Going Gaga for Farmville?

I see that Lady Gaga is going to appear on Farmville ( a game available on Facebook)….a great example of joint venturing with two really popular phenomena. As part of the game, fans can download her latest videos a week before anyone else. If you were ( or maybe you are?) a fan of Lady Gaga would you sign up for this to get exclusive content just a few days earlier? Of course you would! Why? You feel special part of an elite and basically if you are fanatical about something or someone you will want to get access to anything and everything.

I can’t honestly say I am a fan of Lady Gaga, but I do love Adele’s CD “21” the fastest downloaded album this year. Although when I bought it I realised that some of my favourite tracks were not on that album, so I went and downloaded those separately. Haven’t we all done the same, we want more and more of what we enjoy and like?

How does that help you?

Well,

What are you doing to build a series of products and services that your fans can buy into?

Ideally the first product or service your customers buy for you will be followed by more expensive purchases as they realise the value you are providing.

Thus the entry level product may be a free or cheap report that will attract lots of potential customers, some will be prepared for an additional product that is higher value ( for example a CD or DVd, or seminar series) , then like a funnel that you pour in from the top there will be smaller number of people who will pay for a your premium end products. It is critical then that you have a second and third product ( or service to offer to people.

As a general rule we seem to spend too much time on effort on our initial low end product ( and I know I am guilty of this too… I spent a lot of time and sort on my first book that retails through Amazon and makes around £6 a copy….. I would need to sell an awful lot of books to pay my mortgage each month!).

The aim of the initial offering is to entice people in so they can try it and see… like the samples you see displayed in supermarkets ( or as a friend of mine who is a fisherman said… like the bait on the hook). I’m not sure I like that metaphor though as I think there needs to be more respect for your customers than thinking you are going to eat them!. though I know some internet marketers in particular who seem to think this is an acceptable way of doing business… but that’s a different story :0).

The key with building a relationship with your customers is that you are interest in the long term relationship not the one off… you are interested in a marriage not a one night stand!

So it is about having price differentiation for your products or services… and before you say that you have a service and give the best service to your clients irrespective of their ability to pay… often it is about coming up with additional services and products that people are prepared to pay extra for. For example charging more for the peak times ( although it usually helps to position it as a discount in the off peak times… hence the senior meals on a monday lunchtime that you may see advertised in restaurants).

One note on price differentiation. research has shown that if you offer only two bands of service ( say gold and silver) most people will opt for the silver ( not surprisingly), but if you offer three bands of service or product, say silver, gold and platinum almost the same number of people who previously opted for the silver will now opt for the gold as this is seen to be ” the standard” . Psychologically people tend to aim for the middle. So in your pricing offer three different prices rather than two.

So What can you do to build your “back end” of products that people can access and go gaga over?