Yes, I know that upselling is a sales strategy and that I am a content marketing expert. However, I have been running into some terrible upselling strategies, and I feel compelled to talk about it.
Also: upselling can undo all the hard work that went into building a brand and great reputation. It can completely torpedo your marketing efforts, too.
Let me be clear here that small businesses are not doing this. It’s large corporations who should know better.
The upselling strategies that should be banned
Forcing you to pay for a service you don’t want
I know that sounds ridiculous. Who the heck would do that?
Conde Nast, that’s who.
In March, I got an email about my Vogue Magazine subscription renewal. (Don’t judge. I may be an outdoors-y person, but I am also a creative, and I love reading interviews with other creatives, whether they are fashion designers, musicians, artists, etc.)
Anyway, I could not understand the subscription renewal price of more than $70. Why the heck would 10 issues of a print magazine cost that much when they advertise the subscription price as $30 per year?
I called customer service and found out that I was also being charged for digital access –a $43 upcharge.
Whoever I talked to at the call center certainly didn’t care that I was being forced to pay for a service I didn’t want. She reluctantly let me renew for $30 and made it clear this was a one-time concession.
Not cool.
Adding features you don’t want and raising prices along the way
I used Mailchimp for email marketing for a long time.
Like any good company, they added new features – and then they just didn’t stop. They added bells and whistles I didn’t want and kept raising prices.
It was like service-creep. “Oh hey, we improved this for you – whether you wanted it or not – so now you get to pay more. Yay!”
I finally switched to a smaller email marketing platform that is less than half of Mailchimp’s cheapest monthly plan. And I switched one of my clients.
If they offered a subscription option that is JUST email marketing, I would never have left.
Doing too much upselling and not being able to deliver as promised
United Airlines did such a good job of upselling via their various credit cards that they cannot deliver the perks they promised. Specifically: access to their airport lounges.
Lounges are often mobbed. Instead of a quiet place to work, read, or take a meeting before or after your flight, you weave past piles of carry-ons, families, and business travelers in search of just two seats together.
Sometimes, the lounges are so packed that entry is temporarily shut down.
So now that United has oversold their airport lounges, they are trying to rein it in by raising the annual credit card fee and generally making it harder to access the lounges.
I have two easy solutions for them:
Why not ask members to reserve a spot at the lounge ahead of time – and put new restrictions on new card members, not long-time card members?
If you caused the problem, it just makes sense to embrace solutions that allow you to continue to serve your loyal customers.
How to upsell properly
Upselling is a fantastic sales (and marketing) strategy when done right. And guess what? It’s not hard to do it properly!
Only upsell when it’s in your client’s best interest
Relationships are built on trust. Honor the trust that your clients place in you by always acting in their best interests.
This is how I approach upselling.
Let’s say a client comes to me with a request for new website content. I spend some time on their current website and have no idea what they do, why I would buy from them, etc.
It is clear they do not have brand messaging, which is the foundation for how you talk about your company. “We need to start with a brand messaging exercise,” I tell them.
Upsell after the original purchase
This is another strategy I use. When I first meet with a potential client, I always ask what content marketing projects they need help and what they are currently doing.
They might say, “I really want to start blogging once a month and sending an email newsletter.”
“And what other marketing are you doing? What’s working?”
“Well,” they might reply, “I try to post on LinkedIn every week, but I have no idea what to write about, and I really don’t have the time.”
I immediately see an opportunity to upsell them. “We can easily pull content for LinkedIn posts from your blog. But let’s start with your blog and newsletter, and we can revisit LinkedIn in a few months.”
Notice that I set the stage for the upsell, but I wait a few months so we can get in a rhythm with the other services first.
Give people options of three tiers in benefits/features and price
We have all seen those price and feature comparison charts. Why can’t your small business offer three tiers of services and let your clients upsell themselves?
You can!
I remember a friend telling me a couple of years ago that he sent a potential big new client three tiers for one service. And guess what? The client chose the most expensive option.
Don’t decide for them that they don’t want everything. Give them the choice.
You could also tell potential clients that most people start with the middle tier and after six months they upgrade to the top tier. In six months, you can bring this up and let the client choose to upgrade.
What has your experience with upselling been like?
Do you like to upsell? What are your strategies?
Have you ever felt forced into buying something you didn’t want because of aggressive or deceptive upselling strategies?