Whilst you may not have heard of drip marketing, it may well be you are already using it!
The term ‘drip marketing’ refers to an aspect of your marketing strategy where a steady, but constant flow of marketing messages and materials are fed to prospects and customers over a predetermined period.
We often refer to it as a ‘drip’ because information released is at a steady pace so as not to bombard your prospects, more so to inform, educate and encourage their interaction by gently leading them down the sales funnel.
It’s proven that repeated exposure to a business brand, product or service, over time, and through a variety of media, helps to persuade and convert leads into actual orders. It’s that ability that makes it such an attractive proposition for SMEs.
Drip Marketing – aka Marketing Automation!
Whilst drip marketing projects take many different forms – all of which can be equally successful – advances with email marketing and marketing automation software, have made the delivery, messaging and monitoring of drip campaigns much easier.
You can pre-plan, pre-write and precisely time the release of your campaign, and then carefully monitor and tweak its parameters to make sure customers receive the information that is most useful to them as it gains momentum.
What do you want to achieve?
Before you decide how best to deliver your drip marketing campaign, you must sit down and think through what you want to achieve.
Here at 22 Century Design and Marketing, we would start with a preliminary meeting to understand your goals, the audience you want to influence, and what your key messaging might be. We can then recommend and structure a drip marketing strategy that best fits with your individual requirements.
A proven way of connecting with your prospects and customers
The thing to remember with drip marketing is that it’s not experimental. Drip feeding customers the information that they are interested in is something marketers have been doing very successfully for years.
However, new advances in software automation and digital platforms have made drip marketing much easier and more cost effective for SMEs as there is no need to financially commit to printed catalogues, leaflets and flyers, unless this is something you want to do.
The main point now with marketing automation, is that you can reach a large, potential audience and customise their experience with clever design, content and targeting. Everything can be pre-written, designed, planned and released to maximise the outcome and your ROI.
Strategy, content and prospect ‘behaviour profiling’ are key elements of a drip marketing campaign
The targeting element of your drip marketing campaign is hugely important.
With marketing automation, you can focus on the behaviour profile of your prospects, so that you can provide a tailored experience that best aligns with their unique preferences and interests.
As soon as a potential lead lands on your website or purpose-designed landing page, and opts into future communications, you can instantly begin to drip feed them messages tailored to their profile.
For example, if they view an explainer video on ‘how to file your business accounts,’ you can then, over time, send them an email, prices and specific service insights that give them a bit more information. Essentially you are slowly, but surely, leading them down the sales funnel.
What are the overall benefits for SMEs?
- Keeps your unique brand proposition in front of prospects and buyers
- You can automate and pre-plan your content with automation software and email marketing
- You can design your own strategy and make it flexible – i.e.: you can automate the entire drip campaign, partially automate, or run a traditional marketing campaign using printed material
- Can reach a large audience leading to an increase in new customers and orders, as well as rejuvenating ‘inactive’ prospects
- Results are measurable, so ROI can be quantified
- Can convert a prospect into a customer by leading them down the sales funnel
- Initiate campaigns quickly and cost effectively, saving time and money.
How is drip marketing used?
To be honest, our experience is that SMEs are using drip marketing for a wide variety of different marketing purposes.
Whether you want to thank a customer for their first purchase and introduce them to other services and products, generate new prospects, or release targeted information to existing customers that haven’t been active, say, over 12 months, drip marketing can be a useful and successful tool for SMEs.
Drip marketing is being used to:
- Promote online events and subscription renewals
- Publish opportunities to sign up to view relevant ‘explainer videos,’ newsletters etc
- Invite sign-ups for premium content (an informed, unbiased commentary on a topical subject)
- Engage prospects and get them sharing your data with others
- Invite opinion and undertake surveys
- Generate new prospects and sales leads
- Reinforce first purchases (by celebrating their choice whilst pointing them towards other products and services)
- Build lasting customer relationships, goodwill and business
- Reinforce a customer experience.
Customers want to feel valued and to learn from you – drip marketing can deliver that experience
Prospective and existing customers no longer want to buy something impulsively. They expect to take their time, to learn and to educate themselves about products and services, before placing their first or a repeat order. In so doing, they feel they have made an informed choice.
Prospects want to place their order with an SME that understands them, and to feel they are spending their money with a company that values their business. They want to work with an SME that goes above-and-beyond.
Automated drip marketing tools are exceptionally useful in building rapport and feeding customers and prospects with what they need and want to know.
Drip marketing – define it, own it, deliver it!
So, drip marketing is a wide-ranging term that refers to a variety of different ways of drip feeding your prospects and customers with useful, targeted sales and marketing messages, with the overall aim of securing leads, orders and loyalty.
Whether you want to explore drip marketing possibilities using marketing automation, social media, printed material, and/or email marketing, 22 Century Design and Marketing can guide you through the various steps.
