When is a toothbrush not a toothbrush? Well, when the company that manufactures it upsells that toothbrush as a device which does something OTHER than clean your teeth.

Now, let's be real here... a toothbrush is a toothbrush, is a toothbrush.

It's just a device that cleans your teeth, and massages your gums, that's it! This is all that a toothbrush ever needs to do to be an effective oral hygiene device.

Well, here's the "gimme"... you (the toothbrush manufacturer) continually devise more upsell-toothbrush-related "stuff".

Using this approach a toothbrush manufacturer turns their toothbrush into something OTHER than a simple device that cleans our teeth and massage your gums.

Toothbrushes are turned into devices that don't need any effort on our part for them to clean (that's called an electric toothbrush), or when the shape of the handle and the brush bristles are changed it becomes scientifically proven to clean X% better. And, we all know this to be true because the guy in the white coat or that good looking dentist standing with his back to us told us so.

The "benefit" here for us people who need oral hygiene is that this "improved" brush now gets into all of those out-of-the-way places in our mouth where that demon plaque likes to hang out, just waiting to taint our lives and ruin our relationships (every piece of good fiction needs a villain y'know).

These are some of the upsell marketing techniques used by Toothbrush manufactures to sell us more toothbrushes...

Technique 1: Personalize the "problem" (turn plaque into something personal).

Remember, plaque is nothing personal it's just the biochemical result of poor oral hygiene. Australian Aboriginals have been using twigs and bark clean their teeth for thousands of years (and they've still got good teeth).

Technique 2: Use "the fear of being left out of the group".

With toothbrush marketing this "group" is all of those people who must have the newest 'thingy', because (when they do have this latest newest thingy) the world will know that they're on the cutting edge of technology (whatever that means??!!).

I don't know how many people have people hang out in their bathroom going "oh. ah" about their latest electric toothbrush with the new handles on it? I know I don't!

Add to this an individual's personal value system about their own oral hygiene and thereby create another powerful purchasing motivator.

We Human beings all need to belong to groups, and we most certainly don't want to be excluded from any group because we are 'smelly". Now, of course there are parts of the world where being smelly is actually a good thing, so toothbrushes with angled handles and those super bristles don't sell well there.

Technique 3: Make it "limited". This works in a similar fashion to the Technique 2. Both "Fear of loss" and "Fear of being left out of the group" are very powerful LOSS marketing strategies.

Technique 4: Change your new features often and market them as "improvements". Adding improvements enables you to continually upsell that good ole toothbrush to the same people over and over again as something "new" that they "must" have (to be cool, and an accredited lifelong member of the NOT smelly group).

Do these strategies work? Absolutely!

That's why companies use them. Remember, we all live in a consumer society, and our collective economies only continue to "grow" as long as we all continue to consume more "stuff"... and our economists keep telling us that continual growth in our economies is a good thing??!!

Are these techniques ethical? Well, personally, I don't think so (our ever-degraded Earth may well have an opinion about that, if it could speak).

This type of marketing doesn't actually contribute anything of value to anyone. All this approach does is fabricate a false need for something "new"... and many of us fall for it over and over again (a.k.a. "Unethical Internet marketing").

So, does this mean that we should never personally use or buy into upsell strategies to promote your wares? No, not at all.

My CORE point here is that if you use upsell/ cross sell strategies (and you should) then "ADD GENUINE VALUE" to whatever it is that you are selling. This is a much more powerful way to promote your business, because it has substance and integrity. Your clients will reward you. You'll increase your income and customer base, and our ever degraded Earth will Thank you.

There are multiple ways to use ETHICAL upsell/ cross sell strategies, which utilize a broad mix of different Internet based technologies, and that ADD value.

To get BETTER marketing results using ethical methods communicate with us today! We can show you how to use a multitude of web-based technologies that promote your online or offline businesses 24/ 7/ 365.

Live Well. Expect Success!

Kenneth Doyle - eAnalyst
Keywords: internet marketing strategy, strategic internet marketing, Kenneth Doyle - eAnalyst, www.feedyourhungrymind.com