The Magic Recipe

My recipe for follow-up that leads to great results is:

System + Timing + Value + Personalization = Great Follow-Up

The first two variables, system and timing, address how you follow up. The second two, value and personalization, address what you will do to follow up. We’ll focus on the systems and timing in this chapter and value and personalization in the next chapter to examine unique ways to provide value in your keep-in-touch marketing.

What’s your system?

You may need a few different systems, depending on your marketing funnels and your audiences. Your marketing funnel is the process by which someone comes into contact with you until they hire you. Let’s say that you’re a consultant and you have two marketing funnels, one for your potential clients, and one for your potential strategic referral partners. For example:

Client Marketing Funnel

1. Client finds you through search engine

2. Client comes onto your Web site

3. Client wants a freebie you offer and signs up for your e-mail mailing list

4. Client receives your twice-monthly value-packed electronic newsletter

5. Client responds to a promotion in your newsletter for a discounted first session

6. Client completes first session and enrolls in additional consulting

Referrals Marketing Funnel

1. Call potential strategic referral partner (PSRP)

2. Meet PSRP for lunch

3. Keep in touch once monthly with PSRP by sending articles, etc.

4. Send thank-you letter when referral is received

5. Meet with referral partner quarterly to further the relationship

You may have a couple marketing funnels for each type of marketing that you do. The client marketing funnel above is primarily Internet marketing. If you speak or network, you may need a separate marketing funnel for those.

Once you’re clear on your funnel, you can ask yourself what systems you need, such as what contact management systems for e-mail marketing. Be clear on what specifications you need before committing to a system, and take advantage of the free trial offers. I made the mistake of building an e-mail list of over 10,000 in one contact management system only to learn that they did not offer a key feature I needed (autoresponders). So I had to move my list, which resulted in loss of many subscribers. Invest the time, energy, and money (you may need to hire a consultant to help you make the decisions) up front to do your research and save time, energy, and money down the line.

Follow up without hounding people

In determining the timing of your follow-up, the first topic to address is when you will follow up after an initial meeting. My rule of thumb is that the more personal the meeting, the more time you have—but you still don’t have much time. If you have a personal interaction, such as meeting someone at a networking event, I believe you have a couple of days to follow up. Definitely no more than a week. If you have an impersonal interaction, such as a social media connection or someone signing up for your newsletter, I believe you have minutes. You’ll want to use e-mail contact management software that automatically responds when someone signs up for your newsletter or free giveaway.

The second topic is how often you will contact people. There are two important considerations: how much time you have to create quality content and how often people in your target market like to be contacted.

As we will discuss in the next chapter, it is critical that the information you share in your follow-up is valuable. The idea put forth by marketing visionary Seth Godin in Permission Marketing is that you want to be in touch with people by providing value rather than interruption. In general, advertising is not particularly effective for service professionals. A service is a relationship, and it needs to be mutually beneficial. That said, we need to consider carefully how much time you can invest in creating beneficial information to share in your follow-up. Creating content typically takes longer than we think it will, so be conservative in estimating the time necessary. It can become an issue of quantity versus quality. We need to be in contact with people enough so that we are not forgettable (at least once per month in most markets, typically once per week or once every other week), but it may be impossible to write an article or create extensive content every week.

Also consider your personality. Do you get overwhelmed or intimidated when sitting down to create a polished video, audio, or article? Do you tend to think and communicate in quick blurbs? If so, you may prefer to use social media such as Twitter or your Facebook page to follow up. Are you a perfectionist who wants to make sure that everything you put out is of the highest caliber? If so, you may do better with writing a once-per-week compelling blog post and not using something like Twitter. If you tried to make every tweet perfect, it would take up way too much time, and it isn’t necessary since tweets are fleeting and so brief that you can’t possibly convey a great deal of information. You can, however, integrate Twitter with your blog so announcements of your captivating blog posts go out. For example, Daniel, a thoughtful, introverted therapist with a tinge of perfectionism, felt that he had to be selective and professional about what he put out on the Web. So he kept his keep-in-touch strategy very simple by posting high-quality articles on his blog and sending them to those on his mailing list once per week. He integrated his blog with his Twitter account, Facebook page, and LinkedIn profile so that even those who were not on his mailing list would receive updates with links to his articles. Because his articles were so thought-provoking, people often retweeted his article posts and inquired about reprinting his articles, furthering his exposure.

The other consideration is the person with whom you’re staying in touch. How often do they like to be contacted? This can be hard to determine, but you can come up with an estimate by

• Seeing how often they keep in touch (send out their newsletter, etc.) themselves.

• Thinking about what type of professional they are. In general, people who are active with Internet marketing are used to getting a lot of e-mails and would be okay with more frequent e-mail communication.

• Tracking your e-mail sign-ups and opt-outs. If you are getting a lot of opt-outs after you have sent several communications out close together, you may be sending too much for those in your audience.

• Asking yourself what you prefer if you are a member of that group yourself. If you are a psychologist and your keep-in-touch marketing is going to other psychologists, you can use yourself and a few peers as a gauge.

Weighing the amount of time you have, how long it takes you to create excellent content, how often you could create content without having the quality suffer, your personality, and how your prospects like to be contacted should help you create your timing strategy. Once you have your strategy, stick to it no matter what. I’ve had several clients admit, “When I’m busy, I don’t follow up with people, and then when I’m slow, I’m sorry that I didn’t.” Consistently follow up while it’s raining business and when you’re in a drought. This consistent follow-up will help prevent the downpours and droughts by bringing in consistent business.