DRIP, DRIP, DRIP MARKETING

THE ERA OF NURTURING RELATIONSHIPS

There used to be only a few go-to names to call upon for anything a consumer or business needed. Now our options have exploded, with highly specialized skill-sets, rapidly evolving technologies and diverse perspectives. Bright new shiny objects are everywhere, distracting clients and customers from doing business with you.

Drip marketing is one way your sales people can nurture relationships with prospects until they buy. The drip marketing concept has been around since the advent of direct mail in the mid 20^th century, but new technology and the rapid growth of content marketing has fueled the need to nurture prospects and customers more effectively, using personalization to convert those relationships to buy your products and services.

Traditionally, head office marketers were tasked with nurturing leads from a corporate communication perspective – however that proved to be too costly in today’s cash-strapped world.  So little by little, some companies are transforming their front-line sales people into brand ambassadors by using pre-approved marketing content as their calling card.

Here are some tips on how to make it easier for them…

• ORGANIZE & CURATE YOUR PRE-APPROVED CONTENT FOR EASY ACCESS

Good content takes time that most sales people don’t have: time to source, curate, and make a recommendation to their prospects or clients. With the rapid growth of content marketing, your business likely has a variety of pre-approved content. The challenge is knowing what you have and making it easily accessible to your sales team. One easy way to do this is to use a web-based content management and deployment platform designed to provide access to your sales people with the ability to personalize the communication, curate pre-approved content to the needs of prospects and customers, and allowing them to track the response of their drip marketing. That way you are squeezing out valuable profit from your content, you didn’t know existed before.

• CENTRALIZE & PERSONALIZE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING

With a central web-based library of pre-approved content, a strong and consistent sales voice can be created and maintained in email communications, strengthening your brand. Technologies can be used to optimize your timing and type of emails, and ingrained analytics can refine and improve your email marketing tactics.

• DRIP MARKETING IS MORE INTERESTING WHEN IT’S SURPRISINGLY RELEVANT TO YOUR CUSTOMER

Encourage your sales team to mix and vary the content formats: videos, articles, images and infographics, and connect to clients through social channels. A centralized, searchable library can help sales people match content to their clients. Many of us don’t read much anymore – so visual ways to simplify and explain complex products and concepts will help your customers better understand the value of the content you are sharing with them.

• EXCEL AT THE PROMPT FOLLOW-UP

Your content management system should be tracking your content to know what is read and consumed, what works and what falls flat. Scheduling prompt and effective follow-ups is one way to stand out, and of course, you should refine your content based on your successes and failures.

• CONTENT SHARING IN LESS THAN 20 MINUTES PER DAY

With technology in place to facilitate content sharing, sales people can easily accomplish it in a short time, such as 20 minutes in the morning, and pre-schedule interactions for optimal times throughout the day.

Remember: clients and prospects are not necessarily ready to buy when you are sending them content. One principle of drip marketing is to add value to clients and prospects through meaningful and relevant touchpoints, so they think of you WHEN the moment to buy is at hand.

BLUERUSH’s new platform DIGITALREACH^TM   allows salespeople to easily curate and nurture their prospects with personalized communications and pre-approved content. Find out how our platform can turn your sales team into content marketing gurus.