a. What is Back End Marketing?
How can back end marketing help you increase your profits in a long run?
i. Selling on the “back end” simply means selling a product to your existing customer base. Sounds harmless and simple, but it’s deadly. Here’s why…
ii. It’s far easier to sell a product to an existing customer at lower costs than it is to acquire a new one.
iii. It’s generally accepted that back end marketing is the best way to overcome rough times. At the same time your business becomes far more successful.
iv. It is one marketing principle that just about every marketing department can agree on.
b. Why You’re Not Doing Back End Marketing
Many companies do not fully use the potentials of back end marketing.<br />For many businesses back-end marketing is a very very difficult topic. The Internet is helping advance the use of this marketing tool:
i. It meant that you’d have to create a whole new product, or broker a deal with a company that has an appropriate product for your back end.
ii. It would make your life more complicated. Suddenly you have a whole new product to support, more complex accounting…
iii. Back end marketing is totally different from “front end” marketing. You struggle for years learning how to market your product, and then you have to learn marketing all over again.
c. How the Internet Makes it So Much Easier
(Did I mention today how much I love the Internet?) Back end marketing is comparatively quite easy now:
i. With the advent of Internet affiliate programs, you can be up and running with a back end campaign in minutes.
Sign up for a program – offer it to your various contacts – poof! – you have a back end. (Be careful, though! Be sure to read my pointers below.)
ii. Someone else is doing all the hard work.
You just need to get the word out to your customers and the company with the affiliate program will take the order, fulfill the order, deal with the customer, and write you a check. Very nice indeed
iii. The cost is much lower than traditional back end marketing. Sending an email to your customer base only takes you the time involved in writing and preparing the email.
Compare that to direct postal mail – it’s staggering. With this low cost, you can afford to get even more aggressive with your marketing.
That is, with direct postal mail campaigns, you need to be careful who you send to, as you have to pay to mail to every single address on your list.
Normally, you might think twice about mailing a back end offer to a postal mail newsletter because it is a high risk proposition – the subscriber might very well be a *shopper* and a total waste of your time.
However, you know for sure that the customer is a *buyer* – so there is less risk involved in sending a back end offer to your existing customer base.
Since the cost is practically nothing for email, you can mail a back end offer to your newsletter as well as your existing customer base with practically no risk whatsoever.
d. How to Avoid Deadly Back End Mistakes!
Any time you use an affiliate program as your back end you are sending a customer to another company! Hmmm…
You had better make certain that you’re not sending them to a company not worthy of your trust. A good back end affiliate opportunity should:
i. Offer instant free sign up.
If the company can’t manage an efficient sign up process, they may not be able to manage closing a sale efficiently either.
ii. Be trustworthy.
Many affiliate programs will offer you the moon – only to shatter your dreams with broken promises. Watch them carefully.
If they say they are going to do something and then blow it off without an explanation, I would proceed with caution. Keep in mind, though, that no company is perfect – they all make mistakes from time to time.
No company is going to make you rich without any effort on your part. However, there is no reason why companies should not keep their word with you.
If they must break their word, they owe you an explanation.
iii. Pay a residual.
If you send the company a customer, you should continue to make money from that customer. Some companies will pay you a commission on a single one-shot product — and then when the customer buys more, leave you out.
You’ll get a much greater Return on Investment by promoting a product for a company that pays a residual.
iv. Be complementary but non-competitive.
If your main product is cars, you will have a hard time selling your customers a horse. That’s not a complementary product. Selling the customer a competing car isn’t so smart either, as you could be giving away a potential sale of your own product.