Hi everyone, Hopefully you enjoyed your weekend. I spent my weekend finishing my Christmas shopping up. For some reason everyone asked me for gift certificates, so it made things easier. Gift certificates have become a very profitable business during the holidays. They make great accessories for any storefront. Gift certificates offer businesses a way to make the customer spend their money in that particular store front. And the customer is benefiting by getting to choose whatever they want. Do you offer accessories to accompany items you sell?

If you don’t offer gift certificates you should think about it. You can also do other things to give the customer accessories with their purchase. For instance if you sell musical instruments, you should also offer the accessories like; guitar strings, picks, pedals, etc. You could even throw a combo deal together to offer more for a better price. You might not be able to beat out the competition selling 1 item. But if you made the customer buy 3 or 4 things, you could give them a great deal and beat out your competitions prices no problem.

A good example would be; you offer a car stereo and make 20 dollars profit if you sell it. If you sell a combo package with 3 extra items with the stereo; Some monster cable, a crossover, and custom mounting bracket. All 4 items will make you 20 dollars profit each. Now you will make 80 dollars profit for the combo deal. But your competition doesn’t offer any combo deals, so they have to charge more for each single item sold. So you could even lower your profit margin to $50 dollars, just so you blow away the competition’s prices. Now you make $50.00 profit and still beat out the competition.

Selling accessories is a great way to make your prices lower. And at the same time, your customer is getting a great deal that they can’t find anywhere else. Even if you don’t offer combo deals, just selling accessories will sell your main items. If someone buys a camera at your store, you want to also sell memory cards, lithium batteries, and camera bags for the same camera. Chances are, the customer will buy everything you have available because they will need it anyway.

I see lots of online stores who just sell a popular item, but they don’t sell any accessories to go with it. You have to offer lots of ways to make the customer spend more money at your store. By just offering it to them, you are not shoving anything down their throat. So most customers won’t fell forced to buy, yet subliminally, they couldn’t resist because it was in their face.

By offering the accessories on the same page as the main item will also sell more. You see lots of online stores put things like “customers that bought this item also bought these with it” and you will see a bunch of accessories listed. This is a great marketing ploy that actually works. The customer knows that they will need it anyway. Most times they will buy it, just because you offered them a convenient way to buy what they needed anyway.

I hope this gives you some ideas on how to add more to your business. Thanks for stopping by everyone!

Lisa