The benefits of having a big ol’ back end

Often when I talk to people about their business, I hear the same thing:

“I need more customers.”

And many times, people who say this are already making a decent amount of sales, meaning they’ve built a respectable customer list.

This breaketh mine heart, because it ignores one of the most profitable (and fun) aspects of business. That is:

Having a big ol’, juicy back end.

And no, Sicko, I’m not being naughty. I’m referring here to back end sales, which is an oft neglected part of the sales funnel. For those who don’t know, back end sales are sales you make to existing customers.

Some have a teeny back end, which is helpful, but doesn’t multiply their sales or bring customers up their value ladder.

While others have zero back end at all. So the only people they’re selling to are raw, wriggling prospects. And selling to a satisfied customer is always easier than selling to a prospect.

More:

Having a back end is also how many businesses get their economics sorted out. They may lose money on their front end sales (because of paying for ads, creative, delivery, etc), but make it up in spades on the back end.

In fact, this is one of the ‘superpowers’ of great marketers. They understand that the more they can afford to pay for a customer, the better off they’ll be.

And the way they afford to pay more for customers is by implementing a back end.

If you’re still a little lost and want help getting your head out of your own back end (jokes), here are a few pieces to help you get started:

1) 1-click upsells — You can set this up very easily in a shopping cart or with certain funnel software (or even if you know what you’re doing in wordpress), but the basics of a 1-click upsell is that as soon as they buy a product from you, it takes them to a new sales page where they can either click “Buy Now”, or “No Thanks”. 1-click upsells are sometimes referred to as “free money” because they’re so monkey simple to set up. There is a bit of an art to upsells however. And the art is knowing which products fit together. In other words, you want to sell products that help sell your other products. I can talk about this more in a future email if anyone is interested. But for now, just think about which products you can add to your arsenal that are easy “yeses”.

2) Imbedded coupons — I don’t know the “official” name for these, but I’ll just call them imbedded coupons for now. Basically, these are coupons you give to your buyers. My favorite way to do this is to actually have them in your product. Again, I can go deeper into this if someone asks me, but basically, apply my “Email Emperor” methodology to your product and mix the content with a pitch. The CTA here being the coupon code.

3) Buyers list — This is perhaps the most straightforward and quickest way to get started building your back end. If you have a list of buyers, you can simply segment them onto a buyers list and begin selling them more expensive and more valuable products or services. It’s easy peasy. And, depending on what you sell, you can even reuse your front end emails here. Just change the close/CTA. Of course, it depends heavily on what you’re selling. But even if you’re writing emails from scratch to your buyers list, it will likely be some of the easiest money you’ve ever made (especially if you’re selling high-ticket items).

As I mentioned, one of the benefits of a back end is that it massively ramps up your cash flow. Which makes affording copywriting services a lot more doable.

In fact, like I said, you can even lose money on the front end if your back end is built right.

Anyhoo, I don’t usually do funnel consutling, but if you really need it and ask nicely, I’ll consider it.

If your funnel is already in place and you just want more buyers on your list (or emails to sell to your exising buyers), then hit ‘reply’ and let me know what you need.

Tyler McCune

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