The Information Age is dead and you have no further to look than the bankruptcy of Borders Book Stores or Amazon’s Kindle E-book downloads outselling paperbacks. The demise of the magazine print media is collapsing like a house of cards. What has sprung up from the ashes of the Information Age is “Customized Content Delivery.”
While we have more information than ever, we are also overwhelmed by it, trying to find the right information in a way that we can access it in a short period of time, and adequately consume and digest it. What today’s global consumer wants is not just information, but valuable information that is delivered to them in a convenient way when they want it – customized content delivery. And people are willing to pay for it.
Companies such as Apple (providing hardware), Google (quickly sifting and accessing information), Amazon (delivering) together with the advanced cell phones, Internet, and streaming information are all beneficiary proof of this dramatic shift – as are a host of casualties.
This shift is quickly affecting EVERY industry, every market, and every business like a tsunami. This will either be a massive opportunity or threat to you and your company.
Witness the real estate world. More than 90% of homebuyers today say that they start their search online. More than 75% of all new car buyers start looking on the Internet. One out of every eight marriages in North America are the result of online dating.
All that means is that you begin to convert your knowledge into money by creating high-value information products that serve a market, and can be delivered in a convenient way. Your prospects and clients are STARVING for information, and they don’t have the time to go out and try to find it on their own.
I participate in the travel and golf industry where some old fashioned Public Relations people and their dinosaur clients still obsess about having their product highlighted in the old conventional print media. Here is why that is a failing strategy. Their target audiences no longer look to that media to form or make their buying decisions, especially when they can also book their transportation, room, or golf online. And while magazines have the shelf life of not much longer than a fruit fly, the Internet categorizes, shifts, and provides immense amounts of information conveniently at the drop of a hat – indefinitely. That outdated strategy is dooming those who insist upon holding on to it not only in golf and travel, but beyond.
It doesn’t matter WHAT business you’re in: you NEED to figure out how to be in the “knowledge product” business, not only because it’s highly profitable and helps build your business, but it is THE key shift that’s going to separate the winners from the losers this decade.
Those who can adapt and adopt will not only survive and create additional revenues by offering the “knowledge product,” they will also position themselves as a “Trusted Authority,” which means greater demand and market share.
How might you seize this opportunity?
Bob Fagan is a management consultant and coach and can be reached at rsf4653@aol.com. Also check out www.bobfagan.124online.com.
