Your phone spoils, so you decide to get a new one.

While setting it up, the salesperson asks, “Don’t you want a screen guard?”

At that moment, you remember that you can’t afford to repair the phone screen if it breaks so you immediately say yes.

That’s after asking how much it’ll cost because you don’t want to exceed your budget.

If this is you, you’ve just been cross-sold.

It happens to us every day. In fact, it’s a major marketing technique that helps business owners to increase revenue.

Amazon has reported that over 35% of their sales were a direct result of cross-sells.

So, if it can work for Amazon, why wouldn’t it work for you?

In this article, we explain how you can cross-sell to boost sales of your digital products, and how to leverage it for long-term benefits.

TL;DR

• What is cross-sell?
• How does cross-sell work?
• How to cross-sell to boost sales of products
• Tips for cross-selling

What is Cross-sell?

Cross-selling is a marketing technique that involves giving customers an opportunity to purchase another product that complements their initial sale.

That is, offering customers another option for your product that goes well with their initial purchase.

For example, if a customer wants to buy a recipe cookbook, you can cross-sell a food timetable planner to them. So they are not just learning new recipes, they are implementing them by also planning a meal timetable.

This marketing strategy is very effective for digital creators because it allows you to sell more of your products without spending extra money on marketing.

Cross-selling is valuable for both businesses and customers. For businesses, cross-selling can increase revenue and profit margins while improving customer retention.

For customers, cross-selling provides an opportunity to get more value from their purchase and can save them time and money in the long run.

How Does Cross-selling Work?

Ideally, cross-selling is recommending a complementary product to your customers to enhance the value of their purchase.

Ordinarily, a person who comes to buy bread from the store will most likely be open to getting jam or butter.

But in the digital product space, cross-selling can take many forms. For example, let’s say a customer purchases a budgeting template, you can cross-sell or suggest a complementary product such as a financial planner.

Another option is for you to offer a bundle of related products at a discounted price. For example, you can offer the finance planner, budgeting template, and an expense tracker worksheet at a discounted price compared to purchasing each item individually.

The key to successful cross-selling is to provide the customer with a clear understanding of the benefits of the additional product or service and how it complements their original purchase.

By presenting the cross-sell as a helpful suggestion that enhances the customer’s overall experience and provides additional value, you can increase revenue and improve customer retention.

How to Cross-sell Digital Products to Boost Sales

Here are some strategies for implementing cross-sells to boost sales of your digital products;

1. Offer related product

How would you feel when you walk into a pharmacy to get drugs and someone offers you alcohol?

Weird, right?

That’s because you become confused as to how drugs and alcohol relate. You may even find yourself saying, “Oh, I’m just trying to get better, not get more sick.”

And if you’re really pissed, you may just walk out of the store.

That’s the same way your customer feels when you recommend a product they either don’t have an interest in or don’t see why they should get it.

To make cross-selling work for you, prepare to have a complementary product that goes with your other products.

And before you ask, yes, you must have more than one product to cross-sell.

When offering a related product, it’s important to choose a product that complements the customer’s original purchase and provides additional value. This means understanding your customer’s needs and identifying products or services that meet those needs.

For example, Sisi Yemmie is a Nigerian Food creator who also has a wide array of meal prep ebooks. When you want to buy one of her books, she uses cross-sells to pitch her other ebooks to you and you just can’t resist.

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Remember, the related product you offer should be directly related to the customer’s original purchase and provide additional value. This helps the customer understand why the related product is valuable and why they should consider purchasing it.

2. Utilize the power of bundles

Ever seen items in the supermarket tied together with a bold price tag saying “Get 3 for $4.99?

That’s the power of bundles.

A bundle is a package that includes multiple digital products sold together at a discounted price.

Bundles are a popular strategy for cross-selling digital products because they provide customers with a significant amount of value and encourage them to purchase multiple products at once.

The trick to leveraging bundles is to choose complementary products. That is, products complement each other.

For example, if you’re selling a digital marketing course, you could bundle it with a social media management crash course and a content strategy guide. This provides the customer with a more comprehensive solution to their needs and increases the perceived value of the bundle.

Another method is to offer a discount. If you’re going to offer 3 products together, the best thing to do is to offer a discount that makes it hard to ignore. That is, create an attractive offer.

Let’s say your digital marketing course is ₦13,000, the social media management crash course is ₦7,000 and the content strategy guide is ₦5,000. The total is ₦25,000.

To offer these products as a bundle, you can place them at a price of ₦22,000, giving your customers a ₦3,000 discount. You may even go as far as selling it at ₦20,000, thereby, offering a ₦5,000 discount.

When customers want to buy either of these products, they are enticed by the bundle offer and are more inclined to purchase it.

Another strategy also is to create multiple bundles at different price points. This helps you cater to a wider range of customers. For example, you could offer a basic bundle with two products at a lower price point, and a premium bundle with five products at a higher price point.

Lastly, display your bundle offers prominently. Just like Triciabiz with her E Choke Bundle course. The best part? Selar helps you sell your products in bundles so you can display them boldly for your customers to see effortlessly.

With this strategy, you meet your customers at different price points and none of them are allowed to escape your sales strategy, as you have everyone trapped.

3. Leverage urgency and scarcity

This approach taps into the psychological principles of scarcity and the fear of missing out (FOMO) to create a sense of urgency in customers and encourage them to make a purchase.

And what do customers love more than to not miss out on good offers?

To use the FOMO strategy for what it’s worth, create limited-time offers. That is, offering discounts for a short period of time.

You could offer a discount that’s only available for a certain period of time or a bonus product that’s only available for the next 24 hours. This creates a sense of urgency and encourages customers to take action before the offer expires.

Another way is to create a limited-stock product. That is creating a product and making only a certain number of copies available. For a digital product, it could be by setting a number of sales. That is, making the product available to only 100 people and after that, you discontinue the product.

This also creates a sense of scarcity and encourages customers to make a purchase before the product either sells out or is closed.

This approach taps into the psychological principles of scarcity and FOMO to incentivize customers to act quickly. However, it’s important to use this approach ethically and not to create false scarcity or misleading messaging.

4. Highlight the benefits

Let your customers know what they stand to gain with your recommended products.

If you’re selling a preset bundle, why should customers buy it for their pictures when they can easily manage the mobile phone edit?

Start by understanding your customer’s needs. This means understanding their pain points and the problems that they are trying to solve. This way, you can tailor your messaging to highlight how your digital product can meet their specific needs.

Then, focus on the outcomes. That is, highlight the results your customers will experience when using your products. For example, if you’re selling a digital marketing course, you can highlight how it will help your customer increase their website traffic, generate more leads, and ultimately, grow their business.

Always speak for the benefit of the user. The aim is to sell them a transformation that is only achievable with your product, making it more likely that they will make a purchase.

5. Create relevant and valuable cross-sells

Ultimately, providing value is the major reason your customer will make a purchase. The whole idea of cross-selling is to recommend other products that complement your customer’s original purchase.

And to make your customers look in the direction of your offer, your product needs to be valuable.

Value is relative, so we like to put it as, “creating a product that your customer really needs.”

So, an ebook on what foods to eat to lose weight will be highly valuable to someone looking to lose weight but not useful to someone looking to gain weight.

Hence, to create relevant cross-sells, you must understand your customer’s pain points, goals, and interests. Then offer complementary products or services as explained previously.

Next, make the cross-sell easy to purchase. This is why over 90k creators use platforms like Selar to sell their digital products. With Selar, you can create cross-sells and upsells, making it easy for your customers to take up your offer.

With the seamless purchasing process offered by Selar, you can increase the chances of leveraging cross-sells to boost sales of your products.

Tips for Cross-selling

Here are a few tips for cross-selling digital products:

• Understand your customers
• Focus on complementary products or services
• Use social proof
• Offer incentives
• Use personalized recommendations.

Ready to Increase Your Revenue?

Cross-selling is an effective strategy to sell out more of your digital products. By offering complementary products or services that enhance your customer’s experience, you can increase sales and revenue, while also providing additional value to their customers.

And if you need a platform where you can host and sell your products and also cross-sell to increase revenue, think Selar. Selar is an all-in-one store builder for creators to sell all kinds of digital products and services.

So, start now by hosting your products on Selar and leveraging the cross-selling feature to boost sales of your digital products.