The Fine Art of the Upsell--a powerful example of positive marketing

by Bonnie Boots

Often as I work with clients, they'll tell me they want to sell their work on the internet BUT...they don't want to market.

I love marketing. I find it to be very fun and creative, so it saddens me that many people think marketing is all hard-edged and hateful.

How, I wonder, did this come to be? I think you can blame it on the short history of internet marketing.

The internet has become such an intrinsic part of life that it's hard to remember it didn't really open into an avenue for ordinary business until 1999.
 
For 1999 to 2001 or so, it was dominated by geeks that knew everything about coding and little about marketing. If they excelled at selling, it was purely because they were the only ones that knew how to code a sales system.

It wasn't until 2002, really, that we started to see lots of ordinary people and businesses venturing onto the World Wide Web. For many of them, it was the first time they'd ever been engaged in any kind of marketing.

That's when we began to see the rise of the "internet marketing guru."

The first folks to earn their spot on that particular bandwagon were men -usually- who could take real world skills like writing sales copy and transfer them to the virtual world.

With that background, internet marketing came to have a decidedly male aspect--and alpha male at that.

Today, internet marketing information is so steeped in testosterone, one is apt to grow hair on their palms just scrolling through it.

Sadly, when ordinary people come to the internet to find information on marketing, the first thing they're apt to come upon is what I call the internet marketing "School of Chest Thumping."

If the Chest Thumpers have caused you to believe that marketing is all about "Dominate this!" and "Crush that!" you may think marketing is not for you.

You may be wrong.

Marketing, real marketing, is not about dominating and controlling and manipulating. Real marketing is about one simple thing--serving the needs of the customer.

Real marketing, at its core, is about being of service.

Keep this in mind as you read internet marketing information, and filter what you read through a lens that says, "How may I serve?" You will eventually see that there is gold and goodness in even the most testosterone-tainted advice.

Let's take one aspect of internet marketing and look at it through that lens.

Internet marketers preach about the power of the upsell. Upsell means that you sell a customer on one thing, then "upsell" him to a high-priced option.

In the chest-thumping lingo of the internet marketers, upselling is all about "sucking the cash right out of your customers wallets!"

If you care about your customers, those human faces on the other side of your computer screen, you can't help but be turned off to this idea.

But if you look at the upsell as a way to be of service, then upselling becomes one more way in which you can help people have a better life.

Let me show you an excellent example of someone doing the upsell in a way that is both positive and practical.

 Angela Treat Lyon is an EFT practitioner. Her web site, EFT Biz Success, http://www.EFTBizSuccess.com , sells a package of interviews with successful EFT practitioners. The package is $357.

But within the sales page at http://www.eftbizsuccess.com/ is a box that offers the customer a real service.

"Want to save download time?" it asks. "Get the entire package pre-loaded onto a 2 gig, ready-to-listen MP3 player. Unpack it, plug in the ear buds and start listening immediately! Click here to read all about it!"

Curious readers are sent to this page, http://www.eftbizsuccess.com/c-MP3FD.html , where they read about the features of this offer and learn the package with this option is $427.

This offer is an "upsell," an attempt to move the customer from a $357 purchase to a $427 purchase. But it is also an effort to be of service by offering busy people an important option--the option of saving time.

By making it faster and easier for her customers to get the information they want, Lyon is able to generate a larger sale and more profit--all while maintaining her integrity.

Lyon presents us with a positive example of marketing, one that should hearten those who feel marketing can be degrading and possibly sully the personal relationship you are attempting to build with clients and customers.

If you remember that marketing, at it's core, is always about being of service, you can read past the hyperventilating headlines of internet marketing information and see that what lies beneath are tools and techniques that will help you help others.

And that, as even Martha Stewart will tell you, is a good thing!

 

 
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