2011/06/10

Don’t Get Hung Up on the Tech - [chrisbrogan.com]

Posted: 09 Jun 2011 06:40 AM PDT

Funny timing. I just finished running the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco last night, where Tim Hayden and I were talking about his thoughts about mobile. In that conversation, we were agreeing that too many people get hung up on the apps or the devices, such that they’re asking whether Foursquare is the future of mobile interaction, instead of asking what humans want to do most when trying to translate offline to online experiences. Over at his blog, friend and former IMS co-producer Justin Levy, was also writing about the fact that people get hung up on the platform, such as which blog technology to use.

Don’t Get Hung Up on the Tech

Think instead about how you can enable your buyers to connect with experiences in meaningful ways. And when I say experiences, Tim Hayden talked yesterday about putting QR codes on Kendall Jackson wines, such that people who wanted a bit more information about the wine on the shelf could not only get that, but then she’d be given recipes specific to the location where she’s looking at the wine: chowder pairings in Boston and chili recommendations in Austin.

That’s powerful. Who cares about the tech that brings it to you? Focus on the experience of what that’s going to do for your buyer.

That’s why I really like Square, which handles payment transactions in a really different way than credit card companies. The “really different” part doesn’t impact the buyer. It’s all in how the merchant looks at things. To me, that’s not getting hung up on the tech. It’s making a new interaction from offline to online (in this case, payments), that lets people have a better experience.

What’s Your Take?

What experiences and transactions do your buyers take today that could benefit from a new approach? How can you look at that without thinking specifically about the tech? What would you envision for making things easier for your buyers?

And what experiences do YOU wish were different for you?