Too few companies know how to use the concept of up selling in their marketing and advertising to their benefit. What is up selling?
It is the process of getting more business from your existing customers. More often than not, they can be your best customers. Take banks for instance. In the past 2 months, many local banks have boosted their CD rates to attract new depositors. These new depositors are great new customers. Customers who need car loans, home equity loans, college loans, credit cards, checking accounts, money market accounts, you get the idea. Yet if you survey most banks, few if any communicate with their new CD customers. They are missing a huge opportunity to get more business from their existing customers, and more importantly, move them from a “transactional” customer to a “relationship” customer.
Don’t make the same mistake with your business. Look for new ways to up sell your existing customers by offering them new products, new services, or new offers that can build your relationship with them while garnering more share of wallet. Develop a formidable plan to make sure your customers know what services you provide and keep your core and other related messages in front of your customers as often as possible.
But don’t be impatient. It may take up to 10 forms of contact for a customer to identify with your brand or make a new purchase. Yet in a down economy, it’s one of the surest ways to boost your profit margins because up selling has a far better ROI than acquiring new customers.
