buy.
More to come…