Physical Product Delivery vs. Electronic Product Delivery
This post came about talking to my good friend David Yow @ 123-logos.com. He’s in Athol, Idaho, not far from me – well, far enough I don’t drive there routinely, but it’s not like he’s in Florida.
David and I were catching up, talking about my upcoming event on Dec 3-5 here in Salem, Oregon, featuring Dr. Howard Farran of DentalTown, Dr. Mark Montgomery of Synergy Dental in West Linn, Oregon, the World’s Strongest Dentist, Dr. Thomas P. Shortell (aka Shortleg) and Cindy McKane-Wagester, RDH, MBA, among others…
…and, he said, “Dude, I went back to my printed newsletter. The electronic version wasn’t cutting it.”
Ya, really? Seriously?
I have seen countless (and I could name at least 20 right off the top of my head) entrepreneurs, including dentists, and many other business owners, make this same mistake.
They have a good thing going with a PRINTED, real hand-delivered, USPS-mail newsletter and they made a poor decision to QUIT and go to an electronic newsletter, erroneously believing it will have the very same effect.
In effect, they get/got…
LAZY.
It’s the WRONG approach, Dude. (No one talks about this kind of stuff, which is why it’s perfect BUSINESS ANARCHIST material.)
You see, people (well, Internet-trained marketing geeks) equate Internetically-delivered (I just made up that word) to physically-delivered product. NO. It’s not. Never will be. There’s NO substitute for a physically delivered product.
Sure, the Internet can deliver ebooks and video and audio without the cost of PHYSICAL delivery, but here’s the thing: ANYONE can do it. YouTube.com makes it all possible. Streaming audio costs nothing but hosting space.
When it comes to physical delivery, it’s work. The process requires more thought, emotional muscle, financial muscle and HUMAN involvement. Sure, things can go wrong, but, given the chance, GIVE ME physical delivery vs. electronic any day of the week.
Why?
As a consumer, I place far less value on electronically delivered products vs. physically delivered.
It’s not like this is the argument for going from cassette tapes to CDs, which I had in more than one high-level, closed-door mastermind meeting. That was a format/user issue. This is BIGGER than that.
OK, so back to the intent of this post and let me cut to the chase: If you have recently, or in the distant past, converted from a physical delivery of product to an electronic/virtual delivery, I’d be willing to bet your business suffered. In fact, there might be a case of 1 in 100 where it was the opposite.
Bottom line? Get back to physical delivery of product/newsletter/services. Email newsletters have their place, but mostly, THEY SUCK. Your clients, patients, customers will think more highly of you, the delivery of the product, the product itself and will realize you place a higher value on the relationship with them than ANY other person doing business with them if you DELIVER a physical product. (Screw the bean counters who want you to deliver electronic product!)
In today’s environment, or, frankly, ANY environment, you gotta do something different than the crowd to stand out/apart. And, oftentimes, that’s just going back to what USED to work, before you were male and screwed it all up by changing it.
If you need more clients/patients/customers, deliver a monthly, physical copy of a newsletter about you, your business, your clients (testimonials), etc. In a future post, I’ll cover what should be included in such a personal, business-building direct mail piece and what most people do to screw it up that you can easily avoid.
Here’s to TRUE business anarchy!
Oh, one last thing: A client of mine told me recently, “Hey, if my guys [clients] don’t have email, screw ‘em, they don’t deserve to hear from me.”
Knowing what I know about his industry, I can conservatively guess, that attitude is costing him no less than a million a YEAR in lost revenue b/c he won’t get off his lazy butt and MAIL something to them. That’s not ignorance; that my friend, is just plain stupidity gettin’ in the way of making him an ark-load of fungolas. (Thanks to the late, great, Gary Halbert for use of his word, ‘fungolas.’)
[This just hit me: BOTH options executed (physical and electronic) is best. If you only have the emotional muscle to do one, pick physical. I hate to say this event, but something being done is better than nothing - so if you are lazy, or broke, then I suppose electronic will have to do. BUT, get to the hard-copy delivery ASAP. You WILL notice a difference.]