Instead of dreaming up crazy strategies, talk to the people who deal with your customers

I recently read an article about how Barnes & Noble could re-energize the Nook. I’m not linking to the article because it didn’t seem to have any clear recommendation, but it got me thinking about big picture, grandiose business ideas. That is, the kind that might succeed spectacularly or fail spectacularly. The kind some “genius” comes up with.

Rather than relying on geniuses and betting the company on a throw of the dice, I think B&N management should take a more careful approach. Talk to the people who manage the Barnes & Noble bookstores and coffee shops. Talk to customer support for the Nook. Listen to what customers are saying.

They are probably doing this already, but I suspect the information is being fed into the “genius grand idea generator.” Some VP is going to make a Big Decision that will either save the company or ruin it.

Instead of relying on the Big Genius at corporate HQ, they should allow individual business units to come up with ideas and then let them experiment. The goal is to try lots of things and fail quickly and small in pursuit of the good idea(s) that can win big.

The idea that one uber genius is going to find the exactly perfect strategy is far less likely than that somebody among the company’s ordinary creative people will find something good.

They should also bear in mind the advice I heard at an industry conference recently, where the speaker bucked received wisdom and said you should never listen to your customers — rather, you should watch what they do. For example, most restaurant customers are too polite to tell you that they didn’t like their meal, but you can see if they finished it.

A thousand customers telling you that they’d love to have such and so doesn’t mean much. What matters is if, when there’s money on the table, they’ll actually do it.

The implication for B&N is to look at user data on the Nook.

The path should be (1) gather anecdotes from customer-facing employees, and maybe do some surveys, (2) look at the data on actual customer behavior, (3) give managers access to that information and allow them to come up with ideas, then (4) do lots of small experiments.

The future of publishing is in niches

A friend sent me this article — Michael Wolff on digital media in 2015: ‘A deluge of crap’ — which has some interesting observations about big picture media.

On the big picture scale, media is all about click bait and catchy titles and slideshows and traffic. Or, as Michael Wolff puts it, big picture media is all about a deluge of crap.

But that’s just what the kids do, not what real people with jobs do.

Real people with jobs have to worry about real things. Prices. Regulations. Facts. Processes. The latest buzz feed click bait is just a distraction.

People want help with their jobs. E.g., how do I fire somebody without getting sued? What’s really going on with natural gas prices? How do I get the best tax deduction?

People also want to be a part of a community where they can get to know and learn from their peers.

These needs won’t be met by digital crap that’s designed to get clicks and page views, and these real-world needs represent business opportunities for niche publishers.

Pay no attention to the people who want to steer your business on the basis of some kind of grand “the world is heading ___” blather. (Unless you’re Buzz Feed, I guess.) The list of “next big things” touted by industry experts and explained on fancy power points at industry conferences is very long — and, like clickbait, it’s a deluge of crap.

Instead, find out what people need in their niche and provide that.

Foregoing short-term ad revenue for long-term gain

The Sorry State of Online Publishing makes some very good points about how websites are sacrificing long-term gains to get more ad revenue.

As Jon Stewart recently told New York magazine, “It’s like carnival barkers, and they all sit out there and go, ‘Come on in here and see a three-legged man!’ So you walk in and it’s a guy with a crutch.”

All of us have been fooled by those ridiculous articles. The catchy headline promises something, but the content doesn’t deliver. That sort of strategy might get a website more traffic, but when it continues to not deliver on the promise then visitors learn it’s not a trustworthy site. Also, when the site forces the user to load ten different pages to read “ten amazing things about X” — just so the site can get more ad impressions — the reader goes away mad.

I think everyone knows that this is an awful way to treat people and an awful way to run a content-based business. The problem is that publishers have become addicted to the ad revenue. If they change their site to a more reader-friendly design, revenue will certainly plummet. At least in the short term.

I suspect that a company that respects its readers — without the deceptive links, excess of ads, unnecessary page reloads, etc. — will win out in the long term. But who’s willing to take that risk? Who’s willing to give up the revenue today on a bet that respecting the reader will result in more revenue next year?