When Marketing Today, It Takes a Village. Or Rather, a Modern Family.

Have you ever seen that TV show Modern Family? It has an amazingly colorful cast of real-life, diverse characters who make magic on the little screen - yes, because of the gifted ensemble cast, and yeah, because of the razor-edge, hilarious writing - but mostly because of the wonderful integration of the characters in each 22 minute episode. And after one belly-laughing episode recently (where I almost had the Snapple I was drinking snort out my nose), I started to think about how the family of marketing characters has evolved.

Remember the days when you mailed out your catalog and perhaps a few postcards or sales sheets and you watched the orders fly in all year long? (I am dating myself, aren't I?) If you look at your customers today - who they are, how they live and do business, how they buy nowadays - things, in a simple word, have CHANGED. In order to reach your customer, you need to be where they are and appeal to how THEY want to do business.

Look at the landscape of customers today. You have the traditionalists who like scanning a catalog or a print piece. There are some who want to shop only online. Some want to view things only on their mobile device. Some still want to touch and feel the product. Some want to interact with you and give feedback, but on their terms, in their choice of media.

It now takes a village of marketing media to reach them-what I'd like to call a "modern family of marketing channels."

So how does the small business owner or the busy professional do their job, and still find time to market themselves in many different ways, without going broke? Partner with your suppliers who are providing vehicles that will do it for you. Take advantage of their free pass-along websites, their emailable sales sheets, their reduced-priced sample programs, their social media pre-written shareables, and cut and paste away.