As I mentioned in my last article, The 9th Marketing Fundamental You Need to Succeed in 2022, most businesses usually spend the majority of their time trying to get more (i.e. new) people to buy.
And that’s the hardest thing to do.
The easiest and best way for you to help a business make more money is by focusing your marketing on your current customers.
You want to use backend marketing to get your customers to buy more often.
If you don’t get people to buy more often, your business will have a hard time staying in business.
Let me show you what I mean by telling you a story about an incredible light bulb…
The Longest, Continuously Lit Light Bulb
When we think of the light bulb, we think of Thomas Edison, because he was the inventor of the light bulb.
But just like any product, as soon as it came out many people tried to improve it and make a better one.
One of the men who came up with a better version of the light bulb is Adolphe Chaillet.
And the Shelby lightbulb is his creation.
Chaillet liked to do a theatrical product demo where he’d have a big theatre marquee-like light bulb bank.
In it would be one bulb of his own design, and the rest would be bulbs by competing brands. Then, Chaillet would start slowly dialing up the power. One by one, the competitors’ bulbs would all explode.
Every time, Chaillet’s bulb would be the last one shining.
One of his amazing lightbulbs made it to Livermore, California, when a shop owner donated it to the town’s volunteer fire department in 1901.
He did this because he didn’t want the firefighters to have to ready their horse-drawn “hose carts” in the dark. Eventually, the old-fashioned hose carts were replaced with fire trucks.
The bulb hung between the firehouse’s two garage doors and the firefighters were aware of it but didn’t think much about it.
The bulb hung down from a long cord, and it was low enough that you could walk by and tap the bulb and watch it swing back forth.
Bored firefighters would even throw Nerf balls at it.
In 1971, the first fire chief was brought in and he noticed the old bulb and asked people how long it had been hanging there. No one knew for sure, just that it was a LONG time.
So he had people research it and found out it had been light for 70 years! If you think that’s impressive it has now been lit for almost 121 years!!
This product was so good no one needed to buy any more lightbulbs!
GE bought the company and met with others in their industry and came up with a standard that their bulbs would only last 40 days.
This is the first case of something called “planned obsolescence.”
You Have the Same Problem
This is the same problem your business or company has if it doesn’t have any other products or services to sell after you sell your first one.
That’s why you must have additional backend products or services – that they need and want – that you can offer to your customers.
You want to train your customers to buy more and to keep coming back for additional products and services, so you can help them even more!
Because you DON’T just want to sell to them more! You want to take care of them more.
When you do that, your customers will happily keep purchasing from you over and over again.
A Reminder and a Challenge
I wrote today’s article for two reasons:
- I wanted to remind you just how important it is for you to have additional products or services to sell to your customers.
- I wanted this article to challenge you to think about any way your business or company might be overlooking this truth or not fully implementing it.
With that in mind, I want to leave you with these questions to think about:
- What additional products or services are you currently offering your customers? Are these the best and most desirable you can offer?
- Is there any area of your business or company where you’re not offering your customers more products or services they can purchase from you?
- What other products or services can you begin to offer your customers?
Stay tuned for my next article.
We’ll continue this series by looking at the types backend offers you can make, the best ways to make these offers to your customers, and the importance of increasing your customer’s lifetime value.
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