What is it that dictates whether a product sells or not? Of course the uniqueness and quality of the product is the key component but I’ve found that thoughtful and well-planned marketing is even more critical. Finding the right target market and connecting with them efficiently can not be overstated.
The way your product is packaged or ‘bundled’, pricing, and the psychological techniques you employ will go a long way towards increasing sales. For these reasons it can often be useful to look at the different ways you can present your product to encourage more sales. The more different versions of your product you present, the more people you will be able to appeal to.
How to Use ‘Bundling’
Bundling products or services is a great way to offer different packages to cater to different audiences and thus appeal to a wider audience. Let’s say that you have a product that performs a basic function such as an electric orange peeler (if you’ve invented one of those then you’re my hero). Now this product will appeal (no pun intended) to a wide range of people, but it you might be able to charge a bit more for it by adding more functions. For instance, if your peeler also has a de-seeding function or could also be used to peel different fruit then it might be possible to increase your asking price. But, by doing this you also risk scaring away the portion of your market that was looking for a cheap gift. These potential customers won’t want to spend a large amount on the extra features so you might find you actually lose customers by adding the features.
The solution is to offer two different versions of your product – one with the added functions and one without. Additionally you could consider ‘bundling’ your peeler with various other products to create a ‘gift set’ or a ‘kitchen toolbox’ which might include an electric can opener or an automatic nut cracker. This way you can then also reel in the customers that were perhaps looking to give a larger gift to a close member of their family, or that want to kit out their whole kitchen with matching accessories.
By giving your customers the opportunity to choose from different ‘bundles’ and to add or remove items from their purchase to suit their specific needs, you help to create a larger market and ensure that your customers are more satisfied with the products they purchase.
Other Benefits
There are other benefits to allowing your customers to choose the options best suited for them. One of these is a business term called ‘contrast’ which refers to the way in which you can increase the perception of the positive elements of your product by putting it next to another one. For instance if you make a ‘cheap’ version of your product then it will look like an even better deal when offered next to your premium edition – while the premium edition will benefit by looking like it’s even better quality and rich with features.
By increasing the range of products you can create a more significant brand. This helps in two areas. Online, offering more products with different names will mean more keywords that can bring up your items as results in search terms thereby improving the SEO (search engine optimization) of your product in search engines. With retailers, this is even more important as larger retailers do not want to go through the hassle of creating a new account for just one product. Each new customer takes a lot of extra work for the buyer and supply chain management, so they much prefer to consolidate their suppliers by working with those with greater offerings.
Creating Your Offerings
Coming up with these bundles is effective because it’s efficient – re-using the products that you’ve already invested the time and resources to manufacture. Often this can also help with your minimum orders as you can meet the minimum orders for the components and then apply them to different products. Think about what would a ‘lite’ version of your product should look like. What functions could you logically add to it? What other products could you bundle it with? Is there value in your customers owning more than one? Pricing, bundling, and offering the correct range of products can make a huge difference in the overall success of a product concept.
