There is a big difference between a marketing campaign on the front end, and a marketing campaign on the back end.
That is because there are things you can say to customers that you can’t say to prospects.
And there are things you can put in a customer marketing campaign – which is a back end marketing campaign — that you wouldn’t put into a front end marketing campaign to prospects.
If you try to say the same things to your prospects as you do to your customers, you will lose them. That’s because your prospects wouldn’t understand. They can’t relate. They don’t know the lingo. They don’t know the “club language”. They don’t know the secret handshake. And it just wouldn’t make any sense to them.
Prospects on your list?
And here’s something else to understand about the people on your list. Just because somebody is on your email list doesn’t mean that they’re not still a prospect.
Let me give you an example from our own coaching programs.
How Eddie went from broke to $1.5 M in just 1 year
(What Eddie did that changed everything… and how this can be the answer that changes everything for you too!)
First we have the Partnership Coaching Program. After the PCP, we have the Mentor to a Million program.
The only people who ever hear about Mentor to a Million are the people who have gone through PCP. Nobody else will hear about or see a marketing funnel for Mentor to a Million. In other words, a prospect on our list isn’t going to get presented an option to join Mentor to a Million; only our PCP customers get that opportunity.
And after Mentor to a Million we have a program called Eight Players Roundtable, which would also never be presented to a prospect.
I have three different tripwires…
Here is another example. Let’s say I have three different tripwires in my business, A, B, and C.
(Remember that the goal of a tripwire is to acquire a customer. It’s a product that presents such a low barrier of entry that enough prospects become customers, which enables you to cover your customer acquisition costs through them buying the tripwire product.)
So I have three different tripwires on three different topics.
Then we use the upsell/downsell sequence to raise the average transaction value so we can afford to pay what it’s costing us to acquire that customer.
In our company’s case, let’s say a prospect buys one of our tripwires. Now we present them with the opportunity to get the 6 Figure Funnel Formula. That means that after they purchased the tripwire, they ascended into 6FFF.
Now I’m going to ask you a question.
After they buy tripwire A, and 6FFF, at what point do we present them with tripwires B and C?
Do you think you know the answer?
Do they get the tripwire NOW?
If you said, “Immediately”, you would be… wrong.
The answer is, you would never present them with the other tripwires.
I think it’s a Dan Kennedy word, but you always want to think about “ascending” your customers.
Envision this process as a ladder. The goal is to get them to ascend up the ladder. The higher up the ladder they go, the more they are worth to your company.
To get higher and higher up the ladder they take advantage of more and more back end offers. Those back end offers are designed to deliver more value to them, give them more insight, direction, feedback, coaching, and more access to you, if you’re the expert. The goal is always ascension.
The one word that you never hear when this is talked about is descension. There is no such thing as descension! The goal is to get every customer up the ladder to the very top.
The question then becomes, at what point do we offer them the opportunity to go up the next rung?
We offer them a treat, like, “Here’s a cookie. Go up to the next rung. No? Here’s a cupcake, go up to the next rung. Here is a candy bar, go up to the next rung.”
At no point do we ever offer them the thing that got them from the rung below them to go up. Never again do we offer them that same product or service.
Just remember this: a tripwire is a customer acquisition tool. Once you’ve got them you don’t offer them a tripwire anymore. You move them to the next stage in the ascension process.
That’s the difference between marketing to prospects, and marketing to customers.
