If you own a small business in a very competitive industry or if you market on the Internet then obviously you have seen quite a bit of marketing copycats in your industry. It seems that it is almost to the point that over 90% of all the marketing on the Internet in each marketing sector is completely the same. In fact, it is often so similar it is hard to tell which company is which. Recently, a couple of marketing for theorists had decided that if 97% of all the marketing on the Internet is exactly the same, then the 3% who are the innovators will stand out by quite a lot. Indeed this may be true. The 3% does will show up as unique simply because of all the copycats. I wonder how the top Internet marketing entrepreneurs deal with this on their web sites. After all, every time they do something every other online site tries to copy them. After 27 years in business I can tell you that it use to drive me nuts, but we out innovated everyone and it got to the point we were modifying our marketing every month in our company. As soon as you produce something and the word gets around, everyone copies you. On the Internet where your competitors surf your site daily, it is a wonder how you can tell sometimes who was the originator of an idea or marketing plan. Perhaps on the Internet the game is played at a much higher speed like a video game and you have to constantly be changing your web site and your marketing to stay ahead of the competition and out innovate them. Philosophically and theoretically speaking this might even cause problems for customers who visit your web site one day to find something and then come back later after deciding to purchase it and your web site has changed. Interesting subject. Please consider this a 2006. |
