Selling digital products like e-books or videos (or even services) can be great, as they often carry much higher margins than physical products. However, people often place a much higher value on physical products that they can touch and hold. In this way adding physical products as a bonus can increase conversions.
This doesn’t mean that you have to offer all your products as physical ones – far from it! Instead, you should consider offering a simple physical product like a branded coffee mug, hat, t-shirt, or some other product that makes sense with your offer, as a bonus for those who take action fast.
Advantages of giving physical products as a bonus
This gives you three major advantages:
- First, it makes people take action faster because they know there’s probably a limited quantity of the physical product. If you offer a digital bonus then they know you can have as many as you want.
- Second, they place a higher value on physical products that they can touch.
- Lastly, if you have the item printed up with your name and logo, you also get advertising and keep yourself front of mind.
It seems crazy but you can actually increase your conversions on a $2,000 web service simply by offering a branded coffee mug or t-shirt as a bonus. You can even increase conversions MUCH more on lower priced offerings where you give something away that they perceive to be worth as much or more than what they’re buying.
For example, you could sell a newsletter for $19/month and give a free t-shirt away with any new subscriber, and that could in some cases more than double your conversions because they think the value of the shirt is worth more than the $19 they paid (and they’ll often stay for a much longer time, making you a lot more money).
If you include a physical product as a bonus to a membership offering, which has a perceived value to be more than the first month’s price, it can increase your conversions many, many times over to an almost unbelievable amount.
Have your bonus and offer be congruent
Another example would be if you sold a phone case for $29 and included a free charging cable with that. Since many of those sell for $29 or so themselves, the perceived value of the offer is huge, even though it might only add a dollar or two to your costs (and still give you huge margins).
You can do the same idea for services that you offer. For instance, you could offer a free cell phone clip-on lens with any purchase of a custom web video (justifying it in a way where they could shoot professional looking videos themselves from their phone).
It is good to have the freebie be congruent with what you are trying to sell. For example you could offer a free towel and sweatband just for trying out a one month gym membership as a trial.
You’d be shocked at how your conversions can jump even for higher priced offerings, and probably more shocked at how much they can help your lower priced offerings.
Perceived value is what’s important
It’s funny how even a $10 physical freebie can boost sales for a $1,000 product. Likewise, it’s truly amazing to see conversions skyrocket on a lower priced recurring offer by offering something of value that’s perceived to be more than the initial payment. Remember that it doesn’t mean it has to cost you more, just that the perceived value to the customer is more than if they bought it elsewhere.
This marketing trick right here has been responsible for some of the biggest money makers out there, as well as for others that we know. One might say that you could potentially build an entire business off of this tip right here.
So consider adding physical products as bonuses to your offers, as they can tremendously increase conversions for both low and high-priced products and services.
For other great marketing ideas to help you increase your conversions and grow your business, check out this book: 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.
