Daily Fee or Annual Sticker?

I just stuck a 2021 Wisconsin state park sticker on my car. Tongue between my teeth like a 5-year-old, I carefully placed the spanking new sticker on the “lower corner of the driver’s side of the windshield.”

(This followed a half hour removing last year’s sticker using a paint scraper and Nature’s Miracle spray, muttering unprintable things about a low bidder and adhesive. But I digress…)

Since I live in Minnesota, why did I just buy an annual Wisconsin sticker?

Well, Wisconsin is just a short flight across the Mississippi River. If I were a crow, I could be considered a Wisconsonite. But, instead of wings I have four wheels and a license plate. It’s the inflated non-resident sticker fee for me.

Still, I consider it a small price to pay for benefits summed up in two words: anticipation and opportunity.

Anticipation

Here in Minnesota, early spring is snow showers, mud, and frosty mornings. Longing for spring, but stuck in winter.

But then! I put that sticker on my windshield.

Suddenly I am transported to the Mississippi River bluffs of Perrot State Park, basking in warm May sun, hearing the season’s first bumblebees as they gather pollen from hepaticas and dutchman’s breeches…

In a twinkling, I am in a state of serious spring anticipation.

And anticipation, in my experience, is closely tied to opportunity.

Opportunity

Without that annual sticker, would I pay the daily fee to drive into a park? Or would I decide that a few wildflower photos were not worth $11?

The latter. I know how I roll. That’s why I bought a sticker.

With my sticker I am one of the landed gentry! There’s no opportunity too small (and the Visa charge is but a paid-off memory).

Into the park I drive, anticipating—and finding—opportunities. Grab the camera! Was that a red-shouldered hawk that just flew by?

Adopting an Annual Sticker Approach

B2B marketing has the same tradeoffs, it seems to me.

Do we keep on with a daily fee approach? Cranking out marketing collateral only in response to the latest RFP or RFQ?

or

Can we adopt an annual sticker approach? Using white papers, case studies, and more to anticipate new opportunities?

Maybe it’s time to take a drive on the wild side.

Annual sticker it is!