This advice pretty much goes for any type of marketing today; it’s a fair estimate that no matter who your target audience is, they’re stressed out and over stimulated. The advice is especially useful for – believe it or not – website usability.

When designing a website, it’s a common recommendation to maintain certain conventions:

• A log in box is in the upper right.
• The logo is in the upper left.
• Privacy policies and terms and conditions are in the footer.
• A shopping cart icon takes you to a page where you see the items you’ve decided to buy.
• A magnifying glass denotes site search.

Of course, if everyone maintained every convention, websites would get stale quickly. Other than color changes and imagery, you wouldn’t recognize one site from another.

Some conventions go for anyone – like the shopping cart and search. But sometimes, the conventions for an industry are nothing more than “the way we’ve always done things”. And in most of these cases, this way isn’t a good one.
Just because your audience is accustomed to something doesn’t mean they like it. It just means they don’t have an alternative.

Wouldn’t it be great to be the first alternative? The breath of fresh air for an audience who’s been oppressed by boring, difficult to navigate websites for years?

Of course it would be great. But how do you do it?

Don’t look to your industry – often the people who have been and are doing it wrong. Look to the other places your audience hangs out online.

Your audience doesn’t exist in a vacuum, with interest only in your services.  If you’re a law firm, your clients do more than look for a lawyer. If you’re a family lawyer, you can bet your clients have families. What other kinds of sites do people with families visit? School or educational sites? Sites for kids’ clothing or food?

Find the best sites in industries with which your target audience is involved, and take a cue from them. Borrow these conventions for a site that will delight your visitors.

Earlier this month, GM provided a wonderful real world (versus world wide web) example of borrowing conventions from other industries.

With such a diverse audience, the connection is simple: people who shop for vehicles also shop for other things. And when we shop, most often, we can return what we buy. This no-strings-attached feeling makes the decision to buy much less stressful.

New shoes. Not sure if you want them? Take them home. Walk around in them. Don’t want them anymore? Simply bring them back, and they’re out of your life forever.

So, GM decided to offer the same thing for their vehicles: returns.
Their “May the Best Car Win” campaign offers a 60-day money-back guarantee on all new vehicles. (There are a few requirements. Read more about the campaign here.)

Only time will tell if this tactic will pull GM out of the dire situations they’ve found themselves in over the past few months. But one thing’s for sure – it’s gotten them some attention.  Just after its launch, news shows featured the campaign. A Google news search for “GM 60 day money back guarantee” brings up over 1,000 results, all of which seem to accurately reference the campaign.

GM may not have made all the right decisions, but I think this campaign is a great reminder for marketing anywhere. An age old convention for one industry is a revolutionary plan for another.

Of course, this example is an extreme. But sometimes, after getting absorbed in some intense competitor research, we might find ourselves a bit closer to this scenario than we’d like.

No, we’re not going to blatantly rip off a brand name like Coke. But what about “borrowing” just one piece of a competitors’ overall strategy?

Just about every company that bottles beverages has offered the prize on the cap promotion. Who did this promotion first? Did the company that followed put their own spin on it?

With a lot of creative work – marketing or otherwise – we don’t always want to reinvent the wheel. If everyone had to come up with completely original ideas all the time, creative projects would take a lot more time – and be a lot more frustrating.

If a strategy was successful for a competitor, it’s clear they were on to something. If we reuse that something, though, will our customers realize it? If they do, will it impact us negatively?

How much of our own flavor do we need to add to a marketing idea to avoid the risk of being labeled as a cheap knock off…or worse, a joke? Just how much do we need to reinvent the wheel?