As marketers, we tend to want to emulate the biggest and most successful businesses. Simply by mentioning that Apple, Best Buy, or Amazon, or whomever the aspirational brand might be does something a certain way, may be enough all the justification that we need to proceed with a certain course of action.

For example, my most recent e-mail from Apple contained all images and since my e-mail program automatically suppresses images, the e-mail was blank when I opened it.  Now, you could argue that because Apple is Apple and imagery is important to their brand, sending all-image HTML emails makes sense.  That might be the right decision for Apple, but unless you have big brand power, it probably doesn’t make sense for your company.

Certainly look at what other successful companies are doing and learn from their accomplishments, but don’t forget to take into consideration what assets they have that you don’t.  While intimidation might be the sincerest form of flattery, it may not always make the most business sense.

Snakes On A Plane, a movie starring Samuel Jackson, received a tremendous amount of buzz on the Internet, which raised expectations for what is certainly a “B” movie.  However, while opening #1 at the box office, the $15 million it brought in was considered a disappointment. 

In a recent post, Seth Godin made an astute observation about the whole Snakes on A Plane phenomenon.  Seth commented:

“I fear that people are missing a fundamental truth: just because people know who you are doesn’t mean they’re going to buy what you sell.”

In other words, building awareness is only part of the puzzle, you also have to have a desirable product or service.  This is an important yet often overlooked concept in both the offline and online worlds.

For example, marketers will obsess about keyword rankings on Google or Yahoo wanting to be ranked as close to the top as possible, but they don’t spend equal time thinking about the experience once the visitor clicks through to the website.  The same can be said for creative in e-mail campaigns and banner advertising. 

Does your link bring the visitor to page with content relating specifically to the keywords they were searching on?  Is the value proposition of your product or service clear?  Is your content scanable and is there a clear call-to-action?  Are you spending as much time looking at your logs to see what people do once they come to your site as you are reviewing your search rankings?