UP SELLING AND CROSS SELLING

Your company can choose the option of making quick sales of a single product/service, or increase conversions in the same sale trying to offer the highest possible value. If this idea sounds apealing to you and you want to implement it in your Marketing strategy, keep reading and find out more about up selling and cross selling.

It’s important for you  to understand these techniques, because Up Selling and Cross Selling can generate a greater benefit for your business in economic terms, and also generate a better user experience for those who are buying your products. But this good user experience can only be achieved if you apply these techniques correctly. So let’s get started:

How do we define Up Selling and Cross Selling?

In general terms, up selling and cross selling means suggesting another product or service along with the main product or service that a user is considering or already has bought.

And what’s the difference between up selling and cross selling? Up Selling is about selling a product that is more expensive than the one that the lead is thinking of buying, or already  bought in the past. While Cross Selling is based on selling a related or complementary product to that one in which the lead is interested.

Both are about cross-selling since they are based on suggesting another product or service.

You can apply these two strategies when a user is visiting a product (before purchase), during the payment process, or after.

• Before selling: Every time a user clicks on a product/service or is viewing it on your website, similar, alternative or complementary products/services can be shown on the screen helping that user choosing the best option, or more than one option if convenient.

• During the payment or while the product is in the shopping basket: while a user is in the process of buying a product or service on your website, complementary products/services and extras can be shown on the screen that can be included in the shopping basket to obtain a more complete product or service.

• After selling: After a user has bought a product or service on your website, related or complementary products/services can be addressed to the user in two different ways:

1. The first would be through the thanks page or a page that you can create exclusively for this new sale (a landing page), as it would be another way to retain the user and be able to capture it again.
2. The second would be through retargeting: you can automate your project with interesting Email Marketing tools and send emails with other types of products that may interest the user. Additionally, you can use advertising based on the actions that the user has done previously on our website and create ads on Facebook or search engines.

Using Cross selling and Up selling will give you the opportunity to increase the sales of your business; but if you are determined to implement these strategies on your ecommerce or service sales, make sure you do it in moderation since you are aiming for the highest number of clients converting, not overwhelming them in the process.

It is about implementing and measuring, observing the results that these techniques are giving you and trying to improve them to always offer the best user experience to maximise your sales.

Here are four important tips to make your Up selling and Cross Selling strategy as effective as possible:

1. Offer value: When you implement Up Selling or Cross Selling strategies, it´s important not to offer products of low value, the customer who is buying or has bought your product is trusting you and your business, so you need to take care of this relationship so that it continues growing. Also, do not try to offer unrelated products because you want to sell them,  you must first think about the client and his/her user experience so that the customer might become an evangelist or defender of your brand. If you build a good relationship with your customer, there will be more chances that will purchase from you again.

• Segment your market and beware of the buyer journey and conversion funnel: The first thing you need to know before implementing cross selling and upselling strategies is who the user is(segmentation) and what stage of the sales funnel is at in order to offer the right product or service to increase the user experience and the chances of the user to convert. In  addition, knowing exactly who the visitors and buyers are through demographic, geographic, psychographic or behavioral segmentation is essential for these types of strategies to be successful.

• Try to maximize your profit in moderation: If you are trying to capture a visitor with a small profit margin product, try to compensate this with a higher margin and quality product, in order to optimize the sales. But make sure you do this in moderation, what you want to achieve is a repeat purchase, and you will not get it if the customer is not satisfied with the additional product you offer throughout the sales process.

• Don’t abuse: If your client has already bought a product or service from you, and you want to carry out a strategy of Cross Selling or Up Selling through email marketing or other means, try not to networks and t do it in the right measure.