Drip Marketing is used by many of the biggest companies in the world in order to gain customers, keep customers and fuel sales. In the product realm, think “Coke,” or “Tide.” In the company branding realm, think “Apple” or “Microsoft.”
I constantly get comments from both authors and self-publishers about the state of over-whelm they are experiencing. There are so many marketing tasks they should be attending to, and so many channels to juggle that they feel like it is a never-ending treadmill.
The truth is, that it IS a never-ending treadmill. To be successful, Marketing is NOT something you start and then finish, it needs to be consistent and persistent.
No ONE marketing action produces endless results.
The FABULOUS NEWS is that many marketing actions can be put on auto-pilot. You set them up once, plug in the Energizer Bunny battery and it keeps going and going and going.
ONE of the ways you can put marketing tasks onto auto-pilot is by creating Drip Marketing Campaigns.
What is Drip Marketing?
Drip Marketing campaigns allow you to send a set of messages to your potential customers. You can send the same message(s) over and over again, or you can send a series of messages that lead your potential customers though a series of educational, motivational or sales messages. Drip campaigns allow you to consistently send marketing information on timed intervals.
The beauty of Drip Marketing is the time it will save you. Set up your Drip Campaign once and let it run for weeks, months or even years. Drive traffic to your website, or directly to your Kindle/Amazon links. Build your Social Media networks. Sell your books and products.
The Rule of Seven
The Rule of Seven (sometimes nine) has been making the rounds of marketing circles forever. It is as valid today as it was 50 years ago.
Your prospect has to SEE or HEAR your marketing message a MINIMUM of seven times before they take action.
Which means that your message has to be out there in order to be seen. You may have to tweet the same message a hundred times before someone notices it for the first time. Another prospect may have seen your tweet or Facebook message eight times before curiosity wins the day and they take a look at your book.
Drip Marketing campaigns enable you to consistently send your message out to your audience on aut0-pilot.
Drip Marketing Channels
You can set up Drip Market Campaigns on many of your favorite Social Media Channels:
- Facebook (personal profile and business page)
- Google+
- Your newsletter
- Blog feeds
Depending on your time and budget there are various free services available. Generally the free services either have time limits or message limits on them. For example you might only be able to set up 10 messages in advance. There are also some “paid subscription” services that enable you to set up campaigns as much as a year in advance, or that just keep on going until you turn them off.
If you want to start setting up your own drip marketing campaigns, take a look at these two programs designed to make it easier. I use both programs. SocialOomph is a drip marketers dream come true. Buffer makes it a LOT easier but is never truly on autopilot!
SocialOomph Free and paid (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS Feeds)
Buffer Free (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+) and paid (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ and Pinterest)
I’m Curious to know … when I mentioned the Energizer Bunny earlier in this post, did you flash on the image of the pink bunny?
THIS bunny knows what DRIP MARKETING is all about … do YOU?
The Energizer Bunny made his debut in 1989 in a television commercial. Over two decades and thousands of drip campaigns later he still keeps on going!
You can read about the history of the Energizer Bunny here
Watch the very first Bunny commercial!
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The guy who said your message has to be seen or heard seven times before someone takes action was probably an ad agency hack trying to convince a client not to switch agencies.
If at first you don’t succeed, try again, but after that, take another approach. if what you offer is what someone wants, he’ll snatch it from your hands. Nobody calls three bail bondsmen to get competitive bids.
Maybe your goal in dating is marriage, or maybe it’s to get lucky. There ain’t gonna be anything special about your seventh date; it’ll be no different thabn the 6th and the 8th.
We’re talking about getting people’s attention … NOT going on dates where presumably you already have someone’s attention. Someone cannot snatch anything from your hands if they don’t know it exists. I am not an agency hack and I know from repeated testing that drip marketing works.