http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10352848-250.html

AOL in itself is a great service/digital product.

But in this day and age of competition, it acknowledges it’s got a service which can add value but with little differentiation from others whom have overtaken it.

What it can do is let their service interoperate and be pluggable in nature to allow feeds from various other popular platforms so still staying relevant and adding value to its current customer base (so they don’t lose ‘em).

Ciara has a song (with Missy Elliot I do believe) called 1, 2 step and really if you think about many things when it comes to product marketing and business development, there’s always a 2 step process:

1. Build & offer a relevant digital product/service ur customers need or that adds value to ‘em.
2. Make it easy to access.

Sounds easy enough, but many marketers do get step 1 wrong. Of course some do get it right with good research, proper data gathering etc (note: proper customer research and not fuelled by media stories of overenthusiastic so-called ‘digital gurus’. secondary research can go so wrong).

But Step 2 is key to driving usage and encouraging easy sharing of the product/service btw peers. This is where having a value and adding it to customers’ lives really makes a difference.

If you’re a telco for example, offering a mobile phone and plan profiler on your website that helps people cut through the clutter, pick out a good phone bundle & phone plan + data plan without losing them in jargon would be awesome wouldn’t it. Both for retail and eCommerce.

So they could aim to build NASA-level digital product/service that’s 99% accurate in gathering customers’ profiles, information, historical usage trends, social media info (how many friends I’ve got, how often I tweet?) etc. and churning out exactly what they need for their phone/plan/data combi. That would add value, no? Increase sales conversions and value of retail and etail customers. (bonus: maybe you’d even get less complaints about your retail service staff)

Step 1 done. For step 2, restricting the service to your website would be silly. Many telcos do this well though, they extend that service to digital kiosks in their retail stores, brilliant move.

What else could they do:

1. Social media apps that can function the same way. But build campaigns around it to drive initial pickup (e.g. guess your friend’s dream phone/plan combi and both of you win it etc.)

2. Use digital kiosks and other interactive outdoor media to allow target customers in high-traffic places do the same. For example, if there’s a billboard at the train station, let users use SMS codes whilst waiting for the train to interact with the app and the billboard displays their combi to them at the end plus they get a short SMS code to redeem at the retail store to get some savings on their combi if they’re interested.

3. iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile apps, desktop apps etc that do the same.

4. Make it part of their TV commercial by putting a short SMS code which users get sent back info on how to build their own profile and combi via SMS once they send in their details to the initial code.

The ideas are abundant. Why do it? ‘Cos users opt to let you be part of their lives. But you’ve got to be there with an easy to open door, when they’re finally convinced and want to walk through one to meet you(or your service).

So don’t neglect the 1, 2 step. Boxers love using 1, 2-combis to knock out opponents, no reason why businesses shouldn’t have a killer combi of their own.

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