Foresight is important when starting any business. Looking at evolving trends and where your business should be in the next 5 years in comparison with competitors and the economy will provide you the grounds for planning the future.
This week’s chapter in Gary Vaynerchuk’s The Thank You Economy was a short but impactful 5 pages about being mindful of evolving marketing tactics and the importance of foresight. The key example is how Amazon (and e-commerce) has come to dominate the market starting with its war on bookstores. In my opinion, this book has become more of a history book than a piece of business advice on how to.
The Thank You Economy was published in 2011, Gary’s foresight on how the internet and digital marketing will affect where society was to go by 2017, almost to a T. Amazon had the foresight to plan for the digital explosion of the internet and smartphones and how they will affect how we shop. In 1999, Barnes & Noble subsidiary B. Dalton would stay the course according to the numbers, with brick and mortar slowly fall behind the soon to be e-commerce giant. Amazon is now a multibillion-dollar powerhouse to be reckoned with in many key markets outside of books, and Barnes & Noble would liquidate B. Dalton by 2010. It’s amazing to see a company come from a humble online bookseller to a multifaceted giant conglomerate.
Gary’s point is, to be brief, we shouldn’t be looking at the numbers, we should be aggressively marketing and innovating like how “Fox and NBC came at Google, when they developed a true rival, Hulu, to combat Google’s YouTube.” By numbers, I mean the data that is telling us what is trending in the business right now. He points out that that is what Barnes cared about at the time Amazon made its debut, as we know now, Amazon dominates and Jeff Bezos is richer than Bill Gates. It’s 2017, time to start paying attention.
We pride ourselves on our ability to build and maintain relationships at Mega. Those relationships help us provide a service that goes above and beyond what is expected. Our strength is your strength because we care more. Having foresight will only help us serve you better, so you can do the same for your business and clients. Gary has laid the proverbial steps for us to walk in and build a better future through our efforts to produce better content and relationships.
