Let’s be brutally honest. Getting new customers or clients is incredibly difficult. You have to scrap, bite and claw to stick out from your competitors. For most businesses, the total focus is on this process, but this is a mistake? Why? The business is so focused on picking up new clients that they forget to shower attention on prospects that have either purchased from the before or shown an interest in doing so by signing up for a newsletter or more information.
Everybody loves new clients, but you should not go after them without maintaining communication with past clients. These people have already purchased from you! You have a relationship with them and you are credible. This means they are willing to deal with you, which is far more than you can say for a random person that sees your marketing material for the first time. If you learn to mine this prospect group, you can really make out on sales. One way to do it is to use promotional items.
Promotional items are pretty much what the sound like. They are add-ons. They are usually given away in exchange for something. You can usually by them for a discount in quantity and have them branded with your company name and logo. The strategy for using them is also fairly simple. For instance, the customer gets the promotional item if they buy a certain dollar value of products or take some desired action.
A classic example of this strategy can be seen in the magazine industry. Once they have a subscriber, a publication will drip market on them in an effort to get them to extend their subscription. Promotional products related to the theme subject of the magazine are used and the strategy is incredibly effective. Sports Illustrated offers sports bags, for instance.
In your case, drip marketing with promotional items should be done following a few guidelines. The product should be related to your core business matter. Second, it should have a perceived value. Third, it should be a timely offer if at all possible. Consider the following example.
Let’s assume I offer fishing products and accessories. You know, poles, tackle, clothes and so on. I should be drip marketing on my client base during certain periods of the year. Spring and summer seem like natural choices, but so does the Christmas shopping season. People rarely fish by themselves, so offering them promotional products for buying more of my inventory is a no brainer. They get what they want and give the promotional item as a gift to their fishing buddies. By taking this approach, I am trying to get in front of a captive audience when they are ready to buy and jumping any hurdles of hesitation that they might have about doing so.
New clients are great, but you should never forget about the people that have already done business with you. Use promotional products to reward them while also rewarding yourself with further sales.
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