Linking the Tactics, Using the Buffalo

About 3 years ago, all of the talk was about "integrated marketing." Maintain a common aesthetic across all of your marketing channels to increase the strength of your brand.

Last year, all of the talk was about Social Media. It was a new frontier (relatively), and if there was one thing we all wanted to see last year, it was something new.

This year, "the talk" is all over the place. Is mobile marketing the new darling? Is it going to defeat Social Media? Is Google going to take over the world or is Facebook going to beat it to the punch? Is print dead or just on vacation?

Maybe it's the pacifist in me, but I don't think marketing is going to be about just one thing ever again. I think the companies that are really going to soar are going to be the ones who do everything and do everything well.

Chris Brogan wrote a post today where he used the phrase "Buffalo Content Maker." The idea is that generating content for one purpose is not the most efficient way to go about things. If you have a public speaker come in to talk to your company, per Brogan's example, why not videotape it, post it to YouTube, link back to your website, and become a resource? In Brogan's own case, blog posts are becoming books, presentations, tweets, and more.

These are all great ideas, but they are predicated upon the fact that your key emphasis is the online world, particularly the Social Media world. I would like to see someone using a buffalo that is made of new media and yes, the horror, traditional media.

How can you do this?

Let's jump off from a similar place to where Brogan started. Let's say one of your customers has invited you to do a product demo at their facility. You pool your resources and get your talk ready. With you is someone to videotape the session.

When you get back, you do a little editing and post the video to YouTube. Ask your customer if you can include any questions and things they might have brought up that were good points.

Put together a little news release that you send out to the industry and post to your website. Great product demo now available. Link to the YouTube video. It's okay not to link to your site. If they like what they see, they'll link to your site from YouTube -- a boost for SEO.

Let's say you have a trade show coming up. Burn the video to CD, design some nice face art, and you have a give-away for the show that people won't just throw on the floor (CDs seem more precious than sheets of paper or fliers, I've noticed). If you're really feeling wild, create a direct mail piece in which the CD of the video can be inserted. Invite people to view the CD and bring their questions to your booth.

This is just one example, and not a full example, of how Social Media and the ever-changing online world can actually enrich rather than over-power tactics in which companies were engaged but a few years ago. Social Media doesn't have to defeat traditional media and mobile marketing doesn't have to defeat Social Media. Everything can be linked together to create a single, giant, buffalo-like chain. Use it up. The possibilities are endless.



Image by Antonio Jiménez Alonso. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Capgros