If you’re in sales you already know that prospects are not always ready to buy when you’re ready to sell.  Drip Marketing is a term used to describe an automated system that uses emails, newsletters, direct mail and postcards to continually drip out information to your list of prospects and customers.  Developing a strategy for keeping in contact on a continuing basis is what will cause a prospect to buy from you rather than from one of your competitors.

Let’s examine more closely how drip marketing can increase your sales:

1. Build a relationship– Sending out regular messages to your target market allows you to share information about your business and assures the prospect that your relationship with them will not end with the sale.

2. Presell your prospects – Educate them and help them do their research.  When they’re ready to make a purchase, who do you think they’re going to call?

3. Be persistent–Marketing experts recommend you have some sort of contact every 10-21 days to keep your name foremost in your prospects’ minds.   Think about what information you already have that you could divide up and send to your prospect list.   Brochures, white papers, manuals, FYI emails, etc.

4. Become the expert– Supplying your prospects with evidence that you know what you’re talking about will develop your image as an expert.   What have you accomplished that positions you as a leader in your industry?  Don’t be afraid to self-promote!

5. Be yourself–Studies have shown that prospects are more likely to make a purchase from someone they know and trust rather than a stranger who is selling a similar product.  Don’t be afraid to let your personality shine.  Let them see that you are a real person and that you care.

6. Mix it up– Prospects are bombarded with messages every day.  It’s hard to cut through all the clutter in order to get your message noticed.  Use a combination of email, postcards, direct mail, automated voice messaging, phone calls, Twitter, Facebook, etc.   You never know which of your messages will connect with which prospect.

7. Fix your follow-up failure– An automated marketing database will allow you to make sure that no one falls through the cracks.  Think of all the people you’ve met at networking events and trade shows.  What about referrals and your past customers?  If you’re like most salespeople, you have a pile of business cards on your desk with the intent to follow-up.  Unless you have an automated system, regular follow-up rarely happens and many sales are lost.

8. Target your audience– As you have probably discovered, your target market can be divided into various subsets. Using a database allows you to further segment your market and personalize your messages accordingly. Your prospects will become purchasers if they can relate to your sales message, which will be different for every segment of your target market.

9. Eliminate your slow sales times–Just as people are nearing the end of one marketing cycle and making purchases, new people will just begin receiving your information, thus continuing the cycle.  If you automate your marketing messages – such as via email auto responders or postcard campaigns – you will have a steady stream of sales.

10. Appreciate your current customers– Now that you have a customer base that has bought a product, you can use drip marketing to up-sell or cross-sell them to other products or services you offer.   Your current customers are a goldmine as they already know and trust you.

While planning a drip marketing campaign will take time, the effort is well worth the investment.  Once your automated system is set-up,  it will decrease the amount of time you spend in trying to manually follow-up with people and increase the amount of sales you can make each month.

Did you know that if you don’t have a clearly defined, written marketing plan… you are wasting money?

For the most part your business runs very well.  You attract clients and provide a product or service as promised.  What you may not know is that your business as well as any company must have a well defined, written marketing plan.  Without one, you are constantly searching for the “marketing gimmick of the month”.  This not only confuses your target market, but also wastes an enormous amount of money.  I see this approach every single day, but the good news is that your competition is probably utilizing this method also.  Now’s your chance to capitalize on their weakness.

Maybe it seems like too much work, but our experience tells us that your marketing plan (foundation) should be what drives everything you do going forward.
A company or new product launch without a marketing plan and associated strategy is like building a house with no foundation.  Sure, you could frame the wooden structure directly on dirt, but throughout the entire building process you will be constantly trying and guessing how to make everything level and square.  Build a strong, level foundation and the rest of the process is easy.

Marketing is very much the same way.  Almost 80% of all businesses do not have a marketing plan which is the solid, level foundation from which to build your business.  They know they need to generate customers, but yet they continually try different strategies, different advertising methods, public relations, etc. etc.  Each week they try something different, each week their marketing efforts have a different message.  Their advertising doesn’t follow tried and true graphic design layouts.  They have their brother-in-law’s kid slap together a web site.  Their web site looks like a 2nd grader put it together… their print ads looking nothing like their web site, their business cards or anything else they have.  Oh sure, they are spending lots of money but they are not getting results.  No consistency in look, message, or product offering.  Most importantly, they have no idea who their ideal client is, and/or what to say if they did know who it was.

The companies that DO have a marketing plan?  The companies that DO know who their “Ideal Client” is?  Well you know who those companies are.  They are the ones that typically “rule-the-roost”!  They are the companies that everyone wants to work for and many times have secured the “lions-share” of the market that you compete in.

Tell your advertising salesperson “Thanks, but no thanks”!

You as well as most companies are bombarded by advertising sales people… right?  Everything from promotional products like pens, key-fobs and calendars to yellow page ads, newspaper ads, and direct-mail.  Lately there is a new breed of salespeople promising you first page listings on Google, Yahoo, and BING.  Ask yourself, “If I do purchase advertising from one of these vendors, What am I going to say in the ad?”  Most likely, the ad salesperson will come up with some slick slogan, headline, or some ad copy they put together and rush it to press so they can get their commission.  What do they know about your business?  What is your target market?  What is your remarkable difference that will compel new customers to flock to your front door?  If any advertising salesperson doesn’t ask you up front, “Do you have a marketing plan & strategy?”, then they are probably only interested in making a commission.  Never put the “Cart Before the Horse”!  And never buy advertising without your road map, your foundation, your marketing plan.

Our fee typically pays for itself.

Heavy Guerrilla not only brings value to your entire company, we typically pay for our services in the first 12 months.  How you may ask?  We are one of the Northwest’s few true marketing and advertising agencies.  We get at the root of your marketing problems and work with you to generate real, foundational strategies that not only have longevity, but truly differentiate your company from the competition!  We’re not driven to sell you advertising just to make a commission, we’re driven by ROI.

While the underlying foundation of our strategies utilize long held, tried and true marketing methods, we also incorporate unconventional tactics to drive new sales, create excitement, and manage your entire marketing process.

When creating a formal, written marketing plan, your marketing strategy will become the meat & potatoes from which you will generate new business without wasting precious capital.  Marketing strategy is the process that allows your organization to use its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. While marketing strategy should be centered on the key concept that customer satisfaction is the main goal.

Key to Your General Corporate Strategy

Marketing strategy is a method of focusing your company’s energies and resources on a course of action which will lead to sales growth and dominance of a targeted market niche. A marketing strategy combines product development, promotion, distribution, pricing, relationship management and other elements; identifies the firm’s marketing goals, and explains how they will be achieved, ideally within a given timeframe.

Marketing strategy determines your target market segments, positioning, marketing mix, and allocation of resources whether it be capital or human. It is most effective when it is an integral component of overall company strategy, defining how your organization will successfully engage customers, prospects, and competitors in your particular market.

Corporate business plan strategies, corporate missions, and corporate goals.  As your customer constitutes the source of your firms’ revenue, marketing strategy is closely linked with the entire sales process.

Below is some basic theory to chew on.

• Target Audience
• Proposition/Key Element
• Implementation
• Tactics and actions

A marketing strategy should serve as the foundation of a marketing plan. A marketing plan contains a set of specific actions required to successfully implement a marketing strategy and helps to paint a picture for which your target audience is, and how to communicate a message that they want to hear.

Here’s an example of a marketing strategy: “Use a low cost product to attract prospects. Once our company, via our low cost product, has established a relationship with prospect, our organization will begin to sell additional, higher-margin products and services that enhance the prospect’s interaction with the low-cost product or service.”  Walmart would be a great example of this strategy.  Once they get you in the door with “advertised loss leaders”, they then introduce to the consumer higher margin products.

A strategy consists of a well thought out series of tactics, i.e. advertising, public relations, and referrals to make a marketing plan effective and actually generate results. Marketing strategies serve as the fundamental foundation of marketing plans designed to fill market needs and reach marketing objectives. Plans and objectives are generally tested for measurable results in order to achieve overall goals.

A marketing strategy integrates an company’s marketing goals, policies, and action plans (tactics) into a comprehensive whole. Similarly, the various strands of the strategy, which might include advertising, channel marketing, internet marketing, promotion and public relations can be orchestrated.  Many companies flow a strategy throughout an organization, by creating strategy tactics (advertising, public relations, referrals) that then become strategy goals for the next level. Each level is expected to take that strategy goal and develop a set of tactics to achieve that goal. This is why it is very important to create each strategy goal measurable, utilizing a given set of metrics.

Types of Strategies

Marketing strategies may differ depending on the unique situation of the individual business. However there are a number of ways of categorizing some generic strategies. A brief description of the most common categorizing schemes is presented below:

Strategies based on market dominance – In this scheme, firms are classified based on their market share or dominance of an industry. Typically there are three types of market dominance strategies:

• Leader
• Challenger
• Follower
• Product differentiation
• Market segmentation

Innovation strategies – This deals with the firm’s rate of the new product development and business model innovation.  It asks whether the company is on the cutting edge of technology and business innovation.

There are three types of Innovation Strategies:

• Pioneers
• Close followers
• Late followers

Growth strategies – In this scheme we ask the question, “How should the firm grow?”.  There are a number of different ways of answering that question, but the most common gives four answers:

• Horizontal integration
• Vertical integration
• Diversification
• Intensification

Believe it or not, when it comes to Marketing Strategies we have not even scratched the surface but what we have mentioned are some basics that are most commonly used.  Most of our information was compiled from severals sources including Wikipedia from which you can find a plethora of “college textbook” marketing concepts.

While it is good to read and understand these fundamental concepts, at Heavy Guerrilla we feel that a more practical, easy-to-understand approach actually produces better results.