Today we’re discussing a not-particularly-well-kept secret here at The Savvy Solopreneur. We’re talking about why it’s always easier to sell to existing customers than to find new ones.

Finding new customers, marketing to them, and getting them to spend money with you for the first time is a lot of hard work. Getting repeat sales from an already satisfied customer is MUCH easier. And for good reason.

Disclosure: Links in this post (and anywhere on The Savvy Solopreneur) may be affiliate links. Find out exactly what that means here.

Before a new customer is ready to pull out their wallet and spend actual money with you, they have to trust you. To build that kind of trust and show that you’re a person that knows what they’re talking about, takes time and effort. You have to go out and find these people, get in front of them, share content, offer them a freebie, get them on your email list, keep them there a while, and then build that relationship. Eventually you get to a point where they turn into paying customers.

The big mistake most new bloggers and online marketers make is that they stop there, and then transfer all their time and efforts to finding new people to market to. Then they work hard to convert those new people into paying customers. While that’s great, and certainly something all of us need to do, there is another piece to the online business puzzle, and it’s where most of the money for your business is to be made – the backend.

There are a couple of things that happen when someone turns into a paying customer. The first thing is that they know you. They know you do good work, and they are comfortable spending money with you. Hopefully your product is exactly what they needed and it’s helping them reach their next goal, or entertaining them. That makes them highly likely to buy from you again.

If you’re an avid fiction reader, you’ve seen this in action yourself. If you find an author you love, buying the next book, particularly in the same series, is a no-brainer. You don’t even need to read the synopsis. You buy it and dive in. The same happens with your existing customers.

There’s another advantage to marketing to existing customers. You know a lot about a person once they buy a product from you. You know what they bought and therefore what they like or need.

Let’s say you create and sell an info product or online course about getting your first website up and running. You know your customers are interested in that topic. For your follow up products you come up with courses on things like creating content for your site, setting up an autoresponder, monetizing your website, getting traffic to your site etc. Since you know your customers are interested in website creation, chances are they also want to learn the logical next steps.

Create those follow-up products, email your customer list about them, and watch the sales come in. If you have any time left over, by all means, go out and promote to grow that customer base.

Does this work if you are primarily an affiliate marketer? Hell, yes. You could argue that it works even better. If you build up a network of affiliate partners who offer a range of complimentary products and services, you can market a range of related services to your readers, subscribers, and most importantly previous customers, without having to develop each product yourself.

If people on your list are interested in Pinterest marketing, for example, it’s likely they’re also interested in Instagram marketing, and Twitter marketing. You may not be an expert in every type of social media marketing, but you can partner with people who are.

Just make sure you thoroughly vet every affiliate product you offer. In this scenario, a customer is relying on your recommendations. If you only ever recommend top-quality products, they’ll soon realise that buying through you gives them an extra layer of security. So get marketing to those existing customers. If you’ve wowed them once, you can do it again.

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