The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

The term “drip marketing” comes from the direct mail industry. Studies show it takes at least 7 to 10 points of contact before a prospect even remembers a company, much less buys from it. So, the idea is to mail a series of printed promotional pieces (drip) to current and potential customers, and thereby keep the company in front of their eyeballs long enough to establish brand awareness and develop them into leads. But that sure doesn’t sound very warm and fuzzy, does it? In fact, it sounds pretty impersonal and a little too cold and calculating.

People want to be cared about. They want to connect with other human beings, not be a cog in someone’s marketing machinations. But you are in business after all. You have to somehow find a way to get in front of your would-be clients or customers. Marketing is a necessary evil. But guess what? It doesn’t have to be evil. Let me tell you how you can create authentic drip campaigns driven by heart (you might even be doing one of these already):

1. First, change your thinking. Instead of “marketing,” look at these efforts simply as a way to make new friends (prospective clients/customers), help those you are already friends with (past and current clients/customers) and continue to nurture and solidify those relationships. People do business with and refer those they get to know, like and trust. So what you’re really doing in all your marketing efforts is simply allowing people to get to know the real you and leaving a door open for them to enter a little further.

2. One way you can do this is to publish an ezine for your target market. An ezine (electronic newsletter) is a form of drip marketing because it allows you to stay in front of your audience on regular basis. It’s a heck of lot cheaper and easier to publish than a print newsletter, and there’s a much greater return for the effort. The keys to a successful ezine are:

a) make it about your target market (what do they want to read about? What advice, tips and solutions will be of value and interest to them? How can you make it fun?), and

b) publish regularly—at least monthly, but no more than weekly. You know you’re doing something right when readers email you when an issue is missing or late!

3. Publish a blog. Like an ezine, frequency is key. It doesn’t have to be on the same kind of schedule as an ezine, but you should post regularly to maintain a momentum of interest. Posting twice a year just isn’t going to cut it. If you do blog, you can be more personal and less formal, the content less structured. It’s another avenue for allowing prospective clients/customers to get to know you as a person, which makes you much more real and approachable.

4. Offer a free e-course via a series of autoresponders. Say you have some sort of how-to guide that you’ve been offering as a single download. What you could do instead is divide each of the how-to bullets into separate messages to be sent out one at a time each week. If you have 10 messages, that’s 10 weeks you can be helping those on your list and keeping in touch with them. Encourage questions and feedback, which will help you better understand their needs and challenges and develop further useful content and information for them..

5. With the lists you develop, continue to keep in touch. Send out a message whenever you come across news and information you think will be helpful to your list members. Send a message linking to an article you think is of interest to them. Tell them about happenings or products you recommend. Let them know whenever you have a special event or offering for them. Periodically spotlight one of your skills or services they might not be aware of. Map out a list of all the reasons you could contact those on your list. The possibilities are endless. Continue to add to it as you come up with ideas. There’s nothing wrong with letting folks know what you do and what you have to offer them. Just try to strike a balance. Remember that the point is to be helpful, not spam them with constant marketing and self-interested promotion. The simple act of being a helpful, knowledgeable resource for them promotes you in all the best ways possible.

All of this is about creating rapport and trust. When you show people who you are and what you are passionate about, you instill rapport. When you demonstrate that you understand their business problems and needs, you show them that they can trust you. There’s nothing evil about that. It’s simple consideration. Commit to more of that.

RESOURCE: Aweber is the most versatile autoresponder service out there in my book. Not only can you use it to deliver your ezine, it can be used for all kinds of other purposes including capturing subscribers, managing unlimited lists, communicating with those lists (separately or together) via sequential and scheduled broadcasts, setting up automated message campaigns, distributing blog post notifications and even incoporating those messages with social media. The reporting features are phenomenal and it integrates nicely with shoppingcart systems. Its double opt-in policy makes it one of the very top rated services for email delivery and open rates.