The difference between retailers who sell more than their competitors lie in the technique they use when cross-marketing their products. Cross-marketing is a promotion technique that has been used for some time now, and it has proven to be very effective especially where e-commerce selling is concerned. You see, customers are always in need of an additional item, and they need to have it conveniently. Again, sometimes they might need it when they don’t even know they need it — and it’s your job to remind them that they need that item.

3 Cross Marketing Ideas You Need to Try

1. Cross-marketing in Your ecommerce Site Today, every e-commerce site has a category named ”related products”. Just like we said earlier, some customers will need something when they are not even aware of that fact. For instance, they may be looking for a shirt in your online store. When doing this, it’s very hard for them to think that they might need a pair of pants if it was not their original intention to buy pants as well. This is where you must take advantage, maybe by showing them a picture of pants that coordinate well with the shirt they want to buy. If you are offering a computer program, maybe you could send them an email offering to sell them a user manual of the program at a reduced price. You see, when you use this technique to customers, you are doing two things. First, you are helping them discover other relevant products you are selling, and maybe you’re doing that at a reduced price to entice them to buy even more. Furthermore, these listings provide social proof, so you can’t go wrong. For instance, if a large number of your customers have bought a certain product together with another product related to it, it’s easy to convince other customers that all the people who paired the two products together can’t be wrong. In fact, they’ll have confidence and follow suit, maybe by adding one or two of those products from the ”also bought” list of items. And if you own an e-commerce site, such a feature should be easy to implement. In most cases, it’s something like ”show related items”. Most e-commerce themes are designed with this cross-marketing feature in mind. However, if your theme doesn’t have it (which is very rare), then you probably need to tweak things a little bit. Hint You can choose to show your ”related products” at the bottom of the page. The reason being, you should not distract the attention of your customer by including other products on the same page they are viewing. But you must catch them before they leave. In most cases, they will leave after reaching the bottom of the page. There are high chances that they will be interested in the ”related products” category when they scroll to the bottom. The goal is to actually keep them in the store when browsing more products. 2. The Upsell Approach to Cross-marketing An upsell can help you get visitors buying more from your store. An upsell is nothing more than making an offer to a customer who is buying a product from you, or a customer that has already bought something from you. For instance, if they are shopping or have shopped for a camera, you can upsell them something like a battery or a memory card to complement what they’ve bought. You can also target those who want to upgrade their products to a deluxe version — of course by convincing them to buy at a discounted price. In most cases, cross-marketing doesn’t work when there’s no discount on the item. The reason being, some customers just buy additional items from you because they see it’s on sale and they think they need it. However, in the event that the product in question wasn’t on sale, and it was still being offered together with what they wanted to buy, chances are that they would only get what they wanted and leave till next time. Hint You can introduce an upsell at the point of checkout, when the customer is in the process of buying. This cross-marketing technique works when the customer is in a buying mindset. So if you offer it at the right time, and even add value to what you’re offering — say through a bundled offer or a discount, some buyers will gladly jump into the opportunity. This cross-marketing technique is a good way to get more revenue from one customer. However, you must proceed with caution. You don’t want to spoil your customer’s buying mood by showing them too many alternatives when they are already in the buying mood for a particular product they’ve identified. 3. Add Goodies to every Order You can add something of value to the order they’ve already placed. For example, you can offer a free USB thumb-drive or a pen with your business logo printed on it. You generally want to include a free but valuable item to their order — something you know they will find useful and even use for a long time. If you have a Groovboard store, you can opt to sell a variety of other iPad-related products such as styluses and sleeves. So when your customer purchases a stylus for instance, you can include a micro-fiber cloth and a groovboard brochure to their order. You see, since the Groovboard is not very popular among many customers, it’s very likely that they’ll see it the first time they visit your store, especially when looking for something like a stylus. Some may get it by impulse, while others may just get what they came looking for and leave, forgetting it pretty quickly. They might choose to ignore the brochure, but they won’t ignore the microfiber cloth since they know their iPads’ screen get messy after some time, and they need to clean it. So they will use the cloth for weeks or even months. Furthermore, every time they use the cloth, they’ll be reminded of the Groovboard. Conclusion These are your cross-marketing ideas you can implement at no cost. It makes a difference when you sell products bundled together as an offer. It earns you more revenue out of one buyer, and that’s all about cross-marketing, and how it’s done correctly.