Disconnected

I misplaced my cell phone yesterday; left it in a friend's car as I ran for a plane at the airport. Fortunately my friend was able to send it back via Fed Ex and I will have it tomorrow.

What a terrible feeling. I spoke with quite a few people today and they all said the same thing; "isn't it horrible?". Yes it is, but it got me to thinking.

How would we market our business if we could not connect electronically with our market? How would we try to connect? Would we just rely on traditional forms of media or would we try to invent a new way to connect that isn't yet available? Or maybe invent a non electronic form of Twitter or Face Book.

When we were kids, we might have had a "pen pal?" That was a precursor of Face book. We sent information to people and they wrote back to us. We exchanged pictures and talked about our lives. If we were hip, we could have used it as a sales opportunity. In fact we eventually did. It was called direct response marketing.

Perhaps, being in the retail business, we could go back to our 5 mile rings of influence or 10 mile rings of influence to reach our market, either via direct mail, telemarketing, sales appointments and local or regional advertising. Shouldn't we still do that? Recent reports have stated that marketing results increase exponentially, just by adding postcards, permission based faxes and robo calls to our E marketing efforts.

While conventional wisdom states that E marketing must be a cornerstone of your total marketing effort, it doesn't say that it should be the ONLY part.