Smart Marketers Are Always *Thinking.* Get This. It's Brilliant.

Entrepreneur and corporate strategist Colin Jensen has a great post up on Quora. Jensen says, "No matter what kind of business you're starting, you need more than one source of revenue, and hopefully at least one your competition won't have thought of."

That reminded me of a GoogleOffer that showed up in my mailbox just this morning. Fairfield Inn & Suites (Marriott property) has a hotel near Dulles Airport. Anybody who lives in the Washington, D.C. area has utterly NO reason to go to the Dulles area, except to fly or pick up fliers. But wait! Maybe there's something out there in Dulles land after all ...

Fairfield was making an amazing offer -- 14 days of parking and free every-half-hour shuttle service to and the airport for only $20! Fairfield says that's a $140 value and I believe it. Moreover, Fairfield is offering staff help to haul luggage in and out of the shuttle bus. (No, I don't work for them and, yes, I never knew they existed until this a.m.). Wow.

In fact, this offer was SO wow that I went to the Fairfield website just to see if they would let me use the service other times. Yes, we can! But, for Fairfield, the real benefit is that their hotel is now on my radar. I found out they have inexpensive weekend packages and I can also consider staying there overnight before an early flight.

The discounted offer won't make any money of course, but it won't cost Fairfield any money, either. In short, this is some of the best hotel advertising I've seen in years. I'm sure many other curious local gawkers hopped to their website this morning, too .. where we found all manner of other offers besides "fly and park" also featured. This is very smart marketing, right Colin?

-- scrubbed by MarketingBrillo