Daniel Levis’ latest ‘Total Package’ article is titled “The Info-Marketer’s Most Precious Business Asset”. [‘Info Marketing’ Article]


Daniel Levis’ latest ‘Total Package’ article:

The Info-Marketer’s Most Precious Business Asset

Dear Web Business-Builder,

The quality of customer relationships determines repeat sales, which ultimately establishes the profitability and value of your business.

There is a definite short sightedness in much marketing these days. Almost everyone seems fixated on immediate cash-flow, at the expense of relationship and long term customer value.

Would you agree with this statement? I’d be interested in hearing your opinion …

In today’s article, I’m going to share a few of my own thoughts on obtaining a healthy balance between immediate cash-flow and long term customer value.

We’re going to discuss Optimal Acquisition, which is the process of accurately identifying the best possible clients to attract at the top end of your funnel.

We’re going to discuss the process of making a positive and profound connection with those customers and prospects once they enter the funnel… so you can foster serial buying behavior and ascension to ever higher levels and frequency of spending.

We’re going to talk about the proper management and segmentation of your lists, in order to maximize your productivity, sales conversion, and profitability.

And finally we’re going to discuss what I call the product development feedback loop – a proven process for leveraging your lists as a source of ongoing market research, thus ensuring the most profitable product development and joint venture partnership opportunities.

So let’s get started …

What do I mean by Optimal Acquisition?
There are two sides to making a sale. There is the immediate monetary infusion. And there is the long term value that you can reasonably expect to accrue from the customer over the lifetime of the relationship.

In my humble opinion, the initial sale is nothing more than a way of financing the acquisition. The real profits result from our ability to develop those customers into serial buyers.

And there are a couple of key factors that impact the customer relationship before it even begins. And therefore the value of that customer over the long term …

I call them “progression” and “alignment”.

With any lead source, there is a natural – or not-so-natural – progression from initial sale to repeat sales. The more natural and intuitive that progression, the better …

When creating info-products and building customer and prospect lists around those products, it is critically important that you be thinking several steps ahead.

It makes absolutely no sense to develop a product for a market that is not going to be favorably disposed to purchasing additional products, based on the relationship and authority set up by that first sale. A single product rarely makes a business.

The relationship you have with your customers is all important. But if you’ve got nothing to sell them that “makes sense” after the initial purchase, then the value attributable to that relationship is minimal.

When considering entering a new business – or pursuing new leads pools for an existing business – you need to be asking yourself, “Is there a logical progression of customer need here? And if so, am I practically positioned to meet it?”

“Alignment” on the other hand refers the long term compatibility of the target market with you and your business …
It is entirely possible to target a market with a product and create a very successful initial result, only to discover the long term sales to those customers will be negligible.

This happens because there is a weak natural alignment between the target market and your business.

You can affordably twist the promise of your product enough to make an initial sale. But don’t expect to be able to make continued sales without ongoing segmentation, twisting and customization of your messaging. Realizing such things come at a cost.

I’m not talking about misrepresentation here, but simply the added effort required to fit a somewhat square peg into a somewhat round hole. Do it once to make an initial sale and you’re probably going to have to do it for the life of the relationship. Will it be worth the added expense?

So let’s assume you’re building lists with positive progression and alignment …

What can you do to foster the most profitable relationships with those new prospects and customers that are streaming into your business?

Invariably, you will have several lead generation offers. And while each offer brings you a qualified prospect for your front end offer, this may not be true for every back end offer you wish to promote. That’s why you should never dump leads generated by different offers into a single list.

Segment them as they come into the top end of your funnel. And put together a little dossier for each list.

At the very least keep track of the squeeze and sales pages that you used to develop each one. And use those pages as a quick reference when you’re developing new campaigns.

Without such reference, it is very easy to begin mailing offers that are less than ideally targeted. If you’re doing physical mail the consequences are obvious …

You’re going to be comparing your returns with your costs. And ill-targeted lists are going to perform poorly. You’re going to suffer an immediate hit in your pocket book. So this kind of careless list management is less common in the world of direct mail.

But online it’s rampant. People think that once they’ve built an e-mail list they can e-mail that list without cost. And so they get downright sloppy about what they send to whom.

But make no mistake: when you send a prospect an e-mail that’s poorly targeted, it costs you big time in terms of future attention and relationship.

People will become less inclined to open your e-mails and their level of trust deteriorates. And while you may not feel an immediate and measurable pain in your pocketbook as a result of this, rest assured you are pissing money away just the same.

The difference between relationship and branding …

In the general business world we think about the client/supplier relationship in terms of branding. Brand X fits the personality and style of the customer much better than brand Y. Or brand X has the trust of the buying public to a much greater degree than brand Y.

In the info-marketing world, these values are equally applicable, but they exist on a much more personal level.

As an info-marketer, you position yourself as a role model. At one time you were in the same shoes your prospect is in now. But you found a way to transcend that position to greater levels of prosperity, health, happiness, etc.

And if you want deep, enduring, and supremely profitable customer relationships, you have to pro-actively select prospects with whom you have the most natural affinity.

Beyond the functional considerations of having a unique solution to a problem shared by a given target audience, it’s equally important that you share similar values, belief systems, and ideals.

This might sound a little touchy feely, but if you want to create the kind of long term customer relationships that will sustain you in style for years to come, you need to fall in love with your target audience. And avoid selling to people that you don’t admire, appreciate and want to interact with.

This is one of the key secrets to generating repeat sales in the info-marketing business. It’s what keeps people buying from you, despite there being other excellent practical alternatives for them to consider.

Perhaps the most over-looked benefit to creating this kind of deep enduring bond with your list is that it creates an easy and enthusiastic dialog …

Imagine your best customers raving among one another about you and your products.

They talk about you and your company as the way business ought to be done by everyone. And they actively seek your opinion on how they can improve every relevant area of their lives.

Do you think that kind of dialog might help you to answer that all-consuming question: What’s next?

There’s no need to guess what kind of products to develop. Your people will tell you.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis

Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor

THE TOTAL PACKAGE

Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant & direct response copywriter based in Toronto, Canada and publisher of the world famous copywriting anthology Masters of Copywriting featuring the selling wisdom of 44 of the “Top Money” marketing minds of all time, including Clayton Makepeace, Dan Kennedy, Joe Sugarman, John Carlton, Joe Vitale, Michel Fortin, Richard Armstrong and dozens more! For a FREE excerpt visit http://www.SellingtoHumanNature.com.

He is also one of the leading Web conversion experts operating online today, and originator of the 5R System (TM), a strategic process for engineering enhanced Internet profits. For a free overview of Daniel’s system, click here.

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

The Total Package

*IMNewsWatch would like to thank Clayton Makepeace for granting permission to reprint this article.

Sharing is caring