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It doesn’t take profound thinking to grow a business. According to pioneering online marketer Mark Joyner, simple concepts that turn steps in the purchasing process into opportunities have powered the growth of empires. Just consider the impact of inserting “Would you like fries with that?” at an optimal point in McDonald’s “transaction stream.”

But Joyner’s case studies are not about cross-sells or up-sells. In his latest book, Integration Marketing: How Small Businesses Become Big Businesses — and Big Businesses Become Empires (Wiley: 2009), he covers some sophisticated concepts, including mathematical formulas for calculating the return on investment of prospective deals.

Despite all the math and charts, Joyner characterizes integrated marketing communications as “part art, part science, part voodoo” and maintains that marketers can develop a sense of what works and what doesn’t based on their own experience. “Genius emerges from this subjective sense, or ‘feel,’” Joyner writes. Using examples, he explains how businesses can grow indefinitely with minimal risk and offers an action plan along with his supporting theories. His Integration Marketing Growth Strategy consists of four steps:

1. Identify potential “integration marketing” deals. Case studies in the book can be adapted to model deals that fit your business, or you can calculate your own “unit of marketing value” (UMV).
   
   
2. Test your concept. Try out your idea to be sure it can perform before you roll it out.
   
   
3. Strike your deal. Work with the owner of the transaction stream (i.e., the customer) to insert your UMV at a potentially profitable integration point.
   
   
4. Duplicate and scale. Then do it again — and profit from the value of replication. Simply scaling something that works, says Joyner, can be vastly more profitable than trying different approaches.