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Marketing Quick Tips
Creating and Implementing Hopper Systems
Part 2
6. Create A "Rapid Fire" Hopper If Appropriate: In some cases you will want to hit your prospects with a large quantity of hopper pieces in a short amount of time. This is appropriate if the prospect is likely going to be making the purchase soon, and they are looking at you as a possible company to buy from. For instance, if you sell home theaters, and a prospect walks into your store, chances are he is a) going to consider a few options before committing, and therefore may NOT buy from you on the spot, and b) probably WILL be buying from somebody in the next 1 to 4 weeks. So after capturing his contact information at the store, send him at least one marketing message every two days for a month. It could be a combination of email and mail, but you'd better hit him hard and heavy. This would also go for: car dealerships, home builders, playground equipment, furniture stores, anything that requires a bid/quote, any large purchase item, etc.
7. Go Into Nurture Mode At The Appropriate Time: So now you have a "rapid fire" hopper if appropriate, but after a month, your prospect still hasn't bought. At some point, you need to tail it back and apply steady, well-paced pressure. So instead of sending a piece every two days, you might decide to send a postcard every two weeks, and an email every two weeks. After a year, you might even cut back more, to maybe one per month. In cases where you are selling an ongoing product or service (office supplies, lawn service, accounting services, and so forth), you may want to start in "nurture" mode, which is meant to a) keep your name in front of the prospect, b) continuously build a case for why you're better than their current provider, and c) "be there" when their other provider inevitably messes up and frustrates them at some point in the future. Basically, you want to be on stand by waiting for their call.
8. Use Postcards: Postcards are a great way to send hopper messages. If you design all your pieces to look similar (same colors, fonts, styles, general appearance) then the prospect will start to recognize that they are coming from you, and you will accomplish branding with the prospect. Also, if you put good headlines on the address/stamp side of the postcard, the prospect will be forced to read and absorb your message as they are sorting their mail. Even if they quickly discard the postcard (and most probably will) your message is still delivered and involuntarily filed away in their mental archives, ready to be summonsed at a moment's notice as soon as a need for your product/service arises. Postcards are also a) relatively cheap to send, and b) can be sent in relatively large quantities without aggravating/annoying/overwhelming the prospect.
9. Use Email: Email is great because it is FREE. Never forget that. Anytime you can market to somebody for free, you really need to consider it. The drawbacks, of course, are that a) your message has a decent chance of ending up in somebody's spam filter, b) the prospect can easily unsubscribe to your messages and then you're done, and c) if you send too many emails to prospect, it could actually have a negative influence on them ("why do these people keep sending me all these blanking emails!"). Alas, the fact that sending them is free trumps all of the above potential problems. Just make sure that you pace your sends (no more than one every 4 or 5 days in a short "rapid fire' mode; after that, every 1 to 3 weeks is plenty), and make sure you facilitate your prospect easily and quickly unsubscribing. Then keep those postcards rolling!
10. Don't Give Up On The Prospect: Don't assume that because a prospect doesn't buy from you in a certain amount of time that they never will. Some buying cycles are better measured in years than in days, weeks, or months. Run your numbers and then spend as much money as makes sense over time to continually nurture your prospects. Remember, email is free, so there's no excuse for giving up on a prospect through email. And postcards should be used to continually nurture. If you do this properly, you will find that every single month you will have new customers who "suddenly pop up" and buy from you that significantly add to your bottom line. Trust the process.
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