NEWS • 7 April 2016

Stop leading and stand out

As countless motivational memes remind us, every person is unique. When people work together, whether at a sprawling conglomerate or a start up, they create unique organisations. And yet when they need a line or two to describe what their organisations do, they invariably say it is a leader in its field.

Framing a company as a leader is a perfectly acceptable way of saying it is good at what it does, but if everyone else is doing the same thing it breaks one of the few hard rules of marketing: make it memorable.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you can write whatever you want on your website. It’s your platform. You control everything on it. You can use whichever words take your fancy. But websites don’t exist in a vacuum, everyone has one and they are all easily accessible. Anyone visiting your website will look at your competitors’ websites too. If it’s the same as the others, whether or not you are a leader in your sector you will not be seen as one.

If your creative output is the same as your competitors’, it is guaranteed to be forgettable. Most people wouldn’t dream of using the same photography as their peers. So why on earth do so many people use the same words in near identical sentences?

It’s time for website copy to stop leading and stand out.

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