The Fusion Marketing Bible

FUSION MEDIA MARKETING1 It’s Not About the Tools, It’s All About Strategy 2 The Evolution of Marketing: How We Got Here 3 Traditional Marketing Imaged: Everything at a Glance 4 Interconn

Copyright © 2013 by The McGraw-Hill Companies All rights reserved Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced

or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

McGraw-Hill books are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions or for use in corporate training programs To contact a representative, please e- mail us at bulksales@mcgraw-hill.com

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered It is sold with the understanding that neither the author nor the publisher is engaged in rendering legal, accounting, securities trading, or other professional services If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

—From a Declaration of Principles Jointly Adopted by a Committee of the American Bar

Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations

TERMS OF USE

This is a copyrighted work and The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc (“McGraw-Hill”) and its licensors reserve all rights in and to the work Use of this work is subject to these terms Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the right to store and retrieve one copy of the work, you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, reproduce, modify, create derivative works based upon, transmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish or sublicense the work or any part of it without McGraw-Hill’s prior consent You may use the work for your own noncommercial and personal use; any other use of the work is strictly prohibited Your right to use the work may be terminated if you fail to comply with these terms.

THE WORK IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” McGRAW-HILL AND ITS LICENSORS MAKE NO GUARANTEES OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE ACCURACY, ADEQUACY OR COMPLETENESS OF OR RESULTS TO BE OBTAINED FROM USING THE WORK, INCLUDING ANY INFORMATION THAT CAN BE ACCESSED THROUGH THE WORK VIA HYPERLINK OR OTHERWISE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS

OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE McGraw-Hill and its licensors do not warrant or guarantee that the functions contained in the work will meet your requirements or that its operation will be uninterrupted or error free Neither McGraw-Hill nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else for any inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any damages resulting therefrom McGraw-Hill has no responsibility for the content of any information accessed through the work Under no circumstances shall McGraw-Hill and/or its licensors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive, consequential or similar damages that result from the use of or inability to use the work, even if any of them has been advised of the possibility of such damages This limitation of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise.

FUSION MEDIA MARKETING

1 It’s Not About the Tools, It’s All About Strategy

2 The Evolution of Marketing: How We Got Here

3 Traditional Marketing Imaged: Everything at a Glance

4 Interconnection: Traditional Media Revelation

5 Social Media and Digital Marketing: Word of Mouth at the Speed

of Light

6 Digital Marketing Interconnection: A Digital Synergy

7 Traditional and Digital Integration: “Fusion Marketing”

8 What’s Working: Traditional Media Cost of Customer Acquisition

9 Revealing the Trinity of Social Media: The Big Three

10 Fusion Media Marketing: The Best of Both Worlds

11 Strategy: Tactics, Tools, and Objectives—the Perfect Balance

12 Take It to the Limit: “Going Fractal”

13 Moving from 2D to 3D: Exponential Opportunities

P A R T 2

CRITICAL CONCEPTS

14 The Five Steps to Fusion Marketing Success

15 Conversion Strategy First: Tactics, Tools, and Microstrategies

16 The Psychology Behind the Technology: We’re All Drug Pushers

17 Understanding the Sales Funnel: Just Being There

18 Filling the Void: From One Come Many

CONCLUSION

INDEX

Imagine marketing as a lot of Lego blocks Any company’s marketingstrategy is constructed by bolting together some of these Legoblocks A small and inexperienced company may use only a few, likedirect mail and the Yellow Pages, the equivalent of a tiny building Asophisticated company will construct a large marketing strategybuilding with several stories and many rooms named TV, radio,Internet, and so on

When a new technology comes along, as personal computers did

in the 1970s or the Internet in the 1990s, the building owners wonderwhether it will be of any help to them The bigger ones will generally

be the first to try the new technology, since they have the experts whocan figure out how to use it But there is always a problem Theirstrategy building has already been built There are no vacant rooms.Therefore, the new technology room is simply bolted onto thebackside of the building and used sporadically, often with very littleintegration with what is going on in the other rooms Finally the newtechnology may become so important that the management decides

to remodel That is what happened at a lot of companies around

2004, when it became clear that the Internet was no longer justanother room out back, but was a central component in the twenty-first-century marketing strategy

Today’s new technology is social media Most small companiesdon’t understand it well or know how to use it effectively Bigcompanies have done what they always do: try to bolt it on as a newroom out back that is not integrated with much of anything else Most

of them just talk about their new room and let the people in it do whatthey want to, since no one else understands the new technologyanyway, and it doesn’t cost very much.

The building owners may expect that they will need to do somemajor remodeling in a few years, just as they did to integrate theInternet Normally, the remodeled building looks the same; it just hasmore rooms But this time they are in for a big surprise

Social media cannot be contained in a room Unlike other media, itcannot wait for a knock at the door and a cheery voice saying, “Okay,time for some direct mail” or some other sort of one-way media thatwhich is pushed out to the public on various media channels Thesmartest businesses will realize that they cannot remodel their oldbuilding; instead, they will need to design a new building around thestrengths of the new media that make it different from nearlyeverything that has come before: it is instantaneous, it is two-way,and it is virtually free In short, the hallmark of this new building’sdesign will be collaboration—the business’s collaboration withcustomers and customers’ collaboration with one another Like acritical mass for a nuclear bomb, these collaborations can lead tospectacular new marketing achievements—but only if they areassembled in the right way to achieve that mass

The new building will have almost all of the same rooms as before

—TV, outdoor, print—but they will all be interconnected, and everyone of them will also be connected to social media and to theInternet, just as every room in a real building is connected to theelectrical and air conditioning systems That is the marketing strategybuilding of the early twenty-first century

But few people can visualize such a building, much lessunderstand how all those rooms must fit together to create a sleek,efficient, and powerful marketing system that creates integrated,collaborative multimedia messages that can hit the same target fromeight different directions, each with a message specially designed forthat medium Buyers are already bombarded by a thousand or more

“buy me” messages every day, and the number is growing Only thecompanies that find a new way will prosper The old ways will always

be important, but the new ways are what will separate the winnersfrom the losers

In marketing, almost everyone is adept at looking backward to whathas worked in the past They have little skill in forecasting the futureuntil someone explains it to them That is the role of this new book byLon Safko—to explain in detail how to construct your new marketingstrategy building so that all that potential social media collaborationcan pay off for your company This is the new vision that you will readabout, a modern, forward-looking blueprint for all of those companiesthat want a new, more competitive marketing strategy that works Just

as he did in The Social Media Bible, which demystified social media

as a marketing tool, so in this new book Lon Safko lays out the by-step construction for your individualized twenty-first-centurymarketing strategy for success

step-Just 15 years ago, most companies didn’t know exactly what theInternet was, but they were pretty sure they didn’t need it for theirbusiness Today, in the minds of buyers, any business without a web-site is the equivalent of a business without a telephone Social mediawill be equally important, but the transition will be much faster.Businesses need someone to tell them how to get ahead of thatcurve— and Lon Safko’s book will show you how

GARY A WITT, PHDProfessor of MarketingEmbry-Riddle Aeronautical UniversityOwner, Marketing Psychology Group

Welcome to the future! Just as The Social Media Bible showed you

the profound impact that social media is having on marketing today,

so The Fusion Marketing Bible will show you how all online marketing

tactics can be fused with all traditional marketing tactics to create anew set of powerful, low-cost opportunities to reach customerswww.LonSafko.com in ways you’ve never even dreamed of!

Every marketing professional who has read this book has had the

same reaction: “This is an incredible new way of thinking about how

we market! I’ve got dozens of ideas already to gain a real competitive advantage You won’t know how to keep up unless you’ve read this book, too.”

Now is the time to start gaining a competitive advantage, boostingsales, increasing the strength of your customer relationships, andmaking your marketing dollars stretch further than you ever thoughtpossible You will be amazed at how many opportunities to increaseyour ROI (return on investment) you have been overlooking.

Still need to know more? Then take out your smartphone and snapthis QR code (You’ll need to install a QR code reader app on yourphone if you don’t already have one.) I’ll personally tell you why thisbook will improve your marketing and your bottom line

At the start of every chapter, a web address (URL) and a QRbarcode will link you to a video in which I describe what you are about

to read: its purpose, new information, and insights There are threeways to access these videos:

1 Type the URL into your browser.

2 Visit www.FusionMediaMarketing.com and click on the link.

3 Scan the QR barcode with a smartphone and reader app.

In this book, I’ll explain how to develop a successful, integrated,and fully interconnected marketing strategy using tried-and-truetraditional media marketing, social media marketing, and the latest in

digital media marketing This is what I refer to as tradigital or Fusion

Marketing Fusion Marketing is what’s next!

Nearly every book on marketing and social media is about thetools This book is not just about the tools That’s why it isn’t called

Facebook for Morons or Tweet Your Way to Riches.

Fusion Marketing utilizes all the tactics and tools that I laid out in

The Social Media Bible, but the focus of The Fusion Marketing Bible

is strategy This book combines all of what we have learned about thethree individual forms of marketing into one comprehensive,successful strategy, Fusion Marketing

Too often, when I’ve consulted with companies—fromentrepreneurial one-person businesses all the way up to Fortune500s—I hear the same two comments: “Here’s my vice president ofsocial media,” and, “I’ve created a Facebook page and I’ve sent outsome tweets Now what?”

First of all, if the person who is handling your social media isdifferent from the person who is handling your traditional media,you’re in for trouble Social media isn’t some stand-alone set of silverbullets that have been given to us by aliens; it’s just a new set of toolsthat allows us to do what we marketing people have always done:market Don’t treat social media tools as stand-alones.

Several years from now, there will be no distinction betweentraditional and social media marketing, just as today you wouldn’thave separate vice presidents of radio and print You can wait untilyour industry realizes this and move with the herd, or you canrecognize the coming shift now and jump years ahead of yourcompetition The choice is yours; the plan is here

The second indicator that a company is on the wrong track is whenits executives tell me, “I’ve created a blog, but no one is coming,” or,

“I’ve sent out some tweets, but no one is following.” That’s becausethe company is doing it backward It doesn’t have a sound, integratedstrategy They are starting with the tools and trying to build a strategyaround each of them Successful marketing is designed into thestrategy, and the tools are only a means to that end

Leaping into an integrated media plan without a blueprint is liketrying to build a house without a plan Imagine what would happen ifyou went to a home supply warehouse, bought a bunch of tools andwood, picked up a hammer, and just started hammering things! When

it comes to social media, that’s essentially what businesspeople bigand small are doing today They set up a Twitter account and juststart hitting people with mindless, unconnected tweets They try toengage their customers and prospects on Facebook with theequivalent of a hammer You need a strategy

In Part 1 of this book, I will discuss the evolution of marketingmedia: where we started, and how we got where we are today Youwill see that every time we’ve created a new technology that allows

us to communicate better with our customers and prospects, from theprinting press to the Internet, we marketers have figured out how touse the new technology to sell our wares We as humans have beenmarketing for more than 6,000 years Ever since we stood on a rock

in the desert and shouted out reasons why people should buy ourgoats and not someone else’s, we’ve been marketing

Traditionally, we would yell our message and wait to see whathappened If no one stepped forward to buy one of our goats, wewent back to the “marketing” tent, changed the message, andrepeated the process until our goats started selling again For sixmillennia, we have used every new communication technology topush messages to our prospective buyers this way The earliesttechnology was cupping our hands around our mouths to make ourmessages carry farther Today, the newest technology is the Internet.Only a few years ago, that 6,000-year-old “push” marketingtradition was broken by social (digital) media For the first time inhuman history, marketing changed from a one-way, “push”monologue to a two-way, conversational dialogue No wondermarketing people across the globe are having difficulty grasping andadapting to this monumental change.

I will also discuss in Part 1 how to look at your traditional media,social media, and digital media in a completely different, moreefficient, and more effective way As Wayne Dyer once said, “Whenyou change the way you look at things, the things you look atchange.” This book will definitely change for the better the way youlook at your marketing

I’ll show you how to combine or “fuse” these three forms ofmarketing media using graphical, interactive tools that facilitatecreative insights When you take this different approach to looking atyour media, the media that you look at will change, become moreconnected and more deliberate, and, ultimately, convert better Youwill see connections that you never saw before, strategies forsimultaneously increasing ROI and decreasing costs

I will even give you, the owner of this book, a free Safko WheelMarketing Tool Kit that will help you discover these new relationshipsand opportunities

Since the spontaneous combustion of social media in recent years,marketers, PR people, customer service reps, and salespeople havebeen trying to figure out how to handle social media tools, almostalways keeping them separate from their traditional marketing tools.It’s almost like saying, “Don’t let my peas touch my carrots!”

There are only three basic differences between social media andtraditional media: social media (1) is nearly free to implement, (2) is

incredibly effective, and (3) provides a direct two-way conversationwith our customers and prospects, which builds trust Trust leads torevenue.

When you completely understand this, your traditional and socialmedia marketing (Fusion Marketing) will explode The true integration

of these two types of media will provide the next model for generatingrevenue Fusion Marketing is where you completely integrate yourtraditional, social, and digital marketing into one cohesive, effectivemarketing strategy Part 1 of this book will teach you how

Part 2 of this book will present chapters on what I call “criticalconcepts,” ideas that may seem peripheral but are actually critical tothe implementation of a successful Fusion Marketing plan I’ll alsoaddress a few of these critical concepts in Part 1

The first critical concept that I discuss in Part 2 is the Five Steps toFusion Marketing Success, which I also covered in great detail in Part

2 of The Social Media Bible I didn’t want to assume that you have

already read The Social Media Bible, but if you haven’t done so, you

Step 1 I will show you how to analyze your traditional marketing to determine what’s

working and what isn’t Calculating the COCA (cost of customer acquisition) is a very important step in any marketing strategy and one that nearly every company, both big and small, deliberately avoids Cutting this cost directly affects your bottom line.

Step 2 We will look at the Trinity of Social Media: blogging, microblogging, and social

networks, which will account for 90 percent of your social media participation.

Step 3 You will learn to integrate or “fuse” social media and traditional media into a

wide variety of specialized, cost-effective marketing outreach tactics to fit each of your target market segments In marketing, one size does not fit all This book will show you how to tailor your fused tactics to each customer segment, making these new tactics more effective than your present tactics For example, I’ll explain how you can fuse coupons, social media, and business cards to increase the impact of all three.

Step 4 You will learn to analyze the true cost of each tactic in your marketing

campaign—the cost of customer acquisition, mentioned in Step 1—so that you can pare down or eliminate marketing campaigns that have a low ROI This will allow you

to identify both human and financial resources that can be redirected to new, more efficient tradigital marketing strategies.

Step 5 I will show you how to implement and measure your Fusion Marketing success

plan You will see that only through measuring, analyzing, adjusting, and implementing again can you perfect your strategy Lather, rinse, and repeat!

Also in Part 2 of this book, I will show you how to represent yourmost effective marketing mix graphically, completely interconnectingall of your marketing campaigns in such a way that, almost likemagic, patterns will appear and successful strategies will emerge

We will then look more closely at each of your integrated plans foreven more success patterns, which will help you to develop additionalsuccessful microstrategies I call this “Fractal Fusion”: every time youlook at the image more closely, a smaller, successful microstrategycan be identified

As you develop your microstrategies, you can then choose the rightmicro-tools to get the job done By looking at your marketing from aFractal Fusion perspective, you can drill down deeper and deeper,step by step, into Fractal Fusion Marketing that will define yourstrategy and campaign for you

In addition, Part 2 will show you the secret behind the term viral.Whether it’s viral videos, viral e-mails, or viral blogs, they all have onething in common: drugs, or brain chemicals I will explain whyendorphins, dopamine, and serotonin drove more than 900 millionmembers to Facebook and keep them interacting there every day.Also, because of its importance in developing any successfulmarketing strategy, I discuss the sales funnel This is a traditionalsales and marketing concept, but it applies to social media, digital,and Fusion Marketing more than ever

Lastly, I will explain how to create all the different content you need

to feed the hungry multimedia demand Are you voracious for video,but not fascinated by photos? Bonkers for blogs, but not titillated by

tweets? Fanatical about Facebook, but not emotional about e-mail?You’re not alone; we all have our preferences for how wecommunicate with family members, friends, colleagues, andcompanies, and how we consume information Not everyone is intoeverything I will show you how to solve your perplexing contentdilemma.

I will provide you with some amazing tricks and insights into howyou can make your Fusion Marketing strategy even more effective Iwill show you how to start with one presentation and fill your Face-book timeline with wall postings, fill your Twitter stream with greattweets, and create audio podcasts and dynamic blog content, all in afew steps

As I mentioned before, owners of this book will have access toadditional content at the Fusion Marketing website, including videos,graphs, photos, templates, spreadsheets, and more On the website,you’ll find a link for each chapter To access the content, visitwww.TheFusionMarketingBible.com, or use your smartphone to scanthe QR barcode (like the one given just above this paragraph)

In addition, I have provided dozens of “From the Author” videosexplaining the key takeaways from each chapter, my personalinsights, and even a downloadable Safko Wheel Marketing Tool Kit tocreate your very own Fusion Marketing strategies in 3D!

This website will be an ever-changing, ever-evolving source thatwill enable you to access the very latest news, products, services,and resources for the world of Fusion Marketing.

The entire content of this book is focused on helping you to use all

of these amazing tools we have available to market yourself, yourcompany, your products, and your services by identifying the mosteffective marketing opportunities and integrating them into onesuccessful marketing strategy

To write a book takes a village I may have typed the originalkeystrokes, but there were dozens of people who contributed theirvaried talents to making this project a success Writing a book is likebuilding a house There are dozens of subcontractors, from concreteworkers to roofers, plumbers to carpenters, and electricians topainters, but it’s the architect who always gets all the credit

Creating The Fusion Marketing Bible took more than a year and a

half of hard work, insights, late nights, and lost weekends Most of all,

it took passion—passion for marketing, passion for editing, andpassion for getting it right

Social media has run its course There may have been more bookswritten on social media during the past five years than on any othersubject ever It’s time for something new, but what’s next?

In the past, every time I was interviewed on a radio show or for amagazine or blog, there would always be one inevitable question:

“So, what’s next?” And whenever this happened, I would stall, fumble,and give a kind of rehearsed answer about how there will beconsolidation, competition for ad revenue, and many social networksincorporating the features of their competitors

While this was all true, I hadn’t yet seen what really was comingnext—what would be the next big wave, what was going to transform

us again after we had all adopted social media That is, until a chancemeeting with Trent Smock

I want to thank Trent Smock of Straight Line Management forchallenging me to explain social media graphically Trent encouraged

me to try again after many failures to create one image that showedall of the social media tools and their interactions, which led me to theinvention of Fusion Marketing, the “Patent Pending” Safko WheelMarketing Tool Kit, and this book Thank you, Trent!

Dr Gary Witt, professor of marketing at Embry-Riddle AeronauticalUniversity, author, and owner of the Marketing Psychology Group,and I have been good friends for nearly a decade I have alwaysadmired his experience and knowledge of marketing, especially of hisarea of expertise, psychological marketing We would meet often todiscuss how social media has affected traditional marketing

When I first invented the concept of Fusion Marketing, I couldn’tbelieve that no one had thought of it already It seemed so logical andobvious that I thought I must have read it somewhere before I sent

Dr Witt an outline of Fusion Marketing and asked him to tell mewhere I might have seen it or what book I could find it in I awaited hise-mail response

To my surprise, his answer was the foreword to this book.Confused, I asked him why he wrote a foreword He said that FusionMarketing was a brand-new idea, never before done, and that he hadsent the foreword because he wanted to be sure that he had dibs onbeing in my book

Over the year, Dr Witt and I talked about Fusion Marketing, and

while I was pushing for the term tradigital marketing, he came up with

Fusion Marketing, which McGraw-Hill persuaded me to adopt See

the “village” thing again?

Because of our friendship and Dr Witt’s 40 years of practicalexperience, I asked Gary to please sign on as technical editor I knewthat he could keep me on the right track, correct my nomenclature,and add invaluable insights Thank you, Gary!

I am both lucky and proud to have one of McGraw-Hill’s besteditors, Stephanie Frerich, working on making this project a realityand a success

Stephanie Frerich, acquisitions editor in the Business Management

& Finance Division, was diligent about checking in with me to see if Ihad figured out what was next and if I had another book in me Shewas patient and professional, and she displayed an amazing amount

of integrity It was Stephanie who pushed this project up floor afterfloor at McGraw-Hill until our vision became a reality WithoutStephanie, this book would not be the success it is Thank you,Stephanie!

Thank you to all of the contributors who worked so hard supplyingFusion Marketing success stories from around the world I know itwas difficult to take amazing traditional marketing campaigns, mixthem with social media marketing campaigns, add in additional digitalmarketing campaigns, and describe your successes in 750 words.Thank you, contributors.

And I want to mostly thank my amazing wife, Sherrie, for working

so hard; without her taking care of business, I would never have beenfree from distraction and thus be able to invent and write I also want

to give her a great deal of credit for her amazing insights and edits onthis book So, Sherrie, with all my love, forever and for always

PART 1 FUSION MEDIA MARKETING

It’s Not About the Tools, It’s All About Strategy

Start with a Strategy

“I know half my advertising isn’t working I just don’t know which half.”

LORD LEVERHULME,the founder of Lever Brothers(now Unilever)

The soundest strategy you can have is to start with a soundstrategy That may sound silly, but when it comes to social and digitalmedia, most marketing people start with a tool, such as Facebook orTwitter, and try to build a strategy around that tool Marketing isn’t justabout the tools, though You wouldn’t assemble your team and say,

“We’re going to build a strategy exclusively around print ads.” You’dmake print ads part of your overall strategy In the same way, FusionMarketing starts with the development of a successful, integrated,and interconnected strategy using tried-and-true traditional marketingand media, social media, and the latest in digital media

Don’t jump into social media without a plan One Fortune 500company I consulted with had more than 19 million friends, allchatting about its products At first I was impressed, but once theinitial excitement about the number wore off, I asked, “So how areyou monetizing that?” The people present fell silent, looking like deer

in the headlights They were using a tool, but they didn’t have astrategy If you’re not monetizing your friends, your tweets, your e-mail lists, and your blogs, then why are you using social media?

Everything you do should be directly related to revenues If it isn’t,

stop doing it!

Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and YouTube aren’t strategies, they’retools Having a large number of friends, followers, and readers isgreat exposure, but you have to do something with those eyes, ears,and credit cards

Develop a Clear Conversion strategy

Develop a clear, individual, well-defined conversion strategy that willultimately increase your revenue

Increasing your likes on Facebook could be a specific conversionstrategy Increasing your followers on Twitter could be anotherstrategy Building your e-mail list could be another Getting moreconversation and comments on your blog might be one, too But how

do you convert this activity to revenue? That’s your next strategy.Here are some potential objectives and conversion strategies:

Increase my e-commerce

Gather user-generated content

Increase web traffic to a specific page

Build loyalty and peer support

Crowdsource innovation

Drive attendance at events

Build brand awareness

Improve customer service

Reduce tech support

Increase e-mail subscriptions

Increase telephone sales

Liquidate inventory

Here are some of my personal objectives and conversionstrategies:

Drive book sales

Raise sponsorship for PBS television special on socialmedia

Develop a radio campaign to promote the book

Increase my number of speaking engagements

Send direct mail to top 100 speakers’ bureaus

Raise awareness of the book in universities

Develop free press coverage.

Increase my likes on Facebook

Increase my activity on LinkedIn

Drive attendance at my seminars

Send e-mail blasts with free material

Increase Twitter followers

Some of these objectives are generic, while others are morespecific Some are so general as to be only starting points, whileothers involve better utilizing my tools Let’s look at how I developed

my strategies over the past year, when I started with a goal as broad

as “drive book sales.”

Six Steps to a Successful Conversion Strategy

1 What is your specific objective? Of course your goal is to make

money, but how? What segment(s) of your target market will you befocusing on? What specific products or services do you want thesepeople to buy? What is your timetable for success?

2 What is your marketing landscape? The environment in which

your business exists will influence your chances of success Didyou want to start a travel agency in 2004, when the Internet wassending most of them into bankruptcy? Not a good idea Did youwant to build spec houses in 2009? Also not the best idea Do youwant to provide health services to seniors in 2015? That’s probably

a great idea with a healthy economy and lots of retiring babyboomers

There are seven categories of environmental influences that you

must consider:

a The economy and jobs Are people spending, and on

what? Which sectors are getting hot and which are not?

b The competition and vendors Can you get the supplies

you need? How tough is the competition? Can you

compete?

c New technology How can you use it or suffer from it?

d Government regulations and politics What new laws

will affect your business?

e The society Are there social factors that will influence

your business, such as confidence in the economy or

demographic changes (for example, a growing Hispanicpopulation, an aging population, fewer couples getting

married, or later childbirth years)?

f Health and the environment Are there health and

environmental trends that will affect your business, such asglobal warming, increased emphasis on sustainability andgreen awareness, and increased skin cancer and obesity?

g Your customers Who are the specific people in your

niche? How are they doing? Whom are they buying fromand why? How do they feel about your brand?

Each of these categories provides both risks and opportunities Youmust analyze your company’s strengths and weaknesses carefully inrelation to each Providing healthcare services may be a great idea,but unless you have the funds to create such a business, trying to do

so could just bankrupt you Do your strengths let you overcome therisks and take advantage of the opportunities? Do your weaknessesput you in mortal danger and preclude you from benefiting from theopportunities?

Take your time and do this analysis carefully Think of it as aminefield If you miss a mine now, it could blow up later, afteryou’ve committed a lot of money to your strategy

3 What branding strategy will help you stand out from the competition in a positive way for the customers in your target market? To stand out, you must offer value that your competition

doesn’t, and that is important to your customers Scope tookmarket share from Listerine by emphasizing that it not only stoppedbad breath but left your breath “kissably fresh,” an importantpositive value that Listerine doesn’t provide Often the beststrategies are the simplest Look at your product or service throughyour customers’ eyes: what logical and emotional benefits do theygain from using your product? Promise to sell them the satisfactionthat they want, and use product features to prove that you can

deliver Scope promised breath so fresh that your loved one wouldwant to kiss you That is what people wanted to buy.

4 What tactics can you use to reach your target market with your message in a way that is affordable and effective? Maybe

you plan to emphasize print ads, social media, newspaper stories(PR), and video Each channel must be judged on how manytarget-market eyeballs it will deliver for the cost The greater theanticipated ROI (return on investment), the better If you run anItalian restaurant at one end of a large city like Phoenix, and youspend $30,000 for a newspaper ad in Section A, most of the peoplewho see the ad will live too far away to eat there, so those eyeballsare a wasted cost But if you spend $5,000 on an ad in the NorthPhoenix newspaper insert, you will reach a smaller audience, butnearly all of those people will be within driving distance of yourrestaurant The key is to maximize ROI

5 What tools can you use in your tactics? You need the right tools

to make your tactics work If I want to promote expensive bluejeans to teenage girls using videos of cool girls with cool guys, whattool should I use? YouTube will be more effective and far less costlythan TV You’ll learn all about tools and how to plug them into yourspecific tactics in later chapters For now, just keep in mind that youneed to identify specific tools—like specific magazines ornewspapers or TV shows or websites—that will carry yourmessage into your buyers’ minds You’ll also see that you can usedifferent tools, whether they’re traditional, digital, or social mediatools, to create even more specific and effective tactics by usingjust one little word!

6 What is your message? Tools are vehicles that carry your

messages What you say and how you say it make a hugedifference You’ll get a lot more people to have breakfast with you ifyou invite them out for “bacon and eggs” rather than for “fatty strips

of hog back and unfertilized chicken ova.” Your messages mustreflect what your target market wants to buy (“kissably freshbreath,” not mouthwash) Promise them what they want and offermore value than the competition

When you follow these six steps, you’ll have a strong strategyfor converting potential customers into buyers We’ll cover tacticsand tools in greater depth throughout this book, particularly inChapter 15 I will even show you how to develop microstrategies.

In the following example, let’s say my objective is “drive booksales.”

The Five Ws

Remember the Five Ws from grade school English class? The who,what, where, when, and why (and how)? The Five Ws came from

journalism They were developed by the New York Times back in the

1890s, when the paper used kids as (cub) reporters The editorstaught the kids to just bring back the Five Ws If they did, no matterhow bad a reporter the kid was, there would always be enoughinformation to craft a complete story

The what is “drive book sales.” The who is me, although it could

also be my team, my department, my division, or my marketing

company The when might be now or it might be in the first quarter,

30 days before the end of the fiscal or calendar year, or before a

trade show The where could be locally, nationally, internationally, or something else The why, of course, is to increase revenue The how

is where the gold is, and this will require a little mining

To drive book sales, I have to ask how I can do this by raising the

level of awareness about me and the value of the book’s content Themore people who are exposed to me and the book and how it willhelp them look at their marketing and sales in a completely differentway, the more people will buy the book, and the more they will talkabout the book The more they refer to the book, the more the bookwill sell This is absolutely true for any product

The Seven Whys

The Seven Whys is a technique that is credited to Toyota, and I use it

when teaching workshops on building dynamic, productive teams Itprovides a way to get to the bottom of a “we can’t do that” issue As a

kid, I was always asking why “Mommy, why is the sky blue?” “It’sbecause there’s water filtering the sun’s light.” “Why, Mommy?” “Well,it’s because the sun heats up the water, and it evaporates and floatsinto the sky.” “Why, Mommy?” “Well, it’s because when waterbecomes a gas, it’s lighter than the air and rises.” “Why, Mommy?”

“Because the molecule of a gas is ” And so on

Using the Seven Whys to get to a root-cause dogma* is a really

effective exercise Here’s how that conversation might go:

“We can’t do that.”

“Because we never took the time to create one.”

“If I helped you create a killer proposal to justify theadditional staffing budget, could we get it approved?”

“Sure!”

Somewhere between a few whys and seven whys, you will uncover

the real root cause of your problem

Let’s use the Seven Whys (changed to Hows) to determine how we

can raise the level of awareness to drive more book sales

Objective: How can I raise the level of awareness?

Develop a radio campaign to promote the book

Use direct mail to increase my number of speakingengagements

Raise awareness of the book in universities

Develop free press coverage

Increase my likes on Facebook

Increase my activity on LinkedIn

Drive attendance at my seminars

Send e-mail blasts with free material

Increase Twitter followers

Increase video content on YouTube

Do these look familiar? These are all tools: radio, e-mail, directmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, newspapers andmagazines, seminars, universities, public presentations, and so on.They are also actual campaigns that I created and executed over thepast year

Out of all these traditional and social media tools, let’s pick one

(“Increase my activity on LinkedIn”) and continue the how

questioning

Tool: LinkedIn

How can I increase my activity on LinkedIn?

I can increase the number of postings

I can fine-tune my profile

I can create a group

I can create and moderate a question

I can e-mail my contacts

I can increase my number of connections

I can connect with prospects, customers, and vendorpartners

I can participate in industry group discussions.

I can answer questions based on my area of expertise

I can ask for or offer “recommendations.”

These are tactics If you don’t know how to use a given tool, do aGoogle search For example, I searched for “Top + Strateg + Linked-In.” (You could also add “business.”) I used “strateg” so that Googlewould return “strategic,” “strategy,” and “strategies.” Read a few of theSERPs (search engine result pages) to see what the “wisdom of thecrowds” is Pick the ideas that you like and that are appropriate foryour business and write them down

But wait, you can take this even further! Let’s pick one of the

specific tactics related to using LinkedIn and apply the how

questioning to it

Tactic: I can create and moderate a question

How can I create and moderate a question to increase awareness

of me on LinkedIn? I decided to run a contest I used LinkedIn

“Answers” to post a subject-matter question in the form of a contest.Public questions on LinkedIn are amazing! They:

• Show up on the Open Questions page for others to answer.

• Are visible to all LinkedIn members to browse and comment on.

• Appear in your profile.

• Generate an update sent to your connections.

• Generate an update when someone answers the question.

• Can also be delivered as a message to 200 of your connections.

• Will show up in search engine results.

• Are open to responses for up to seven days or until you close the question.

• Can be reopened after they’re closed.

Within 15 minutes, I got exposure to thousands of people andreceived dozens of correct responses to the question What was thecontest? I simply asked, “What was the very first social network?” Isuppose you would like to know the answer too—it was SixDegrees

This chapter outlines the traditional way of developing a successfulmarketing campaign with a sound conversion strategy to increaserevenue Coming up, we’ll examine more sophisticated and excitingmethods of developing these strategies, all the way to the point ofusing three-dimensional fractal analysis Don’t worry, this is going to

be fun!

To access additional materials, go to:

• Start your successful marketing with a strong, sound, clear strategy.Facebook, twitter, Linkedin, print, seminars, and direct mail are

tools, not strategies.

• Make a list of all of the things you might want to do for your nextcampaign

• Analyze that list using the six steps to a successful conversionstrategy:

1 Develop your Objective start with one general objective.

2 Identify your marketing landscape

3 Determine what branding strategy will help you stand out fromyour competition

4 Develop tactics you can use to reach your target market withyour message

5 Identify what tools you can use with your tactics

6 Determine what your message is

• Choose one objective

• Identify the Five Ws of that strategy and develop that list in detail

• Use the seven Whys in the form of Hows to achieve the objective.

• From the list of hows, choose a tool.

• Continue the how questioning to discover the right tactic.

• Continue the how questioning again to determine how you can

implement the tactic

• Lather, rinse, and repeat!

*Dogma: Noun: a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.

The Evolution of Marketing:

How We Got Here

Ever since we were cavemen trying to exchange a bear claw for aseashell, we have been trying to convince others that the exchange

we want will benefit them as well: you can never have too many bearclaws, you never know when an extra bear claw will come in handy,and they make perfect gifts, too! That’s marketing and sales

As a society, we continued to market and develop our marketingmessage until we were selling goats atop a rock in the desert 6,000years ago We would bark out, broadcast (push) a message to thepassing crowds explaining why our goats were better than theherder’s down the trail We would shout out the benefits of goatownership: they provide milk, cheese, amusement, meat, andcompanionship, maybe not in that order All that for a mere five goldpieces But wait, there’s more!

We would utilize the very latest in marketing technology by cuppingour hands around our mouths to amplify our voices We’d push outour messages of the features and benefits of goats and wait for thegold pieces to come rolling in When the revenue stopped, we wouldrethink our strategy, features, benefits, and rock location, and thenrecraft our push message Or we would go to the marketing messageshaman in the next tent, pay him a lot of gold pieces to developanother goat-selling message, and try again

If the new message worked, we would see better results: we wouldbegin selling more goats That’s how we would know if our new pushmarketing message strategy was on target for our specificdemographic and geographic location

Every time we have developed a new way to communicate withone another, people in marketing and sales have figured out how touse that new technology to sell Here are some highlights of theevolution of communication technology over the past 6,000 years:

6,000 years ago: We invented cupped hands (megaphone).

1450: Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press.

1837: Samuel Morse invented the telegraph.

1876: Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.

1899: Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio.

1927: Philo Farnsworth invented the television.

1972: Tim Byrnes and Vint Cerf invented the Internet.

1999: E-commerce established a foothold.

2000: E-mail went mainstream.

2004: Social media caught on.

As soon as Gutenberg invented the printing press to mass-producethe Holy Bible, marketers began using that press to create printed

“bills” that were posted on billboards (This led to the first antispamruling: “Post No Bills.”) Then came flyers that were handed out inlarge crowds I am sure someone eventually got the idea of deliveringone of these flyers to each hut, thereby creating the first direct-mailcampaign

I am also sure that soon after Alexander Graham Bell developedthe telephone, someone used it to call other people about buyingproducts or services

Then came the radio When Westinghouse relaunched stationKDKA on November 2, 1920, it became the world’s first commercially

licensed radio station (Note the word commercial.) In those days,

station employees tested the tower’s signal strength and range byhaving one person sit at the microphone repeating the words “testing,testing, testing” while another drove around New Jersey keeping arecord of where he was able to receive the signal

One day, the man at the microphone got bored with repeating theword “testing” and decided simply to read that day’s newspaperaloud, story after story When listeners heard the news over the air,they demanded more, every day Eventually a marketer realized that

in order to pay for the technology and pay the person reading thenewspaper, he could have the person read the ads as well Thus

“commercial” radio was born

Then, after World War II, in the late 1940s, television becamepopular “This is great,” thought the marketer “I can create marketing

messages in which my prospects can actually see me demonstrating

my product! I’d pay for that!”

All of these technologies have one thing in common: they arelimited to one-way, push-messaging, monologue marketing Until theInternet revolution, that’s about all any marketer had to work with

In 1994, the modern Internet was emerging, and by 1995, chatrooms and web sites were springing up around the world (Prior to

1994, nobody could easily tap the Internet’s marketing potential.) Atthat time, not knowing how to use this new medium, companiessimply copied their brochures onto their web sites (“brochure-ware”).Cool! There was now a way that anyone anywhere in the world, 24-7-365, could sit in front of their computer, type in a URL (webaddress), and be instantly transported (well, at 300 baud) to a placewhere they could read your company’s brochure And it was free(except for the small monthly hosting fee)!

At this stage, Internet marketing provided yet another example ofusing the latest technology to push a message to sell and market.Then, in the early 2000s, as the Internet emerged from its infamousstock meltdown dot-bomb, something changed E-mail became morepopular, and for the very first time in human history, we had a truecommunication technology that was perfect for mass marketing and

mass two-way communication! (Telephones allowed for mass

communication only if you were on a party line.) With e-mail, ourclients and prospects could communicate with us nearly in real time

We could actually develop an ongoing dialogue That’s when webegan moving toward the mass two-way dialogue that social mediaand digital marketing provide us with today

Starting with e-mail, which I call the “original” social media, weconnected, promoted new products, answered questions, and closeddeals We developed “Squeeze Pages,” segmenting or A/B Testing,Day-Parting, seasonality, tracking reports, hard and soft bounces,open rates, forwards, calls to action, subject lines, and psychologicalhot buttons, eventually perfecting the art of spam Until the U.S.government passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, we were on a roll

As MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other socialnetworks grew in popularity at an astounding rate (from 2005 to mid-

2008, the number of Facebook users jumped from 1 million to 90