Applying The Immutable Laws of Marketing in SEO, part 1

People have written classic books as recently as 1993 – amazing, eh? I thought the only worthwhile thing created that year was hypercolour t-shirts . The classic I’m referring to is a book called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, written by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It is aimed at marketers in general, but all of the concepts contained within are applicable to internet marketing. Today we are taking a selected look at the laws in a web marketing context.

The ‘First’ Laws

Ironically, the first laws in the book are all about ‘firstness’. Laws 1 through 3 are:

1. It is better to be first than it is to be better.
2. If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
3. It is better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.

In an SEO and web marketing context, one of the most important of this set is number 3 – it is better to be first in the mind than first in the marketplace. As concrete business advice, you can take this to mean “If your competitors are lagging behind in their SEO efforts, you’d better hop on your horse quick to take advantage of that!”. You can have competitors, not be the first in your niche and still succeed – if you see that little opening.

And if you take it a little more literally, you could say that it is better to be first (in the Google rankings) than it is to be better … and you’d have a highly profitable view of business on the web!

Battle of Perceptions

The law we are talking about here, number 4, is : Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions.

In the real world, it refers to the importance of brand-building. You should have a brand that is both recognizable and respected. In web marketing this is less important, because consumers are more apt to research and choose, than blindly brand-follow.

Yet, you should always focus on maintaining good perceptions of your business, as well as maintaining good products. If your website looks a little shonky, or you link out to bad neighborhoods, or your website is listed in dodgy directories, you lose in the battle of perceptions. SEO specialists can help determine exactly how those perceptions are best ‘massaged’.

By the way, we’ll be looking at more or less all of the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing in an SEO context over the coming weeks … so stay tuned!