Today, I want to continue my series of articles on The 9th Marketing Fundamental You Need to Succeed in 2022.
I want to do that by showing you when the best time is to make your first backend offer to your new customer.
I’ll also reveal the best time to send your second backend offer and how often you should consider sending backend offers.
In the process, I’ll also show you three common mistakes businesses and companies make when it comes to backend offers.
But before I do that, I need to tell you a quick story about what happened when I took my sons to a bowling alley while on vacation visiting family recently.
Why do I need to start with this story?
Because it reveals some powerful lessons about backend marketing and backend offers.
I’ll explain more in a minute. First, let me tell you what happened…
The Unexpected Backend Marketing Lesson I Learned on Vacation
After Christmas, my family and I flew out to Colorado to be with extended family and celebrate New Year’s together.
Before we flew back home, we took all of the kids to go to a local, high-end, bowling alley/arcade.
I didn’t know it at the time but I was about to see some great backend marketing in action.
You see, after the kids were done bowling, a message popped up on the screen offering us tokens if we texted the bowling alley at a certain number.
The best part of the offer? We could text them right away and use the tokens before we left.
After we texted them, all we had to do was go up to the counter and show them the automated text message we received, then delete it in front of them (so we couldn’t use it again).
We did that and received our free tokens.
Besides the fact that I was impressed that they had just used the 2nd marketing fundamental you need to succeed, I wasn’t thinking about marketing.
That was until the next day when I received my first text from the bowling alley…
FIRST TEXT
Thanks for your recent visit to (name of business)! We are grateful for the pleasure of serving you.
We would appreciate it if you would take a minute and give us some feedback on your recent visit. (They had a link here).
The fun doesn’t need to end. Come back and visit within the next 14 days and receive up to 40% off your purchase. Get offer>> (They had a link here).
TextSTOPtoEnd
SECOND TEXT
But that wasn’t all. Three days later, I received this short but effective text message…
Join your friends at (name of business) to enjoy live music tonight at 8:00pm! Reserve> (They had a link here.)
Show this text and get $5 off a $25 purchase. 1/7 only
Stop2End
(IMPORTANT: I changed the wording slightly in both of the above texts.)
I was REALLY impressed with the backend marketing that this business used.
I’ve since received another text from them that I’ll mention a little later.
But I just want to focus on those two texts because you can learn several important lessons about backend offers from them.
A Quick Review for Those Who Missed My Last Two Articles
In my first article, I revealed that the 9th marketing fundamental you need to succeed this year is backend marketing. In other words, the marketing that you make to your existing customers.
In my second article on the 9th marketing fundamental, I showed you Why You Need Backend Marketing to Stay in Business.
If you haven’t read these articles yet, I’d encourage you to scroll back up and read them as soon as you’re done with this one.
Now let’s get back to the lessons you can learn from this high-end bowling alley/arcade…
SIDEBAR: What is a Backend Offer (or Back End Offer)?
For those of you who don’t know, a backend offer is an offer you make to an existing customer.
The First Mistake Businesses Make With Their Backend Marketing
Believe it or not, one of the biggest mistakes businesses make with their backend marketing is waiting too long to make their first backend offer.
They mistakenly think that making a backend offer too soon will make their customers upset. And that thinking makes them afraid to pull the trigger and make a backend offer.
This causes them to wait days or even weeks to make an offer and so they miss out on the opportunity to build momentum off of their customer’s purchase.
The Best Time to Make a Backend Offer
When is the best time to make a backend offer? The bowling alley sent me a text the day after I was there. That means that within 24 hours of being there, I received the first text to come back again.
That’s pretty good. Many businesses and companies are too afraid to make a backend offer that soon. So I give the bowling alley a lot of credit for sending that first text.
But do you know what would’ve been even better than sending me an offer the next day? It would’ve been better to send it to me right after I sent them the text.
You see, the best time to send a backend offer is right after a customer purchases from you.
Why Should You Make a Backend Offer Right Away?
There are several reasons why you should make a backend offer right after your customer purchases from you, but here are two important ones:
- If you sell a great product or service (and you should), the moment right after a customer purchases from you is when they’re the happiest about their experience and therefore most likely to buy.
- This is when your customer first realizes their need for other products or services. You know what I mean. We’ve all purchased something and then immediately realized we also need something else. (I’ll talk more about this when I share the types of backend offers you can make in my next in my next article.)
The Second Mistake: When You Should Make Your Second Backend Offer
After waiting too long to make the first backend offer, the second backend marketing mistake that businesses make is waiting too long to make the second backend offer.
Let’s look again at the example from the bowling alley.
They sent me the first text/first offer the next day. Then they sent me a second text with a second offer three days later.
Did they risk getting me upset by sending me a text three days later?
Some might say so. But I don’t agree. I think it was a really smart move.
Here are five reasons why I think it was a smart move to offer a second backend offer within 72 hours of making the first backend offer:
- I might not have read the first text.
- I might not have had the time, money, or interest to respond to the first offer, but I might now.
- Offering another offer helps to weed out any people who will be too bothered by receiving offers.
- It’s a different offer. Different offers appeal to different people.
- It’s still really soon after I first purchased, so I’m probably still happy and more likely to buy again.
I’d encourage you to test making your second backend offer within 72 hours of making your first offer.
You might find out that you bother some people and you’ll get some unsubscribes.
But you also might find that you make a bunch of additional sales and the customers that you keep are better quality.
That seems worth the risk of testing this out, doesn’t it?
The Third Mistake: How Often You Should Make Backend Offers
When it comes to backend marketing, the third common mistake that businesses and companies make is not making enough backend offers.
They don’t make enough backend offers because they’re again afraid to upset their customers.
Now you don’t want to be annoying and keep hitting your customers over the head with offer after offer.
But that doesn’t mean that you need to go to the opposite extreme and hardly ever make any backend offers to your customers either. Instead, try to find a happy medium.
I told you that the bowling alley sent me another text besides the two I mentioned above. What was it? It was another a MLK Day offer that was sent 10 days after the second email.
How do you find a happy medium between hardly ever making backend offers and annoying your customers with too many backend offers?
Again, the only way you can really find out is through testing.
4 Takeaways
I hope this article has got you to think about your backend marketing and how you should set up your sales funnel with backend offers.
Before you leave, let me leave you with these four takeaways you can begin testing:
- Make sure to send your first backend offer right away – no later than 24 hours from the purchase.
- Test making your second backend offer 72 hours after your first one.
- Test making your third backend offer 10 days after that.
- Test how regularly you should continue making backend offers so that you don’t leave too much money on the table or don’t annoy too many customers.
Stay tuned for my next article on the 9th marketing fundamental.
I’ll reveal the types of backend offers that any business or company can and should make.
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