Many businesses focus a lot of their marketing efforts into finding new customers when the most valuable market for growth is current customers - you already have an existing relationship and they would likely purchase again from businesses they already know. On top of that, the cost of acquiring a new customer is 5-25 times more expensive than keeping existing ones.
One of the many ways you can sell to existing customers is through upsells. Upselling is the process of encouraging customers who are about to buy or have already bought from you to buy additional products or upgrade to a more premium product or service.
As long as it's done with tact, carefully designed and timed well, upselling can actually improve customer relationship because you're able to provide more value and make it easier for them to find products they need. A good upselling strategy should be focused on knowing your customers and meeting their needs vs pushing as many products or services as possible to increase sales.
Tips for how you can use Upsells as part of your business strategy
Know your customers First things first - know your customers. The more you know about your customers and their requirements, the better you can tailor the product to offer.
One simple way of gaining insight into your customers is by adding custom fields to your order checkout process. For example, adding fields such as 'What is the primary purpose of the product you are purchasing today?' and 'How many employees do you have' will give you an idea of your customers use cases and their potential size and opportunity for future promotions and upsells.
Bundle related products
Applying the same concept as fast food combo meals, bundle your related products and make it easier for your customers to purchase related products.
For example you could bundle a Hosting package with SSL and Malware Protection, and another package with Hosting, SSL and Website Backup.
When creating your packages, carefully consider if the products are complementary and naturally go together.
Offer discounts
Taking the above as an example, you can offer discounts for bundled products to encourage customers to purchase and show them how much they can save vs if they buy the products individually.
Another example of how you can leverage discounts to upsell is by offering discounts on annual subscriptions
Upsell on checkout
One of the most effective ways to upsell is by offering products to customers who are already purchasing and about to checkout. They have already made the decision to buy from you and it will be easier to convince them to add more to their basket at this point. This is why retailers line up their checkout counters with sweets and treats! They know your guards are down and you are more likely to pick up these items.
The upsell process on checkout should feel seamless rather than intrusive - for example offering 2 or 3 related products on the checkout page would be less intrusive than having the customers click through page after page of product offers.
Use design and great copy
Use design and catchy phrases to focus your customer's attention on higher profit margin products/ services. Use phrases such as 'Our Most Popular Plan' or 'Best Value' to highlight mid-tier and higher-tier plans, and you can use colours that pop up to bring attention to these products and place them higher on your page.
Tools in WHMCS to help you Upsell
There are many tools within WHMCS that can help you upsell to your customers easily and seamlessly: 1) MarketConnect
MarketConnect makes it easy for you to sell add-on services such as SSL, Website Builder, Website Backup, Website Security and more.
One of MarketConnect's key features is its ability to provide relevant and context-driven promotions and upsell offers to your customers based on the products they are about to buy, and the services they already have. You can read more about the feature here.
The Upsell Integration in cPanel allows for a seamless upgrade within cPanel and WHMCS. When a user reaches a package limit within cPanel, a warning will appear when attempting to use a feature for which a limit has been reached. They will be presented with the option to upgrade seamlessly right there and then, directly in-context within cPanel.
The Automated Upgrades and Downgrade functionality allows your customers to easily upgrade/downgrade packages within the client area and add additional features and resources to their existing account.
4) Product Addons
Product Addons allow you to offer additional related products/services, not only during the initial checkout process but at any time during the customer lifecycle. Addons support flexible and independent billing cycles that are separate from the product to which they are associated and enable selling of a wide variety of products and services.
The Feature Highlights on Order Forms allow you to feature the plan you want your customers to purchase more prominently by making it stand out from the other plans you offer.
When a customer is searching for a domain, WHMCS Namespinning will generate, rank and return alternative yet relevant domain name suggestions across a wide range of keywords and TLDs to help drive more domain registrations.
With the email marketing tool, you can send automated emails to your customers based on pre-defined rules. This will allow you to send emails offers in the future based on customer's past purchases.
I hope the tips and tools above will help you craft your next upselling strategy to help you grow your business by tapping into your most valuable market - your current customers.
