#40 - Do you upsell?

It's a freaking win win for everybody. It doesn't require more emails, it doesn't require ad spend, it doesn't require anything. It's usually super duper simple.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready?

Ready.

Let's do it.

Hey. Hey guys. It is Kate McKibbon here from HelloFunnels Co and welcome to episode 40 of the Doing It Online podcast. Now, as someone who has been helping people to create, automate and scale their online courses for many, many years, I have racked up a few special party tricks in that time. Now, these are really tricks because that sounds like they're, you know, kind of dodgy and they're not. But more specific strategies that I just love to whip out and wow my clients with. And I wanted to share one of my faves with you today. And the reason that people love this so called, you know, quote unquote trick, or as I prefer to call it, tried and tested strategy, slightly less catchy. The reason I love it so much is that it is super simple to implement, it works really damn well and it costs absolutely nothing. So what is it? Well, the title probably gave it away, but this week I wanted to nerd out with you about all things upsells, what they are, why I recommend everyone has at least one and how you can quickly add them and increase your profit with them today. So let's dive on in. So first of all, what the hell is an upsell? An upsell in simplest form is simply a second offer. So think about, as you know, the good old analogy of the do you want fries with that at McDonald's? It's when somebody has come to you, they've already purchased one thing or are just about to, and you offer them something else that is going to complement that offer or make that experience even better, you offer them the fries. Because when are fries not appreciated? Right. Why do I love them? Well, first of all, because they increase your profit for, you know, once you've got them set up and you've found one that works. And yes, that does sometimes take a little trial and error, but once you have them, you can use them again and again. And what they do is they increase the average, we call it the average cart value or the average order value of your customers. So if previously people were paying 2.99for a program and then you offer them a $97 upsell and that's just one example. There's so many different ways that you can structure it. You know, all of a sudden a certain percentage of people are now spending an extra 25% with you and it's not a. And as long as what you're giving them in that upsell is truly beneficial and it's truly something that is useful to them. It's a freaking win win for everybody. It doesn't require more emails, it doesn't require ad spend, it doesn't require anything. It's usually super duper simple. That's what they are. That's why I love them. Now I wanted to walk you through my three favorite types because it's not just the ones that you're automatically thinking of. Top three types of upsells that I love seeing people add into their business. Number one is, and this is probably what you think of when you think of the upsell and it is the true. It's the fries, it's the candy lane at the supermarket. And this is the, either the order bump or the, you know, the one time offer. So this is where people are. The order bump is when they are in their checkout and you get, you can add this little extra box which says hey, would you also like this before they've actually purchased. And what that is is normally like it's a lower priced service, little snack that you can add on top. That's it is the fries, it's the chocolate bar. Or there is the one time offer that people see off directly after they've purchased. Which again is usually just a really, really easy Hells yes, a little something sprinkle something extra on top of what they've already purchased. I group those two together because they both happen in the same place. They happen in your checkout and at the time of sale. And you can either choose to have one or both or play with a combo. And usually they are on the lower end of the, you know, say monetary wise like it might be adding an extra 20 or 30% to a sale. They're not normally something that's significantly above the price of what it is that they've just purchased. Or they can be, go ahead, test it out. That's one of the best things about these things. It's all a trial and error. The second one is, and this is a course model that, sorry, a business model or an offer model that I Just love. But it's where people offer sort of like an ongoing continuity or maintenance program after their program ends. So if you have a online course or online program that is Maybe it's a 30 day challenge or it's for 12 weeks or whatever it is, you structure it like you take them through over a certain period of time, they get, you know, support and feedback in that time and they've paid for this container. Now if you do your job and you give them, you, you create a great experience for them, you give them great information, you help them, a lot of people are going to get to the end of that and like, oh, but I want more, I want, I want more help, I want to keep doing this. Or they want to stay as part of the community and keep working through stuff together. And that's where having a, I said like a continuity or a continuation of some sort of your support and of your offer is great. And one of the other reasons is great. You don't have to actually create anything new. It's just you can just allow people to stay in your support community. So whether that's your Facebook group or your Slack channel or however you run it, some people like to do, you know, the occasional monthly challenges, throw in some extra little tidbits every month here and there just for the continuity people to give them that extra boost. But you don't need to turn it into a full on membership site style thing. It really is just about hey, you like this, you want more. And usually the key that I've seen to making this work is some people offer it at the end, but I actually think it's a great thing to offer at the start. So you tell people when they purchase your original offer. So that original container, they also get one free bonus month to your continuity program or to your ongoing program at the end and then they can cancel it at any time. So pretty much when they, so you give it away as a bonus, that free months as an extra thing you can add in as a bonus, which is always good. So they're getting extra support and then they've already opted in, they've already said yes, yes, of course, give them some notice before you start charging their card at the other end. But you're going to have much higher chance of having people stay if you don't ask them or have to try and reconvert them later if you just do that right up front. So as I said, as long as you are doing your job or providing great value, a great experience, creating a great community, people are going to want to stay anyway. You're just making it easy for them. And just remember, don't be jerks. Make sure you give people some notice before you start charging their card. And then you it's going to add this extra recurring revenue to your business without you having to do all that much. A last final upsell that I love is what I call step one to step two. So unlike moving on to sort of like that maintenance program or that continuity program where they're not really getting anything new, they're just staying in this community, staying in your sort of galaxy universe and staying part of the crew. The step one to step two upsell is where at the end of your first program you invite people to then move on to a next step program that covers off the next sort of logical step in their journey. That next step is usually a higher investment as well. So up to three to five times the initial investment. And it's really just going to be for those people who, you know, got in, did like the dream client people, the people who you really want more of. It enables you to actually sort of step up, help them more, keep them as part of your, you know, your world, your ecosystem and actually serve them more as well. So that's the step one to step two type of upsell. All of these are upsells. All of these are super simple to set up. The second one, yes, it does require a little bit of sort of mini automated funnel set up we which is one of the ones that people in ecos Empire love setting up because it's actually super simple and he just is a real set and forget. But yeah, none of them have to be hard or complicated and they all help to add not just a better and longer experience for your clients, but they also help to increase your profit without any extra spend. And I think that's really important and really crucial. And it's a point a lot of people kind of forget about in this online world. It's just about let's just grow as fast as we can, as fast as humanly possible. And they kind of forget the good old tried and tested stuff of hey, how about we just offer something even better to our existing customers. So do you need any special tools for this? Yes, of course you do. It wouldn't be, it wouldn't be me if I wasn't going to recommend some plugins or some software or depending on which one you go for, you may need to upgrade your checkout. So if you wanted to do something like order bumps, all those one time upsells things like that. It might be time to upgrade to something like a Thrive cart, a Sam cart, Kajabi Kartra, clickfunnels, all those. Like you may already have one of those that you can use and in which case great. However I would normally recommend people do a step between before you upgrade. Like if you are thinking oh gosh, I don't have to pay for another subscription, you can simply create the sales page for your offer in whatever your existing, you know, page builder is and just do a good old fashioned after sale. People get redirected to that sales page with the next offer. Yes, they'll have to put in their credit card details again, so it'll probably be a slightly lower conversion rate than if it was just they could click a button and add it to their existing order. But it shouldn't be enough that you can't get a good feel of whether or not this works and it's going to be something worthwhile investing in. So that would be my little kind of step before the step if you're a little unsure, are you going to give this a try? Are you going to add an upsell? If you are, make sure you DM me, tag me over on Instagram at hellofunnels, let me know which one. And if you want a step by step plan to not just make more profit but to make more sales full stop of your online courses and offers than ever before, then that is exactly what we walk you through inside our epic new six day live workshop Six Figure School and it all kicks off on April 12th. And inside it I'm going to walk you through a six day intensive hands on experience to show you exactly what you need to do to market and sell your own six figure plus online courses in 2021. It's going to be super valuable and so much fun too. So grab all the deets and grab your ticket. It's just $66 at HelloFunnels Co school so hurry, click on over, grab your ticket and I'll see you inside.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today at stealmyfunnel.com.

Sam.