Drip, Drip, Drip: Why Drip Marketing Is Perfect For Home Performance
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The days of “one-stop selling” or pressure-selling are effectively over.
If your sales methods haven’t changed in the past 5-7 years, yet you wonder why your closing ratios have gone down, wonder no more.
Comparison shopping is now done at the counter. Customer testimonials and ratings – good or bad – are in the palm of prospects’ hands. Proof of your claims is a click away. The former “control” of sales pressure has turned into the risk of publicized online backlash.
That’s why helpful, transparent, advisory content that precedes the sale is now a crucial weapon in the marketing arsenal.
You’ll hear these called by 3 basic names: drip, nurture, or sequential marketing.
Basically, a sequence – or “drips” – of information relative to a query or search are presented to prospects in order. This info is crafted in a way that progressively prods and prompts toward a single goal of choosing you for the job.
Why the Whole House Sale is Perfect for Drip Marketing
Two things make the drip effort worthwhile: High price and low knowledge. A $129 “commonly understood” tune-up doesn’t fit; a $10,000 “limited understanding” whole house solution does.
You can promote this valuable service through your regular offline marketing vehicles, including the usual suspects of direct mail, newspaper, radio, and press releases. Additionally, your newsletter is ideal since it is going to current customers (easier to sell than cold prospects).
Yet today we’re going to focus on the online methods.
Hear me on this as a “coming wave” in marketing: Integration of online and offline will become the marketing standard. Regardless of media, the commonality among all effective drip marketing is good content.
Components of Online Drip Campaigns
Accordingly, in your online strategy, these are the pieces we recommend:
Blogs – This is a key part of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. First, your blog content must contain keywords that fit this industry and your services, drawing prospects to your site, who are seeking what you offer.
Further, the act of adding new posts regularly is viewed favorably by search engines – for example, search engine spiders have more to crawl, and “activity” adds to SEO. Fresh content also gives customers and prospects a reason to return. Continued updates are the framework for establishing your role as a trusted advisor. After all, can you really be trusted as a reliable source if you haven’t updated your blog in three months? (What, may I ask, do you think of retailers still wishing you Happy New Year in March?)
Reports – In our Drip campaigns, the pre-written blogs link to reports on your site. See, this is just an easy, natural “next step.” They’re intrigued; they click the link, and poof! They’re on your site, driving up site SEO and looking at a longer format report, which is actually a sales letter about Whole House performance contracting. This information can be even more effectively conveyed in…
Videos – Short format (4-7 minutes) videos that move from “Advisory” to “Promotional” are fantastic credibility builders and sales tools. Plus, people are more likely to watch for 7 minutes than read for 3 minutes. We created 19 videos for all aspects of HVAC initially, but the viewership increased so much we are now up to 34 different “pre-done” videos that homeowners actually watch and “click” for appointment or follow-up information.
The “negative” of video is cost versus quality. Cheap and stupid does little to help your image. Doesn’t need to be Hollywood, but spend a little time crafting a good script, deliver it honestly and professionally and you’ll be fine.
Tweets/Facebook Posts – Social media is there for you to share valuable information. So start sharing through tweets or Facebook posts. Oh sure, tweets are limited to 140 characters, but adding a link gives you an opening for more – plus, it brings people from social media back to your site.
But how does online marketing interface with print and electronic media? Glad you asked because you’ll find that answer in your…
Landing Page – The most certain way to link online and offline marketing is by using print and electronic pieces to push to a landing page that details your particular offer related to Whole House Performance. In other words, there should always be an online destination for whatever you sell or however you serve.
Creating a landing page for your particular campaign will also give you valuable tracking data. For example, you’ll be able to determine traffic sources – such as how many people are coming from mobile devices, or whether they are being referred by social media or are direct traffic. That, along with the usual site statistics about visits and visitor behavior, will give insight into the effectiveness of your campaign.
You do NOT have to do all the above. Just pick the parts you can do on your own and go for it. We do all those for clients here, but we’re freaks. You just do what makes sense and follows the formula below.
What Makes Great Content? Follow the Formula:
Your drip campaigns start where all good selling starts: with a problem. The more specifically this problem affects your target audience, the better.
This problem can be a “lack” of something – a cost, delay, inconvenience, annoyance. In my copywriting I also use potential conspiracies, withheld information, over-charging, or even guilt as leverage.
- What is the problem? Hidden energy losses throughout the home are affecting energy bills and overall comfort. Filthy air is making you and your family sick. More sick days, less joy, more medications.
- How’d this problem happen? Who benefits? Could be a low-bid builder left gaps, poor insulation. Could be a low-bid HVAC contractor never sealed the ducts. It happens. Could be the constant “over-paying” for energy was never anyone else’s problem… except that now you know. See? Exacerbating the problem helps drive them toward a solution. The real issue is that it is not the homeowner’s fault.
- How can this issue be solved? Identifying the scope of the problem through a Whole House Energy Audit.
- How do they know this isn’t a scam? They’ll see the data, measurement tools, the numerical results, the “before” versus the ideal after.
- When should they solve this problem?Before the weather changes. Before the next pollen burst. Before the next power bill. If you believe in what you’re doing, all answers lead to now.
- Where do they find help? That takes them back to the other “who” – you. You are the “who” who can solve the problem. You’ve demonstrated care, knowledge, and a willingness to help.
Now that wasn’t so hard was it? You now have the elements of a great Whole House Campaign that works tirelessly, generating leads and good prospects for other promotions too. The more content and advice you offer, the more your “sale” is done even before the first call.
You can drip your way toward a raging river of credibility and sales.
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Posted In: Building Performance, Residential Buildings, Sales & Marketing
