One of the several ways that products selling brands make a lot of money is through the downselling of related products.
Downselling is an added way to make additional sales even from any form of selling.
Also, it’s a way to hold back customers from not taking that necessary buy action which you want them to take.
So, instead of just letting them go. You can recommend them another product that is more price lesser to the one they ought to have bought.
Many eCommerce websites have started using this technique for a long time and it’s just a way to hold tight on their customers.
Since you cannot see them physically – you have to do everything necessary to make them stay glued.
This is the only way you can keep making enough profit from any investment you make in traffic generation.
Below are the things we will be discussing in this guide which you must take note of:
- What Is the Difference Between Upselling & Downselling?.
- What To Consider When Down selling.
- How To Down sell Products.
- Benefits Of Downselling.
- Final Thoughts On Downselling.
What Is The Difference Between Upselling & Downselling?
Let us quickly look at the differences between Upselling and Downselling and their effect on a brand’s profitability.
- Price.
- Usage.
- Purpose.
- Advantage.
1. Price:
a. Upsells are introduced to the customer whenever a low ticket offer has already been purchased.
The only aspect where upsells prices are Introduced is when the price of the product being bought is less than the price of the product being introduced.
The price difference must be there because the major reason why an upsell is being introduced is to bring more profit.
So, price is a must when you are trying to do Upselling.
The price of Upselling must be more than that of the price of Downselling or the sold product.
If the price of the product is $30 – you can easily upsell any product ranging from $100 for more gains.
So, an Upsell item is majorly a high-priced item that complements the item that is being bought.
b. While a down selling is quite the opposite of upselling.. it is the low ticket product that is being introduced in a product.
That means that instead of it being a higher price product like the upsell.
It is always a lower-priced product that is introduced to the customer to make a purchase.
If the product that wants to be bought is something like $200 and the customer kinda feels skeptical to buy.
A down-selling of $100 product can be recommended just to make such a customer buy.
So, down selling is the selling of low-priced items when a purchase is going on.
2. Usage:
a. Upsells are majorly being introduced when a purchase has been made already.
The only time that an Upselling will pop up is when a customer has already made a purchase.
Then the seller can then introduce another higher product that also complements the product that the customer has bought.
Let us say, for example, a customer bought a course on “How to build landing pages” and it’s worth $150.
The seller or course creator can introduce another upsell for the product on “Tools to drive traffic to the landing page” and it can be worth $500.
It must complement the product bought and this can also happen in a physical product.
Amazon is the best place to go if you are into selling eCommerce products and you are thinking of how to do Upselling.
So, the major aspect where Upselling comes up is after a purchase has been made and you want to introduce another product.
Just make sure you do it right the way I just stated.
b. Downselling is always introduced within a purchase.
The aspect where this is very much needed is when a customer doesn’t want to buy.
There can be a lot of reasons why a customer doesn’t want to buy the product on your website.
But marketers just Immediately find another alternative to making customers make that purchase.
And that is through the technique of Downselling of products.
Like, if you are selling Product A for $50 and the customer just doesn’t want to buy maybe because it’s kinda high.
You can easily down-selling them with a Product B of $30 and that can get them to buy.
This is the best aspect where down selling comes up the most.
Also, you can easily do down selling even while a customer is making a purchase already.
You can just add an extra product that will only need them to checkmark and be added to their cart.
This is where the usage of Downselling comes up.
3. Purpose:
What’s the purpose of Upselling and Downselling?
a. Upselling serves majorly as an added profit for the company.
Majorly all the time…Companies depend on the product they want to sell before they can calculate any profit.
Also, if they don’t have any upsell – they will have to rely only on that product for them to bring out their profit.
But when Upselling is being introduced – that will serve as an added profit for the company.
The reason is that if a product is being sold for $50 for example and an upsell of $150 is being introduced.
What happens? The company or website has added another $100 profit to their revenue.
Although, not all the customers will buy the upsell as a majority will bounce off from the website.
But the little who bought will be an added profit that the website can use to settle other expenses.
This is the purpose of Upselling and why a majority of the E-commerce websites out there use Upselling.
b. Downselling cannot be compared to Upselling that is only there to add more profit for the website.
Down selling is in existence to cover up the expenses that the website has already incurred.
As you know that traffic (people) into a website is not always enough.
If you ask a website with millions of visitors if they need more traffic. Their answers will be YES!
So, websites do spend extra money on traffic and some other expenses just to bring more eyeballs to their content.
They spend a lot of money just for them to get people to come to buy their products.
And if down selling is not introduced. They will always have to keep relying on the revenue from products sold.
This means they will always have to remove the money from their revenue before they can continue their adverts or other costs.
So, just not to tamper with the revenue from the product sold. They decide to introduce down selling to the system.
When customers buy low-cost Products of $20 as down sells.
The stated website can use that to continue running more ads without touching the money from the specific product sold.
4. Advantage:
What are the Advantages of Upselling and Downselling?
a. Upselling helps in the development of the business. The money generated can easily be used to multiply.
They can use it to pay workers salary and also use it to buy more tools for the development of the website and the physical business.
Upselling can easily bring about more gaps to continue getting close in the business just from the little sales.
Even the company might not need to rely on revenue from the specific product sold.
And Upselling is always products that are of high ticket products.
Products that are of great luxury.
b. Downselling is majorly Introduced to fix sales for the website and not lose customers.
Just like I have stated earlier… some customers might just bounce from the website.
Mostly because the product is of high cost or maybe because they feel it’s not suitable for the price.
Different customers have different reasons for any product they want to buy.
And because of this – they might not just put effort and just bounce.
That is what down selling is there to fix up.
What To Consider When Down selling
There are several things to consider when you are doing down selling and we will be discussing them shortly.
- Relevance of the product.
- Price of the product.
- Accessibility of the product.
- Aspects to show a down-sell.
1. Relevance of the product:
Before you should even consider trying to downsell any product. First look at the relevance of that product with the product that the customer plan on purchasing.
This is what many E-commerce websites do wrong and also course creators who are selling digital products.
They won’t downsell products that have relevant closeness to the product that the customer wants to buy.
As you know that down selling comes up in two occurrences.
It’s either the customer wants to buy a product or you recommend a product of low price.
Or the customer doesn’t want to buy a product and you recommend other products that are low priced and also serve the same function as the stated product.
So, you should know that if you are recommending a product that doesn’t even stay closer to the product the customer wants to buy.
Then you will lose out on such a customer.
Like, if a customer wants to buy a bespoke shoe and you recommend a Polish that will make it shiner and last for days.
You can see that such a product compliment the product that you want to sell.
And because of that, the customer can just easily checkmark the Polish and add it to the cart.
But if you are selling a bespoke shoe and you are recommending a Cap or A Shirt.
Even though they might be in the same fashion niche…The fact that it doesn’t compliment each other is a lose out.
So, you must always make sure that you are selling something related to each other as a downsell.
2. Price Of The Product:
The price of the product that you’re trying to promote as a down-sell also matters in this type of case.
Normally, you should know by now that any product that you want to offer as a down-sell should not be of high price.
What this means is that… it must not be costly than the product the customer intends to buy.
You are only using this down-sell product as a support system to get more sales from a single customer.
And also to hold back a customer from purchasing in case he or she doesn’t want to buy the product he or she intended to buy.
So, it must be of low price – so that it can easily be affordable for them to add to the cart without thinking twice.
You want it to be something that they will easily add to the cart without thinking twice.
Just because they see it complimenting the product that you wanted to sell from the onset.
So, this is another part to take note of when you are trying to down selling of your products.
3. Accessibility Of The Product:
The process through which the customer will go through to access the product is also very important.
Do they need to still go through stress to buy any down-sell product?
Then you will easily lose out on some sales because people can procrastinate a lot.
That’s just the fact because even some might even want to buy the down-sell but just get distracted with other stuff.
So the best thing you can do here is to make the process very easy for them to add to any cart.
Don’t let them go through another checkout process for your down-sell when they have already gone through a checkout earlier.
You should already have a technique in position that will already have their details saved and automatically add the down-sell to their bills.
This way, you will save them a lot of stress and you won’t have to lose out on any sales.
The reason is that when they are making a purchase and you just bring out another product with a checkmark option.
The checkmark or tickmark option is already at the front of the down-sell product and nothing to stress.
They will just easily mark and it will be added to their cart which they will pay for easily without stress.
Kindly note that this is available and important for bother physical and digital products.
4. Aspects to show a Down-Sell:
There are some aspects where down-selling should come up in your selling process.
You cannot just fix down selling at any part of your website just to expect magic to happen.
Although I will discuss a little bit about where you should add your down-sell products in the next aspect of this guide.
But you should just have it in mind that you have to be careful with the way you do your down-sell.
That is why I advise anyone who is into e-commerce to try and always emulate what Amazon is doing.
It will enlighten you and make you know how well what to do and how to structure all your Downsells.
You can try and purchase and product and see what is being brought out for you and use the same logic.
Down selling comes up within a purchase and is not like Upselling that occurs after a purchase has been made.
So, that means that you don’t need to spend a dime to test this out.
Although, you should still be on a watch out for the next section of this guide for more knowledge.
How To Down sell Products
Although what I will be discussing a little bit here will be to buttress the aspect we just finished.
So, if you understand that clearly… You can easily jump to the benefits of down-selling.
Or you can just take time to study it a little bit because it will help you with any product you are selling.
- Make Sure It Complements Any Product You’re Selling.
- Make The Price Lower To Any Upsell.
- Make It Easy To Buy.
- Test Downsell From Different Products.
- Test Different Prices.
1. Make Sure It’s Compliment Any Product You’re Selling:
The first thing you should keep in mind when you are doing down selling is that the product to downsell complements the one that the customer wants to buy.
I already explained what this means in the previous aspect of this guide which you just finished reading.
And to do this is very simple… just easily compare yourself and look at what you will buy to complement what you are offering.
If it’s a shirt sleeve that you want to sell… you can see (miss) as the down-sell to compliment the product.
Or if you are selling cake and have a website where you sell all your cakes.
You can decide to offer ice cream as the down-sell – so that when they are eating cake… they can also lick or suck ice cream alongside.
Anyway, I don’t lick ice cream nor lick cake…So, I wouldn’t know much about that. Hahahaha…
2. Make The Price Lower To Any Upsell:
Another one which we discussed earlier is that your price of Downsells must be lower than that of the actual product.
You cannot consider a product as a down-sell if the price is, even more, higher than the product the customer wants to buy.
It must be lower and by doing this… you can easily identify the product that complements what you are selling as-is less price.
If you compare the short sleeve and (miss) which I discussed earlier. You will know that (miss) is lesser to the shirt sleeve.
All you need to do is just to reason what you can put together to bring out the best result from a single visitor that enters your website.
It’s just as easy as that and you will see your website converting like crazy.
I believe we don’t need to do much explanation here since this aspect is more explainable?
3. Make It Easy To Buy:
Your down-sell must be very easy to buy and should not require any further stress from the customer.
If you still give the customer another reason to input his or her card details before purchasing the down-sell.
You will lose important sales from distractions just because they might change their mind.
Another thing that you have to consider I’d the fact that people procrastinate a lot and this can cost you a lot of loss.
So, make sure that it is very easy to add downsells to the cart.
If you are using the WooCommerce plugin on your website…Then adding down selling products to the cart is very easy.
As they won’t need to stress over adding. And if you are selling digital products – you will have some tools online like leadpages to bring the best out from your funnel.
4. Test Downsell From Different Products:
I do not believe anyone knows it all. Because even though those who claim to know it had to learn it the hard way.
So, don’t expect someone to stipulate the exact Product that you should downsell on your website.
And this is where many people stay disturbed for a long time – because they will keep waiting for who to spoon-feed them.
You need to test out all by yourself and do some comparison with several products.
Use several products as downsell for several items and don’t just rely on one product.
Most especially if you are even someone who is into Dropshipping.
You might want to consider doing this testing out a lot. I have seen some people into Private Label Dropshipping doing this.
They make sure to test low-cost products out with several high-cost products as down-sell before stabilizing it for a long while for the product.
5. Test Different Prices:
As you are testing different products… did I remind you to also test out different prices?
Oh yes, you should also test out prices and see the one that customers best flow within your Downsell.
And doing this, I don’t mean that you should change the figures in front of your down-sell products.
All that you need to do is just to use coupon codes for these products and give coupons.
You can do this with a high ticket product and just offer a discount on the purchase of that product as a downsell.
People like discounts a lot because it makes them feel special that they purchase something others bought at a higher price for a cheaper price.
That is why Black Fridays always sell well during Thanksgiving in the United States because people are always in anticipation of discounts.
So, you can also use this technique for your website and see your profit skyrocket.
Benefits Of Downselling
Let us quickly look at some of the benefits of down-selling before we wrap up this guide.
- Helps Retain Sales.
- Helps Sell Low-Cost Products.
- Helps Compliment Products Together
1. Helps Retain Sales:
One of the main benefits of down-selling is that it will help you to retain sales that you could have lost.
When you down-sell several products to a customer. You are making such a customer have another alternative to what they intend to buy.
This way, you can easily make more money just from any traffic that comes into your website.
One thing you have to know is that it takes effort for you to get traffic on your E-commerce store or a normal website.
Either it is free or paid… you need to pay attention and also give time for anything to work out.
And because of this… you must not take any traffic that comes into your website with levity.
You must make sure that you do everything possible for them to make a purchase and more purchases on your website.
That is the reason why down selling is in existence to bring you more sales.
So, that if you spend $1 to bring a customer inside your website.
You can easily get back $5 just from down-selling products aside from the actual product you are advertising.
This is a way to get extra benefit and also bring you more sales from low-cost products and also products that are not bringing many sales.
2. Helps Sell Low-Cost Products:
You can use this process to sell low-cost products. The reason is that running paid ads to low-cost products might feel skeptical.
Maybe products that are below $50 and you might be thinking of the best way to sell these products.
You can easily offer them as a down-sell and get them to bring and yield you more return on investment.
Selling low ticket products will make any effort you spend on your advert to count graciously.
You can easily get paid on these and also make more sales. Which will keep selling out your stock.
3. Helps Compliment Products Together:
Some products might not bring you many sales ever since you have them on your website.
Offering them as a down-sell by complimenting them with the fast-selling product will help a lot.
Even if it’s high value…You can easily give a discount on them and offer them as a bonus just like I have stated earlier.
This way, you start selling more of your products even with the less amount of money spent on the advert.
Also, this way – you keep running out of stock if you are selling physical products.
Also, you keep banking more cash if you are running a digital product store like selling E-Book or Video Courses.
Final Thoughts On Downselling
Down selling will bring you more sales and will also make you keep more customers.
That is the reason why you should make sure to include this technique in your marketing plan.
Either you are doing Dropshipping or you just have a website where you sell Affiliate products or your product.
If you enjoy this guide, you might want to check out this article that teaches you how to earn recurring income online. Enjoy!
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