But this new landscape introduces a new problem. Or
rather, reintroduces an old problem: how to differentiate yourself and win business over
your competition.
Consider a local music store called Armand??™s. They compete with the downtown mall shop
and another record store a few blocks away. Their biggest problem came when the competitor
marked his 12-inch singles down to $5.99 and theirs were still $6.99. Despite this,
business remained strong because everyone knew Armand??™s name, where they were
located, and the variety of the merchandise, and the helpfulness of the staff.
By contrast, an online shop has thousands of competitors, all lined up on the same
???street,??? each with relatively equal pricing and selections. The Internet flips the archetype
of the brick-and-mortar store. The new twist on the age-old problem turns out to be
deceivingly simple??”to succeed on the Web, you must be found in the first place.
Old paradigm: the phone book. New paradigm: search engines. Google, Yahoo, and MSN
have supplanted the slabs of dead trees thrown on our doorstep every six months, and
their information is a hundred-fold deeper and updated every second of every day.
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