Welcome to the latest installment of our new weekly blog series, If You Only Do One Thing. Every Monday, we will discuss one thing that you can start doing today to improve your marketing performance.

With so much advice floating around from so many different sources, it can be tough for marketers and small business owners to know where to focus. This series aims to help you out. Last week’s thing was Promote Special Offers.

Today’s Thing = Free Shipping

Free shipping sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And it is. If your company sells physical products, you should offer free shipping.

Why? Because it works. In study after study, test after test, free shipping is the single type of promotion that works to increase sales and conversion. It’s why so many companies now offer standard free shipping on all purchases. It gets more people shopping and more shoppers to purchase.

If you don’t want to mess with your pricing, and you don’t want to be one of those companies that offers a lot of discounts, then you can use free shipping as your special offer. Even if you increase your prices to cover the cost of shipping, then promote the fact that you don’t charge extra for shipping, you should see an increase in sales.

You don’t have to offer free shipping on all purchases. You can offer free shipping for limited periods of time to increase urgency. Or you can offer free shipping on orders over and above a certain value, to increase the average order size. But you can’t afford to not offer free shipping ever. You’re sacrificing sales if you do.

If you only learn one thing about marketing from me, it should be that free shipping is the best offer you can ever make.

Share “If You Only Do One Thing” with all your marketing friends, and suggest future topics in the comments below or on Twitter @zheller.