Macro Trend 3: Its About Distribution Not Destination
Once upon a time the idea was to build something and people would come.
Better still, building something that people were forced to come to, ensured the idea was realised.
The original AOL model essentially charged people for using the internet, then mobile portals offered limited services and stung you for anything you chose to do outside of the walled garden.
Running these ideas past the younger generation rewards you with incredulity. How could companies even dream of forcing people to do things?
However – creating a singular destination and then ‘driving traffic’ – or worse – ‘gaining eyeballs’, was a priority.
The most advanced practitioners would then append the desire for a ‘click’ from such traffic. The volume of traffic and numbers of clicks was pretty much the essence of online media.
Once upon a time.
Then, citizens who embrace freedom like a fish to water, found ways of escaping forced environments and accessing things they valued through a variety of means. The effect of which meant that a singular destination was only as successful as the traffic and clicks in one place, whilst the people of the world travelled to many places on various machines and screens.
Once the main thing was destination and now the main thing is distribution.
Creating ways of accessing value via alternative means, enables people to get what they want, when they want.
Singular destinations don’t need to die – but multiple destinations or pathways need to be created.
One of our clients wanted to increase their e-commerce sales and upon inspection, I found they depended solely on traffic to their website to do this.
We created a number of online stores on various platforms and unsurprisingly the sales accelerated.
Another past client, with explicit knowledge and (I thought) understanding of this case study, decided that it was too costly and unpredictable to diversify their retail buying points and chose to stick with their singular destination.
One year later, they had lost significant market share and budgets were duly cut in the name of efficiency.
Good people were fired and now today, due to the state they are in, it would take a major overhaul for them to get back to where they were, let alone get to where they could have been for the sake of a few thousand dollars of investment a little while ago.
Paradigm shifts away from the norm are often seen as dangerous but simple logic will tell you that in a market of (for example) 14 million buyers, having 1 million coming to a single destination will lose the potential of the 13 million others.
However – being where the full 14 million people are, will at least increase the chances of purchase.
But this trend is more than retail specific.
Tools, utilities and applications are currently in an upturn. Companies and citizens alike, are creating things that people can use but echoing the mentality of destination methodology.
It is great to be in a single ’store’ but the real fun begins to be in all stores.
Creating an application for the Apple store and “seeing how it goes” will only prove how well a single destination works – not the full potential of your product or service.
It may be that the Android Marketplace is more suitable but you may never find out.
The great work of companies creating better priced bundles, better designed services or better worded communication, are often falling over at the final hurdle with naive assumption that attracting attention to a single destination will circumvent a macro trend of distributed interactivity.
Thus I attest that distribution over destination is more than a call to give people an RSS feed. It signals a redefinition of product, proposition, placement and pricing. The acceptance of this trend is directly proportional to revenue potential. Right now.
