Greetings! 

A couple of weeks ago at 10 a.m. I was thinking about the nachos I wanted for lunch. The idea came to me as a way to use up stale tortilla chips, leftover taco meat and refried beans. Layer those things on a baking sheet, add some cheese, bake until the chips are hot and crispy and the cheese is melted and gooey.  Then tear off hunks and dip in salsa - YUM!

That morning I dove into a couple of projects, got a call and suddenly it was 1 p.m. with my stomach growling. I zipped down to the kitchen, turned on the oven, and started to assemble the ingredients. I was really hungry and looking at the ingredients on the kitchen counter did not help. Did I have the will power to wait 20 minutes for sizzling hot, gooey deliciousness? Maybe I would just microwave the meat and beans then dip with the chips.  I popped a chip into my mouth. Blech!  No crunch. Even the salty flavor was overwhelmed by the mushiness of a stale chip. These definitely needed the oven to be edible. Besides the oven was almost up to temperature.

So I grabbed a carrot stick to munch on, assembled my nachos and put them in the oven. I still remember that first bite - crisp, salty corn with spicy richness from the meat, all tied together with creamy melted cheese and tangy cool salsa as a contrast--nirvana! Really worth the wait.

How does this relate to marketing, or any business (or life) endeavor? The separate ingredients were ok at best, stale at worst.  Yet when they were combined, a unifying ingredient added (the cheese) and processed a bit (baked)--magic occurred. Alchemy created a marvelous result from a ho-hum starting set.

It's a perfect example of the benefits of an integrated marketing strategy or business plan. Each piece can be useful - brand, website, SEO, advertising, email, social media, newsletters, PR and more. Then when the components are considered as part of a whole and we think about how they work together to build something larger than the sum of the individual pieces, that synergy brings additional flavors and life to the strategy. Results are created that were probably not imagined from considering the solo parts.

Wonderful nachos can be composed from a vast array of ingredients, mixed in inventive ways, custom to each creator. Similarly, a marketing strategy or initiative can (and should) be custom, in both ingredients and the process to combine.

How are you making nachos this week? 

Happy Belated Cinco de Mayo!

"Cada cual hace con su vida un papalote y lo echa a volar"
(We each make a kite of life and fly it as we will)

Mexican Saying