A Unique Way to Increase Your Customers Spend Per Sale: The Value of Offering A Gift With Purchase

Offering a free gift, with a purchase over a certain amount (or just with any particular item), is a great way to encourage people to buy from you, but also to spend more per sale if they have to spend a certain limit. A great way to take this strategy a step further is to make your free gift a sample of other products you want to promote, or a new product you want to encourage your customers to try so as to buy in the future.

For example, beauty brands use this strategy regularly, and to great effect, offering a selection of sample size beauty products in a cute looking case, when spending over $50, $70, $100, etc. in one transaction. Not only does the free gift encourage their customers to buy more beauty products in one transaction, it also allows them a chance to introduce their customers to new products or items they may not have bought previously, without the chance to try them first.

A twist on this method that we used with great success in building a couple seven figure businesses was to offer a free gift in exchange for signing up for a monthly membership program as an upsell. It dramatically increased the conversion rates (by many, many times over). However, the key there was to have the perceived value of the bonus be more than their total investment for the first month. That makes them feel like they’re getting a no brainer offer that they’d be dumb to turn down, yet it gets them into your recurring money maker where many of them decide to stay to make you even more over time. The bonus here has to be of real value to them, which is why we often times would include a physical item as a bonus even for a digital membership program.

Look at what you can offer as a free gift to customers when they spend over a certain dollar amount in one transaction. This encourages your customer to spend more per sale and also gives you a chance to get customers trying new products, if you make those products your gift. Or put a little twist on that method and include a free gift with the purchase of any particular product you want to push, or even as a bonus to push them into a recurring membership site (physical products can work really well here for a bonus even if the main offer is a digital one).

For more great tips to increase your profits and make more money from your sales funnel, check out this tool here: BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer

How Giving Away Something of Value Can Help You Monetize Your Back End

Everybody loves a freebie! What do you currently sell, that is of value, that you could offer for free? And how can you monetize the back end of that? This works especially well if you can offer something that other businesses would normally charge for.

For example, if you have a corporate cleaning business, you could offer your first clean free, and follow up with your customer to see if they were happy with your service and would like you to continue. This is a great way to get new clients to try your service, as you’re taking all the risk out of it for them and, if you do a great job, chances are they’ll want to keep you on. The principle of reciprocity comes into play here too - you’ve given something of value to them and chances are they’ll feel the urge to do the same back.

A twist on this model is our “free plus shipping & handling” funnels, where we offer something for free on the front-end as long as the customer covers a small s&h fee (usually under $5). As long as they think the value is $20+, they’ll consider this a steal and be inclined to jump on it, even if they normally wouldn’t buy it right then and there. However, a necessity with this model is to make sure that you have a great set of upsells and a good backend to really monetize it. We typically have a continuity offer (like a membership or something along those lines), a low to medium priced offer, and ideally a high-end offer in the upsell path. The real money is made in the upsell path, as it’s hard to make a lot off a free plus s&h offer. As an added bonus with this model, you also get a lot of quality buyer leads (worth far more than non-buyer leads), without often having to pay a lot in advertising costs to acquire them. This allows you to market more offers to them in the future and make even more money off these buyer leads.

Think about something you can give away, that has value, and then look at how you can monetize the back end. Whether it is a sample of your service or a physical product, this works especially well if it something that other people usually charge for.

For more insights on how to create a sales funnel that maximizes your profit potential, check out this tool here: BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer

How A Themed Promotion Can Boost Your Sales

Any special promotions can help you drive sales, especially those sitting on the fence as to whether or not to buy from you. However, offering seasonal or holiday themed promotions can help even more, as prospects not only immediately understand that it’s a limited time deal for a good reason, but you’ll also hit them up during a peak buying period.

For example, the vast majority of people are probably already buying lots of stuff over Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Black Friday, etc., so you can ride that wave while they already have their credit cards out, while also standing out amongst the crowd of competitors by having something that they perceive as a special deal.  

Similar to other promotions, it’s often best to have these be very limited time deals (even if you bring them back multiple times) so prospects don’t have the opportunity to sit on the fence too long. Three or so days is often the perfect amount of time to offer a special promotional deal, as long as you give them many reminders along the way.  For instance, if you have an email list and are offering a three day special promotional offer, we recommend mailing once on day 1, twice on day 2, and three times on day 3. Using this method will get you a lot of sales on that last day, especially during the last hours when they know there’s no time left!

One observation that we’ve had over the years, which many business owners seem to ignore or be unaware of, is that even “after the holiday” sales can be huge, especially for big holidays when people are often still at home, bored, and looking to buy or do something. We’ve run several webinars and special deals right after Christmas when most marketers in our niche were afraid to schedule anything then, yet that period of time would often get some of the highest amount of sales and webinar attendance. Don’t assume that everyone is out visiting with friends and family. Some (okay … maybe all???) are looking for a break or just aren’t traveling then, so it can be the perfect time to run a special offer or schedule a special event!

During holidays, different seasons, or any other special time of the year, it’s a good idea to create themed promotions with special offers to not only drive extra sales, but to also stand out from the rest of the competition during high sales periods.

For other marketing tricks to help increase your sales, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

How Creating A Sense of Urgency Can Help Improve Sales: Reducing/Offering Free Shipping Within A Certain Time Frame

Don’t you hate it when you’re searching for an item, find it at an amazing price, then see that shipping is going to cost you an arm and a leg? One way to increase your sales, especially over a short period of time, is to reduce the cost of your shipping, or offer a sale period time where shipping is free. By putting a time limit on when you make free shipping available, you add a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to buy now, as opposed to at a later date. It’s also a good way to encourage customers who may have been on the fence to make a purchase now.

For example, say you have a business that sells gardening supplies online. Reach out to your customers and let them know that for any supplies ordered by midnight on Sunday, you’ll offer free delivery. If you have regular customers that place large orders with you, you may even want to reach out and call them. On your website, make sure it’s clear that you have this offer available for a limited time - it may be a pop up on your website or the first thing your customer sees.

So consider, for a limited time, offering reduced or free shipping on your products. The limited time frame creates a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to purchase now, as opposed to at a later date, and encourages customers who may have been on the fence to make the purchase.

For more tips on boosting sales within your business, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

How to Improve Your Marketing and Create Hot New Products That Your Customers Already Want

How can you improve your marketing and create new products - products that your customers already want? Simple. Ask for feedback from your customers and see what the common themes are. What do your customers like most about your product? How can you focus on that more in your marketing? What do they believe that your product/service currently lacks? Think about how you can use their feedback to create a new/improved service and offer that to your customers.

For example, perhaps you have a business that creates websites and the common feedback that your customers give is that they wish you also helped rank their site on search engines. You could create an additional service, where for a monthly fee you help rank their website. If you don’t know how to do this yourself, you could always outsource this part, but white label it as your own service - you still make a profit on the service, but don’t need to do any of the work. You can offer this to your current customers, saying that due to their feedback and the demand, you’ve created this service to help them with what they want most.

Ask for feedback from your customers, specifically on what they like most and what they dislike most/wish you offered. Use the feedback, on what they like most, and highlight it in your marketing. With what they like least/wish you did, create an additional or improved service/product and offer it to your customers.

For more great marketing ideas to improve your business check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!

How to Access A Whole New Set of Leads By Partnering With Other Businesses

Looking for new customers? Or a way to make a whole bunch more sales? You’re going to love this strategy then! Think about other business that you could partner with, that you don’t directly compete with, where you could offer value that will make you both a lot of money. Think about the customers a business already has, and whether those same customers would be interested in your own product or service. Now, think of how you can make your offer a win-win for you and the other business. This is a great way to access a whole new database of potential clients for yourself, and give the business you’re partnering with an opportunity to upsell their current clients by offering them your service (for a cut of your fee).

For example, if you sell homemade candles, reach out to boutiques to see if they'd be willing to sell your candles (even without them buying them first - just sharing in the sales). Or if you sell a social media management or SEO service, reach out to web design firms that might not offer your services to their clients, but offer them a good chunk of the sales PLUS offer to do all the work, support, etc. for their customers AND let them market it as their own (a win-win for both).  Or if you're a programmer or have a tool of your own, reach out to market leaders in your industry who might be able to sell a lot of your product and let them white label it (sell it as their own) for a good cut of the profits while you just maintain it and do support for it. One good deal here can be more than a full-time living or a good little business all by itself.

We’ve started six and seven figure businesses by making such deals, and it all starts with just reaching out when you know both sides can benefit.

So have a look for other businesses that you don’t directly compete with that you could partner with. Then look at how them selling your product can be a win-win, whether it’s a share in sales, fulfilling a need their clients have but they don’t offer (and allowing them to market the service as their own) or white labeling your product for their clients.

To find businesses to partner with, check out our business lead tool here: Macroleads

How Adding Physical Products As A Bonus, Especially For Your Digital Offers or Services, Can Increase Conversions

Selling digital products like e-books or videos (or even services) can be great, as they often carry much higher margins than physical products. However, people often place a much higher value on physical products that they can touch and hold.

This doesn’t mean that you have to offer all your products as physical ones - far from it! Instead, you should consider offering a simple physical product like a branded coffee mug, hat, t-shirt, or some other product that makes sense with your offer, as a bonus for those who take action fast.

This does two things. First, it makes people take action faster because they know there’s probably a limited quantity of the physical product (vs. a digital one that they realistically know you can have as many as you want). And second, they place a high value on physical products that they can touch.

In fact, as crazy as it sounds, you can increase conversions on a $2,000 web service simply by offering a branded coffee mug or t-shirt as a bonus. Likewise, you can even increase conversions MUCH more on lower priced offerings where you give something away that they perceive to be worth as much or more than what they’re buying. For example, you could sell a newsletter for $19/month and give a free t-shirt away with any new subscriber, and that could in some cases more than double your conversions because they think the value of the shirt is worth more than the $19 they paid (and they’ll often stay for a much longer time, making you a lot more money). We actually included a physical product once as a bonus to a membership offering, which had a perceived value to be more than the first month’s price, and it actually increased our conversions many, many times over to an almost unbelievable amount.

Another example would be if you sold a phone case for $29 and included a free charging cable with that. Since many of those sell for $29 or so themselves, the perceived value of the offer is huge, even though it might only add a dollar or two to your costs (and still give you huge margins).

You can do the same idea for services that you offer. For instance, you could offer a free cell phone clip-on lens with any purchase of a custom web video (justifying it in a way where they could shoot professional looking videos themselves from their phone).

For an offline physical product or service example, you could offer a free towel and sweatband just for trying out a one month gym membership as a trial.

You’d be shocked at how your conversions can jump even for higher priced offerings, and probably more shocked at how much they can help your lower priced offerings.

It’s funny how even a $10 physical freebie can boost sales for a $1,000 product. Likewise, it’s truly amazing to see conversions skyrocket on a lower priced recurring offer by offering something of value that’s perceived to be more than the initial payment (doesn’t mean it has to cost you more, just that the perceived value if they bought it elsewhere would be more).

This marketing trick right here has been responsible for some of our biggest money makers out there, as well as for others that we know. One might say that you could potentially build an entire business off of this tip right here.

So consider adding physical products as bonuses to your offers, as they can tremendously increase conversions for both low and high-priced products and services.

For other great marketing ideas to help you increase your conversions and grow your business, check out his book: 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.