Cross-Selling Your Marketing Campaigns

When it comes to increasing the bottom line of your business, cross-selling is one of the first places to look. It’s commonly accepted that it’s far more expensive to win new customers than to retain existing ones – up to 7x more expensive, according to Kiss Metrics – and so getting your current customers to spend more becomes an attractive alternative.

To persuade people who already do business with you to buy more of what you sell, certain marketing considerations need to be taken into account to make the most of the opportunity.

Learn Where Cross-Selling Works: Not all of your products or services will be suitable to suggest associated items that the customer might also want. Take care to market only those that make sense as a combination, and be sure to test those assumptions against actual sales figures.

Pick Your Channels Carefully: Some marketing channels lend themselves more to cross-selling than others, depending on your brand and the industry you serve. Try them all, but only keep those that you can prove drive a bigger spend.

Target to the Correct Customers: There are some customers who simply aren’t a good fit for broader sales. Certain types of returning customer can actually cause you to lose money, so it’s important to target only the right ones, as this Harvard Business Review article explains.

Don’t Ignore the Data: If your sales figures say that certain campaigns aren’t working, don’t be afraid to pull the plug. Your efforts are better spent on those that spike your sales, and ineffective cross-selling runs the risk of alienating customers.

 

Done well, cross-selling can be the perfect antidote to a slow sales period. Just make sure you’ve targeted correctly and keep testing to prove your tactics are truly working.