Have you ever gone to a store to buy one thing and ended up leaving with a few more things? Well, in this case, you might have already seen the idea of cross-selling in action.
In a nutshell, it is a common marketing strategy in which we offer our current customers more products or services. It can help you make more money and grow your business.
Cross-selling and up-selling are two popular ways to market that should work well together. Cross-selling is when we offer our customers other products or services that go well with what they have already bought. For example, let’s say you went to a shop to get a cup of coffee but ended up getting burgers and fries instead. Well, this is a great example of how cross-selling works so well at the point of sale.
On the other hand, when we “up-sell,” we just offer a better or more expensive version of the original product. For example, let’s say you went to get a medium-sized drink but were instead sold a large-sized drink.
Cross-selling Marketing Strategies for Online Stores
Cross-selling can be your most important marketing and sales tool if you have an online store. Here are some smart tips and strategies you can use to make more money through cross-selling.
Also, if you have an online dropshipping store, you should definitely put some of these tips to use:
Try to give your customers something of value
The first rule of cross-selling is that you shouldn’t force your customers to buy other products. It might not only turn off your customers, but you could lose the sale altogether.
Remember that your goal should be to give your customers more value with your products. To do this, you can suggest other products that go well with what they are buying.
Let’s say a customer came into your store and bought a cell phone. Now, you can suggest the phone’s cover, screen guard, or other accessories that would make their smartphone experience better.
Offer discounts and shipping for free
This is one of the most common ways that online stores try to get people to buy more things.
You can set a certain amount of money that a product needs to be shipped for free. So, your customers will be more likely to buy another item or two, which will save them money on shipping. This would be a great way for both store owners and customers to get what they want.
You can also offer special discounts when people buy more than one of your products. Let’s say a customer gets 20% off their purchase if they buy two items instead of one. This could make them want to buy more things from your online store at once.
Customers should be shown hand-picked products
You might have seen this on Amazon or AliExpress, two popular online stores. You can keep track of what your users buy and what they like, and then suggest more products for them to buy.
One of the best ways to do this is to suggest products based on what they have already bought. If a customer bought a pack of diapers from you last month, it’s likely that they will need the same thing next month.
Just remind them of what they’ve bought before, and they might add the product to their cart.
Cross-selling is another popular way to get people to buy things from different sections of your store. If a customer buys a pair of jeans, you can suggest other items that other people have bought with jeans.
You can also suggest other products that are similar that your customers might want to buy with it. Remember that your goal here isn’t to give your customer an alternative to what they already want, but to give them something that would go well with what they already want. Try to do that in a quiet way so that your customers won’t think you’re being pushy.
Give customers loyalty points
Do you want people to keep coming back to your store to buy more things? If that’s the case, you can give them loyalty points for each purchase they’ve made.
You can also set a date for when the loyalty points will run out and send them reminders. In this way, your customers are more likely to use their reward points to buy other things from your store.
Sell a Look (a group of items)
If you have an online clothing store, this is one of the best ways to get people to buy more than one thing.
Instead of selling a single item, you could think about selling a whole look. To do this, you can make whole look books with a lot of products in them. You should try the same thing on your online store by putting products together in a single bundle.
You can then give your customers the option to buy just one item from the set or to buy the whole look at once. This is one of the best ways to get people to buy more than one thing at the same time.
Look for ways to make money after the sale
Last but not least, you should stay in touch with your customers and give them a memorable experience after the sale. There’s a good chance that they’ll need another similar product a few weeks or months after they buy the first one.
For example, let’s say a customer bought a new water purifier from your store. Now, you can remind them to change the filters on the purifier every six months and give them a simple solution: they can buy all kinds of filters from your store. This would help you sell more products to customers who have already bought something from you, and it would also help you keep your customers.
Use dropship-empire to promote cross-selling in your dropshipping store.
As you can see, cross-selling is a great way to boost sales and can be a smart marketing move. But if you have a dropshipping store, you might want to check out dropship-empire, which is the official AliExpress dropshipping tool. From product bundles to variant mapping, it will help you combine different products and sell them in your store more effectively.
- You can save time running your dropshipping store if you order a lot of products at once.
- dropship-empire has a unique feature called Supplier finder that helps you choose the most reliable and profitable supplier for your product.
- You can make bundle products by putting together several items, which can help cross-selling a lot.
- You can use a lot of other features, like variant mapping, automatic updates on order status, managing multiple stores, running BOGO offers, and so on.
Cross-selling can be your most effective way to sell if you do it right. Not only will it help you make more money, but it can also give your customers something extra. Most experts say that cross-selling different products should be done in a way that gives customers something extra.
In this way, you can sell related items to your customers and improve their shopping experience as a whole. Also, if you have an online dropshipping store, you might want to check out dropship-empire to sell bundles of products and take advantage of the many advanced selling options it gives you.