There are many ways of marketing products to your potential customers. There is what they call viral marketing, considered as the most effective way of advertising since the time it was introduced among marketing circles. Another way of marketing is direct mail marketing, the oldest marketing technique in existence. There is also what they call drip marketing.
As absurd as it may sound, drip marketing developed from a very different concept. The concept originated from the agricultural practice of using only small amounts of water, “drips,” to nourish plants and make them grow effectively. This makes sense; if you irrigate paddies too much, your crops will drown and die. This way, you have directly wasted valuable investment and may incur losses in your business.
It has long since been the practice of some marketers to refer to “leads” as “plants.” Let us look at it this way: if you plant a flower, you expect it to grow. That’s true with marketing as well; once you generate a lead, you want it to “grow” or become interested enough in the product that they will bite at the chance when you offer them a deal. However, this does not go by chance. You have to nurture them, in both cases. For a flower to grow the way you want it to be, you have to tend to it everyday. You have to water the plants regularly, and trim the stems when needed. You’d also need to get rid of the weeds, so they will grow healthy and beautiful.
Drip marketing is a very effective tool to use for marketing.
For one, it does not bombard your leads with shocking and irritating marketing materials. The death of marketing is generally realized when a marketer sends too much advertising materials and initiates too much marketing action to the prospect. The interest of a lead is usually distinguished if they receive marketing materials one too many; they start getting irritated and will slam the doors on you without even listening to what you have to say.
However, drip marketing does not do that. Carrying on the analogy of the drips of water used to irrigate plants, drip marketing involves the regular and intervallic sending of offers or information to the client. Just like the concept behind the agricultural practice, marketers just feed on the interest of the prospective client and nurture it until it becomes fully ripe for the taking.
The interval between each transmission of marketing materials to the client depends entirely on the marketer. However, the concept is simple: you should send prospects an advertising material at a set interval that does not irritate the client. However, it should not take too long between each transmission and receipt that the lead forgets who you are and what you want from him. You can construe drip marketing as a way for you, as a marketer, to constantly remind the client that you’re there waiting with an offer for him and that he should take actions to respond to the offer.
Another advantage of drip marketing is that, instead of giving details about the offer, the marketer takes the chance to become more intimate with the client. Drip marketing materials are personal in nature; the marketer directly talks to the lead. It is also quite aggressive; there is always a call to action in every marketing material issued within the drip marketing campaign. Every advertising material that is sent to the lead is considered as a prodding, to remind that person that he has a need and that you have the means to answer it.
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