Two of my favourite types of customers or clients are those that I refer to as “shoppers and collectors”. As far as customers go, they are the lowest touch, least hassle people you have to deal with, especially if you sell info products.
I’ll break each of them down for you.
“Shoppers” are the customers who wander into your little world, see something you’re selling or offering and for whatever reason, they decide to pull out their credit card and buy. They don’t really need to be sold to, they may never have heard of you before, but they are happy to buy your product and move on just as quickly as they arrived.
“Collectors” are the customers who buy everything you sell and you may even find out they are buying from everyone else as well. Again, there’s something about their personality that makes them want to just collect info products or sign up to every membership community they can find. The sales process is smooth as silk because they want everything that you have.
I love these type of customers and clients because I don’t really need to do any work to acquire them or keep them. They are doing their own thing and they are happy just to part with their money and move along to the next thing.
On the other hand, I know so many people who hate these type of customers and actively try and make it difficult for them to buy. These sellers are always talking about this type of customer as the kind who never implement what they buy and complain about them not being serious.
Who cares?!? Seriously. I hate that kind of stupid, self-importance like somehow what you’re teaching is so important that unless someone is entirely focused on implementing it right away, then you somehow must do everything in your power to dissuade people from buying.
Get over yourself!
I have written a lot about the importance of getting people to consume your content and I’ve even gone so far as to say that in my opinion, that’s really the guts of Content Marketing 2.0. However, the whole point of encouraging and making it easy for your audience to consume your content is to increase the importance of your relationship in their mind to make it more likely that they’ll buy from you. If the person is going to buy anyway, everything else is just selling past the close – let them click the buy now button and move on with their day.
I think people totally over complicate online business. Let me break it down for you in its simplest form: create stuff, convince people it’s valuable and worth paying good money for.
That’s it, very easy. If you’re making it more complicated than that, you’re a muppet. All this talk about “changing the world” and “helping people create better versions of themselves” has nothing to do with your customers and everything to do with your own ego.
Above all else, I like to sell stuff. I want everyone to join my Casual Marketer Monthly Newsletter and pay me every month or preferably, annually. I really hope that people enjoy it and I do my best to make it as valuable as I can, but let’s be honest with each other, I’m not solving the great issues of our time with this 12 to 16 page newsletter every month.
Even better, I really want customers who are cool and easy to deal with. I feel incredibly lucky that every single person that’s signed up for the Newsletter has been great. Nobody complains about the content, no silly chargebacks and no payment disputes.
With the newsletter, I know a bunch of my customers personally – they’re all very good people which makes it easy. However, there is a healthy dose of random people who’ve found me through various means and decided to sign up and see what this whole newsletter thing is about. Again, very low touch clients who happily pay and get their newsletter.
I think everyone should be aiming to build out their side hustle, casual marketer style side business this way – low touch, low friction and easy to deal with. Don’t start something on the side that’s going to require you to boil the ocean every week just to keep clients happy. It’s not your job to change the world and solve everyone’s problems, you’re there to do the right thing for yourself and your family.
Let me fill you in on a little secret I have. When a random “Shopper or Collector” customer comes along, I go out of my way to try and discover where they came from. Why do I do that? Simple, I want to see if I can figure out what caused them to want to come and buy so that I can try and repeat the process! I want as many of these customers as possible.
The other secret is easy to say, harder to do and probably somewhat self-evident really… You need to create good products. If you consistently create good stuff so that people talk about it positively then people will find out about it. You’ll get a reputation for being smart and worth listening to. And in some instances, that’s what’s happening with this type of buyer, your reputation and previous exposure they may have had to you indirectly has made them want to buy from you.
As someone said to me one time when I was starting out in my career, “The best customer is the one who is excited to keep paying you without ever needing to meet with you.” In an online world, those are the customers who sign up for your products and quietly enjoy what you’re delivering without you needing to dedicate much time to making and keeping the sale.
Or more succinctly, never look a gift horse in the mouth.