“Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects. ” — Captain Renault, Casablanca (1942)
Today’s Daily Marketing Ace tip encapsulates one of the most powerful concepts in marketing: tailor your message and call to action based on your prospect’s mindset. Here’s the tip:
Tip Tag: Sales Processes
Three Types For Follow-Up
Three types of people you should follow up with: suspects (in your target market), prospects (have responded to your marketing but not purchased), and customers (have purchased something.) Each follow up message will be different for each type. Suspects: entice to visit your website. Prospects: persuade to make their first purchase. Customers: convince to come back and give you referrals.
David Frey: Senior Editor of the “Small Business Marketing Best Practices Newsletter.” To get your free lifetime subscription visit http://www.MarketingBestPractices.com
Once you learn how to bring the right message to, and ask the right action from people in your sales funnel based on where they are, you will start to see greatly improved results. David defines the different stages of the buying process as Suspect, Prospect, and Customer. I like to focus on four stages: Suspect, Prospect, Buyer, and Repeat Buyer — because there are separate and distinct communications strategies that apply to each.
Here are my definitions:
Suspect = Someone you *think* might be qualified for your offer
Prospect = Someone who has demonstrated that they are qualified for your offer
Buyer = Someone who has purchased once from you (I don’t call them “customers” because customers become prospects as soon as you bring a new offer to them)
Repeat Buyer = Someone who has purchased more than once from you
Here’s the rub: it’s a linear progression. Suspects must become prospects before they can be buyers; prospects must become buyers before they become repeat buyers, etc.
Sadly, most businesses focus almost all (like 90%) of their effort and resources on converting suspects to buyers. This is a remnant from our upbringing in the age of the broadcast marketer.
Where is the most profitable place to focus? Hands down, converting Buyers to Repeat Buyers wins every time. Yet there are very few businesses that focus on this stage at all.
People like Jay Abraham do. People like Dan Kennedy do. People like Marlon Sanders do. But these are the exception, and not the rule.
How about you? Do you have systems in place to convert Buyers into Repeat Buyers? Do you measure your results?
2 Comments
Hi, Doug — Question: I’m a life coach, and my primary marketing aim is to fill my practice with ideal clients. Once a client hires me, they tend to stay with me for a couple of years. They’re my most significant (and favorite) source of income. Are these repeat buyers?
Absolutely. What you have, in marketing terms, is a continuity program. Repeat buyers who pay you (more or less) the same amount month in and month out. That equals predictable and profitable sales.
The definition of repeat buyer is simply a buyer who generates multiple transactions with you. Sometimes, that comes about through multiple product sales — the buyer purchases one product, and then later purchases a different product (or hopefully multiple additional products).
A continuity program is even better — it is multiple transactions for the same product. In other words, sell it once and keep billing for it over and over again.
Now, in looking at my definitions above, I see a bit of a hole (hence your question). Perhaps I should add another category called “Continuity Buyer?” I still prefer the term buyer because I believe that a buying decision is made every time a transaction takes place. “Customer” has a past-tense feel to it, but “Buyer” is someone who is active.