“From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.”
~ Napoleon Bonaparte
Those forty centuries of history represent the immense lifetime value of every customer once you get your pyramid built.
The Power of Ladders and Ascension Pyramids
When you think of the cost of customer acquisition in your business and the importance of identifying buyers (present or future) and freebie-seekers (not to mention the risk of attracting outright scammers) the lure of increasing customer value is extremely potent.
The reality is that if your customer likes you and the product or service you deliver, then they’re probably keen to keep buying from you as long as you let them do so because it mitigates the work they need to do and the risks they need to take. That creates a win for them (ease and simplicity) and a win for you (more money from the same customer).
Ladders and ascension pyramids effectively enable you to easily increase customer value and, therefore, your ability to spend more to acquire high quality customers.
Ladder vs. Ascension Pyramid: What’s the Difference?
The shape says it all…
A Ladder allows for almost any number of customers to ascend from rung to rung and it is often possible for new customers to join at almost any point. A ladder is an ideal model for businesses (or parts of businesses) where scarcity of delivery does not come into play.
For example, you could easily have 3 tiers of paid newsletter subscriptions or even website hosting because you only need to print more newsletters and ensure that your server capacity was adequate.
An Ascension Pyramid, on the other hand is far more prescriptive and exclusive. For the most part customers will start at the bottom (or very close to the bottom) of the pyramid and work their way upwards, competing with other customers for increasingly scarce places in the higher tiers.
For example, coaching pyramids move from online-only courses with no live component, to group programs, to 1:1 coaching. There is usually an element of scarcity and high levels of pre-qualification to get into the higher levels and this is the natural result of limited time and other delivery resources.
5 Ways to Create an Ascension Pyramid in Your Business
Here are 5 potential ways that you can create levels or tiers in any business:
- Instead of selling programs or services as individual components, bundle them together into a coherent package and offer savings over the individual purchases along with greater impact and speed to results;
- Provide greater access to ‘live counsel’. This has almost unlimited potential for ascension because you can offer access to a range of mass, group, alternative coaches, and (at the top of pyramid) the chief herself – and you can also offer a range of time and price options;
- Invite people to join an exclusively limited number of people in core groups at various points on the pyramid;
- Community-focused status options. Where you are building a community there are many opportunities to showcase members who meet certain criteria and this is (or can be) a benefit that is well-worth paying for;
- Externally derived status options. This is the heart of celebrity marketing which is a very effective way to induce people to pay more. Sometimes it happens as a by-product like Tom Cruise’s popularisation or RayBan sunglasses, and sometimes it happens deliberately like the choice to use George Clooney in the Nespresso ads, to choose a traditional publishing house for your book, or to invite a sports star to speak at your event.
Choose one of these and build your product or service offerings around it. Your business will thank you!
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