How to Use Bonuses to Increase Your Conversion Rate

Last year on Cyber Monday, customers spent $9.4 billion online. The Cyber 5 online sales, these are the five days across the Thanksgiving Weekend, accounted for $28.5 billion in sales. It’s a lot of money, so it shouldn’t be surprising that in the US, the top shopping days make up 45% of annual holiday sales.

The reason people go so crazy - shoppers want a bargain.

A flash sale is sure to draw in crowds of shoppers. Bonuses are just as effective. In this article, I’ll show you how to use bonuses to boost your sales. Let’s start with the very basics.

What are Bonuses & Why Should You Use Them

You see bonuses everywhere. When you go to the supermarket and see a bottle of hand lotion with a free smaller bottle from the same brand, you’re looking at a bonus. When you see your usual razor blades packaged with some aftershave at a heavily discounted price, you’re also looking at a bonus.

Bonuses are used all the time by digital marketers to help push undecided customers into making a purchase. Here’s an example from a sales page for a digital marketing product.

A study conducted by the University of Minnesota found that shoppers preferred getting bonus items over discounts. They determined that a 33% discount didn’t have the same resonance among customers as getting 50% more of a product and that offering, 50% more lotion, resulted in a 73% jump in sales. 

Bonuses work, they discovered, because most shoppers couldn’t be bothered to compute how much they were going to save. After all, not everyone can do fractions on the fly.

They also discovered people associate more value with the words “more” and “free” compared to “less.” In other words, they wanted to get more than what they paid for instead of paying less for the same thing. As you can see from the example above, the difference between a bonus and a sale comes down to positioning. Fundamentally, with a sale or a bonus, the offer is often the same.

Understanding the Customer Persona

I like to compare bonuses to making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It’s not going to be a sandwich if it doesn’t have a top slice of bread, a layer of peanut butter, a layer of jelly, and a bottom slice. I mean, I’m partial to open-faced sandwiches, but you get the picture.

Now, think of your promotion as the very same sandwich. Let’s say your main product is a timesheet app. The peanut butter and jelly layers are the main product that you’re selling. You can also think of the main product as just the peanut butter or the jelly, depending on which spread you like better. The bonuses you’re offering are the slices of bread. What can you offer as a bonus to entice customers to sign up for it?

More often than not, your bonuses should be related to your main product. Now, if you’re a hardcore PB&J sandwich fan, you’ll leave the Wonderbread on the shelf and get a couple of slices of pumpernickel bread, which in my opinion, is the only bread that makes a half-decent sandwich.

The bonuses you create should align with the pain points your customers face. To create effective bonuses, you need to understand your potential customers. A well-defined customer persona will help you identify those pain points and where you can add value.

Taking the timesheet app as an example, here are some possible bonuses for a potential customer.

Notice how the possible bonuses add value to a potential customer and address problems they are likely to face. I cannot reiterate this often enough: a good bonus must pair well with your main product.

How to Come Up with a Relevant Offer

Theoretically, you can offer anything in your product line as a bonus (or team up with another business). However, you should ask yourself, Does it make sense to offer it as a bonus?

Following our sandwich analogy earlier: does your bonus make your sandwich taste great, or will it go better with some other sandwich? I suppose some people add mustard to their PB&J. It’s not my thing, and I think a lot of people will agree with me. So let’s stick to what most people like, shall we?

The easiest thing to offer as a bonus is a free complimentary product or service. For example, if you are running an e-commerce store, you might decide to run a three for two offer. Or, the least expensive thing you purchase is free or comes at a discounted price. These types of offers can help either increase the amount a consumer spends or increase the conversion rate on their existing purchase.

Giving away a product for free has its downsides. If you give away a product that costs you money, that will reduce your profit margins. It might be worth it for the increased sales. It's also a good way to get rid of surplus stock. However, you'll need to make that decision on a case by case basis.

You can add a bonus that has a one-time cost of course. In some niches, PLR products offer you a way to get around this. Some marketplaces offer white label software, eBooks, website themes, and more that you can purchase and then giveaway with an offer. Alternatively, you could make a course, white paper, or information product to give away with an offer.

How to Sell Your Bonus

We’ve covered how to come up with a suitable bonus for an offer. Now, I want to discuss how to position your bonus. This is important. To really boost your sales, you need to sell your bonus, not just give it to them.

Earlier in this article, I showed you an example bonus product from a sales page for a digital software product. Here’s another example from that page.

There are a couple of things I want to highlight the way the bonus is positioned:

• There’s a monetary value attached to the offer (really important)

• A short description of the product, how it offers value, and how it relates to the product

• The bonus appears before the buy button

Giving the bonus a monetary value, and providing it before the buy button will help increase sales.

Of course, this assumes people are already on the sales page. If you were funneling people to an offer, say via a webinar or email campaign, you might create a landing page with bonuses that people would see before they arrive on the sales page.

Here’s an example of how you could stack bonuses together on a squeeze page.

You should add a video before the bonuses to provide context. This helps people make the link between the bonuses on offer, and the product they are thinking about purchasing.

Finally, you can add an element of pressure by offering a limited time bonus. This will create a sense of urgency to your offer, which will help boost sales.

Conclusion

Bonuses are a proven way to boost sales. In this guide, I showed you how to create a relevant offer with bonuses that would interest your audience. Your bonuses should always be something your audience will appreciate. Be careful not to fall into the trap of offering something totally unrelated to your main product. It should ideally be something that adds value to your product.

Finally, make sure to sell your bonus. Give your bonus a financial value, so they know what they are getting. You can even stack bonuses together until it gets to the point where you have a “no brainer offer.” When you have the perfect offer, your customers won’t be able to stop themselves from making a purchase.

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Crucial KPIs to Track for Measuring Brand Performance

There are too many metrics and KPIs you can measure, whether you own a small business or a well-managed brand. However, it is not the point to track and measure everything – you should focus only on metrics of high relevance. Measuring your brand performance is about understanding the process of how consumers make purchasing decisions in your industry and how to increase the chances of being their favorite brand. Hence, let’s check all crucial KPIs you need to track for measuring brand performance.

Brand Awareness and Recognition

First of all, you need to know if your customers recognize your brand on the market. You can measure it with three key performance indicators (KPIs) – top of mind (TOM), spontaneous, and prompted brand awareness. Using unprompted questions is the best way to measure spontaneous and top of mind awareness. For instance, you can ask which brands they remember when thinking about a particular industry.

On the other hand, to measure prompted awareness, present your respondents with a list of brands (including yours), and ask which ones they recognize. It is not a big deal if your TOM awareness is low. However, prompted awareness is far more critical, and it should not be lower than 60%.

How well your Customers know the values of your Brand?

Finding out if your customers know what your brand stands for is super valuable for your further marketing tactics. KPIs that you want to track in this segment are brand profile and self-declared knowledge about the brand. Before getting to the questions about your brand’s profile, you should first ask respondents whether they know anything about your brand or not. Eliminate the group that knows nothing (but include the percentage in final measuring) and continues the process.

Ask remaining respondents to rate your brand based on different values and attributes, and to give each of these 1-5 ratings. Of course, the goal is to have high scores in almost every aspect. However, even if you don’t achieve that immediately, you will see exactly which segments of your brand you need to improve in order to be widely recognized. As a progressive bachelor of arts degree in product design teaches, the quality of a product, which comprises of the product’s conception, usability, and emotional appeal, should be the hallmark of its market positioning.

Purchase Consideration

Purchase intent is a crucial KPI that tells you whether people consider purchasing your product or not. In many cases, this KPI is closely related to sales, so people who answer positively will, most likely, buy a few products. However, sometimes, people change their minds right before the moment of purchase, and your job is to determine why people make such a decision. For instance, it might be due to high prices or limited distribution of your products. Anyways, whatever the most common reason is, focus on it and do everything you can to make things better and increase the number of purchases.

Sales Process

Finally, we come to the sales volume and sales value, which are two crucial KPIs. They will give you the answer to question how often people buy your products or services. To measure it successfully, you need to know how many items people bought and what their value is. For these KPIs, you don’t need people’s declarations – both metrics are entirely based on the real-time data that you can get from the digital marketing reporting dashboard. Weekly and monthly reports are crucial for these KPIs, as well as putting them into spreadsheets and documents. And finally, it is vital to know all the relevant factors that had an influence on sales in a particular period.

Would your customers recommend your brand to others?

Recommendations are crucial for business success. Word-of-mouth marketing is still super powerful, and you should not underestimate it. The KPI you should track is a net promoter score (NPS). Ask people how likely they are to recommend your brand and products to their friends and family members. They can answer on a scale from 0 to 5, for instance. Those who respond with 4 or 5 are your brand promoters, while others are either passives or detractors. Subtracting the percentage of distractors from the percentage of promoters is the best way to calculate the final result.

Measuring your brand performance should be one of your primary tasks each month. It is the only way to improve brand awareness and increase sales.

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How is AI Impacting B2B Marketers’ Jobs on a Daily Basis?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has immersed itself in our lives and made a remarkable impact. Smart devices and AI tools and toys used to seem like products of the imagination but now they are part of our everyday life. Considering that AI is an inevitable future advancement, marketers should know more about it. They are the force that keeps people updated with the newest trends and that is why AI should be on their list of priorities.

The fact 80% of B2B marketing executives predict AI will revolutionize their industry by 2020 clearly shows that AI is redefining B2B marketers’ jobs. If you want to be a part of this change let’s learn more about what AI can bring to the table and how it impacts the world of marketing. If you are being impacted by AI and need to update your professional resume, check out CraftResumes, for professional resume writing services.

AI and Marketing

Artificial intelligence presents enhancing human knowledge through machines. What makes these machines smart is applying different technologies, algorithms, and techniques to achieve natural language processing and deep learning.

Or, how this infographic explains it:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai claims that AI will have a massive impact on the world. Considering AI as an innovation that will spread worldwide, he said the following: “AI is one of the most important things humanity is working on. It is more profound than, I dunno, electricity or fire.”

Pichai’s attitude about the importance of AI shows that this leading company finds AI to be an essential, not a potential addition.

When it comes to Artificial Intelligence Marketing (AI Marketing), it presents using customer data in combination with AI advancement such as machine learning to predict customers’ actions, intelligently target the customers, and act accordingly.

The reality of AI in marketing is that only 13% of B2B marketers are very confident with their knowledge of AI, while 55% are somewhat confident, and 33% are not at all confident.

Gaining knowledge about how AI can improve marketers’ business on a daily basis can be of huge help for advancing their marketing strategy. With AI they can make better marketing decisions and attract more customers to their company.

As Paul Roetzer, a founder and CEO of PR 20/20, author of The Marketing Performance Blueprint and The Marketing Agency Blueprint, and creator of The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute and Marketing Score nicely put it: “Your life is already machine-assisted, and your marketing will be too.”

How Marketers Use AI Daily?

Some marketers have already introduced AI into their marketing routines and their practices can show us how AI can be beneficial for improving marketing strategy.

Let's take a look at some of the ways in which AI contributes to the marketing industry and impacts marketers’ jobs on a daily basis.

Better Search Engine Optimization

Google started with AI search innovation back in 2015. They introduced RankBrain, a machine learning-based algorithm.

This leading company was the inspiration to many websites such as Amazon who also use AI for their search engines.

Marketers turn to AI to make product searching more accurate and smarter.

Semantic search and natural language processing find relevant search results and make more accurate suggestions. Even when the customer doesn't know what he is searching for, AI will help him discover products.

This eases up the pressure that marketers used to have when it comes to SEO considering that is one of the main aspects of marketing strategy.

Additionally to SEO, AI also provides image recognition and analysis so customers can use visual search. Visual search technology improves merchandising and shopping experience because it provides the customer with a more accurate suggestion.

Improving Customer Experience

Presenting the brand as helpful and people-centric is one of the main goals that marketers need to fulfill.

With the help of AI technology, companies will no longer have to wait for their questions, problems, and inquiries to be addressed.

The technology that is used for this purpose is chatbot technology that is powered by AI capabilities.

By using natural language processing, chatbots identify the question and provide the company with instant answers. This is the best choice for handling general questions in B2B cooperation.

Identifying Prospective Customers

For sourcing quality leads markets used to go through endless customer data manually. Obtaining, classifying, and reviewing data manually takes a lot of valuable time that marketers could put in use for other purposes.

AI simplified this process because it captures and collects a larger set of data from contact databases, websites, and social media platforms and identifies the best B2B target customers. It shows the best solutions for both inward and outward marketing initiatives.

AI enables marketers to capture data during consumer interaction and create customer profiles that are later used for targeting new customers.

Not only that it improves the quantity of leads, but it also improves their quality which makes marketers more successful.

Personalization

Personalization can be done on many different levels. Some companies like Instagram offer suggested sponsored ads based on your previous searches while others such as those you can find at TheWordPoint offer adapted translation prices.

AI-driven marketing analyzes the behavior of potential customers and provides marketers with a chance to conduct the hyper-personalization of the marketing campaigns. That is why 71% of B2B marketers are interested in using AI for personalization.

Marketers use AI to eliminate spam emails and messages by initiating personalized conversations. It independently crafts messages that upscale the customers’ interests.

Additionally, it collects historical data and analyzes the correct time of sending the right content to the right person

Brands have a chance to target customers one by one instead of targeting specific sectors. Consequently, when they use the personalized approach they have a better chance to increase sales.

Improving Conversions

Some research showed that 80% of the time of sales representatives is spent on emails and phone calls for nurturing and qualifying leads with repetitive activities which gives them merely 20% of the time for the closing of the lead.

Such an approach is slowly becoming outdated because AI offers a less time-consuming and more efficient approach.

Based on predefined characteristics, AI can identify new and existing customers that are more accurate choices for the conversion.

Instead of wasting time on uninterested prospects, AI directs marketers to ideal prospects that are more likely to seal to deal.

Some Final Thoughts

AI is clearly taking the world of marketing by storm. By understanding this incredible technology, marketers will be able to improve their strategies and make their job easier. AI also brings new career opportunities in marketing because it presents a completely different approach to marketing practices.

AI gives marketers an opportunity to identify customers, improve their experience, create a personalized approach, and optimize the search in the best possible way. No matter how marketers use AI, it is inevitable that this phenomenon leads to surpassing the competition and growing the business.

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ABOUT: ERICA SUNARJO

Erica Sunarjo is a communications professional with more than five years of experience. Erica runs her own blog BestWritersOnline and is proud of her an uncanny ability to explain the most complex subject in simple terms.

How to Close More Sales Without Getting Pushy

Ryan Stewman is a five-time bestselling author, sales trainer, and entrepreneur. He's also a regular contributor to Forbes, Entrepreneur, and other major publications.

 Ryan is known throughout the sales marketing industry as the "hardcore closer."

He didn't pick this name himself, but he accepts it with pride.

Today, Ryan talks about how you can get everything you need to know about your initial sales call and close more sales without getting pushy.

Spend More Time Preparing and Less Time Calling

Most companies recommend calling leads within the first five minutes, but not Ryan.

In fact, his team doesn't schedule calls for about four or five days out.

Why not? This gives them ample time to prepare for the call. The goal is to find out as much as they can about the person.

Another mistake companies make? They call every. single. lead.

Ryan recommends opting for quality over quantity. Why waste your time chasing down bad leads and facing ultimate rejection? Sales is emotional and stressful: you're constantly berated, rejected, and turned down so morale can deteriorate pretty quickly.

No one likes hearing the word "no." You can avoid lots of rejection simply by getting to know your leads before making the call.

Gather Information

When Ryan's team receives a lead, the first thing they do is determine how they can get more information.

Ryan suggests utilizing an automated email system that sends out surveys and forms to your leads. He uses a roughly ten-question survey to find out where they live, where they work, what kind of problems they're having, and what kind of business they're in.

This helps to get an overall sense of who they are and build your familiarity.

Social Reconnaissance

Ryan recommends checking out your lead's social media profiles.

Most people share posts with a public audience because they want others to see these things. No one pays attention to anyone anymore, so Ryan says people really appreciate this effort.

The goal is to get a sense for their personality.

This can also help avoid unnecessary rejection. Notice a lead chronically complaining or making up excuses in their Facebook posts? Then don't pursue that lead. Why waste your time with ultimate rejection?

On-The-Call Strategy

Ryan's strategy for phone calls is pretty simple: he barely says anything.

If you can get folks to open their mouths, they're more likely to open their wallets.

This means that you don't need to be a good sales person if you're already a good listener.

First 30 Seconds

At the very beginning of the call, Ryan says you'll want to accomplish two things: let the person know you already have successful results with someone just like them and get them to admit they've already made a decision with you involved.

It sounds hard but it's actually pretty simple.

Ryan starts out by asking for the person's geographical location. Then he lets them know that he has current clients in that same area with great results.

He doesn't lie: if Ryan doesn't have clients in the same city, he'll list the state or region.

After that, Ryan asks why the lead reached out to him. By answering this question, Ryan gets them to admit they've already made a decision that involves him.

Keep the Conversation Flowing

Ryan says the process of sales is very similar to what a doctor does: someone tells you their problems and you give them a solution.

When you enter a doctor's office, you usually go through the same protocol, right?

Ryan uses the same strategy for sales calls. He calls it the "prescription method."

Come up with six or seven open-ended questions to use on every sales call. This helps keep the conversation flowing and avoids dead-ends.

Once the lead feels like you thoroughly understand their situation and problems, they're more likely to trust you for a solution.

Answering Questions

Ryan says a lot of companies make big mistakes when it comes to answering questions on the initial phone call.

They forget what the lead wants to get out of the phone call. When someone calls a mortgage loan officer, it's because they want a house. They don't want to hear all the details about bond markets and interest rates.

Answering questions with too many details gets confusing quickly. We're conditioned to write and speak for experts, but fancy words and industry detail is just confusing to customers.

Tell them what they want to know in a way they can understand.

What about revealing prices?

Ryan prefers to list his price up-front on the website. He also likes to compare his price and product to another product with a similar price. He'll then explain that not only is his product superior, but it also costs less.

Closing the Sale without Getting Pushy

Ryan says the atmosphere has changed since the days of cold calls and newspaper ads.

You don't need to go through the hassle of changing someone's mind because you can find leads that prequalify for your product or service. Social media has made this strategy easier than ever.

Once you thoroughly understand someone's problems, you can prescribe them a beneficial solution. This is only possible by conducting efficient research through surveys and social reconnaissance.

Don't push for a one-call close!

Why risk jeopardizing the relationship? If a lead isn't quite ready to commit, ask when you can follow-up for an answer. Ryan also likes to send automated "thank you" emails.

The goal is to push for future contact. Clients feel comfortable when you give them this control.

How to Learn More from Ryan

You can find Ryan at Hardcore Closer where he's written over 700 blogs and published over 500 additional pages of content covering everything to do with sales marketing.

Ryan's bestselling book, Elevator to The Top, walks you through the sales funnel, upsells, and extra programs. You can score a free paperback copy here.

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About Ryan Stewman

I’m a 4x best selling author

I contribute to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Addicted2Success, Good men Project, Lighter Side of Real Estate and Huffington Post.

I’ve got more Salesman of The Month plaques than I can count. It’s crazy to think of what all I’ve done from just taking action and working hard.

Hardcore Closer is an online learning resource for salespeople. We sell e-learning products in the advertising, marketing, funnel, sales and social media arenas, as well as do personal coaching and live events. My Break Free Academy program is our flagship program. It has everything you need in order to start marketing your business online and crushing your competitors.

I’m Ryan Stewman CEO of Hardcore Closer and it’s nice to meet you.

Increase Audience Reach with a PPC Campaign

Over the years, new marketing strategies such as PPC campaign advertising has been developed to take advantage of how the internet can reach many consumers.

PPC marketing strategies have been known to reach a wider audience to increase the internet visibility of a brand employing PPC campaign services. If you are considering getting a PPC campaign done for your brand, you should also consider hiring some of the PPC advertising companies in Austin, TX.

They can do the PPC campaign services on your behalf, especially if you have little to no idea what PPC management is, but you still want to be successful with it.

Benefits of PPC Marketing or PPC Campaign

Marketing strategies have developed through time, and these new practices were developed by experts through research to create campaigns which adhere to the latest trends in marketing.

With this in mind, PPC campaign marketing has been developed to start taking advantage of the perks of paid advertisements from search engines like Google Adwords. Some of the benefits of PPC marketing include:

1. It can generate more traffic to your website.
2. It can increase the number of audiences you can reach.
3. By following tips on keyword use, you can avoid making more mistakes and get conversions from your targeted audiences.

With these benefits in mind, PPC marketing has made advertising easier. You can get PPC marketing services from PPC advertising companies in Austin, TX to manage your PPC campaign and learn tips from them.

Reasons to Hire PPC Advertising Companies

If you want your PPC marketing or your PPC campaign to become a success, you should consider getting professional PPC campaign services from PPC advertising companies in Austin, TX.

With their experience in past and current projects and their expertise in the business, they can help you improve your campaigns and move high in your rankings. They know what they need to do for effective PPC management, so you are assured the best ones can help you get the full benefits of your commerce.

What is PPC Management?

For a certain amount of specific PPC services in Austin, TX,  you can get better campaigns for your business and improve your sales with the help of professionals who know what PPC management is.

Employing effective PPC management strategies, with the help of a critical expert, can help you formulate solutions on strategies which don't work. Through effective PPC management, you can kill ineffective strategies and start new campaigns which still adhere to the rules of PPC marketing.

With the advent of recent technology, new marketing strategies such as PPC marketing have been developed and employed by many.

In turn, they were able to experience an increase in sales, brand visibility, and overall market performance of their respective brands with the help of PPC professionals. Book the best ones in Austin, TX and enjoy the benefits this service offers.