Cross-selling is one of the important marketing and sales techniques, and its goal is to increase the value of each transaction. With this method, you offer a customer who’s buying one product some related, complementary products or services as well. This strategy helps businesses earn more from every customer without having to go chase new ones.
The Benefits of Cross-Selling for Businesses
More Revenue at the Lowest Cost
When you offer a complementary product, the customer is encouraged to buy extra items and the total value of their purchase goes up. This costs you almost nothing, and you can earn more from your existing customers. In other words, you grow your revenue without spending on acquiring new customers.
A Better Customer Experience
Offering related products or services can meet the customer’s needs better and improve their buying experience. For example, if a customer is buying a laptop, suggesting a suitable bag or a wireless mouse makes their experience better, and since you’ve got everything in one place, from now on they’ll come to you for laptops and accessories too, and even recommend you to others.
Stronger Customer Loyalty
When a customer feels your offers line up exactly with what they need, their trust in and loyalty to your brand grows, and that same trust brings them back to you again.
Lower Cart Abandonment
You’ve probably had this happen yourself: some items in your order weren’t in stock, so you put off the purchase or bought them from another seller. This happens even more when shipping is on the customer and the amount is significant. With attractive complementary offers, you can encourage customers to complete their purchase and bring down your cart abandonment rate.
The Principles of Successful Cross-Selling
Offers Have to Be Relevant
Your offers need to relate directly to the main product. When there’s a logical connection between the complementary product and the main one, the customer feels these offers are worthwhile. For example, suggesting accessories for that same camera or phone right on the product page can help. It’s best to go in yourself and define the cross-sell products for each item, or at least for your best-sellers.
Personalize Your Offers
If you use your customers’ purchase data, you can make personalized offers. For example, if a customer has already bought a particular product, you can offer things related to it, like suggesting coffee and disposable filters to someone who bought a coffee maker from you before.
Good Timing
Cross-sell offers need to show up at the right moment. The best time for these offers is usually one of these options:
- On the product page: This can sometimes put the customer off buying. For example, if you’re buying a camera and you see you have to spend as much again on needed items like a lens and a bag, you might give up on the purchase altogether. But for introducing cheap complementary products, this is the best spot.
- At the final checkout step (the cart): At this stage the customer has probably already decided to buy, and you can introduce a few add-ons, but it’s better that these don’t pull their focus away from the main purchase. For example, if the customer picked a laptop, you can suggest a laptop bag right here, but preferably don’t take them off the page; give the needed details right there and add an “add to cart” button.
- After checkout, in follow-up emails and SMS: This is one of the best places to introduce any kind of cross-sell, because the customer has finished their purchase. True, they can no longer cancel the previous order, but the chance of them coming back to the site to add an order also drops just as much. So at this stage it’s better to encourage a repeat purchase with an attractive offer, like: “Buy this lens with 10% off by the end of tonight and get it delivered free with your camera order.”
Be Transparent in Your Offers
In the examples I’ve seen so far, this hasn’t been used much, and just sticking to the first point, keeping offers relevant, helps a lot. But on top of that, you can boost the impact of your message and offer by adding an explanation and personalizing it. For example, instead of emailing the customer a list of screen protectors, you can send them a personalized email saying you noticed they didn’t buy a screen protector for their phone, and if the phone drops they’d face a big cost, so you suggest they get one to protect it, and then put the list of protectors further down the email.
Online Cross-Selling in Practice
Smart Product Page Design
Product pages should be designed so that related offers are shown in an attractive, noticeable way. These offers can be personalized based on the product the user is currently viewing and their purchase and browsing history.
Using Email and SMS Marketing
After a purchase, you can send emails or SMS messages that present complementary offers to the customer. For example, email marketing services with automation like Sender and the X-Cart plugin in WordPress can help you with this.
Special Discounts on Complementary Products
When you put an attractive discount on complementary products, the customer is encouraged to buy more. For example: “Buy a camera and get 20% off lenses.”
Leveraging Technology and Data Analytics Tools
Using data analytics tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar can help you understand your customers’ behavior better and make more relevant offers.
Common Challenges in Running Cross-Selling
Irrelevant Offers
This one, which also came up in the up-selling discussion, is the worst mistake any online store can make, and in my view, making no offer at all is better than making irrelevant ones.
Overdoing the Offers
If offers are made too often and at the wrong times, the customer might get confused or, because they’ve gotten distracted, give up on the purchase and leave the buying process half-finished.
Conclusion
Cross-selling is a powerful strategy for raising revenue and improving the customer experience. By making relevant, personalized offers at the right time, you can increase the value of your customers’ purchases and win their satisfaction. Running this strategy successfully requires a deep understanding of your customers and products and the use of the right tools. With proper planning and attention to customer needs, cross-selling can become one of the most effective sales methods in your business.