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 back end 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 back end 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 back end 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.

Cross Selling

Another successful strategy similar to the ones discussed above is Cross Selling. One of the best examples of cross selling via the web is on Amazon.com. If you search for a book on the Amazon site, a message will appear on the same page, saying 'Customers who bought this book also bought…' and will list half a dozen other books for your consideration. This is an excellent way to cross sell additional services or content to your members.

You can also direct visitors to other parts of the site, to consider products and services that they hadn't previously considered. Successful cross selling is the result of recognizing a customer need and meeting that need with a useful product or service. Customers benefit from needs-based cross selling efforts because they receive the services they need and want.

Cross selling can help your business realize its objectives: providing useful services, retaining customers, attracting new customers, and staying competitive with other websites.

In conclusion, you can offer a range of products and services on the Internet. The key is proper research and a great marketing plan.