It’s 3.30AM in the morning, you’ve been awake now for a couple of hours after getting up for a drink of water.
You had a big day yesterday sharing a couple of beers or more at the local pub.
You were keen to look at shots taken yesterday to see what you came up with, in particular creating the pub panoramic (pictured).
It’s a great old pub – an early opener catering for the fishing fleet (seen in the background). Like the town it’s seeing it’s customer base change towards tourism and leisure.
You just don’t find pubs like this one anymore (particularly in Sydney) – big outdoor beer gardens, run down but full of character (and characters). It’ll only be a matter of time before it is finally knocked down and rebuilt – you can see in the future a large open verandah and at some stage a marina down the front.
You have a strong love of pubs – I suppose it’s the community social aspect. What many people don’t know is that prior to setting up BANGitUP.com you ran a hotel “Maxys Intersection” down in Sydney.
As you’ve discussed before there’s a lot of similarity between running a pub and an Internet portal, that is –
You need to give people a reason to come in, you need to make them feel welcome, trust to transact, be happy with the service and then easily tell their friends.
This is interesting from an Internet marketing perspective. In terms of business how important will face to face remain. Are we resigned to a fate of pure electronic communications?
You hope not and don’t think so.
You’ve found that people either like people or they don’t. An outdoor beer watching a live band with friends and family is pretty bloody good.
But what about commerce? Is retail dead?
Yes the % of online transactions will increase but only those transactions that are best done online. I suppose it comes down to what is most convenient. Are your customers online?
Your website is your store front and sales person. Can the customer make a better or easier purchasing decision?
With over 20 years of experience you’ve learnt that the customer is not always right, it’s impossible to please all the people all the time. That in today’s market it appears from a customer perspective it is sometimes harder to buy then to sell. Today we as customers are more informed and more demanding and today’s social networks are more important than ever in driving market adoption. In the same respect Sellers will also migrate towards customers they most enjoy.
As a business you need to provide multiple customer interfaces capable of meeting each customers unique needs. In a pub that’s having a red head, a blonde, a brunette, couple of young ones and a couple of oldies (smiles). Most importantly they need to be able to talk with the customer.
At the end of the day we are social animals. All this technology are just aids. So next time you’re about to send that long email, ask can I do this over lunch at the pub?
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Scott Maxworthy is the CEO of BANGitUP and the author of the BANGitUPTV blog.
