Christo: Hi there! In this tip, I want to share the answer to a common question that keeps coming up: How do I get higher returns from my marketing expense? So one way to do this can be a little shift on your thinking; think about how you can maximise every sale because when you maximise a sale, you’ve then got a higher return like you increase the average sale, you’ve then got a higher return from the marketing activity that got them there in the first place. So one way to make our marketing work better is actually to make more sales, like generate a bigger sales amount, a bigger volume, like increase the average sale. If you sell for $100, sell for $120, and that way you’ve suddenly made enough money to maybe cover that advertising expense. And once your advertising expense is covered and you’re still making a profit, then you can increase the budget, you increase the advertising spend. So it’s always something we want to be looking at is actually what happens after the sale to increase that average sale amount. So a couple of things to keep in mind is if anyone’s buying anything from you at all right now, keep in mind are there~ upsell can sound a bit like a cheesy word—like, “Would you like fries with that?” it’s like you’re trying to like squeeze people for more money, but to put it in a nicer way, what else do you have that they could be interested in? Let them know what else you have. Like when you purchase something on some websites and it says, “People who bought this were also interested in this, this, and this…” you know, make sure that no matter what anyone buys, they see the other things because the reality is, as business owners we often think that our customers know everything we sell, or they’re going to look all through your website. But think about it—when you are a customer, when you’re buying something, you usually come into a business, you get the thing you want, you get out. You don’t go browsing through all the products pages and services pages and seeing everything else they offer. So it doesn’t matter if you sell a product or service make sure you show when someone’s buying something, we’ve got to think of ways to show them other stuff you sell it could be as simple as send a “thank you for your purchase” email and “by the way here are three other product lines or three other services, or, something we offer that you might be interested in as well” to increase that average sale. So then if you get that extra sale tacked on to the original sale, suddenly that’s come at zero extra marketing spend and usually zero extra effort as well because often if sometimes for you a sale might take a bit of back and forth, or a bit of conversation and that additional sale comes without all of that extra work. Another thing to do after the sale is there should be a process to ask for referrals, so if you can generate a customer who buys something, if they can share your products or services with someone else and that generates an additional sale, that’s still revenue coming from that initial marketing activity that got the first customer there in the first place. So it increases the results from that marketing activity once again. And that could be another email, it could be as simple as you know, “I hope you’re loving our products and services as much as we do; if you know anybody else who would benefit from these products or services, please forward this email on, we’ll look after them like a VIP as a friend of yours, or, if you can give them a “$20 voucher by forwarding this email”, or whatever works, but the key is: ask for referrals. Another thing you can include after a sale, obviously to help your credibility, is to ask for a review. You could link to Google reviews for your own business so people can leave a review, or on Facebook, or wherever you collect your reviews, but yes, we want to be thinking about increasing the average sale amount to increase our return from our marketing expenses. So I trust you’ve got some tips out of this one. Even if you think you’re a bit of a ninja at this it’s worth going back to your products and services and just having a look at your process. because I can guarantee no matter how long you’ve been in business, and how good you’re doing at it you can always make it better. You can always come up with better ways. It could be a personal video after someone purchases that says, “Hey Johnny, thanks for your purchase! Here are some other things we offer”, so there are always ways we can make it better and any questions, get in touch with the Basic Bananas team. Look forward to hearing from you soon!