Improving your design, improving your content and increasing your social media presence are all incredible soft-sell methods to boost your sales. Still, even though their ROI is truly amazing, their efficiency can always be interpreted in more than one way. Sure, greater exposure gives more people an option to buy from you; however, what was it that actually made a potential customer turn into an actual customer? Unless you create an extensive survey (and get 100 percent honest answers), this is something you’ll never know for sure. Nonetheless, there are some sales-boosting techniques that work in a much more straightforward manner. Here are five of them.
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Making bundles and upsells
In order to make a sale, your audience needs to believe that they’re getting their money’s worth or that they’re receiving a great value for their money. That’s right, they don’t actually have to get that great of a value; it’s enough for them to just perceive the situation in this way. Needless to say, this is exactly what bundles and upsells are there for. Still, in order not to dismiss the pragmatism of this technique completely (from the standpoint of your audience), both bundles and upsells do give your customers a chance to save themselves from having to make a subsequent purchase. For instance, selling your customer shoes and a shoe care kit is a smart idea, seeing as how they would have to buy one either way. Why not present them with a chance to buy it right now? Why not ensure that they buy it from you?
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Creating a false sense of urgency
The next thing you can try is creating a false sense of urgency. What we mean by this is that you should create an offer with an expiry date. You see, a 25 percent off deal on a certain product is not nearly as effective as 25 percent off on a certain product for the next three days. This is due to the fact that this strategy helps you capitalize on the FOMO (fear of missing out) phenomenon. In other words, your audience will create a fictional scenario where they have to make the same purchase later, at the regular price, and feel inferior to those who made a smarter move of getting the product while it was on a discount.
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Selling gift cards
The next amazing idea is selling gift cards to your target audience. The way in which this works is fairly simple – you sell a person a gift card and the value on that card has to be spent in your store or in your shop. Now, to be completely honest, not all gift cards work in this way. Some, for instance, may be used to localize your sales. For instance, if your aim is to boost the sales of Hong Kong-based vendors, using a Hong Kong prepaid card program is definitely the most reliable way to do this. While seemingly simple, this method is incredibly effective and gives an outstanding ROI.
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Ask for referrals
One of the simplest ways to get new customers is to harness the raw power of your already existent customer base and allow them to help both you and themselves. This means that your customers stand to earn a discount, a gift, a coupon or a certain amount of points (redeemable in your store) in exchange for bringing you new buyers. Keep in mind that the only valid referral is the one that results in an actual buy, which is why this trick always has a resoundingly positive ROI. This is especially true in a scenario where the number of awarded points gets proportionally decided according to the value of the purchase (made by the new buyer).
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Start a loyalty program
At the very end, a loyalty program is probably the simplest, most straightforward way of generating return customers. Make no mistake, while attracting new people is great, making people buy from you over and over again is what makes the bulk of your profit. This is because every subsequent visit becomes more reliable (the likelihood that a person who has bought from you three times will come around for the fourth time is incredibly high), and the fact that each subsequent visit tends to be more valuable. A good loyalty program can help you get there a lot sooner.
Conclusion
The best thing about the above-listed five sales-boosting tips is that each of them results in direct sales, making it incredibly easy to monitor its efficiency. For those who have been in digital marketing long enough, this straightforwardness in relevant metrics is a welcome change and a breath of fresh air.
Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is currently working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and regular contributor to Technivorz.
