With a rapid increase in digital technology and businesses now being fully-automated, the ability to understand consumers behaviour has proven to be more difficult. In today’s world, unless your customers have a problem, it is a rare occurrence to communicate with your customers before their purchase. 

If you are an online business and you are uncertain about your customer’s purchasing habits, it can be very easy to oversell and lose potential customers. This is a common occurrence among online businesses, losing the ability to retain customers due to their selling techniques. It might not be easily apparent to see that your customers are becoming less interested in your business, but there are some early indicators to suggest you are overselling to them. 

Here at Parcel2Go, we want you and your business to be as prepared as possible. Identifying the early signs you’re overselling will help you spot any potential problems, meaning you can become closer with your customers and increase your knowledge of their behaviour online. 

So, what are the early signs you are overselling to your customers?

 

 

1) Lack of Customer Engagement 

Ensuring your customers are always engaged is the key to success. However, this doesn’t mean you need to be promoting your brand on social media every 5 minutes. The general rule for content is usually 80% engaging and 20% promotional content. When you are creating engaging content, you need to understand your customer’s interests in order for your content to resonate with them. 

On social media, you might be seeing a lack of likes or general engagement with the posts you are sharing. This is a general sign you are overselling. If this is occurring you may want to formulate a plan to structure your posts and at a time when your customers are most active online. 

Formulating a plan for your posts on social media will mean you are prepared. If your engagement is decreasing you may want to include key trends in your posts or topical points that are relevant to your business.

 

 

2) Too Many Promotional Posts 

A common problem with online businesses is that they are trying to promote their brand all the time. This can lose engagement very quickly as customers don’t need you to promote your offers at them from every angle. You need to find the grey area for your promotional posts, the point at which you aren’t spamming your customers, but you are also resonating with them. 

As mentioned earlier, sticking to the general rule of 80% engaging and 20% promotional content, you will be able to successful post and gain customers. Plan and strategise when you need to promote your business. 

 

3) Followers Unsubscribing

Generally, most people input their information on your website to stay on top of offers or promotions. However, that doesn’t mean they want to see 10 of the same email in one day saying ‘Buy it Now.’

If you are finding that customers are unsubscribing to your emails or social media accounts, you are probably overselling. Your email marketing needs to be concise and engaging to your customer. Alongside this, you may want to improve your list segmentation to target customers who are interested in offers based on their click-through rate.

 

4) Products Not Being Added to Cart

In order to be a success, you are looking to drive your customers from the first point they land on your website to the point they finally transact. However, your customer journey might be letting you down. This can be due to your product descriptions and general navigation around your website. 

You need to be honest with the descriptions and content on your website, making sure you aren’t overselling or setting expectations too high. Stating the realistic benefits of your product is helpful to the customer, letting them know why they should buy your products.

Be concise and helpful, creating a helpful experience to your customer.

 

 

5) No Customer Feedback

There are various types of ways your customers can land on your website. Online reviews of your website are very important when deciding to use your website or not as this gives potential customers a genuine understanding of their experience.

You may have sent out customer feedback surveys out via email to gain valuable customer insights. However, if you have only heard back from a minority, there’s a good chance your customers are ignoring you due to your overselling techniques. 

This is a good indicator that your customers are paying less attention to you and your messages aren’t resonating with them. Go back and see how customers are engaging with your previous posts, seeing what you’ve done well and use this to construct successful posts in the future.

 

6) Limited Conversions Through Retargeting 

Retargeting can be an effective way of retaining customers that may have abandoned their carts or who took action on your site but never converted. 

However, if you have oversold your product or service to this person, you may have already crippled your chances of converting. Retargeting those customers is likely to be ineffective which will lead to poor conversion rates on ad retargeting.

It might be time to go back to the drawing board and re-think your selling strategy.

 

7) Declining Conversion Rate After Conversion

Sometimes after the sale, businesses can incur a poor conversion rate due to overselling. Aggressive sales techniques can make customers less enthusiastic about their purchase decision. Customers quickly develop remorse about the product or service because a business has oversold or set the expectations too high. 

If you’re not sure if this is you or your business’s techniques, look out for the following signs: 

 

• A high volume of returns

•  Declining customer engagement after conversion

• High levels of customer churn after a sale has been made

 

 

Conclusion

Here at Parcel2Go, we want you to stay ahead of your competitors by understanding and eliminating early signs of overselling. In some cases, overselling to your customers can be easily fixed by re-evaluating social media posts to see why there is no engagement. In other cases, you may have oversold your product or service on multiple occasions as you are receiving less attention from your customers. In this instance, you may need to go back to the drawing board. 

We want to ensure our customers are being looked after and that’s why we provide the most affordable postage costs at Parcel2Go. Click here to get your free parcel quote today!