How to Boost Your Sales with Cross-Selling: 7 Smart Tips

Have you ever visited a store to buy a particular item and ended up buying a few more add-on products? Well, in this case, chances are that you could have already experienced the principle of cross-selling.

In a nutshell, it is a popular marketing concept in which we provide additional products or services to our existing customers. It can help you boost your business and generate more profit.

Let’s learn how to do the same in a jiffy!

Cross-selling and Up-selling: Things to Know

Ideally, cross-selling and up-selling are two popular marketing tactics that go hand-in-hand. In cross-selling, we provide additional products or services to our customers that go well with their existing purchases. For instance, let’s assume you went to a shop to get a cup of coffee and ended up getting burgers and fries with it. Well, this would be an ideal example of how cross-selling works so efficiently at the time of purchase.

On the other hand, in up-selling, we simply provide a better or a costlier alternative to the original product. For example, let’s say you went to get a medium-sized drink but got up-sold to a large-sized drink instead.

7 Cross-selling Marketing Strategies for Online Stores

If you own an online store, then cross-selling can be your most vital marketing and sales weapon. Here are some smart tips and tactics that you can also implement to generate more profit via cross-selling.

Furthermore, if you have an online dropshipping store, then you should certainly implement a few of these tips as well:

1. Try to Add Value to your Customers

The first rule of cross-selling is that you should not force your customers to buy other products. Not only it might turn your customers off, but you can end up losing the purchase altogether.

Remember, your motive should be to provide more value to your customers with your products. To do that, you can suggest other related products naturally during their purchase.

Let’s say that your customer has bought a mobile phone from your store. Now, you can suggest the phone’s cover, screen guard, or related accessories that would make their smartphone experience better.

2. Give Discounts and Free Shipping

This is one of the most popular tactics that online eCommerce stores apply to get their customers in buying more items.

You can set up a particular amount for the eligibility of the free shipping of products. In this way, your customers would prefer buying another item or two that would save their money in shipping. This would be a win-win solution for store owners and customers.

Besides that, you can also host exclusive discounts on the purchase of multiple products. Let’s say if a customer would buy 2 products instead of one, they will get 20% off on their purchase. This might lure them into buying more products in one go from your online store.

3.Suggest Handpicked Products for Customers

This is something that you would have seen on popular online stores like Amazon or AliExpress. You can track the buying pattern and preferences of your users and suggest them more products to purchase.

One of the best examples is suggesting products based on their past orders. In case your customers bought a pack of diapers last month, chances are that they would need the same product in the coming month as well.

All you need to do is remind them about their past purchases and they might end up adding the product to their cart.

4.Suggest Similar or Related Products

Another popular way of promoting cross-selling in your store is by suggesting similar products on the side. If your customer has bought a pair of jeans, then you can suggest related products that other customers have also bought with it.

Besides that, you can suggest other similar products that your customers can consider buying with it. Remember, your motive here is not to provide an alternative to what your customer is already interested in, but something that would go perfectly with the existing product. Try to do that in an understated way so it won’t look forceful to your customers.

5.Provide Loyalty Points

Do you want your customers to come back to your store and keep buying more products? In that case, you can provide loyalty points to them for every purchase that they have made.

Furthermore, you can set up an expiry date for the loyalty points and send them reminders. In this way, your customers are more likely to buy other products from your store with their reward points.

6.Sell a Look [Bundle Products]

If you are running an online clothing store, then this would be one of the best ways to promote cross-selling.

Instead of selling a single product to your customers, you can consider selling an entire look. To do that, you can come up with entire look books that would have a bunch of products integrated. Ideally, you can try the same approach by including products in a single bundle on your online store.

You can later give an option to your customers to select any product from the set or buy the entire look in one go. This would be one of the best ways to promote cross-selling of several products at the same time.

7.Look for After-Sales Opportunities

Last, but most importantly, you should keep in touch with your customers and provide a memorable after-sales experience. Chances are that they might need any other related product a few weeks or months after their initial purchase.

For example, let’s say that a customer has bought a new water purifier from your store. Now, you can remind them to change the filters of the purifier every 6 months and give them a simple solution to buy all kinds of filters from your store. This would help you sell other products based on their existing purchase and you can retain your customers as well.

Pro Tip: Use DSers to Promote Cross-selling in your Dropshipping Store

As you can see, cross-selling can be such a smart marketing move to increase your sales. Though, if you own a dropshipping store, then consider exploring DSers, which is the official AliExpress dropshipping tool. From bundle products to variant mapping, it will help you integrate different items and sell them more effectively in your store.

• You can order products in bulk and save time managing your dropshipping store.
• DSers provides a unique Supplier Optimizer feature to help you pick the most profitable and reliable supplier for your product.
• You can come up with bundle products by integrating numerous items that can drastically help in cross-selling.
• You can access tons of other features like variant mapping, automatic updates on order status, multiple store management, running BOGO offers, and so on.

If implemented correctly, cross-selling can be your most powerful sales tactic. Not only will it help you generate more profit, but it can also be an add-on feature for your customers. Most of the experts recommend providing a value-added experience to customers while cross-selling different products.

In this way, you can certainly sell related products to your customers while elevating their overall shopping experience. Furthermore, if you have an online dropshipping store, then you can consider exploring DSers for selling bundle products and utilizing tons of advanced selling options that it offers.