Why Buy The Cow When The Milk Is Free
Bill Floyd
Recently a couple of articles published on an industry association enewsletter gave a forum to some industry "experts" to tell distributors how easy it is to create compelling content. This of course speaks to their desired result of getting more repeat visitors and website stickiness. In many instances they offer Amazon as the model. To their {content DYI} premise my response is - poppycock!
No wonder many wholesalers are frustrated and confused. As they struggle to transition in today's "e" economy, they can now question why they haven't been savvy enough to do a few easy things and take on Amazon - the company that's taken down Borders, Barnes & Noble, and some of the largest, oldest, and most respected department store giants in the country. To tell distributors that it is simple to grab a camera and produce site-worthy content is laughable. In fact, it's darn hard to create good content. You need a plan and to know what you are doing.
Distributors carry hundreds of product lines. Are they really going to produce interesting, representative content for each line and their gazillions of products? Amazon does. Of course Amazon has enormous advantages:
My response to the newsletter article was Why Buy The Cow When The Milk Is Free. Would you insist on taking a shot at building your very first house if an experienced, professional builder offered to construct it for nothing? For almost 18 years now ElectricSmarts has been in the content business. Partner-Distributors get free, filterable new products, videos, catalogs, IDW data, application stories, e-learning modules and more. Manufacturers get their content re-purposed across hundreds of industry sites through a single hub contact. We have learned much and pioneered innovative e-strategies.
Simply put, if you don't have the enormous, expensive, and unending capability to compete in this area, don't bang your head against the wall. Find it elsewhere, borrow it, partner for it, or do whatever else it takes to make you competitive without going bankrupt. You need to get into this game and to move beyond "in-house" thinking. There's whole great big world out there. And, it's loaded with resources that are well beyond your core competency. Smart-simplicity isn’t doing it yourself. Smart-simplicity is picking up the phone and getting it done for you wherever you can.
Stay tuned for the next round of innovation from ElectricSmarts and NetPak.
To reply to this article or contact the writer bfloyd@electricsmarts.com
No wonder many wholesalers are frustrated and confused. As they struggle to transition in today's "e" economy, they can now question why they haven't been savvy enough to do a few easy things and take on Amazon - the company that's taken down Borders, Barnes & Noble, and some of the largest, oldest, and most respected department store giants in the country. To tell distributors that it is simple to grab a camera and produce site-worthy content is laughable. In fact, it's darn hard to create good content. You need a plan and to know what you are doing.
Distributors carry hundreds of product lines. Are they really going to produce interesting, representative content for each line and their gazillions of products? Amazon does. Of course Amazon has enormous advantages:
- They were about the first in this online sales space.
- They have huge amounts of cash.
- They have great expertise in creating product information.
- They have specific teams that focus on customer online behavior and how to satisfy it.
- They have technologists who look down the road and know what hardware/software will change product and information consumption and how to plan for it.
My response to the newsletter article was Why Buy The Cow When The Milk Is Free. Would you insist on taking a shot at building your very first house if an experienced, professional builder offered to construct it for nothing? For almost 18 years now ElectricSmarts has been in the content business. Partner-Distributors get free, filterable new products, videos, catalogs, IDW data, application stories, e-learning modules and more. Manufacturers get their content re-purposed across hundreds of industry sites through a single hub contact. We have learned much and pioneered innovative e-strategies.
Simply put, if you don't have the enormous, expensive, and unending capability to compete in this area, don't bang your head against the wall. Find it elsewhere, borrow it, partner for it, or do whatever else it takes to make you competitive without going bankrupt. You need to get into this game and to move beyond "in-house" thinking. There's whole great big world out there. And, it's loaded with resources that are well beyond your core competency. Smart-simplicity isn’t doing it yourself. Smart-simplicity is picking up the phone and getting it done for you wherever you can.
Stay tuned for the next round of innovation from ElectricSmarts and NetPak.
To reply to this article or contact the writer bfloyd@electricsmarts.com
