3 Ways To Grow Your Business – Part 3

In part 1, we looked at what most businesses tend to focus on – growing your customer base. In part 2, we discussed the potency of increasing the frequency of purchases.

In this last segment, we will look at how to get your current customers to buy more from you, also known in the marketing world as up-selling and possibly cross-selling.

How this is different from increasing purchase frequency is the emphasis on getting your customers to buy more at the time of purchase or from a subsequent purchase.  To purchase more of your or even a partner’s service (cross sell) or a higher end solution (upsell-sell).

Many of the considerations will be the same as increasing purchase frequency. You need to deliver both a top-notch product or service and offer an exceptional customer experience. The quality of the product or service should speak for itself. Customer experience involves every single customer touch point, from your shopping cart to your support team. To get your customers to buy more from you, they need to be loyal and trust you completely.

Up selling is also a very cost-effective option. Keeping your current customer base is 5 – 10 times cheaper than trying to bring in new customers. And it’s easier to cross / upsell customers that are already loyal and happy with what you do than those that are learning about you for the first time.

If you want to cross /up sell to your current customers, make sure that they know about all of your offerings. In all your communications, whether it be newsletters or social media or even your email signature, make sure that you are highlighting all of your different offerings. Awareness is a crucial aspect of cross / up selling.

Whether you are selling to a new customer or an existing, a very effective cross / up-sell technique is to get them right at the point of purchase. Offline, we can see this at virtually any retail shop. There are additional products right at the till. This works online as well. During the checkout process, you can suggest or encourage additional purchases. The more targeted the extra offering, the better. Cross-selling related products or services is much more effective than a random suggestion.

You can also encourage additional purchases by offering special discounts or deals that only apply for the purchase at hand. This can increase urgency and the likelihood that a customer will act.

To get your customers to buy more from you, they have to be buying in the first place. You need to be upping that conversion rate and ensuring that your sales funnel is optimized and doing its job. Pair that with a strong cross / up-sell strategy and you’ll be seeing increased growth from a smaller number of customers.