Have You Shifted to Living Online?
Posted on | January 30, 2009 | No Comments
Abu Noaman, in his recent blog post about “The Age of eMarketing” states as the sixth reason for the paradoxical rise of eMarketing spending: “Most importantly, prospects and customers have shifted to living online”.
Is he crazy? Do you believe this?
Well, are you reading this blog post? 
Think about it: are you living online? Are there some activities you do via an internet connection today that would have taken you to a brick-and-mortar facility ten or even five years ago?
I’ll bet that ten years ago, the following activities would have led you to the paired brick-and-mortar facility, but are now handled via the parenthetic online solution:
- Register for a professional event: drop a check and registration card in a mailbox/at a Post Office.
( Register via an online event registration solution ) - Pay your utility bills: go to your local utility office to pay in person, or mail a check at the Post Office.
( Use an e-bill-pay service, or have your bank make payments electronically ) - Respond to a survey: send the completed paper survey back to the company by snail mail.
( Respond to an e-mailed or website-based survey software solution ) - Deposit your paycheck: walk to your local bank branch.
( Use direct deposit between your employer and your bank [this has been available for 10+ years]) - Research a book, article or school paper: go to your local library.
( Use Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia or some similar search engine/resource to hunt down your information ) - Call your brother, sister, mother, father or a local pizza shop: pick up your land-line phone to place the call.
( Use your cell phone to call, or more inexpensively, text or send e-mail from your phone ) - Send a mass full-color mailing to thousands of customers: engage a snail mail marketing firm to send bulk-rate mail.
( Use email marketing software, or contract with a marketing firm who does this )
Can you identify other areas in which online services have superceded (for you, for others) brick-and-mortar services? Let us know!
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