Second Tier Marketing

In this article we will review the principles of second tier
marketing or selling to your existing customers. We will
also discuss how to cross-market and find potential
customers that you may not have been aware of.

Importance of Back-end Selling

Considerable effort is required to get customers for your
products. You design killer web pages, work hard for high
search engine rankings (or pay for them), submit classified
ads, etc. but still do not manage to sell enough. This is
where the concept of back-end sales is useful.

Most marketers are successful because they apply back-end
selling into their marketing efforts. Back-end selling is
when you sell other products or services to your existing
customers after they have purchased an initial product.

It is always easier to sell products or services to your
existing customers because you have developed a relationship
with them when you sold your first product or service to
them. You will find it less expensive to sell to old
customers as compared to selling to new customers.

Your conversion ratio will be dramatically higher with
existing customers. Every time you continue selling back-end
products or services to existing customers, you will be
building a life-long relationship. You should continually
bring out new back-end products or services to sell to
existing customers.

Many businesses sell their front-end products (initial
products) at almost zero profit in order to generate
back-end profits. These businesses do not care even if they
lose money on the front-end products or services; they want
the back-end profits.

How do you make backend sales? There are several ways. When
you order a product from a mail-order company, they'll send
you a catalog along with your order, or put you on a mailing
list and send you new catalogs from time to time. They might
also send you a sales letter for another product. This may
be related to the first product in some way. Many companies
implement such a strategy.

To implement this technique on the web, you can put the
sales pitch for your backend item in the email to the
customer to confirm their order. If you have an online
catalog, you could include a link to it, or even include a
coupon or special offer "for all valued customers".

For a faster response, you should put the backend offer on
the "Thank You" page that is generated by a credit-card
sale. The customer just bought something from you and has a
credit card in his or her hot little hand! Why not ask for
another purchase while they are in the mood to buy. In case
you do not sell more than one product or service, affiliate
programs might come in handy. This way you can back sell
products promoted by your affiliate programs as well.

Back-end selling can also be integrated with “Up-Selling”
wherein you introduce more expensive products or services to
your existing customers in similar ways as those mentioned
above. This will almost instantly raise your sales and
profits.