Information marketers are routinely instructed to build out a “product ladder” as the primary vehicle to move new customers from low-value to high-value and as a way to routinely increase average lifetime customer value (LCV).
Totally sound guidance.
However, where this guidance typically falls apart is in the order marketers are taught to use when building-out the various products for their ladder.
A product ladder within the arena of information marketing is a coordinated series of products typically escalating in depth of content, escalating in perceived value and price, and, often, escalating in access to the content provider.
The order in which the average online marketer is taught to build-out their product ladder… even the order I was first taught and adhered to… is vastly different from the way the biggest players in direct response do it. And it’s in this difference where the magnitude of success and profitability of your backend marketing is totally determined.
Bottom-Up or Top Down?
Typically, the way lots of online marketers are taught to build-out their product ladder is from the top down.
Meaning: they’re taught to start with their most expensive backend product (or the biggest backend product/offer they eventually want to have), and pull-out pieces or chunks of that big backend product to create smaller products lower on their product ladder.
Eventually, pulling-out more and more chunks, and getting the content more and more narrowed, all the way down to their front-end product/offer that will be used to acquire new customers at the bottom of their ladder.
Whereas, the way the top marketers and companies in direct response go about this process is in the reverse order.
They approach it from the bottom up.
Meaning: the top marketers and companies in direct response build their product ladder by starting first with a successful front-end, customer acquisition product (one from the lowest rung of the ladder), and build-out their backend, higher rung products from there.
Now, for clarification purposes: The most successful information marketers and companies often have multiple product ladders. These various product ladders get built based on the response experienced with their different front-end products and offers.
The successful front-end products are the ones that may get a full or partial product ladder built-out for them.
Whereas, the front-end products and offers that aren’t successful (i.e. don’t break-even in the acquisition of new customers or simply lose too much money when being tested), do not get a product ladder built-out for them.
With this bottom-up approach, the most successful info-marketers and companies are building product ladders based on products, topics, ideas, and content that have been proven in the marketplace.
The problem with the top-down approach used by average marketers is they’re either building their product ladders based on pure assumption of what the market wants, or based solely on the response they’ve gotten to a “higher rung product” from existing customers (a totally different ball-game then selling to cold prospects with no prior relationship and no existing level of trust).
How The Pros Stay In Tune With Prospect Desires
You see: It’s your front-end, “first rung on the ladder” products and offers that allow you to get and keep your finger on the pulse of what your market wants and desires.
As you put out more and more small front-end, “first rung on the ladder” products and offers into the marketplace you quickly learn which products, topics, ideas, and content your market is most rabid about and, most importantly, willing to pay for.
And, it’s from the response to these small, “first rung on the ladder” products where you then decide which should get bigger and bigger backend products built for a full or partial product ladder.
When you start with and use your successful front-end, “first rung on the ladder” products and offers to determine which should have a product ladder built and what that product ladder should consist of, you have a much greater likelihood of creating a sequence of bigger more high-priced offers new customers are going to partake of.
Because your product ladder, in this case, is being built based on what the market has proven to you they want… and want more of… by their response to your smaller “first rung on the ladder” products and offers.
Make sense?
Good.
Your job now going forward is to be prolific with the creation and testing of new front-end products and offers so you stay on the pulse of what your market wants… so you can routinely identify what your prospects are willing to pay for… and so you can create backend products and product ladders with a high likelihood of success and big profits.
