The answer to this question is yes, and right now, Google and other search engines are playing the role of a serious competitor. Maybe this isn’t the answer you wanted to hear, but direct fulfillment and other technology-based or internet enabled supply mechanisms threaten our industry. The supply chain needs distributors – and you need to make the sale so you’re a necessary part of building your clients’ marketing campaigns.

Not surprisingly, distributors need to be exceptionally good at their jobs. We must redefine, in many situations, what the job of a distributor entails. The promotional products industry doesn’t want distributors to see their role as a “gofer,” finding, compiling and presenting options like Google does. Google simply retrieves the information upon request.

WHAT GOOGLE CAN AND CAN’T DO
Google has digital bots – lines of code executing all over the web, watching and taking notes on what consumers do. These lines of code monitor searches, and compile a history of the sites consumers visit. All of this indexing, verifying and compiling of information helps Google continually create an environment that caters to each consumer’s needs on the web. Google also reports and ensures all rules are followed – rules like paid advertisements, search engine optimization and ranking popularity through linking algorithms. Search engines and commerce sites make suggestions based on who paid the most and how much money they’re leveraging for the company.

What Google and other search engines can’t do is create an experience. It can’t maintain relationships. It can’t know an end-buyer and the complexity of their business, their offline habits, and how those and many other factors combine to influence consumers’ choices and needs. In short, they can’t create or replicate a human experience.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO WOW CLIENTS
The good news is that you’re made up of so much more than algorithms and can offer your clients far more than a quick list of products to accompany a marketing campaign. Here are two things you can do better than Google or another search engine.

1. Create ideas. You have a leg up on this part. Your ideas have no limits, at least not in the brainstorming phase. Creativity s key. You have the opportunity to generate unique marketing ideas. Making the human connection is something Google can’t do. At their core, clients want to be heard and to have their projects cared for in a way only a human can. Being in the technology age is great; however there’s still a need for human touch. Building a brand is a tedious process when you’re doing it right, so the human component softens areas that seem too technical.

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