User Experience Marketing Manifesto
The following is an excerpt from my blog post, User Experience Marketing Manifesto. Full article available here.
Content is not king
Content is King is another meaningless slogan that is taken for truth. I am guilty of saying it. But no more. Here is why: My focus has changed.
Consider the top internet companies by market capitalization. They number Google, Alibaba, Facebook, eBay, Priceline, Saleforce and Netflix. None of them are in the content business. Now ask yourself this: If content is king, how come the top Internet businesses sites are not in the content business? What about Netflix? You think that’s content you are paying a monthly subscription for? Or is it convenience? Netflix is not in the content business. They are in the convenience business. Anyone can provide content but nobody delivers convenience the way Netflix does. That’s because their focus is and always has been the user experience. Convenience, the user experience, is why customers pay Netflix.
If Netflix had followed the Content is King strategy it would have been Blockbuster. For all the lip service Blockbuster gave to convenience, Blockbuster’s true focus was content and lots of it. Their walls were lined with the latest releases. That’s not the only thing long at Blockbuster. Their lines rivaled Disneyland. If I could have back all the minutes I wasted standing in line at Blockbuster I’d take a year off to visit Hawaii.
What does the beast require?
Answer this question and you will approach Internet Marketing in a manner that largely sidesteps concerns about Panda. You will have little to nothing to worry about Penguin. Here is another word I like: Pragmatic. Pragmatic means to accomplish something in a sensible manner. No theories. No hypotheses. Just getting it on. And getting it done. So what is Google feeding on? What is the formula that underlies the algorithmic decisions that Google makes? Understand this and you have a set of keys.
Here is the key. Google’s number one philosophical foundation for everything they do, including the algorithm, is this:
“Focus on the user and all else will follow.”
Google then explains:
“Since the beginning, we’ve focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we’re designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line.”
User experience as a marketing tactic
I cannot understate the importance of understanding that the user experience underlies many of Google’s important decisions related to it’s algorithm. Continue reading full article.