To be able to optimize out marketing campaigns to existing customers, we need to make sure we have all the data required to be successful.

As I have mentioned before, you need to track all customer sales in a database, whether it be in a simple excel spreadsheet or a CRM tool, it doesn’t really matter.

The basic information to track is as follows.

• Customer Name

We need this purely for identification purposes.

• Customer Contact Details. Tel cell and mailing address

We use the contact details to be able to keep up regular communications with customers for follow up marketing purposes. The more contact details the better. Contacting customers via all available contact methods maximizes the results we receive from our follow up marketing.

• Customer demographics (if available): Gender, Age, Industry Etc.

Example, a health business person, you have an easy excuse to collect age and gender as this fits with knowledge required by health professionals.

Base on demographics, we can easily tell what the best method and products we will target when marketing to these customers. Women for example will respond to different products or marketing messages then men.

• First purchase date.

This data is required for us to track the purchase frequency of this customer

• First purchase product name

Product purchased allows us to tell what type of products this customer prefers, and allows us to market complementary or advanced version of similar products to them.

• First Purchase Spend

This purchase spend allows us to track the value of each customer over a period of time. This ties into the lifetime customer value as discussed in the last article.

• Second Purchase Date etc.
• Second Purchase Product Name etc.
• Second Purchase Spend etc.

So how do we use this data?

First of all we will be using this data to analyze and group our customers based on frequency of purchases, total spend, and over what period of time this occurred.

In any business, you will always have your loyal rabid customers who will trust almost anything you say and buy anything you sell.

From the above data we want to determine our top 20% of customers buy determining who purchases the most from us over the least period of time.

You can chart your customers over a time period, say 4 months, and from this chart you can see which top 20 customers have purchased the most from you within this 4 month period

We then want to spend the majority of our time and cultivating these customers and building a good relationship and marketing to them.

It’s been proven time and time again that your top 20% of customers are responsible for 80% of your revenue so you make the ultimate best use of your time focusing the majority your efforts on these customers.

In the other side of the coin its worth mentioning that 80% of headaches and support issues and waste of time communications come from your bottom 20% of customers. So you can cut away most of the time wasting tasks by trimming out our bottom customers, giving you more time to focus on your top ones. Some customers are simply not worth the time spent on them!

So simply tracking the above data, you can easily increase your profits by knowing where to focus your attention and marketing efforts/spend, as well as drastically reducing time wasters by trimming out certain customers who are not worth keeping on.

This is simply a way to increase your conversion rate on back end offers. You conversion rate is simply the % of customers you make an offer to, that accept the offer and proceed with the purchase.

For example, as a fitness professional who offers a group class training session (such as spinning class) as well as one on one training, you can offer all your group class students 20% discount on your one on one training simply because they are already in your group class.

Discounts are great, and people always want to save a buck where they can.

I would recommend first recommending an additional service or product to existing customers without a discount. Track the conversion you receive over 3 months and the additional profit generated.

Then offer the same product at a discount and record you conversion and additional profit.

In most cases your conversion will be higher with the discount then without, but if it is not high enough, the revenue you loose offering the discount may put the total profit generated below what was generated at the lower conversion, but without the discount.

You should always track results, conversion, profits and test test test test offers and discounts until you reach the highest profit to discount ratio.

At this point I’m going to stress something very important. You always need to track results, conversion and profits so you can accurately gauge the results you receive from your marketing efforts.

If you don’t do this you could be wasting your time for minimal results, or even do your business harm. Its very easy to do this, so there is no excuse not to, as it has direct effect on your bottom line.

Go here for an article on marketing tracking and metrics.

Next we will discuss service plans.

Right now, im going to start of with a quick example of a back end sales funnel:

As a personal fitness trainer, your core business may be a once-a-week fitness training session, which is what you market and sell to new prospects.

Most personal trainers and other health professionals will only focus on their core offering, and will never realize they now have a customer who has already put their trust in them, and are now prime targets for additional sales!

So, on week 2 at the end of the first session, you may discuss diet with your training customer, whereby you will recommend a great weight loss product that will maximize the results they receive from your fitness service.

Naturally, they can get this product directly from you, or they can purchase it from www.XXX.com (your special internet link whereby you generate commission on every sale).

On week 3, you can now mention to them that they are now ready to go onto the next level of supplementation, so you recommend product B.

On week 4, you mention that you know of an excellent book on dieting that has helped you get to where you are right now, and by following it as well as continuing to take the 2 supplements, they would get excellent results in combination with your training services.

This book and be purchased at www.XXX.com, another special link which generates you commission with every sale.

This is a very simple back end sales process for a fitness professional.

So, lets do some math:

Previously, let’s say the customer was spending R100 per day (1 hour session) for training, or R400 monthly.

Let’s say you have 30 training customers a month.

That’s R12000 per month you get for your fitness training.

Now, if you had implemented your backend process correctly, its easy to get an average of 40% to accept your back end offers.

That’s 12 customers who purchase the two supplements in month 1, as well as the book.

Supplement 1 makes you R100 commission

Supplement 2 makes you R80 commission.

Book makes you $120 commission.

That’s R300 for each of the 12 customers that accepted the other offers, each month.

So 12 customers R300 = R3600.00 additional for that month for only a small bit of time invested in recommending the products to your customers, at no additional cost to you.

Additionally, if the customer keeps purchasing supplement 1 and 2 each month you will get $35 per customer the following months as well.

Not bad eh?

The back end sales funnel can be very powerful and I recommend you experiment as much as possible with making additional offers to existing customers. Obviously each business is very different and you may think this is not possible in your business but I can tell you this is not the case. There is always opportunity to grow a back end in any business.

One important thing to note. You will see from my example that the additional offers to customers were made in the form of a recommendation.

This is very powerful. Remember in the introduction I mentioned that once the customer has already made 1 purchase from you, you now have their trust.

Well, this means that any recommendation you make for an additional product or service that may help them is now coming from somebody they now trust and thus you can expect a very high percentage of them to go with the recommendation.

Actions:

1. Sit down and consider your current customer base. What additional products or services do you think will complement (not compete!) with your current offering. What other products or services are targeted at your specific group of customers?
2. Once you have developed this list, are there any products or services you can offer them directly. Perhaps a new service you can create?

Remember, it is usually more profitable to offer them your own services or products, then it is recommending another service or product for a referral or commission fee.

1. Finally review your current business and customers and try and find points in time and opportunities to make your recommendations.

It’s important to note right now that an offer sooner than later is more likely to result in a sale, as customers are more likely to make another purchase very soon after the last one.

Backend offer 1 and 2 should ideally be made within the first month of the initial offer, after then your conversion will go down.

In the next few articles, we will look at the different types of backend offers and strategies you can employ.

If you already have an existing business that generates sales, chances are you are leaving a lot of money on the table by not attempting to optimize generating additional sales from existing customers.

It’s a fact that it is very much easier to sell something to somebody who has already made a recent purchase with you.

Psychologically, once a customer makes a purchase from you, they have give you their approval and trust, and will be far more likely to make another purchase from you, since they have already gone through the mental process of deciding if they should buy from you or not.

Once the first purchase was made, and the product offered value to them, you now have their trust.

Therefore with good marketing and follow up communications it’s very easy to get at least 30-40% of first time customers to purchase something additional from you again.

You will now want to set up an automated process (if possible) where you send additional communications to these existing customers with the purpose of generating additional sales. This is called making sales on the back end or back end sales.

The front end is the product you try to sell to a new prospect, which will then put them in the back end sales funnel (which can be completely automated) where you will market additional services or products to them.

In the following articles we will go over the different methods and strategies for making additional sales on the back end.

The sad thing is that most small business owners simply don’t understand most of these strategies and many even think of marketing as handing out fliers or branding coffee mugs.

In so many cases understanding these fundamentals can be the difference between running a successful profitable business or failing miserably.

This course will contain easy to understand actions you can implement to obtain measurable results in your business, so I implore you to read through it all carefully and TAKE ACTION by implementing these steps.

The course is broken up into 4 parts, which, incidentally, are the only 4 ways you can possibly grow your business:

1. Generate more sales from existing customers
2. Increase the value of each sale
3. Convert more leads to customers
4. Generate more leads

We begin with part 1 which covers leveraging your existing business to increase revenue generated from existing customers.

Its a well known fact that it can be up to 10 times easier selling to existing customers or those that have purchased from you before, then it is to obtain a new customer.

This means that the fastest way to grow your business and increase revenue right now is to focus on generating additional sales from existing customers.

In part 2 we focus on increasing the value of each sale. By doing this we attempt to get prospects who have already decided to buy from us, to spend more then they may originally have intended.

Part 3 focuses on converting more existing leads into customers. This leverages existing lead generation sources such as your current advertising, and attempts to convert as many of these leads into paying customers as possible.

By doing this we generate more sales and profits with a minimal increase in marketing expense.

Lastly we look at generating more leads for our business.

You will see that our initial focus is maximizing our return on current business, customers and marketing spend, before we invest any additional spend in generating more leads.

This allow you to easily increase revenue sometimes up to 100% without spending a single cent more on lead generation then you are spending right now.

This also means there is no longer any excuse to not implement these steps right away, since most of them can be done with only time invested, and not cash.

Now, before we begin with Part 1, we need to first take a look at your offer as well as your USP (unique selling proposition). Every bit of our marketing will be leveraging your USP and thus its critical that we get this right first.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE WITH PART 1 – UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION