Back-end, Back-end, Back-end!
It costs money to acquire a customer. Whether that money is in the form of personal labor invested through marketing, even with “free” methods, or in the form of cash spent on advertising and promotion, there is always a cost to acquiring a new customer. And those costs accumulate - often, substantially.
I must confess: It drives me crazy when I see people sell one product or service to a customer, and then simply walk away. In my estimation, it’s “money down the drain” (not to mention the money it will take to replace the customer). As long as you are selling a product or services that has value, one that solves a problem, and as long as you are ethical in your dealings, you can keep that customer for life.
Cost do accumulate considerably when developing your customer base, because there are numerous elements involved in the acquisition process. If you want to know what’s involved, here’s an example. When you gain a customer, you have already spent money (whether it’s cash or time) on:
- Finding a niche market,
- Developing a product or services,
- Designing a website,
- Writing a winning sales letter,
- Attracting visitors to your website,
- Developing a sales process,
- Creating rapport with your visitors,
- Establishing online order processing,
- Getting visitors to buy from you,
- Fulfilling the product or service,
- And developing streamlined systems to handle all of the above.
And there’s probably more that I have omitted, here. Therefore, it is simply common sense to keep that customer because, in the end, your back-end is where you generate the most profits. For example, you have already spent the time and money in gaining a customer. You have her name, address, email address and possibly more. You can now tell her additional product or services - for free
Whether it’s once a week or once a month, you can email your customers whenever you want - and pay nothing to do so. Email is free, so it makes perfect sense to offer them complementary products or services. As long as you are ethical in your dealings, or in other words, as long as you appear that you are “helping” and not “selling” the customer, you can generate a substantial, virtually cost-free income.
Therefore, once you have developed your customer base, find a back-end product or services. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your own. As I did in my businesses, you can approach other companies and arrange referral fees, finder’s fees or sales commissions.
Discover what your customers want. Ask the questions, “Once customers have purchased my product, what’s next?” “What are they going to do or what will they want next?” and, “in what companion products or services could they be interested?”
When your customer base become large enough, it will tell you. But until it does, it is up to you to carefully listen, ask and analyze your existing customers. You must poke and prod. Don’t be afraid to continually ask them what they want. And keep in mind that email is free - so why not survey them?
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Gobala Krisnan is a direct-response marketer turned blogger who makes over $10,000 a month from his blog empire. If you want to make money online from blogs, he is the only person who can reveal the secret of merging time-tested direct marketing strategies with web 2.0 traffic. Read more about him >>
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