insights! episode #3: the dominance of the GAFA companies

I talked about dilemma that GAFAs, meaning Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple, meet us everywhere in end effect and without them we can no longer manage path so easily. But on other side, if we only rely on GAFAs and build our business on that, chance is also high that we very quickly have no business left. So question is, how do I handle this dilemma and my own business? And let's look once at where these four firms move. Amazon is of course known via marketplace, but also has infrastructure with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that they provide. With Amazon Pay they have possibility to handle payment through that and do delivery and logistics via warehouses. And more, just as brief overview.It's of course not sensible to say I'll build my business long-term only on Amazon as marketplace. Much more important is to say I have many channels I play on, because there's not just one marketplace. In Germany there's also Real Digital, a Cologne start-up that's existed for a few years now. In Switzerland there's Galaxus. There's plenty of other marketplaces that are completely cross-industry, but there are also industry-specific marketplaces: Otto, ABOUT YOU, Konrad. So you don't only need to keep Amazon in mind. But all marketplaces share one thing: the marketplace owns customer interface. That we keep in mind. Second thing is, how do I advertise? Facebook and Google, with Facebook Ads, Insta Ads, with Google Advertising, are basically source to generate new prospects. Often these new prospects get generated, led to a conversion and then not properly looked after and nurtured further. This point is absolutely crucial to also draw sustainable profit from it. Fourth point, Apple, doesn't affect everyone directly, but affects among others those who earn money via app stores, via an app. Because Apple as well as Google charge their percentages, their taxes on everything generated as revenue via these apps. If they're digital apps, that's one variant. Otherwise this highway robbery, as I'll call it, is extremely expensive. So you need to have your customer journey under control. You must be crystal clear on how do I get the relevant new users? Sure, maybe I do Insta advertising and yes, they then see something via Facebook too and maybe customers also come to me directly via Amazon. But how can I get these customers into my CRM? How can I keep generating these customers again and again with the right, valuable content for the respective situation of the user? So that you simply gain attractiveness. There are very simple examples of how to make this lifecycle completely clear: let's take children, babies. Babies have a certain path in their customer journey. At first they're not customers, later yes, but parents are customers. And sure, when a baby turns one, at some point it becomes a toddler, two to four years old, and then certain needs and necessities arise for parents. That's plannable, various retailers for baby items already do this. But this also applies to other customers, leasing contracts for cars for example, mobile phone contracts. There are very many variants of customer journeys that we actually already know implicitly but don't exploit. Covid – there's a totally clear customer journey through Covid: home office means equipping employees. What does that mean? At first they have a chair, the desk is maybe new because regulation prescribes it. After that come other variants, Teams gets introduced but hardware doesn't fit and all these typical scenarios. That we think about these in advance and react to them leads in end effect to a personalised feeling for customer: yes, they understand me. And that's something where we can differentiate ourselves from big GAFAs. They do that via a lot of artificial intelligence (AI), but not specifically in their segments, that's of course disadvantage of a huge company. And that's the chance every omnichannel retailer here in Europe has, that's chance for brands and manufacturers, to really go in precisely there and offer customer, whom you actually know very well and with whom you actually have good touchpoints, a good customer journey. And let me put in a good word here for all chain retailers and staff in the stores: does staffing really need to be that tight there? It doesn't lead to a better customer experience, doesn't make me want to walk in. It maybe leads to moments,

That frustrate me, because the employee has to go to the toilet, but there's only one person in the shop. She locks the shop, which you're actually not supposed to do, because you're told to drink as little as possible. And I as a customer can't get in and say, well then I'll just go to the next one or order online. Aren't these the small things that generate a bad customer experience without anyone wanting it to? Do these become bad profits? And that's the topic of the next session. Thanks for listening, looking forward to the next episode already! Have a nice day or evening. You can subscribe to this podcast on all common channels. Tell your colleagues and friends too. The bigger the community grows, the more content and discussion we can bring you and create.