In this final part of a 3-part series, let’s discover ten sub-strategies to increase the average spend per transaction and reduce attrition. You’ll recall that the four strategic ways to grow your business are:
- Increase your customer or client numbers
- Get your customers to buy more frequently
- Get more customers to spend more money per transaction
- Reduce attrition – Keep your customers longer
These four strategies provide us with the targets for what is to be achieved when growing a business. The difficult part is knowing the HOW. Sub-strategies provide the technical know-how and it is then down to people, planning, policies and procedures to create the actionable elements. Of course, all action should be monitored and results recorded so that you can confirm the action is indeed working.
So, let’s get on with this article and provide you with the final 10 sub-strategies.
1) Add Value
Add more value to your products or services. Here are a few examples:
- Faster delivery for a certain level of spend
- Offer a higher level of service than your main competitors
- A dedicated phone line / account manager
- An educational item such as a free ebook
- A discount off a future event etc.
- A limited time ‘done for you’ upgrade
2) Upsell
I touched on this in Part 1 – when a prospect or customer buys from you, add an upsell or cross sell to a complimentary product at the point of sale. A well known e-commerce site does this extremely well using terms such as ‘customers who bought this item also bought…’ or ‘frequently bought together’.
3) Payment Terms
Remove a potential barrier to sale by offering easy payment terms on more expensive items.
4) Offers
Do an irregular special discount deal to existing customers which can also be linked to volume or a package deal.
5) Postage & Packaging
Always charge for shipping separately. Shipping should be a small profit centre, after all you have packaging, administration and the shipping cost to consider.
6) Communication
Send out autoresponder emails to a customer after their purchase with information and advice on how to get the best from the product they just purchased. It encourages more use of the product.
7) Bonuses
Add a surprise gift and/or bonus in with the products.
8) Loyalty Schemes
Create a loyalty scheme which provides increased purchasing options after a timely period. If you know that the average time a customer remains with you is a year, then set this just beyond the period and program a series of communications for the next year. At the end of each communication, ensure the customer knows that something else will be coming their way!
9) Testimonials
Ask for testimonials. If a customer is willing to a testimonial then your relationship is strong. Of course, sending them a surprise gift for doing it is a nice gesture too.
10) Know Your Customer
If you can gather the data, you could go sending your customer a birthday message. It doesn’t have to be a card, why not an electronic message. Customers like to know you are thinking of them and celebrating their special day won’t go unnoticed.
With so many strategies provided to you during these three articles, I hope you have made copious notes and will begin selecting the sub-strategies that you consider are the best for your business, and possibly the easiest to commence or implement. It is important to gain momentum in business and to do this you may find it easier to select one sub-strategy, implement, monitor, adjust if required and then move on to add another.
Whenever you are breaking new ground, it is advisable to invest in a consultant who knows and understands these sub-strategies and/or the principles of change management. You will need guidance from somebody who really understand the implementation of the sub-strategies rather than the theory.
Finally, I wish you a great deal of success adding these sub-strategies into your marketing. Feel free to contact me to ask questions or tell me your success stories as I love hearing from you.
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