Posted by Atlanta Tuba Dad on February 20, 2004 at 08:15:31:
In Reply to: Tuba Consumerism & Emails posted by Joe Baker on February 19, 2004 at 18:10:31:
I gotta jump into this thread, even though I am not involved in music
and in fact have never even blown a single note on my son's tuba. But I
want to expand on Joe's thoughtful post.
Businesses need to realize that the Internet completely changes the
buyer-seller paradigm.
Before the 'Net a business had to find potential customers and attempt
to put its ad or message where those potential buyers would see or hear it.
Old way: businesses went searching for customers to market to.
With the Internet, the situation is reversed. Now people go to the 'Net
to find products and services. What a business now has to do is to be easily
found, with all of the ramifications of that statement. New way:
customers come searching for businesses who sell the products or
services they desire to purchase.
This leads to something I learned many years ago when I managed
McDonald's restaurants: if you ask for more business, you damn well
better be ready and able to deal with it when it comes knocking at your
door (or emailing into your computer). Or you just spent money to piss
off and drive away your customers, which is not a very wise thing to
do.
It should be pretty obvious to everyone by now that the Internet is
changing the way business is being done, regardless of the industry and
regardless of how any one business feels about it. You either get on
the boat or get left behind. If you're getting more emails than you can
handle, you need to figure out how to deal with the volume or to become
less "visible" on the 'Net. Or figure out a way to filter the "wheat"
from the "chaff."
The company for whom I work initially didn't want anything to do with the
Internet, other than putting up a simple text-based website. They
didn't even want email access! Using the 'Net properly, we were able to
increase sales to 'Net-source customers from $25k to $400K annually in less than
18 months. Doesn't mean that everyone can do this or will even
want to do it, but it should illustrate the power of the medium.
As Joe's post suggests, the Internet ain't going away. The smart
operators will figure how to use it to their advantage.