In order to grow your business you need a steady influx of new customers, but that isn’t the only option. You can also harness your existing customers to squeeze even more sales out of them. After all, this strategy is cheaper as it doesn’t require you to do any additional marketing. Looking for ways to increase profits without further investment is one of the keys to running a successful business.
Make Sure To Get Their Email Address
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Every time you get visitors try to capture their email as that will give you the ability to market products to them on a regular basis. Furthermore, if customers buy any of your products then you need to create a buyers’ list which is simply a list of people who have bought products from you in the past. This list is important because on it you can do upsells of products at higher price points, and in the process you will get more profits. An expert from Mad Mimi explains the type of emails that can be sent out:
You can cover whatever topics you like in your email marketing: news about store hours, sales, coupons, personnel, changes, victories, request feedback – this list is virtually endless. With 2.5 billion users, email isn’t going anywhere.
To get an email address, it is important to have a lead magnet, which is basically something that you are willing to give away in exchange for an email address. For example, you could give away a sample of your product or even create a product that you are willing to give away for free, such as a free ebook that compliments your paid product very well. You might be thinking – “creating a free product is too much of an investment.” But you need to see the overall picture which is that the number of people on your list will be much larger as a result of the lead magnet, and as a result you have more people to market your products to.
Joint Ventures
One of the easiest ways to double or even triple the size of your market reach overnight is to do a joint venture. Joint ventures are simply partnerships with other companies where you pool your resources and business infrastructure so that both parties can mutually benefit. For example, if you have an email list of 20,000 subscribers you could share that list with another company who also has a list of a similar size and is willing to share their list details with you. Ideally, to avoid conflict you need to seek out a company that has products which you are not competing with, but rather can complement your own products. As a writer from NI Business Info explains you don’t even need an investment to get help:
Joint ventures often enable growth without having to borrow funds or look for outside investors. You may be able to use your joint venture partner’s customer database to market your product, or offer your partner’s services and products to your existing customers.
The flexibility that comes with joint ventures is great because you don’t need to give away more assets than you want to. For example, if you have an email list of 20,000, but don’t want to give all of it away then you can give access to only 3,000 subscribers, for example. Furthermore, you can limit the access to your list to a few months if you want. The point is there is a lot of flexibility and you can reach an agreement that matches your needs as long as you are able to approximately provide equal value to your partner.
Create a Variety of Products
There is no point of having a buyers’ list if you are only selling one product. Therefore, create a series of products that people would be willing to buy because they build upon one another. So if you are selling an ebook that solves a particular problem, then think about what other issues your target audience might be having. Once you come up with a list of additional problems you can write a new ebook that solves those problems and you can sell if for bigger profits. Donna Fenn from Inc. explains how complementary products increase profits:
Language International’s primary product is language study abroad programs. “But very often, our customers also need housing and travel insurance,” says Karen Ong, CEO of the Boston-area company. Offering those complementary products has “helped us expand our gross margins from 21 percent to more than 25 percent,” she says.
You need to be creative when coming up with additional products. Do not create products for the sake of squeezing out as much money as possible from an existing customer. Make sure that you add value and in turn you will have high conversion ratios when trying to get repeat sales.
Encourage User Feedback
One of the best things that you can do when you are struggling to understand your market, or have run out of ideas for new products, is to encourage user feedback. This can be in the form of a questionnaire that they can fill out if they want to after buying a product, or it can be in the form of an email invitation. The thing is if your product provides enough excitement and value in your marketplace then customers will step forward themselves and speak up about what they liked and didn’t like. You then have an opportunity to communicate with those customers in order to find out more about their needs.
Remember you are building product for your customers which means you need to understand what it is they want. A lot of business owners make the mistake of building products that are based around misconceptions of what the marketplace actually needs. With enough market research you can make a success of every single one of your products, and in turn you will have a customer base that is satisfied and will be hungry for more of your products.