A good chunk of the new economy is looking just-in-time, by design.
Friends refer to it as the Sharing Economy. Others think of it as peer-to-peer commerce. Neither phrase captures the broader shift in market culture. The tipping point is tied to changing customer behavior, not the business model.
Examples are everywhere.
ZipCar–Just-in-time commerce with each of us is in a perpetual queue moving around, reserving a car with a click wherever we might be. Use and return.
Airbnb–just-in-time for a bed to sleep in. Book someone’s empty room with a click.
CitiBike–new kid on the just-in-time economy block. Playing musical bike docks. So behaviorally right on, it’s breaking with over use yet a few months old.
Sure, one is about cars owned by Avis, one about beds owned by individuals and one, short hop bikes. But the core connection is cultural. None of these would have been possible 20 years ago, technology aside.
A behavioral change in how the mass market consumes goods is in full tilt. Matching more than shopping, bumping into what they want more than searching it out.
Online, this is everywhere. Different medium, same behavior. Want to hear a song, watch a movie or share a file? Streaming has replaced storage, rental replaced ownership.
I’ve vacillated over whether this idea is just a twist on ‘Always On’. But they are very different. ‘Always On’ is platform think. Just-in-time is a consumer and market perspective.
Think about customers going through their day bumping into impulses. This is transforming how we sell and market.
Trending cultural change terms like authenticity, customer centric, social engagement are not useful when it comes to sitting down and figuring out how to intersect with your market.
As sellers of goods we’ve become pretty sophisticated at embedding transactions in objects. This is just-in-time selling through social objects distributed by the consumers themselves.
As marketers, much less so.
Brands for the most part are employing push marketing disguised as conversations. Sales disguised as customer support. And humbleness disguised as authenticity. The social web is employed as a prop.
It is a very tough problem.
Gazillions of customers milling around on Facebook, and your brand trying to leverage a soft sell connected to some social cause or some goodness that benefits the company by association.
Most brand efforts seem more like cosmetic repackaging, faux interest wrapped as a humane slide to a transaction. It’s just a hybridization of old-school marketing. Every brand wants to be Liked (and counts them) but invariably, their quotient for value and success is how being Liked drive sales.
Two directions, more than solutions, seem to be surfacing.
For Sales
Network specific behaviors drive models naturally.
Facebook and Twitter are pure media platforms, push advertising vehicles with a social twist. To plan on commerce on either is a false start. As advertisiing channels, possibly. These platforms are the new broadcast networks without a late night Crazy Eddie sales underbelly.
Pinterest is a natural sales channel. It understands that we buy images as fashion object for most consumables. Instagram and Tumblr are more complex, but at their core, more focused brand marketing than sales.
Understanding each network’s unique dynamics and how your product plays there is always the place to start.
For Marketing
Brand marketing on the web is really in its infancy.
The more we consider markets as communities, the closer we get to a natural poise between company and customers. And the more we look to the skills of community managers, the more marketing on the social nets is finding its pulse.
We manage communities as they need it, at their own pace. Just-in-time to the dynamics of the situation. My community-smart friends may balk at the term but indeed this is the pacing.
Right now though, marketing on the social web is a mess. A pushmepullyou monstrosity of sorts. Noisy. Posey. Uncomfortable.
I’m over simplifying of course.
Selling is not all about the transaction, and marketing is not brand first with every breath. But what we have today ain’t working. All the misguided KPI to ROI charts in the world will not teach you how to talk to the people in front of you.
It’s a big start to acknowledge that what is happening just doesn’t work.
Remember the old saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Couldn’t be more true.
It’s time to rethink.
This concept of just-in-time as market metaphor for UX, as a handshake to the shopping cart and the sales funnel, with community as the model for marketing—is one way to get there.
It’s what our customers want. It’s just smart to be there when they want us.
