Bypasses and Tolls

This is a map of Peoria.

Traveling East or West on Interstate Highway 74, you are given a choice outside of Peoria.

• Stay on I-74 and go through Downtown Peoria.
• Take the Bypass via Interstate Highway 474.

Be it life, marketing/e-commerce, or pickleball, I'm surprised how few people are willing to take the bypass.

I spoke at a conference pre-COVID ... the professional eagerly approached me and said "I am sure looking forward to hearing the best practices you'll offer us today!" Well, I don't communicate best practices. Best practices are for those who lack imagination. They are tactics vendors communicate to make sure you use vendor services.

Make sure you take the bypass before everybody else figures out that the bypass exists.

In modern e-commerce, once you figure out the bypass, somebody will tax it with tolls. Just like I-294 or I-355 in Chicago, somebody will figure out that the bypass is the better option and they'll charge you money to drive on it. Remember Facebook? You had all that organic activity back in 2009 ... and then POOF, it's gone ... you had to pay Facebook for access to the very customers you willingly steered to them ... for free. Omnichannel!!

• Why did you ever let Facebook get away with that stunt?

There's a whole side of the vendor world that wants to help you. Then there's the minority of vendor professionals who want you to pay a toll. They want to get paid for your hard work.

When the route through town becomes too congested, you take the bypass.

When they place a toll on the bypass?

You build a new route.

This is where we are now.

• The paper/printing/postage folks want more from you to maintain their craft.
• Facebook / Google want to extract every penny, within reason ... they know the exact balance required to make them money while optimizing how much they can get from you.

It's time for you to build a new route.