Pix-and-mortar marketing
Over at TechFlash, I’ve contributed a commentary on the potential value – even for pure Internet companies which produce only digital products – in having a physical world presence.
For more than 15 years, brick-and-mortar businesses have been creating Internet presences for both marketing and e-commerce. But there seems to have been an unspoken hesitancy to promote moves in the other direction, from Web-only to Web-plus-cinder block.
Underlying the hesitancy may be a false assumption that the Internet is the ultimate destination for all business, and that a physical presence is a sign of the past. No company, it’s implied, should go out of its way to create a real-world presence if the business was spawned and is doing fine on the Web.
Yet it does pay off. In the TechFlash commentary, I point out one of the highest-profile success stories is women’s active wear retailer Lucy. Now Smilebox is the latest to make the move. While Smilebox is not a traditional “retailer,” that in itself is an increasingly dated label as more companies sell directly to consumers, and as more retailers create their own merchandise (think Lands’ End). Smilebox effectively is a retailer.
The reality is technology moves faster than biology, or even psychology. We live in the analog world, even if we spend a lot of our work and leisure time in the digital one. Good marketing requires understanding that blend of being wherever the customer is. Not where we wish he or she would be.
That doesn’t mean every Web-only business should have a physical presence. It depends on the customer set, the potential cost versus revenue, and a host of other factors. But it shouldn’t automatically be dismissed, either, out of some kind of only-the-Web-is-the-future bias. Whether virtual or physical, marketers should be reality-agnostic.
