How to Create a Successful B2B Cross-Sell and Upsell Marketing Strategy
Total customer value in B2B (business to business) does not end with the point-of-sale transaction. Brands can tap into B2B cross-selling and upselling strategies to maximize their order value.
Combining strategies helps B2B brands drive revenue while reducing their expenses. For instance, businesses that use cross-selling techniques sell 20% more than those that don’t. Additionally, companies that utilize cross-selling strategies can increase the lifetime value of a customer by up to 14%. As such, cross-selling can significantly improve the buyer’s journey with B2B companies.
Upselling And Cross-Selling In A Nutshell
Upselling refers to the strategy of persuading customers to purchase a feature-rich version of a product or service. The B2B cross-selling process can also include selling premium subscriptions and platform add-ons as well as promoting services and products closely associated with a purchase or interest.
A high customer lifetime value (CLV) offsets the cost of acquiring a new customer (CAC), making it generally more profitable for businesses. However, first-time customers usually involve a high CAC, potentially resulting in a lower conversion rate.
For example, B2B brands may recommend CRMs alongside email marketing platforms. Aligning cross-selling and upselling strategies by asking customers the right questions can help drive optimal order value. Companies can offer surveys to learn more about their clients’ company goals, priorities, and problems to present the most suitable B2B upselling solutions.
Leverage Data
Data plays a critical role in shaping effective upselling and cross-selling initiatives. It’s essential for companies to transform raw information into actionable insights, so marketing teams can identify pain points and offer real-time solutions that create the most positive impact.
Teams can gather quality data from a reliable customer success tool that can help reduce churn by monitoring multiple customer health scores. Advanced tools can also help teams monitor customer accounts across various segments, delivering effective content for building lasting relationships.
Focus On Successful Customers
B2B marketing teams must keep a structured, accessible list of successful customers. Doing so enables them to create a suitable plan tailored to each segment in response to specific customer needs. In addition, using a systematic approach to manage successful customer segments makes it possible to keep a record of buyer patterns that resolve prevalent issues.
Dive Into Customer Feedback
Interpreting customer feedback data can help fine-tune the B2B customer experience. Consulting the data enables teams to better understand the customer experience and plan the most suitable approach for optimizing their product and services. Marketing teams can leverage multiple customer feedback channels to acquire the most comprehensive data. Potential channels include email and customer contact forms, chatbot logs, social media responses, and online surveys.
Strategize Price Points
A powerful B2B cross-selling strategy should apply relative price points that increase the attractiveness of an offer while reducing resistance. For example, recommended secondary offerings should have a more accessible cost of about half the price of the primary product. The lower price point can help optimize customer interest, engagement, and ultimately conversions.
When it comes to upsells, it’s best to keep the pricing at less than 25% of the initial purchase price to avoid steep price resistance.
Conduct Regular Testing
Frequent monitoring of B2B cross-selling and B2B upselling data provide consistent, accurate insights for positioning future offers. It’s important to check customer purchase histories, interactions, and timing of transactions to gain the most traction.
In addition, it’s necessary to avoid overburdening customers with offers during cross-selling and upselling that could leave a negative impression (i.e., pushy practices) on the B2B brand. As such, regular testing should include a review of the quantity and frequency of product recommendations issued to a customer.
Add Endorsements For Credibility
Reliable customer reviews (i.e., from verified accounts) can help promote trust and support among buyers during B2B cross-selling and B2B upsell strategies. In addition, best-selling products with high ratings and reviews can boost marketing campaigns through the power of social proof.
Automate Sales
An automated platform simplifies the B2B upsell and cross-selling process through insightful metrics that enable decision-makers to target and manage their most valuable customers quickly. Targeted metrics include demographics, past purchases, and customer preferences.
Through automated upselling and cross-selling, marketing teams can customize offers based on key insights and major pain points.
Similarly, automated upselling and cross-selling processes ensure undisrupted follow-ups with each customer, maintaining optimal customer satisfaction and loyalty. Advanced automated sales systems may provide users with the option of setting conditional responses, such as blasting a template email reply when a customer makes a transaction via a URL within an email.
Closing Thoughts
The Madison Taylor Marketing team offers years of expertise in optimizing B2B cross-selling and B2B upselling strategies for improving CLVs. Our team has extensive experience working with organization’s sales teams to ensure alignment between the two departments. We work with B2B sales departments to create content and make sure leads are nurtured with targeted solutions that increase revenue.
