FORWARD TO EXPERIENCE EVERYWHERE
What do terms like “media convergence” and “multi-channel” tell you? That you are stuck in the past. Because you still think that digital competence will make the difference. Sorry, guys, that’s over; we have already entered the post-digital phase.
Now there is only one channel: the relevant one in a hybrid world.
The barrier between online and offline disappears piece by piece, step by step, app by app – and with it the artificial separation of information sources and action fields. Today, online and offline channels are more and more used at the same time and combined with one another as required. If city-light posters show you daily news in real time or even fade-in related to your mood (scan of posture): Is it still justified to call it the separation between online and offline? To cut the customer into channel-pieces?
The challenge for companies now consists in anchoring this new user behavior in the minds of their internal decision-makers. At the moment there is still a „transfer dilemma“: The manager as a private person already entered the new world but cannot transfer it onto his business. The application of a new mindset is necessary. First of all the four development steps of the customer decision from an EDM point of view should be understood:
1 ROPO
Research Online, Purchase Offline. Beginning with the Dotcom years, this was mostly a thing of the noughties.
2 THE NEWROPO
Research Online, Purchase Off- and Online. This was the multichannel-time, later on omni-channel thinking. Full steam in the early 10s, but now looking a bit like a very distant past.
3 EDUCATED PURCHASE
Naturally both online and offline, O2O approach (Online-To-Offline commerce). Your customers are mostly here right now. You should be, too – but already knowing/planning/doing the next step.
4 EDUCATED EXPERIENCE
Not just buying but experiencing and feeling as well. Realtime. As soon as your customers want this, you should be able to deliver. So better you deliver in advance – now.