This is a transcript from the Business Secrets Podcast With Robert Kanaat. Click here to view and subscribe on iTunes.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Business Secrets. My name is Robert Kanaat – founder of wanderlustworker.com, the premier online destination for all things inspirational and transformational.
I wanted to thank you for your time today. No matter where in the world you’re tuning in from, or what time of day it is. Whether it’s morning, noon, or night – I appreciate you spending the time here with me today.
Today I wanted to talk to you about something that will help you to grow your business. In yesterday’s podcast episode, I talked about scaling your business. But I talked about scaling your business from a goal setting standpoint. What I wanted to talk to you about today is – related to three of the pillars of growing your business.
These three pillars come from Jay Abraham, who’s one probably one of the most inspiring business consultants and gurus out there on the internet. I’ve had a chance to speak with him. I interviewed him for an article in Entrepreneur Magazine. I had a chance to collaborate with him. He’s just a great guy. He definitely talks a lot, and he has a lot of ideas that go in a lot of directions. But extremely intelligent guy.
He talks about three different ways to grow your business. Those three ways are basically to increase the number of clients. Or you could increase the average transaction value – the average order value, or the average cart value if you’re a sales funnel geek. Or, number three – is to increase the frequency of repurchase. So getting those customers to continuously purchase more and more.
What I wanted to talk to you about today was number three. How do you get your customers to increase the frequency of re-purchase? I thought about this, because I was building this sales funnel for a friend who owns a supplement company. I was thinking about it, because I had a conversation – I believe that I said that here on one of the podcast episodes.
I had a conversation with a guy named Brian Bowman, who is one of the most intelligent Facebook ad guys that I know. I met him in Inner Circle for Life, which is Russell Brunson’s Mastermind over in Boise, Idaho – for those of you who don’t know where Boise is. It’s kind of like in the middle of the country. He was talking to me about how – for consumables, for example – if you have a consumable, you could easily re-target those people after they buy. For example, before the product runs out.
Let’s say you have a 30 day consumable, and you know that when a customer purchased – you pixel them. So they hit the purchase pixel. You could create a custom audience, and then run an ad like 25 days after purchase, or maybe 28 days or however long it usually takes to ship to them. You could run an ad reminding them to re-order. Which I thought was really interesting, especially if you are running a consumable .
The other question then is, how do you get your customers to spend more often? How do you increase the frequency of re-purchase if you don’t have a consumable? In order to do that, you really do need to create more back-end products. You need a bigger product line to entice those customers to continue to spend more frequently. That is the question. Of those three pillars, how do you get existing customers to spend more frequently?
The existing customers, those were the easiest to target, especially if you have a product that has value, or a service or information or whatever it is that you sold them in the first place. If that thing that you sold them has a good deal of value, then how do you get them to spend more frequently? Well it’s way easier, because they were already happy with what they bought from you in the first place. All you have to do is get them now to spend more frequently. But in order to do that, you have to have something for them to buy.
What do you create for them to buy in order to increase the transaction frequency? Ultimately you need more back-end products. When I say back-end products, I mean you need stuff that’s either higher up in your value ladder – and if you don’t know about value ladder, Russell Brunson teaches it. Just Google, “value ladder,” and you’ll probably see it.
The way that a value ladder works is at the very bottom you have your low ticket stuff, or even your free stuff. Including a lead magnet for example. Like a checklist, a cheat sheet, PDF, eBook, whatever. From your lowest ticket to your highest ticket. If you haven’t developed high ticket products or services, then its something that you should focus on.
Because increasing the transaction frequency can really help you to exponentiate your current business, without really that much more of an investment. Because you have the customers, and if the customer’s already happy with whatever it is that they bought from you – then it’s just a natural understanding that if you build it, they will come.
Creating more products or services. I think that that should take a priority. You should have a fully fleshed out high ticket back-end of your funnel. Other ways like are really to just communicate with the people. Send them notes, phone them, call them, see how they’re doing. Just talk to them. Just have and maintain a positive relationship with the consumer, with the customer. Make that ongoing, and don’t like just like forget about them.
A lot of people sell stuff, and then they forget about the customer. I think that that’s just like, that’s just a really bad thing to do. It’s a no-brainer to continue a relationship with an existing customer. It’s cheap, it’s basically free. That’s an easy way. Of course, when those customers are on your list – you don’t have to just sell them stuff you have. How do you increase the frequency of customers buying from you?
Well if you listen to the affiliate marketing podcast episode, you know you could sell stuff as an affiliate. It doesn’t mean just because you have your own company with your own products and services – maybe you find something that is ancillary or complementary to your business. Where you feel like your customers are going to get a lot of value out of it – why not create an affiliate relationship with that company who’s selling that product or service or information, and then market it to your existing customers?
You can get them to buy more. If you know for sure, for example that something is going to help your customers – it’s really going to deliver a lot of value. Then, why not? It’s a way to quickly increase your income, and it doesn’t take a lot of effort. You can run all sorts of events and special offers, and all that kind of stuff to those existing customers. It’s just really the easiest segment that you can approach.
I think that a lot of people forget about their buyers. They continuously go out there and try to find more buyers. Which is great, because that is one of the pillars of growing a business. You need more customers. The only three ways are to increase the number of clients or customers. Increase how much they’re spending – the average transaction value. Or increase the frequency of re-purchase or re-spending with you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the re-purchase of an existing product or service.
If you have a consumable, yes then that is a great way to do it. But if you don’t, then you’re in a situation where you can sell other things to that customer. So you have to find those other things that you can sell. Build out your back-end of your sales funnel. Build more high ticket products and services, like coaching and stuff like that. I assure you that actually when you sell at the higher ticket, you get higher quality customers. The higher quality customers are spending more money. They require less upkeep, which is so cool. When you find people spending just a small amount of money, it’s just really like a dribble and the drabble, and they’re difficult to deal with sometimes. Not all the time.
Those are like the three ways. But I’d say geek out about the frequency of re-purchase. Take your existing customer list. First of all, if you haven’t pixeled your website, pixel it. Put a purchase event on the thank you page. Because you can create a custom audience of those purchasers. If you have no idea what I’m saying right now, talk to an ads expert, like a Facebook ads expert. Or just do it manually. Create a list based on those buyers. You have their email addresses probably somewhere. Create a list and target them, and start marketing to them.
That’s a big thing. Because you know who your buyers are, and so selling more to them isn’t that big of an effort. If they were really pissed off or unhappy with what they bought from you – okay, so maybe like in that case, it’d be really hard. But if you have customers that have bought from you, which I’m hoping that you do. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re running a business – then likely you do. Get out there and then find more things that you can sell these people. That’s the key here.
Really dig deep. If you have to build the back-end of your funnel, go out there and build the back end of your funnel. Run a campaign where you ask your customers what else they want, what else they need. Be in touch with them, and flesh things out that way. Of course, continuing a relationship with customers is just good business. It’s great to keep that relationship, and make it solid and make it continuous and make it flow. Instead of selling somebody something and forgetting about them, that’s not what you should be doing. You should continue that relationship.
I think that there is really a pot of gold here for people who have an existing business. This doesn’t mean that you have to go out there and find a $100,000 thing to sell your customers. If you sold $1000 widget, then figure out a $10,000 widget or a $10,000 consulting or like a $25,000 – you’ll be surprised what you can sell to existing customers, especially those who are happy.
You could sell these to non-existing customers. But somebody who has already spent money with you is far more willing to spend more money with you. That’s why the power of free plus shipping is so huge. It’s because you remove that barrier. By using the psychology of free, you remove the barrier of purchase psychologically. Because people are less adept to spend money with people that they don’t know, or buying products or services that they aren’t familiar with. But really that free, that psychological barrier just gets blown through – which is like just really crazy.
Anyways, I hope that this was useful. Please like and comment and subscribe on iTunes. I read all the comments. I greatly appreciate it. If you want to drop me a message, drop me a message on wanderlustworker.com. Go to the contact tab, you’ll find my email address there. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I will speak to you guys tomorrow or the next time. Thanks so much.