Every time we go into a new industry we find everyone imitating what everyone else is doing. All Lawyer's websites look the same. Here in Tampa Bay, the big money is being spent by attorneys on billboards, Yellow Pages ads and TV. Why? Someone started doing it, and kept doing it, so people guess it must be working.

So is this a good idea, because that way you meet people's expectations, or because someone must know what they are doing?

Here's what Jay Abraham (one of the great marketing gurus of recent times) has to say on this point:

"When you limit your business to doing things the same way every other competitor of yours does, you can only produce modest, incremental gains -- at best. At worst, you could easily lose ground." (from "Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got".)

I agree. So it may be "safe", but is that good enough? If you are in trouble, or ambitious, the answer is no.

Be smart about it, but stand out from the crowd.

For successful marketing, you have to put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customers.

Look at things from where they sit. If you were them, what would you look at, what would you read, what would you believe?

What are your hopes, worries, concerns, dreams, problems?

What would reach you through the daily clutter of 3000 advertising messages, in the midst of already overwhelming demands on your time, in spite of all the past track of being burned on something that looked great?

What would make you stop and despite everything, say, "I'm going to check this out."

Answering that is the key to successful marketing.

Lacking that, even a huge marketing budget is no guarantee of success.

It's rant time.

We didn't win any Addy's this year, not even for our own website.

Now why is that?

Actual people, the clients and prospective clients you know, LOVE our website.

I get comments like "I didn't know there was anyone that good in Tampa Bay." I mean people just gush.

We get calls from people who have already decided, before talking to us, that we are doing their website.

The menu system of the website is unique without being confusing. The branding is impeccable.

Then there's the stats. The conversion ratio of our website - the percentage of visitors who then contact us - is so high I hesitate to say it as unbelievable.

So then, what's wrong with our website as far as the judges are concerned? There's really only one answer. It fails to satisfy some arbitrary, and I might add, FADDISH standard of creativity.

Phooey.

Oh, we'll keep submitting for awards. They give great credibility with a lot of people. But the real award - and the best judge - is the positive effects for our clients, and the testimonials they write about our work and results.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

Green may be the most varied and versatile of colors.

From an ethereal pale translucent green, to nauseating "puke green", to lush Emerald Green - you can say almost anything with green.

It's the color of growth, health, of vegetables and moldy bread.

And it's the color of money. And shallow water.

"Turning green" can mean you're envious, sea sick, becoming environmentally conscious.

And don't forget Green Eggs and Ham.

What can Green do for You?

Over the years other factors have increased in importance - and it was never the all-encompassing factor many thought it to be - to a point where best estimates are it is now about 20% of what goes into search engine rankings.

And here's the latest in confirmation of that, from Peter Norvig, Google's Director of Research.

As described in Web Pro News,

Norvig said at SMX today that PageRank is still one thing that is "overhyped," and that Google never felt that it was such a big factor. They have always looked at all available data, combining every available signal and trying to figure out the best way to combine them.

Got it?

A Life magazine cover by Cole Phillips, from 1910, and, I might add, simply a stunning work of art:

Can you measure the results of marketing? Should you?

One would think this would be settled by now. How can anyone reasonably argue that the use of statistics to measure the effectiveness of marketing is a bad thing?

And yet, people still write and publish articles to that effect.

Why Metrics Are Killing Creativity in Advertising

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

So how cloudy is YOUR crystal ball?

It possesses the seemingly magical ability to interpret searchers' requests no matter how awkward or misspelled. Google refers to that ability as search quality, and for years the company has closely guarded the process by which it delivers such accurate results.

That's a controversial subject.

That if you tell the truth you can't get people's attention and you'll never get the business.

Now I'm not opposed to idealizing things or putting your best foot forward.

I'm violently opposed to lying, deception or trickery.

So far as I'm concerned someone who says you have to do that is just advertising their own incompetence.

It takes marketing skill to effectively promote what you have to sell.

If your product isn't good enough to be truthful about, you need to improve your product.

Don't you agree?

White is the most vanilla of colors. But, like vanilla ice cream, it has its variations.

White is a tool to set off and show colors to their best advantage. Designers speak of the importance of "white space", the unused blank space that surrounds and helps give value to your featured design elements.

A Picasso on a blank wall is more noticed than a Picasso on a wall with 20 other paintings.

But let's speak of variations. Here are just a few names for shades of "off-white", those pale tones that are distinguishable often only in contrast to one another or to plain white. Yet these shades add flavor and emotion to the overall design. And this is without even getting into all the slightly darker shades, such as variations of beige or light gray!

Cream
Oyster
Pearl
Ivory
Alabaster
Skimmed-Milk
Bone
Eggshell

(Fascinating how most of these are biological in origin.)

White is mostly something we don't see. How about for a change looking at it? There's a depth and richness to be found there.

I was reminded of this when meeting with a businessman who was interested in an effective national Internet Marketing campaign for one of his product lines. It was a very realistic ambition, and he had the budget to do it.

What he didn't have was a realistic way of dealing with the influx of business that was going to result.

I've seen this more than once when a prospective client gets close to signing onto one of our programs, and is suddenly confronted with the thought: "What if this works?"

It's easy simply to have vague ambitions of building a billion dollar business or a million dollar retirement fund.

If you're serious about it, you need to take it to the nuts and bolts.

How big do you want to get? And how fast? is the nature of the first questions to ask.

Then, if you're really serious about it, you have to work out how realistically to get there from where you are.

Again, you can't base it on some vague dream of an investor with enough money to get it done.

I guess what I'm trying to say is pretty simple: "Folks, Get Real!"