You don’t always want to offer a special offer or discount to sell products on Facebook; not only will you slash your profit margins, but you’ll also devalue your brand and customers will become used to buying only during sales.
How do you get customers to buy more without offering discounts? In this article I’ll teach you how to sell more on Facebook without offers or discounts.
1. Dynamic Product Ads
Dynamic product ads are the most efficient way to get prospects and customers to spend more at your business without the need for discounts.
They work by automatically serving your website visitors product items they have viewed or similar items they have seen in the past. The headline and text is pre-populated from your product catalog with no mention of a discount or offer.
Why this works: Dynamic product ads drive more sales because the products they show are personalized to the visitor’s taste based on their past interaction with your website.
You can learn more about product dynamic ads here.
2. Take them off of Facebook
Every other Facebook ad I come across nowadays has the word ‘FREE’ or ‘discount’ somewhere in the title.
41% of consumers put off shopping in the hope of a discount or promotion later. This is partly due to what they consume every day on social media.
E-commerce marketers leverage offers and discounts because it’s the easiest way to generate a sale on Facebook and pump up their conversion numbers.
They sacrifice long-term profits for short-term gains.
Email is the best-selling tool for repeat sales and is a more direct form of marketing than Facebook. This is a fact!
Run more campaigns to gather leads and take your prospects off Facebook. Through Facebook and email marketing you can send more personalized content and products without adding a discount.
If you can personalize your messaging, you don’t need to offer a discount (see tip #5).
3. Does your brand need a new message?
When was the last time you saw a Nike or Apple ad offering a discount on any of their products?
They never do it.
They are two world-class brands that tailor their ad copy to focus on a particular message or product feature/benefit. Do you see any mention of sales or discounts on Nike’s Instagram account?
They avoid promotions and focus on messaging (inspiration and being the best). This type of message in the short term may not generate sales for Nike as opposed to a quick-cut offer, but in the medium- and long-term they can charge high amounts for their product without the need to ever offer a discount.
Apple’s latest iPhone is reported to be sold for over $1,000. Their customers won’t wait six months for it to come down in price (because that’s not how Apple operates). They will actually be queuing up for days to buy it.
Are you known in your industry for being the best, or for having the best offers?
4. Stop selling your product to the wrong people
I had an interesting chat one day with a client. She told me that 20% of her customers only purchase products when they run an offer.
She wanted to know how we can focus on this 20% of customers and get them to buy without offers.
I told her they are not her target market and she should forgot about them altogether.
Not everyone is a customer, and if you spend too much time trying to convert everyone, you can often end up focusing on the wrong audiences and allocating Facebook ad spend on the wrong audiences.
Using your CRM, filter out customers who only buy when there is an offer or tend to buy during promotions and filter them on your email list. Upload them as a custom audience and exclude them from all ads.
Re-update your lookalike audiences removing the 20% of freeloaders to ensure new prospects you bring don’t have their traits.
5. Sell features and benefits—not price
If a campaign doesn’t work, many in-house marketers will reduce the price or add a discount as it’s the easiest way for them to drive sales.
Discounts and offers are low-hanging fruit.
Instead of focusing your ad copy on the $20 or 50% that customers will save if they take action now, focus your ad message on the benefit your product or service offers them, like Rewind.
The ad copy starts with a problem their customers face and offers a solution (their product). There is no mention of a price or discount anywhere.
When you start to focus your ad copy on problems and solutions you’ll notice that you can sell a lot more without using discounts or offers.
Your turn
Is your marketing team focusing too heavily on discounts and promotions to grow your sales on Facebook?
If so, you might want to forward them this article.
Offers do have a place in e-commerce, but using too many or solely relying on them isn’t a sustainable business model for growth.
If you’re looking to grow your business on Facebook and are tired of giving continual discounts and offers to drive sales, get in touch with us today to see how we can help.