Connections
Make Your Own Connections And Win A Prize!
The Definition of Fusion Marketing
Below are logical marketing campaign strategies that everybody in marketing and sales has to choose from. Start with what you want to accomplish this year and define your conversion strategy. Take a step back and look at all the tools in our tool chest and figure out what tools are the most appropriate ones to use to accomplish each of your strategies. Next, take a look at each one of the tools and decide how we actually use that tool to accomplish that specific goal… that conversion strategy.
I never really thought of marketing as linear or two dimensional. I never really thought of it as a process either. When we do marketing and we develop strategies, we just rely on what we’ve done in the past, or what we’ve read other people have done, or something we took out of a textbook, or what we did last year. And we just re-implement that same strategy maybe with a twist or two.
As an example, I started with “Business Cards”. I then saw the category “Telephone” across from it. I always knew that when I created a business card, it always contained customary information like my telephone number. I also remembered how long it took people to remember to put their email addresses on their business cards. It was the better part of a decade before most everyone had their email addresses on their business cards.
Look at the diagram and realized that instead of just remembering to add in the customary “form” information to our business cards, what if we tried to connect most or many of the other items on the wheel. What if we connected say, Trade Show to the business card? Would that have any value?
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Making TheConnection
By connecting Business Cards to Trade Shows, you could use the back of the business card to promote the next trade show you have a booth at. The back of the business card could say something like “If you’re coming to the International Social Media Experts Convention in Atlanta on May 23rd, stop by Booth 2036 and see what we have to offer!”
Business cards are seldom thought of as “lead-gen” tools, but they are. How many business cards could you hand out if it had a current marketing message on it? How many business cards would your entire company of employees hand out if instructed to do so? How many people could your company touch by only adding a current promotion to the back of everyone’s business cards?
Business cards are probably the highest ROI lead generation tool that we have in our marketing arsenal. The reason is, business cards are free or near free. You can get them on the internet for free! Most online business card printing companies will give you up to 1,000 of them for free just because they want to get your business. When you are looking at “free” your ROI is off the charts because, anytime you divide by zero , the ROI is infinite!
What if, rather than you and all of your employees just accidentally handed out business cards they were instructed that any time you meet somebody new, it’s mandatory that you hand out your business cards. You know that when some one receives a business card it can sit on their desk for a long time, the card can go into Outlook / Entourage, it can get scanned. This is a residual marketing tool that keeps working for a long time. It’s a residual marketing piece… business cards.
They’re lead-gen. You give them to somebody that you have met that you think might have a reason to contact you, or even better yet, eventually is going to be a purchaser of your product or your service. Business cards give them an easy way to contact you, call you, mail you, to go to your website, to email you. They really are lead-gen! I never thought of that! I never looked at them that way!
I’m now looking at business cards and going around the Wheel to see all the other categories; tools I could connect with. Let’s try another random connection with Business Cards. What if you put an image of your brochure and a download link (Bit.ly shortened link) and QR Bar Code linked to your product brochure on the back of your business card? How many digital brochure do you think you can get in the hands of existing customers and prospects and the cost of of about $0.02 per delivery.
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The problem with our marketing plans isn’t the effectiveness of the tools as much as it’s our inability to fully utilize them. It’s true that traditional media is becoming less and less effective and social media has become very effective. So now is the time we need to get the most out of all our marketing tools. Let’s try this again.
Let’s try connecting Business Cards to Coupon and see if it works. What if we printed redeemable coupons on the back of your business cards with either UPC type bar code or a QR Bar Code that lead the holder of the card to a printable coupon or an ecommerce web site. Using the numbers technique above, how many casual acquaintance business cards holders do you think you would immediately convert into a customer every 30 days?
By using The Safko Wheel to display all of your marketing and sales campaigns, both traditional and digital, you can see patterns and synergistic relationships between all of your campaigns. The Wheel encourages you to look at your marketing in a completely different way. You look at it in multiple dimensions. The Safko Wheel not only encourages you, but forces you to look for as many connections and opportunities as possible. Just by paring up multiple campaigns you can see double, triple, quadruple, or greater multiples of return than from the same two campaigns running independently.
Your Contribution
I am looking to challenge individuals to contribute their best thoughts and ideas about how you would connect traditional to traditional, traditional to digital, and digital to digital the way I describe above.
Format
You must follow this format to be considered for inclusion: It must be one paragraph and approximately 50 words. Have the type of connection; traditional to traditional, traditional to digital, and digital to digital, the Connection; Coupon to Business Cards, and then reverse.
Here’s A Submission Example
| Sample | Connection Traditional to Traditional Business Card To Coupon Print redeemable coupons on the back of your business cards with a UPC type bar code, a QR bar code, and URL that leads the holder of the business card to a printable coupon or an ecommerce web site to encourage first time purchases. |
| Sample | Reverse Connection Traditional to Traditional Coupon To Business Card Be sure all of your contact information and especially your social network URL’s are printed on your coupons so you prospects can engage with you before purchasing if necessary. |
• Enter your connection ideas in the comments below and if your idea is chosen, your connection will will you an iPod Shuffle!.
• You can enter as many ideas in different categories as you would like.
• Be sure to use the following format; Connection / Reverse Connection, Media to Media, Tool to Tool, and Idea.
• If you have any questions, contact me at any time at LonSafko@LonSafko.com.
