Are your marketing costs sky-rocketing? Spending a fortune on ads and brochures?

Let me tell you about one of the best marketing tools I´ve ever stumbled upon. No, it´s not one of  those pyramid-multi-level-marketing things. This one is for real. And I´m not paid to write this. It allows you to communicate exclusively with people that are genuinely interested in your stuff. No others involved. No more waste of time and money on “the subscribers mother-in-law” or other non-existing readers that happens to take a glance in the paper, which ad-sellers often include to boost their figures.

It was invented by a coincident a few years ago. Funny story. The sales manager for a hotel at Scandinavias largest wildlife park, was a bit short on conferences. She needed about 30 more bookings according to budget and time was running out.

She called a friend of mine, in those days he was doing customer research for chain stores, and asked him for an advice. His brilliant solution was a combination of customer research and sales tool.

They put a small printed flier by the Zoo entrance. The park is most famous for its marine world and the dolphins, so they asked a thrilling question, illustrated by a nice photo, in the flier: How about dating a dolphin? Just answer a few simple questions… A chance to win a weekend and meet the dolphins.

They also e-mailed the flier to about 2000 existing clients. Her idea was to get a 100 leads which eventually would get her 30 new conferences. The response was tremendous. She got 800+ leads and about a hundred conferences. How did it happen?

The key is the questions. Just a few, but important: How many conferences a year do you usually arrange? When? For how many people? When do you plan to have the next conference? You get the idea. She reached exclusively those clients interested in having a conference at a wilderness park hotel. She knew exactly how to prioritize her potential clients and could accordingly invite them for a study-tour.

The customer database then grew by itself. People continously replied to the questions, now online, entering their interests, names and numbers directly without any effort needed from the hotel. Except for drawing a winner now and then.

What´s your thrilling key question to sort out the best leads?