I recently had a very interesting meeting with a website designer, who is looking for help with creating social media content for his clients. When I got thinking about how we came to be having this meeting, I realised that it was definitely a case of ?long term marketing?.

Way back in 2004 I met a lady called Janet, who was a virtual assistant. She did some work for me ? I?d only been in business for 4 years and needed some part-time help. Janet introduced me to her husband, Kevin, who ran a website development company. He was looking for someone to write some copy for one of his clients. We never met and didn?t actually do any work together, but Janet and I kept in touch for a while, until I needed more help and took on a permanent member of staff. Even after she stopped working for me, Janet used to receive my email newsletter, which I write every month.

Fast forward 7 years and I was promoting a workshop that I was running, by mentioning it in my email newsletter. Janet forwarded a copy to Kevin, who booked a place. At the workshop he signed up to my new mentoring programme ? Magnetic Mentoring. After our second monthly call, Kevin asked if we could meet for our next session, rather than having the usual phone call, as he wanted to know more about what we do at Appletree. So he came to my office and we spent an hour working through his marketing (he?s making great progress!) before spending some time talking about how we work with clients. As a website developer, Kevin has plenty of clients who need someone to write website and social media copy for them, so we?ve put together a menu of services that Kevin can take to his clients.

And all because … I have a way of keeping in touch with people for 7 years (an email newsletter), a low cost product that introduces what we do to potential clients (the FastTrack and SOS workshops) and a low cost marketing service that is ideal for helping small businesses to grow (Magnetic Marketing).

What long term marketing can you do to keep in touch with your potential clients, to help turn them into clients?