How To Make A Sales Funnel Work For Your Business
Firstly, what is a sales funnel? In simple terms, it’s the journey that you guide a prospect as they first discover your product or service to the point of them buying and becoming a repeat customer.
Part of making a sales funnel more effective is offering related products as part of your original offer. These are upsells, where they buy your product and some extras and even downsells, where they buy something different from you at a lower price.
Upsells and downsells can increase your average price point for every single order that your customers make. It also increases the lifetime value of every customer.
When you make a sales funnel that is a well-thought-out and includes the right offers at the right time based on your buyer’s journey, you’ll increase your ROI and bottom line. Here are 9 things to test when creating upsell and downsell messages to make your sales funnel work more effectively.
FREE Checklist: Create An Effective Sales Funnel
1. One Upsell Versus Another
If you have two ideas for upsells for a product in your sales funnel stages, why not include both
and let your prospects choose? This is a good way to find out which offer resonates more with your audience. You can do this in more than one way. You can run two different sales pages with the offers, or you can run one sales page and let them click what they want to order.
2. Price Points of Upsells and Downsells
Aside from the words you use, you should also test different price points for your main offer, the upsell and the downsell. The rule of thumb is that the upsell should not be more than 25% more expensive than the main product. The downsell also should only be about 25% less.
3. One Downsell Against Another
Not sure which downsell is best? Try more than one. You can do this by setting it up so that your viewer can check a box for the one they prefer, or you can run two different sales pages in which a different downsell is offered.
4. Bundled Offers Versus Upselling
One thing you can try if you want to add upsells to your offers is to offer a bundled option in the shopping cart. So, if they go to buy your eBook, in the cart they can check to upgrade their order to the club which includes your book and membership.
5. Test the Relevancy of Your Upsells and Downsells
It’s very important when you create upsells or downsells that they’re relevant to your original offer in some way. You don’t want to offer something totally unrelated as it won’t make sense to your audience. To test the relevancy, try different offers to see which one resonates the most. You can even poll your audience in advance to find out what they like.
6. Try Different Calls to Action
Your call to action (CTA) is an important component in ensuring that your audience notices your upsells or downsells. Ensure that all your offers are clear and understandable to your audience.
7. Test Upselling at Time of Purchase Versus after Purchase
You can do upselling at the time of purchase or after they make a purchase depending on how your bigger and better product works. This is a great way to let them try out the first idea and then upgrade to save money on the better features.
8. Test Downselling at Time of Purchase Denial
Using your automated systems on your website, you want them to be offered the downsell the minute they choose not to buy. When they click away, a new page can pop up offering the downsell.
9. Test Downselling via Retargeting
Another way to do a downsell successfully is to use retargeting to market to people who came to your site and did not make a purchase. Offer to them an alternative product that is a little less expensive (or even free) to get them on your list.
Free Checklist: How To Make A Sales Funnel
Adding upsell, cross-sell, and downsell opportunities to a simple sales funnel will increase average order price, develop a bigger email list and keep people excited about your offers. When you’re careful about the offers you add, test each offer, and then use the best, you’ll see a huge uptick in orders.
When you create a sales funnel strategy that puts your upsells and downsells on autopilot it can consistently turn prospects into paying customers if you structure it the right way. Download my free Sales Funnel Checklist which outlines the best practices to make a sales funnel produce the intended result, lots of traffic, lots of prospects and lots of sales.