I’m a huge fan of diversifying business ventures and cross-selling to increase the bottom line. Why should you cross-sell to your consumers?
- Make more money by selling additional products and services to consumers who are already interested in what you’re offering
- Protecting yourself against regulation of verticals; if one industry becomes obsolete you’ve built other quality businesses that continue to generate revenue.
This article is about the first point – making more money. The more complementary offers, products and services you can offer to your particular demographic, naturally the more money you will make. You’ve already made your initial sale or generated your initial lead – why not keep it going?
Here’s how I did it: I spent three years running a direct mail-in cash for gold business, buying gold through the mail and refining it. I also have businesses that generate payday loan/cash advance leads and sell directly to lenders. I have a business that generates auto title loan leads for lenders as well. I have a business that generates cash for electronics leads. The point here is that my consumer-facing web properties offer consumers more than just one option to get instant cash. The trick is to gain experience and knowledge in multiple complementary verticals. If you can master three or four business models in the same industry, you’re going to beat out the guy that specializes in just one business every time.
1. I’ve positioned my businesses in a unique way; while my competitors are either mono-line payday loan guys, cash for gold buyers or auto title lead generators, I’ve built businesses around all of the options. So if a customer requests a payday loan and doesn’t qualify for the full amount they need, not only do I make my money off selling the lead, but I then offer them the opportunity to sell their gold AND electronics for additional cash, or get an auto title loan. Options, options, options.
2. The important thing here is I am not just up-selling another relevant offer. When you OWN all of the complementary offers yourself, you have full control and deliver more value and more options for the consumer. By the time the whole sales process is done with one of my competitors, a customer might end up with a $300 or $400 payday loan. With my lead funnel, by the time the customer is finished they’ve gotten their $300-$500 loan, sold their gold, sold their electronics and have potentially made out with several thousand dollars. So I make 3x-4x as much as if I had a mono-line business with no other offers, my customers get more options, more cash.
3. I can offer my publishers higher payouts for leads and enticing rev-share back-end deals that my competitors can’t match because I am 3-4x more profitable than the mono-line businesses. This is how you take over an entire industry, leverage a competitive advantage and then take over traffic.
4. When you own the offers yourself, there’s no possibility for your data to be destroyed. You can monetize it with a few trusted emailers, call centers and SMS publishers. You can push your own complementary offers and referral programs to get your customer’s friends and family members interested as well.
This setup is designed for longevity. If you want to run an offer for 3-4 months and make some quick cash, then move onto something else – this is not for you. If you want to build a real, long-term business that offers value to the consumer across multiple product offerings, establish real partnerships with publishers and affiliates and build a profitable business then build your financial models, design your sales pages and launch!
