Website Marketing: Think “sticky,” not “memorable”

Website marketing begins by creating a relationship, not a memory.

What’s wrong with asking for a memorable website?

After all, our advertising culture was founded on being memorable. Consumer psychologists tell us that icons like the Marlboro Man or the Coca-Cola bottle are as embedded in our minds as religious symbols in other cultures.

The problem is your visitors won’t view your website the way we used to look at ads for soft drinks and cigarettes.

We would see those ads every time we opened a magazine or watched a television show. We saw those ads on billboards. When I first began teaching Marketing 101, we said, “Your customer needs to see this image at least 5 times before they’ll notice.” Some research even said “7 times.” So we recommended buying ads that would place these images in front of potential customers 5 to 7 times.

Today it’s going to be difficult getting visitors to revisit your website even once.

They may not come back, even if they move on to become good clients. Instead, your website will motivate them…