If you’ve ever been involved with a start-up, you know the paranoia you feel with respect to competition – especially if you’re trying to live up to your business plan’s claim of the “first mover advantage.” Multiply the anxiety if, heaven forbid, your competition is a large and well-established company.

Here and now, I’m going to challenge the idea that competition is more bad than good for innovators and start-ups – and while I’m at it, I think I’ll dispute the notion that a first mover advantage is necessarily a good thing.

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Today, the Martin Agency (Richmond, VA) learned that it won the Walmart account - probably the largest advertising engagement in the country.  Congratulations to an amazing agency!

Surround yourself with smart people, and you can’t help but get a little smarter yourself.  I participated in a conference call between a couple of Web marketing experts last week – Shell Harris and Alyssa Duvall (President and VP of Strategy for Virginia SEO firm, Big Oak) and Howard Kaplan, one of the big wigs at Future Now (the thought leaders in online conversion).

It was a simple revelation, but one well worth sharing here. The problem that most of refer to simply as Web conversion, “I want to increase my site’s conversion rate,” is actually a symptom of two separate and distinct issues. What are those issues you ask???

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