I wrote this arti­cle way back in 1998. It seems to have made a resur­gence, espe­cially with today’s econ­omy. So I said to myself, “Why not repub­lish it?” So here it is. Enjoy!

If there is some­thing about which I’m pretty adamant, it’s the idea of attract­ing qual­i­fied prospects who are will­ing to do busi­ness with you. And this involves many dif­fer­ent things.

Posi­tion­ing is one of them. In fact, it has been one of my favorite mar­ket­ing con­cepts for this very reason.

How­ever, this fun­da­men­tal mag­net­ism is not only based on pure mar­ket­ing prac­tices or strate­gies. It also involves some­thing at a much deeper level that is far more effec­tive than any other mar­ket­ing tool or process in existence.

This “thing” to which I am refer­ring is, I believe, the most impor­tant mar­ket­ing secret I can ever teach you — and it’s far from being a secret at all. It is con­sid­ered as one sim­ply because it is often neglected or ignored by many mar­keters and businesspeople.

What is this “secret” that’s so elusive?

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I love social media. And I love try­ing and test­ing new stuff. If there’s some new social media tool, web­site, or com­mu­nity, I’ll be one of the first ones to try it out.

But there is a limit. And I think we need to be care­ful. Because social media is like a drug. It can become dan­ger­ously addic­tive. It can even kill your business.

Social media seems to be the cur­rent fad. Everybody’s in on it like it’s one big cock­tail party you just don’t want to leave.

But the way social media is cur­rently being touted, hyped up, and used (or should I say, abused), is rem­i­nis­cent of some­thing that hap­pened way back in the 90s.

(I’ll come back to this in a moment.)

Yes­ter­day, I watched a bril­liant video by Loren Feld­man. Feld­man has a tell-​​it-​​like-​​it-​​is style. While he may be blunt and use strong lan­guage to voice his opin­ion, he is never afraid to voice it. Regard­less of what I think of his style, his video res­onated with me.

In it, he drove home an impor­tant point. I believe what he talked about is not only right, but also some­thing we need to real­ize and become wise about before we need­lessly kill our busi­nesses. And that’s ignor­ing the most impor­tant place on the web…

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So what exactly is Web 2.0? I’m not an ana­lyst or some dot­com pun­dit. But being online since 1991 (or since 1982 if you con­sider bul­letin board ser­vices), I’ve wit­nessed enough to have a good grasp of what’s going on.

So here’s my perspective.

At the dawn of the Inter­net the web was pri­mar­ily a uni­di­rec­tional, one-​​way com­mu­ni­ca­tions process. The web was com­prised mostly of sta­tic web pages, filled with hyper­text and links. It was akin to the direct mail indus­try, only this time it was served up on a com­puter mon­i­tor rather than on a piece of paper.

In fact, web pages that worked the best, espe­cially in a direct mar­ket­ing con­text, were ads and saleslet­ters that closely mim­ic­ked the long-​​copy print saleslet­ters we often get in the mail.

For many years and until recently, this was true.

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The next ques­tion is, what does Web 2.0 have to do with saleslet­ters, if any­thing? And how does it affect them? For mar­keters, Web 2.0 presents a num­ber of new oppor­tu­ni­ties and avenues that allow more interaction.

More specif­i­cally, tools cre­ated by Web 2.0 can help to not only human­ize but also mag­ne­tize a web­site, which, in turn, gives mar­keters the abil­ity to cre­ate bet­ter rela­tion­ships with prospects, and sup­plies them with bet­ter tools to offer more proof, com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively and develop that trust they so seek.

In terms of mar­ket­ing, it can lever­age a viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign by cre­at­ing a cer­tain buzz about the busi­ness, which can enhance a website’s traf­fic, expo­sure, stick­i­ness and, to some degree, believability.

But in terms of saleslet­ters specif­i­cally, which is what I really want to focus on, it can serve up a sales mes­sage in the way the user wants, not how the busi­ness behind it wants or thinks their users want.

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Nowa­days, it’s no longer a choice between the A and B piles. It’s no longer a choice between hun­dreds of sta­tions or chan­nels. It’s a choice between mil­lions if not bil­lions of options called “websites.”

But there’s some­thing else.

The Inter­net has mul­ti­plied not only the num­ber of options but also the num­ber of choices, too! (If you want a hint, think of those choices as “applications.”)

From mil­lions of web pages (as opposed to just hun­dreds of direct mail pieces, TV chan­nels or radio sta­tions), to var­i­ous deliv­ery meth­ods for each one (e.g., text, audio and video), to addi­tional appli­ca­tions that equally demand atten­tion (on the web as well as on a com­puter desk­top), a user’s choices have there­fore become expo­nen­tially more complex.

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“The truly impor­tant events… are not the trends. They are changes in the trends.”
— Peter Drucker

First, my thoughts on the whole Web 2.0 “social” craze: web­sites that offer social inter­ac­tion, such as MySpace, Squidoo, del​.icio​.us, YouTube, Digg, blogs, dis­cus­sion boards and so forth, do not affect saleslet­ters directly.

Fact is, they are sim­ply tools that help peo­ple to orga­nize, sim­plify and opti­mize their brows­ing expe­ri­ence (and not nec­es­sar­ily their buy­ing expe­ri­ence). I’m not try­ing to dis­count them. Not at all. They can be very use­ful in brand­ing, estab­lish­ing cred­i­bil­ity, dri­ving traf­fic, mar­ket­ing, offer­ing social proof and more.

But how are they use­ful when it comes to copy­writ­ing? Here’s the thing:

See how peo­ple use these ser­vices, and what they pull from them. Watch how they inter­act with oth­ers. You can learn a heck of a lot from sim­ply see­ing what’s pop­u­lar out there, and why those tools are so pop­u­lar. Because, the bot­tom line is, it all comes down to that fun­da­men­tal denom­i­na­tor that per­vades all mar­kets, all saleslet­ters, and all “web ver­sions.” It’s…

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With “user-​​driven copy,” the fact is, peo­ple can choose what they want, how they want it and when they want it. And that is what’s work­ing really well right now, not because it’s new but because it’s natural.

The pro­gres­sion of the web (regard­less if you call it Web 2.0 or not) is sim­ply an exten­sion of how peo­ple behave. Busi­nesses and web­sites are finally wak­ing up. And they’re giv­ing their users what they want, ask for and prefer.

Here’s an example.

In Web 1.0, we were lim­ited by text, graph­ics and links. When cook­ies came along, they helped to cus­tomize the user’s expe­ri­ence to a degree. But cook­ies are still lim­it­ing. They are sta­tic in nature, require more pageviews to make them use­ful if at all, and as we all know carry risks such as pri­vacy and secu­rity issues.

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