The Lancaster Air Show – Let’s talk about SYNERGY!

Every town has it’s heroes. It safe to say that the Air Force and associated Aerotech companies are one of Lancaster’s biggest. We just returned from a pre-show on Lancaster Boulevard for tomorrows air show and patriotism was thick in the air. In front of the live country music and line dancing, members of the Thunderbirds mingled with the community and posed for photographs. The seniors sat in lawn chairs, the beauty pageant winners came together in front of supercars, people ate burgers and waved flags. Americana at it’s most proud and potent.

This is all very good PR for the air force which makes up a good chunk of the job economy in the AV. It’s generally good news for everybody when the local base wins a contract. It’s the kind of water cooler conversation people tend to talk about around here and read in the local Aerotech newspapers.

How does this all relate to web design you might ask? I’ll admit it’s a loose connection. But it’s a local event and I’m a local businessman so I’m going try. Let’s talk about synergy!

When I talk about synergy I’m talking about many different organizations, components or substances combining efforts to create something worth more than the sum of their parts. This is how your web strategy should work, in a nutshell.

The components I’m talking about are things like your website, Adwords, SEO, visual media etc. Every branded tool you use to get leads to conversions.

Like the Lancaster thunderbirds, each part of your web strategy should know exactly what it’s doing or it will not perform as well as it should. When it does work, your strategy will rocket you into the sales stratosphere. When it doesn’t, you might have a hard time getting off the ground.

I’m not just talking about the planes in this grand analogy of mine. Think about the air traffic controllers, the engineers, the event organizers and every other party involved in putting on the show. Including, most importantly, the spectators (or customers). If any of these components were to step out of line, the event would be a disaster.

For this reason it’s important that you know what each of your components are good for. Many businesses think that social media marketing will be the free platform they can use to drive conversions but that isn’t even close to being the case most of the time. As Christopher Penn recently wrote about marketing “Consider the context in which our audience interacts with what we do. Group tactics by behavior and purchase intent”. I really recommend giving his article a read, by the way.

So when you’re thinking about your online strategy, think about the Lancaster Thunderbirds, and make sure everything works TOGETHER as it should.

And go see the Airshow starting around noon tomorrow (March 24th).

Oh, and being from England I couldn’t help thinking of this gem from my childhood.