Cross Selling and Upselling on Amazon— Effective Strategies For Success

If Amazon resembles a baseball field, sellers are exerting their best to strike out the competitors. Cross selling and upselling on Amazon is now, one of the most effective methods to become more noticeable. 

New brands need help to stand out, and their growth can be incredibly stunted due to the immense competition. In addition to driving brand visibility, these approaches can drastically increase your profit margin.

Strategically implementing these practices can ensure not only an increase in your Average Order Value (AOV) but also Customer lifetime value (CLV); while correspondingly offering customers a tailored solution for their requirements. 
Sounds like a win-win strategy? Keep reading as we take you through some of the best current approaches to successfully cross-selling and upselling on Amazon to thrive in the marketplace.

Quick Guide

• Cross-selling and Upselling on Amazon and What Value it Adds to Your Business
• How Cross-selling vs. Upselling on Amazon Conceptually differ?
• Benefits of Implementing Cross-selling vs. Upselling on Amazon
• How to Implement Strategies of Cross-selling and Upselling on Amazon as an Amazon Seller
• Foundational Cross-Selling and Upselling Practices To Boost Average Order Value
• Optimize Product Listings for selling and Upselling on Amazon
• Advanced Strategies for Cross Selling and Upselling on Amazon
• Challenges you may come across when Implementing Cross-Selling and Upselling Strategies 
• Final Thoughts

Cross-selling and Upselling on Amazon and What Value it Adds to Your Business

A surface-level view would tell us,

• Amazon Up-selling aims to maximize profit by suggesting users opt for a premium version of the product they’re eyeing. 

• Amazon Cross-selling is essentially encouraging buyers to add more products that may complement their purchase and upgrade their experience along with their primary purchase. 

So, as you may have already figured, the concept of up-selling is rooted in elevating the overall value of a single purchase while cross-selling focuses on increasing the count of units purchased in one go. 

How to recognise Cross selling on Amazon?

A classic example of cross selling on Amazon would be when a buyer comes across a digital camera. When they click on it they are led to the product page where a bunch of suggestions appear. Amazon might show items related to it such as a screen guard, extra batteries, or memory cards. These sections might appear as  “Frequently Bought Together” or “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”. These are the essential complementary products in addition to the digital camera, and are known as Cross selling products in industry terminology. 

How to Recognise Upselling on Amazon?

When a buyer purchases a laptop on Amazon, they might have their eyes fixed on a specific model. On opening the product listing page they might come across a suggestion of the same model but with upgraded RAM. This subtle encouragement is known as Upselling and it redirects buyers to having an upgraded experience with the same product they’re looking for. 

 What else can make the distinct entities conceptually separate?

How Cross-selling vs. Upselling on Amazon Conceptually Differ?

Points	Up-selling	Cross-selling
Aim	Upselling increases the AOV by increasing the value of a single primary purchase.	Increase the AOV by increasing the total units of purchase.
Nature of Experience	It focuses on user satisfaction with the performance of the primary purchase. Upselling stresses the individual upscaling of items.	Cross-selling emphasizes the overall experience often accompanied by secondary purchases.
Intent	The initial intent of the user is to buy the primary item.	The buyer comes without the intention of buying the complementary items but finds the suggestion useful.

Although the goal for both (Cross-selling and upselling on Amazon) remains constant (i.e., generating more profit), both of these sales concepts target specific areas to contribute to the goal. 

Growth reports by McKinsey & Co. showed how cross-selling practices potentially increase sales by 20% and overall profits by 30%.

This brings us to address your obvious question—  what value does it add to your Amazon store? 

Benefits of Implementing Cross-selling vs. Upselling on Amazon

Here we’ll individually take you through the benefits of cross-selling vs. upselling on Amazon along with the benefits of a hybrid approach to combine both for the best results. 

Upselling

• Upselling increases the exposure of premium products to potential customers.
• Upselling results in heightened chances of repeat purchases due to customer satisfaction.
• Upselling results in Higher Revenue Per Sale. 

Cross-selling

• Cross selling Amazon is an effective way of showcasing associated products that are present in the catalog, that a buyer may not have considered previously.
• As the cross selling suggestion aligns with a buyer’s goal, it successfully cuts down on the search time. This may lead to better customer satisfaction and eventually better chances of customer retention.

Cross selling and Upselling on Amazon Collaboration: the Hybrid Strategy

• Practicing cross selling and upselling on Amazon increases the store’s AOV. However, both strategies are extremely efficient in elevating ROI.
• On repeated implementation of these strategies, you find drastic decreases in the customer acquisition cost as a good percentage of the customer base gets successfully retained increasing the Customer lifetime value (CLV) of your Amazon store.

How to Implement Strategies of Cross selling and Upselling on Amazon as an Amazon Seller

Whether you own a small and medium-sized Amazon business (SMB) or an enterprise-level business, implementing up-selling and cross-selling can help you beat your competitors and stay ahead in the game. We recommend you put these tactics into action and see how they perform in terms of numbers. 

Foundational Cross-Selling and Upselling Practices To Boost Average Order Value

Understand Your Customer Base

First things first. Successful implementation of upselling and cross-selling strategies on Amazon starts when you start understanding your customers better. To get started, 

Leverage Amazon Data

As a registered seller you’ll be able to derive amazing insights from Business Reports and other reports available on Seller Central. Armed with this data, you will be able to gain an in-depth understanding of the customer’s buying behavior, purchasing history, and preferences based on demographics. You can now use this data to create buyer personas which will only enrich your marketing efforts by implementing Cross selling and upselling on Amazon.

Formulate In-depth Buyer Personas

82% of organizations rely on using buyer personas to boost their value proposition. Almost 71% of them leveraged the documented buyer personas to reach their target revenue. Similarly, you can use buyer personas to implement Amazon Cross Selling and upselling techniques into your marketing campaign for your Amazon store.

How?

This gathered data is a direct view into consumer preference which helps in bettering product listing, description copy, and keyword selection to reach a target market, and ultimately to understand aspects of improvement in both product and campaign performance. Cross selling and upselling on Amazon is another useful outcome of this analysis.

Meticulously Track Customer Engagement

Amazon metrics are such that they will help you gain insight into the click-through rates, time spent on product pages, purchase frequency, and so on. This leads you to understand their purchasing behavior so that you can implement timely strategies to boost the efficacy of upselling or cross-sell strategies. 

Identify Rooted Pain Points

Understanding the limitations of your product’s functionality is the road to addressing major customer challenges. You as a seller may focus on the major pain points found in reviews and feedback to label the opportunities that require strategies for upselling and cross selling on Amazon.

Let us explain how.

If you’re an ambitious seller, you may refer to these pain points to improve the quality of the existing products in the catalog with a motive to upgrade and upsell or even come up with accessories to scale up its utility. 

An added advantage would be running PAT ads for interested buyers to discover befitting products to upgrade the experience associated with the primary purchase. Its another path to well-implement cross selling and upselling on Amazon. 

Personalized Recommendations

After carefully addressing its relevance, you can add targeted keywords or descriptions based on your customers’ search queries. Here the Amazon Ads Database comes to rescue. This goldmine reveals some useful keywords that can help you strategize an upsell while serving their search terms.

Or you can leverage Amazon Product targeting to increase effectively cross-sell and upsell. You have the freedom to target categories or individual products. Running a targeted campaign is a paid service for which you can set a daily or lifetime budget. 

To try cross selling and upselling on Amazon, an SMB brand selling Retinol serum may display an eye cream as a PAT ad so that their target audience gets to know about their product offerings and they may also add it to their cart if they find it useful. This can be an effective way to enhance AOV for Amazon FBA sellers.

Optimize Product Listings for selling and Upselling on Amazon

Excellent product listing when teamed with relevant backend search keywords using specialized tools, compelling product titles, high-quality images, and well-presented product features gives the best result. This enhances visibility and hence indirectly influences upselling and cross-selling strategies. 

Here’s an instance that illustrates how optimizing product listings can reinforce Amazon Upselling and cross-selling strategies:

Mirage is a new leather accessory brand in the US market. It is striving to rank in a marketplace that is already saturated with competitors. Their strategy team decides to supplement its Amazon presence with revised product listings to enhance its visibility. 

For well-optimized product listing using tools for Amazon cross-selling, Mirage worked on their product photography, revised their product feature, and improved their keyword research and placement increasing their depth of title and feature depiction. These calculated changes would make their position prominent in the Amazon search results.

To better assess your product listing success, head over to our Amazon listing quality checker here. 

Monitor and Adapt Strategies

To gauge the effectiveness of upselling and cross-selling strategies on Amazon, make performance metrics your best sidekick. By monitoring performance through Amazon Seller Central you can get direct insights on what to readjust and how to optimize products’ presence to get the best results.

Imagine a scenario where MCB Electronics, a verified Amazon seller for electronics, notices that smart speakers are frequently bought together with smart bulbs. They keep an eye on Amazon Seller Central to have an in-depth understanding of the situation, considering sales metrics such as conversion rates, click-through rates, and customer feedback. Eventually, the strategy team may sit with these data and observations to come up with relevant recommendations for improving conversion rates based on these metrics. 

Advanced Strategies for Cross Selling and Upselling on Amazon

Strategic Timing for Offers to Unfold the Best Possibilities 

There are specific time-sensitive opportunities to upsell or cross sell your products. This especially holds true when the holiday season is just about to arrive. Strategic offer placement can be in the form of seasonal promotions or it can appear during purchase. Flash sales and pre-event promotions can also contain elements of Amazon Cross Selling and upselling. 

However, it goes without saying that you, being a seller, must have a comprehensive understanding of the products that you’re offering and harness the power of Amazon Central Analytics report to effectively bring better revenue to the platform. Gauge the performance of these systemic cross selling and upselling on Amazon to outperform your own scales. The holiday season may witness a surge in sales of chocolates while sales of essentials such as vitamin supplements may show no fluctuation of demand as it is required all year round regardless of season. 

One of the best Amazon cross-selling examples for this case would be season special sales, which are excellent chances to leverage consumer readiness as they are more than willing to make spontaneous purchases. Say, during Christmas season, a buyer might find themselves extra generous and buy two gifting sets instead of one; or they’d feel like splurging a little, just because of the jolly mood (which he won’t consider otherwise).

Sellers can find scopes in offering bundled products which not only would serve them a better customer experience but increase the overall profit from a business point of view. 

Dynamic Pricing to Sway from Repetitive Sales Pattern

Dynamic pricing for cross selling Amazon is as dynamic in style as the name suggests. It is a proven way to increase the AOV while adjusting the pricing according to demand that keeps fluctuation with season. Given that the products are suitable for flexible pricing and are not sensitive to the changing market trends.

Based on Amazon Central analytics report you can identify trends and change product pricing to attract more sales. This strategy requires constant vigil to timely adjust the pricing so it can match market demand by pulling up the AOV.

Dynamic pricing approach not only attracts price-sensitive customers but also makes the most out of peak sale hours effectively.

For a Fourth of July sale, an established apparel brand ‘JX Cooke’ may run a sale on all Denim products. While denim is considered an ‘All American’ style, it is not sensitive to changing markets, and running a sale on Denim products before the mentioned occasion will amp up the sales generating more revenue overall. This is a perfect example of strategically changing the product-focused pricing strategy which aids in better sales. 

Run A/B Tests to Tap into the Truest Potential of your Thriving Amazon Business

As we talk about effective cross-selling on Amazon, there’s no way we can skip mentioning A/B testing. Just like the success of time-specific promotions varies from product to product, not every potential customer responds to every marketing strategy. 

A/B tests with different promotional tactics can help you get deeper insights into which segment of customers responds to what eventually contributes to an increase in Average Order Value (AOV). The comparison features of A/B testing tools allow easy judgment of effectiveness and running these quick tests well optimizes your Amazon Cross Selling and upselling strategies accordingly. 

Here are a few of the points to consider while making A/B testing work for you:

• Test out a variety of offers: Consider all types of promotional tactics like discounts, coupons, bundles, free samples, etc. to specifically keep the focus on understanding the motivation behind the purchases. This information can further help optimize or customize these campaigns. 

• Segmentation of audience: Understanding your target customer base can improve your sales in multifold ways; it easily divides customers among different demographics, choices, etc., which opens up the scope to implement new upgrades. The addition of new and improved features to existing products eventually leads to product upgrades (to keep up with the audience demand) which further leads to upselling. Although indirect, it has a major impact on a company’s long-term goals  and subsequent implementation of cross selling and upselling on Amazon. 

• Key metrics: To keep business decisions purely data-driven, metrics such as conversion rates, average order value, etc. can be the most practical quantitative measures for success rate to optimize your cross-selling and Amazon Upselling strategies.

Remember to test various offers, segment your audience, monitor key metrics, iterate and refine, and stay consistent with your Amazon cross selling strategy.

Stay ahead by staying consistent and making informed decisions following the above-mentioned points. To fully explore the true potential of your upselling and cross selling on Amazon, remember to revise these tactics. 

Offer Bundle Deals to Push Cross selling and Upselling on Amazon

Say you’re a photography enthusiast. You often search for camera equipment on Amazon. You can often find bundle deals in suggestions containing a camera body, a variety of essential camera lenses, and a memory card on your feed. And this is presented to you as a package with significantly slashed prices. 

While this mitigates a buyer’s obligation to look around for complementary essentials, it cuts down on the search time for these items. Buyers get what they want without facing decision fatigue and it increases its perceived value in customers’ eyes increasing the chances of them making snap decisions. 

Product bundling is an excellent tool for Amazon cross-selling. Say, if a bundle deal costs $40 while the items separately add up to a sum of $50, customers will be automatically drawn to the deal. This will eventually lead to higher AOV compared to that when sold separately.

Challenges you may come across when Implementing Cross-Selling and Upselling Strategies 

Competition

Often the spirit of upselling overpowers the existing product offering model. Competition can manifest itself across competitor brands or within the same brand itself. A certain product may win over the market quickly leading to competitors launching a product that is more or less similar all across. 

Unless you implement a competitive pricing strategy and comprehensive listing as a part of Amazon cross selling strategy, making your product visible can be challenging, leading to lower conversion. Besides all the benefits of Amazon cross-selling we can very well notice internal competition resulting in cannibalization of sales. 

Cannibalization of Sales

E-commerce platforms like Amazon often face challenges such as cannibalization of sales which typically occurs when upselling or cross selling Amazon strategies backfire, reducing sales of the other variants of products of the same brand which are often products with higher price margins. 

So even though we can find the cross-sell or upsell being effective, the overall sales are sabotaged. Amazon cross-selling best practices include preventing cannibalization to focus on its primary goal, i.e., increasing AOV.

Inventory Management

Cannibalization can potentially lead to inventory imbalance. Amazon Cross Selling often requires careful inventory monitoring as you do not want to run out of stock and miss sales opportunities! Hence, to keep up with the raging demand, establish a balanced inventory management model.

Going further, we can also witness cases where a successful cross selling on Amazon upsell can result in overstock of an established model which over time lost its popularity. This is an eminent challenge that sellers like you can avoid strategizing your upsell efficiently. 

Value Estimation

In other cases when the pricing of a new launch (an upsell) closely resembles that of the previous popular pick, buyers tend to prefer reaching out for the upsell that meets their price range while offering premium services. 

While keeping the prices of an upsell way higher than its predecessor can lead to complete abandonment from a certain segment of price-sensitive buyers, keeping it low and trying to stay relevant in the competitive market can create inventory imbalance and affect the profit margins.

The drop in sales of a previously established product is evident after a new launch but it is advised to plan your upsell strategy in a way to steer clear of such possibilities.

Final Thoughts 

To be successful as a seller in the Amazon marketplace, the best you can do is to stay on top of customer’s expectations and aim for higher profits. After all, you can leverage a plethora of strategies offered by Amazon.

Beating your competition can be not so complicated when you have the best tools at your fingertips. Of course, Amazon Central is your free database to draw easy visualizing insights about the products you’re offering but we suggest why not go a few steps further and uncomplicate those sales metrics to make yourself familiarized with the nitty-gritty details about your Amazon business.

You cannot control the market dynamics but you can surely stay ahead of the curve by making the most out of the tactics you have viz, cross selling and upselling on Amazon. It promotes product discoverability while presenting sellers like you with wider chances to market your products. As we part, we’d like to suggest a few free tools and paid services that SellerApp offers which can help you deep dive into your performance, ultimately making a huge leap in increasing your overall AOV. You can find our free listing quality checker and the keyword research tool extremely valuable for gaining in-depth insights into product offerings and their performance.

Additional Readings:
A Beginner’s Step-by-Step Guide to Selling on Amazon
How to Sell on Amazon as an Individual Seller
How to Sell on Amazon Without Inventory
Amazon Seller Calendar 2024

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