5 Product Bundling Tips to Increase Sales and Customer Satisfaction

by | Oct 21, 2020 | Business Growth, Merchandising, Partners, Retailers

5 Product Bundling Tips to Increase Sales And Customer SatisfactionAbout Guest Author Nick Shaw
Nick Shaw is the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Brightpearl, a leading provider of inventory, warehouse and Omnichannel retail software. He is responsible for Global Marketing, Sales and Alliances for the leading retail inventory management software provider. Nick has written for sites such as Hubspot and G2. Here is Nick Shaw’s LinkedIn.

 

When you’re running your own business, there’s a lot that you have to get right. For example, you’ll need  order management software that’s robust enough to handle order entry and processing. Then there’s the issue of getting your head around the figures — including the landed cost formula you use to allocate shipping costs.

But the bread and butter of any successful business is customer satisfaction. If you can provide your customers with outstanding products and a great customer experience, you’ll find that they keep coming back to you time and time again.

In today’s modern retail environment, however, keeping customers satisfied is a trickier task than it’s ever been before. This is because consumers are so savvy, and because they have so much information at their disposal. It’s easy for them to do thorough research before they make any purchase. So, if you’re going to win consumers over to your business and its products, you need to offer them a little something extra.

Of course, customer service matters as well. VoIP for eCommerce can help your business handle customer inquiries more quickly and  easily. While video-based solutions can also do much to facilitate improved communications and thus drive up service standards. If you’re going to make it worth your customers’ while to stay loyal, though, you have to be prepared to provide something else as well.

This is where product bundling comes in. Product bundling is proven to be an effective way of driving up sales and thereby revenues. It can help you keep customers happy while ensuring you reduce the risk of overstock issues.

So just what can you do to make product bundling work for your business? In this guide, we’ll list five of the best product bundling tips to help you boost sales and keep your customers happy. But before that, we’ll look in closer detail at what product bundling is and what it entails. Read on to find out more.

What is product bundling and why does it matter?

Product bundling is, quite simply, where two or more products are sold under the same product listing. As you’re probably already aware, online outlets use it quite often — think of all the times you’ve gone to order something online only to find it bundled with another product. The benefits of this to consumers are quite obvious — it enables them to save money (and time) by buying two related products at once.

It’s usually quite a bit cheaper, of course, to buy two related products (say, a laptop and a headset) together at once. It also helps businesses with the supply chain management side of their operations. Bundling allows them to shift stock more efficiently, so that they don’t get overloaded with items they might otherwise struggle to sell. This can help firms that use FIFO accounting methods, for instance.

In addition, it’s important to understand the effect product bundling can have on the psychology of the consumer. The consumer mindset is vital – knowing what makes customers tick, and what they’re likely to respond positively to, is crucial in trying to manage a successful business. Product bundling works very effectively here because it makes customers feel they’re getting a bargain.

This means that when customers come across bundled products, they are likely to buy (and spend) more than they otherwise would. They’re more likely to make purchases on impulse. They may have come looking for one product, only to find it bundled with another which they hadn’t previously thought they needed.

Top product bundling tips

So, having elaborated on what product bundling is and why so many retailers make use of it, we’ll now move on to look at some top tips to help your business. Creating mixed product bundles can help you to drive sales, but it all depends which products you bundle, and how. Getting this correct can have a big effect on sales and revenue.

Here are our top five tips for making the most effective use of product bundling:

1.Bundle related products together

We’ve already touched on this, but it bears repeating. If you’re going to bundle products, then you really need to make sure they’re related to one another in some way. They need to complement each other, otherwise there’s relatively little value in it for the consumer, and it doesn’t serve as an effective incentive to buy.

As always in these situations, it helps if you can put yourself in the customer’s shoes. If you go to buy a product and it’s bundled with something you don’t want, why would you buy it? After all, products that are bundled together usually come at a slightly higher price. So even if it would cost more to buy each product individually, it still makes more sense to buy separately if you only want one of the products included.

Think carefully, then, about which products you bundle together with one another. Product bundling has to make sense to the consumer. If disparate products are included together with no real rhyme or reason involved, it’s more likely to act as a deterrent. The result you’ll typically see in that case is the customer simply taking their money elsewhere.

2. Include a free item

Shoppers love freebies —that’s a given. It’s one thing to bundle products together at a discount, and this can definitely serve as a very effective incentive to buy. But what’s even more effective is a free item. So why not chuck one in? You’ll find that consumers lap it up, and it gives them a little extra nudge to go ahead and buy.

As with the previous point, though, free items have to be relevant to the main items included in the product bundle. You have to think about what’s relevant to the needs of the consumer; a free item that’s not likely to prove all that useful to them isn’t going to provide a very compelling reason to complete the purchase.

In addition, if you’re struggling with overstock problems, then giving away free items can be a good way of whittling down your stocks of certain products. This allows you to adjust your inventory in line with consumer demand. That can help you free up some space which you can use to bring in other items.

3. Emphasize the savings involved

Another point that’s important to make here is that customers also love to feel they’re saving money whenever they complete a purchase. Part of the appeal of buying a bundle is the satisfaction of that feeling that you’re taking advantage of something other people haven’t picked up on.

More importantly, most customers only have so much money to spend, and there are all sorts of demands on their wallet. So, if they’re presented with the opportunity to save money on a purchase they feel they need to make, they’re going to be seriously tempted.

When you offer product bundles, then, you should stress to consumers how much money they could save by buying these items together rather than separately. This will communicate to the consumer in concrete terms just how good a deal they’re getting. Otherwise, the benefits might seem somewhat abstract.

Make it crystal clear to shoppers that by buying the product bundle you’re offering, they could save such-and-such a percentage, or such-and-such an amount of money. That’s as compared to what they’d be paying for each individual item. This is much more likely to get a positive response.

4. Take a data-driven approach

When choosing which items to bundle together, it’s essential that your decision is based on hard data. It’s not enough to just go by your hunch. In other words, don’t assume that a consumer who’s interested in one sort of product would also be interested in another. Product bundling needs to be based on concrete evidence instead.

Look at your sales data or those collected through your call center software. After all, eCommerce retailers now have more data at their disposal than ever before. It makes sense, therefore, to delve into it and see what insights you can gain. 

What is it your customers are buying? When customers buy one item, what do they generally buy with it? This should give you a clearer view of which products might prove alluring to shoppers when they’re bundled together.

Whatever else you do, you should avoid a trial-and-error approach. If you bundle the wrong products together, you may end up selling fewer of them rather than more. Retail data tools can also help you improve sales through more accurate forecasting.

5. Offer product bundles at checkout

If you’ve ever found yourself standing in a lengthy checkout queue at a supermarket, you’ve probably noticed that there are plenty of products placed within easy reach. This is because brick-and-mortar retailers know the checkout phase is their last chance to generate a few extra sales, and that a lot of customers will be tempted.

A similar principle applies to product bundling. Namely, that it’s a good idea to offer bundles at the checkout stage. Customers who receive a gentle reminder that they could save money by bundling their existing item with another are more likely to take advantage. Think about our earlier point about customer psychology — these recommendations at checkouts can be highly effective.

Conclusion

Product bundling, as we’ve discussed, is proven to boost sales and increase revenue. But it has to be done right: the products bundled together have to be well-suited to one another and they have to offer consumers a genuinely good deal. Don’t forget to put the word out there when you’re offering product bundles — use social media promotions and SaaS marketing strategies if they apply to your product — to generate interest.

Hopefully this quick guide has given you some useful ideas on how to make good use of product bundling to generate sales. There are lots of other tactics you can deploy, but these are good places to start. Over time, no doubt you’ll develop your own ideas, and your business will continue to benefit from enhanced customer loyalty as well as increased sales.

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5 Product Bundling Tips to Increase Sales And Customer Satisfaction

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