Fusion marketing
As many of you know, I am the author of the bestselling book, The Social Media Bible published by John Wiley & Sons. My newest bestseller is called The Fusion Marketing Bible , published by McGraw Hill. Fusion Marketing is about “What’s next”, what comes after social media. Fusion Marketing is actually an entirely new form of marketing.
I discovered Fusion Marketing as a result of constantly being asked in interviews “So, what comes after social media?” Social media has changed the way the world markets, sells, and communicates forever. And, it has caused us to change at speeds we have never seen before with technology and I think, you want to know what’s next?
I decided to take that question on as a challenge
I asked myself, “Where will marketing and sales organization be in say, five years? How will we be treating traditional, digital, and social media marketing? That’s when I realized that Traditional Marketing + Digital Marketing + Social Media Marketing = Fusion Marketing!
I realized that even now, if you are still calling yourself a “Social Media Expert” then you’re announcing to the world that you have been left behind. If you’re an expert in Facebook and Twitter, then you’re trying to build a entire marketing strategy restricted to using only one or two tools from all of the marketing tools available today. Facebook is not a strategy. Twitter is not a strategy. They are only tools.
Ahead of the curve
If you’re still stuck looking at social media as a stand alone marketing technology, then you’ve been left behind. Today the term V.P. Social Media Marketing sounds normal, but it is already as obsolete as V.P. of Billboards. Companies that recognize social media marketing as one set of marketing tools out of many, will be ahead of the curve.
Fusion Marketing is the next generation of marketing that brings all of our 6,000 years of traditional “push” or “monologue” marketing, the exciting digital marketing tools of the Internet, and social media or “dialogue” marketing and fully integrates them into one seamless toolset that will accomplish every objective you set at no additional costs! Fusion Marketing is such a totally new concept of “Interconnecting” all of your marketing tools that it has been accepted by the United States Patent & Trademark Office as “Patent Pending”.
As part of the Fusion Marketing concept, I also invented a tool to help you implement your Fusion Marketing called the Safko Wheel. This tool is available for free with the pre-purchase of the book at www.TheFusionMarketingBible.com or you can make one from scratch.
This article is about how Fusion Marketing works, how the Safko Wheel works, and how you can use these tools to discover hidden ROI opportunities in your marketing. Fusion Marketing is a 12 Step program and here’s how it works!
The fusion marketing Safko wheel – 12 step process
An Example of The Safko Wheel
Traditional Marketing Wheel
Step 1 – select your traditional tools
In Step 1, we will start by selecting (or creating) the Traditional cards (red), for the Traditional Marketing Tools you used last year, then place them around the Wheel or… try working with all of the cards at first to see how powerful Fusion Marketing and this Wheel can be.
Step 2 – perform fusion marketing
Fusion Marketing is about “fusing” all marketing tools together to create new opportunities. To begin, select one Tool from the Wheel. Study that Tool for a moment and understand how it really works. Then, randomly select a second Tool from the Wheel and study it. Now, connect Tool 1 to Tool 2.
Now, ask yourself the question “How can they work together?” such as what if you “put a coupon on the back of your business card” or “put a coupon on your brochure?” We know that business cards represent a strong interaction, face-to-face, and most likely, you “touched” the other person in the form of a handshake.
If you put a coupon on the back of your business card, where that person; prospect, after meeting you, would exercise that relationship more readily by purchasing. Would putting a coupon on your brochure make a customer more likely to purchase while holding or viewing your product brochure? Of course it would!
Make multiple connections:
The next step is to keep Tool 1 and move around the Wheel connecting it to different Tools and discover the opportunities. Next, move completely around the Wheel keeping the first Tool and connecting it to a different Tool. When you have completed this, repeat this process with an adjacent Tool and write down all of the discovered opportunities. Can you see how many different opportunities that can be discovered by looking at your Traditional media in this way?
Make reverse connections:
Once you have gone around the wheel making the one way connections, now you can make reverse connections. Start with first Toolset (Tools 1 and 2) and “reverse” the connection to identify additional opportunities. Move around the Wheel again making reverse connections such as “put your personal contact information on your coupon”, or “put a QR Barcode on your coupon to view your product brochure”.
If you had a “person” someone to speak with, an individual who represented your company with their personal contact information on your coupon, would that make a prospect more likely to exercise that coupon and converter from a prospect to a customer? It would!
Step 3 – The trinity of social media
Start with The Trinity of Social Media; Blogging, Micro-blogging, and Social Networks. With only these three Tools, you can accomplish 90% of the total success social media has to offer. Next, add in other Digital Marketing Tools; e.g.: SEO, SEM, Facebook (social networks), Youtube (video sharing), Email, etc. Tools that you wish to incorporate into this year’s plan or you can look at all of the Tools, first. If you aren’t familiar with all 20 categories, please read The Social Media Bible.
An Example of The Safko Wheel
Digital / Social Media Marketing Wheel
Step 4 – Perform fusion marketing
Refer to Step 2 above and repeat the process of Fusing all of your Digital / Social Media Tools together to discover new opportunities. How many can you identify?
Step 5 – Create a “tradigital” toolset
In this step, you combine the Traditional Marketing Tools with the Digital / Social Media Marketing Tools you have selected and place them around the Wheel to create a custom TraDigital toolset. And start making connections once again.
Step 6 – Perform the cost of customer acquisition (COCA)
You will quickly see that there are just too many possible connections. None of us have the time or resources to pursue all those opportunities. Actually, with the 20 Top Traditional and the 20 Top Digital / Social Media Tools, there are 8.15 1047 or 8 with 47 zeros after it. We have to trim it down somehow, someway that makes sense.
To do this, we will perform the Cost of Customer Acquisition on each Tool (campaign). Start by listing all of the Traditional campaigns you performed last year on a white-board, yellow pad, or spreadsheet. List every expense, be sure to include all of your overhead. Total the columns for those expenses. Estimate the number of new customers each campaign generated. Finally, divide the totals for each of the expense categories by the number of new customers. This is your Cost Of Customer Acquisition, (COCA). These numbers will surprise you, some in a good way and some will cause shock.
Step 7 – Eliminate and prioritize
Here we you eliminate campaigns that were ineffective; the ones with the poor ROI. This will provide new human and financial resources that we can use later. Prioritize the remaining Tools you will use for this year’s Fusion Marketing Plan. Add in any new Tools (cards) you wish to incorporate this year.
Step 8 – Perform fusion marketing
Once again, refer to Step 2 above and experience the process of Fusing all of your Tools together to discover new opportunities.
Step 9 – Define strategy
In this step we will define “strategy” and create all of the strategies you will need to build a successful Fusion Marketing Plan. Strategy = Objective + Tool + Tactic. A Strategy is the outcome, not an item.
Create objectives:
Let’s begin by creating 5 Objectives (goals); such as; “increase email list”, “drive more attendance to presentations”, “perform webinars”, or “develop more product awareness”. Write them down.
An Example of The Safko Wheel
Strategy-Objective-Tactic-Tool Wheel
Step 10 – Work the wheel
Now it’s time to work the Wheel by placing one of your Objectives from above in the center of the Wheel. Select each Tool, one at a time, and ask, “How can I use this Tools to achieve that Objective?” Move around the Wheel connecting each Tool to that Objective. These connections are your Tactics. Try making multiple connections; using two Tools to connect to the Objective. Continue around the Wheel. Record every Tactic. Repeat with next the Objective until you have fully developed all five Objectives.
Step 11 – Prioritize tour objectives
Next we will prioritize each Tactic for each Objective then prioritize each Objective, because you can’t do everything. Remember, now that you have performed your COCA in Step 6, and have eliminated campaigns with a poor ROI, you now have human and financial resources to accomplish additional Objectives.
Step 12 – Finalize your fusion marketing plan
It’s the combination all of the Tools and Tactics for each selected Objective that becomes your final list of successful Strategies. Combine all of your final strategies to form your new Fusion Marketing Plan!
Execute with success
By utilizing Fusion Marketing and the Safko Wheel process you will only spend resources on your most effective Tactics, on your most effective Strategies, using the most effective Traditional Marketing Tools combined with the most effective Digital Marketing Tools.
That’s Fusion Media Marketing!
Fusion Marketing is about looking at all of your tools, campaigns, objectives, conversion strategies and everything you do in marketing in a completely different way to identify hidden opportunities to increase your ROI without spending any additional money.
For more information on Lon Safko go to www.LonSafko.com, to learn more about Fusion Marketing, and to get your free Safko Wheel Marketing Toolkit download, go to www.TheFusionMarketingBible.com.
