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Second Tier Marketing

It's high time I review the concepts involving "second tier marketing" or selling to your existing customers. In this article I'll also discuss how to cross-market and find more of your ideal potential customers that you may not have known were out there.

The Critical Importance Of Back-End Selling

Considerable effort usually goes into getting your customers. In fact, it's probably your most expensive marketing cost out of everything you do. But I've found that many businesses prefer to chase after new blood and let their existing clients wither and even die on the vine, when they are the absolute best 'next customer' for you to sell to.

You might create killer web pages, sweat bullets for high search engine rankings (or pay for them outright), or even submit classified ads, etc., and still find that it's not enough to keep your business booming.

Of course you need to keep getting new customers, but don't undervalue your existing assets in those customers you already have established, or are developing relationships with.

This is where the highly revered concept of the 'back-end sale' can come to your rescue - but only if you actually put it to use.

Back-end selling is when you sell other products or services to your existing customers after they have purchased an initial product. And many, many marketers are VERY successful because they apply the concept of back-end selling in their marketing efforts.

Above all else, it is always easier to sell your products or services to existing customers. That's because you started developing a relationship with them when you first sold your initial product or service to them.

You will find it less expensive to sell to existing customers as compared to selling to new customers. In fact, you'll probably find that your conversion ratio will be dramatically higher with your existing customers.

In addition, every time you sell additional products or services to existing customers, you will be building a stronger and stronger relationship. That's why you should continually create, find, and introduce new back-end products or services to sell to them.

Some companies take this idea to the extreme. They can do it because they crunch the numbers to find out just how much their customers spend with them over the lifetime of doing business with them.

These profits can be HUGE!

So many businesses sell their front-end products (initial sale) at almost zero, zero, or at a loss of profit in order to generate long-term back-end profits.

These businesses are not concerned if they lose money on the front-end because they know there's much more money to be made in the back-end profits.

How do you make back-end these highly profitable sales? There are several ways actually .

For example, when you order a product from a mail-order company, the smart ones will probably send you a catalog along with your order. They probably also put you on their mailing list and send you new catalogs from time to time.

They might also include a sales letter or coupon for another product or service. This may be related to the first product in some way or may not - depending on your purchase.

Many companies implement such strategies with alarming success.

To apply this type of technique on the web, you can include your sales pitch for a back-end item in your email to the customer when you confirm their order. If you have an online catalog, you can include a link to it, or even include a coupon or special offer "for all valued customers".

For a possible faster back-end sale, you might put a back-end offer on the "Thank You" page that is generated after a credit card sale. Your customer who just made a purchase from you has a credit card in his or her hot little hand!

They made still be open to buying more if your offer is right. Why not ask for another purchase and see if they are in the mood to buy again right then and there?

If you don't sell more than one product or service, you can use affiliate programs until you develop your back-end. This way you can other companies products that either align with your or are non-competitive.

Some companies will even make arrangements with their competition to sell each others' products or services after their main product or service is bought by the customer or client,

Back-end selling can also be integrated with “Up-Selling” where you introduce additional or more expensive products or services at the point of sale.

This is a tactic we always suggest to our clients as it will almost instantly raise your sales and profits on the spot every time your customer chooses to go with it.

Cross-Selling

Another strategy similar to the ones I've talked so far is Cross-Selling. A combination of of cross-selling and up-selling is what you'll find at Amazon.com.

When you search for a book on the Amazon site, a message will usually appear on the same page saying something to the effect of, "Customers who bought this book also bought…". then it will list other books for you to consider that are of related subject matter to the one you were originally interested in.

Using this tactic is an great way to cross-sell/up-sell additional products, services, or content to your members.

You should also direct your visitors to other parts of your site, to consider various products and services that they hadn't previously considered. But you don't want to give so many choices that you confuse customers or make them indecisive. Once they start doing a 'Q and A' your are on your way to losing the sale, because they can't make up their mind.

Your success in using cross-selling will be the result of recognizing a customer's need or problem, and meeting their need or solving their problem with a useful product or service.

Your customers will benefit from a needs-based, cross-selling and up-selling effort on your part because they'll get the services they really need and want.

Cross-selling can help your business achieve its sales and profit objectives by:

- Providing useful services
- Retaining customers
- Attracting new customers
- Staying competitive with other web sites

And of course turning a nice profit!

To wrap up, you can always offer a wider range of products and services after your customer has decided to do business with you -just don't offer more too soon at the risk of confusing them or making them indecisive.

The key to making this all work is two-fold:

1) Define your overall plan by doing proper research on what your customers are buying now from your competition

2) Develop a great marketing strategy that isn't’t just hot air and marketing mumbo-jumbo, but instead, something you can actually do as actions and measure as monetary results.

Warmly,

Vince