The Digital Product Handbook PDF
The Digital Product Handbook PDF
The Digital Product Handbook PDF
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What is cost-based pricing? 55
What is value-based pricing? 59
How can I find out what price works best for my products? 60
What are the costs associated with selling digital files? 61
How much do successful digital downloads charge? 64
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Digital product ideas and tips for
creators in need of inspiration
You’re racking your brain, trying to come up with your next online
product idea. You’re totally lost.
But, here’s the good news: it doesn’t have to be that way. Because
although yes, there is a lot to cover when moving from idea to
implementation, it can be simple.
Today, we’re going to lay out that map. First, we’ll look at the
benefits of selling digital products, check out some actionable
brainstorming strategies, and then pivot to validating your idea.
After that, we’ll top it all off with simple steps for creating and
launching your digital product.
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So, ready to tackle your next digital product venture?
Then let’s get started with the most important question of the
day. Why sell a digital product in the first place?
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Conversely, the market for physical products, while certain to
remain strong in its own right, will struggle to provide the same
instantaneous satisfaction. In other words, digital products have
some serious long-term staying power and easy sustainability over
physical goods.
That’s not all digital product profits have going for them, though.
The lack of overhead costs is another major financial advantage of
selling digital goods.
After all, once your digital product is launched, you only have to
worry about promotional and other low-maintenance costs.
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As you can see from the above, 60% of her revenue comes from
her membership site, and 20% is generated from selling other
digital products, like ebooks and online courses.
It’s nice knowing you can earn a substantial profit from your digital
products, right?
Our next benefit explains why your profit potential is even higher
than if you were selling physical goods.
You never have to fret about running out of stock, and your sales
are never capped by your inventory capacity.
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Just as McCoy’s audience can purchase his $7 ebook without him
having to replenish stock for the next round of customers, you can
sell your digital products to as many customers as you can reach.
After all, once your product is published for sale, the bulk of the
work is done, leaving just marketing to maintain.
Unlike physical products where your hours are traded directly for
your profits, your revenue can continue to scale without taking up
your most valuable resource -- your time -- in the process.
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How do I come up with a digital
product idea?
To come up with the best digital product idea, start by choosing a
topic and listing out your interests, passions, and skill sets.
Here’s how this might look filled out with some ideas. Just for fun, I
collected some topics to create a cooking course:
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We’re looking for the ideas that land in the top right quadrant: the
ones that you’re excited to work on and that you’ll be able to sell.
But “How to grocery shop better”, “How to use knives like an expert”,
and “How to impress your date/loved one with cooking”?
Those are all excellent online course ideas with a lot of potential!
Pick the one that excites you and your potential audience the
most. After that, your next step is to choose a format for your
digital product.
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Want to learn more about your options? You may find more
information further in this ebook.
But if you want the quick and skinny on formats, here’s what you
need to know:
It’s unsurprising that the written word is thriving (and the creators
behind it are, too). All signs point to digital readership expanding
with little to no cause for delay.
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For example, digital publishing revenue reached $18 billion in the
US alone last year, and digital newspaper revenue reached an all-
time high of $5.5 million globally.
That said, if you’re not much of a writer but you’ve caught the
music bug, our next format is worth considering. The audio format
is also part of a growing market.
If you’re someone who has an ear for melodies and sounds like
Vincent Retg, creator of online course Melody Maker, you should
consider selling digital products in audio format.
You can sell an online course about creating originals, like Vincent
does, or explore other audio files, like songs, beats, jingles,
samples, sounds effects, and other audio tracks.
Not the musical or writer type? No worries. We’ve got two more
formats you can tackle, instead.
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#3. Create design assets
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#4. Make video-based digital products
You can create a stock video for nearly any audience covering a
wide gamut of topics and set designs, so let your imagination go
wild.
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All in all, these four formats are profitable digital products to sell.
His course comes with a mix of written, audio, and video formats
including 80 videos, one digital document, and one text file.
Regardless of the format you decide on, your primary focus should
be on your customers and offering them what they want and need.
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Pretty clear results, right?
Your customers.
The next step, validating your product idea, also helps to that end.
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What are some ways to gather your research? You can collect both
primary (first-hand) data and secondary (second-hand) data during
your market research.
#2. Poll your audience using surveys - If you have an email list,
email your subscribers and link to your online survey asking about
their struggles. On social media sites, simply send links to your
survey with the same questions.
Using free tools like Google Forms or Typeform, here’s what your
survey can look like:
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Some key questions to ask your audience members are
demographic questions (like age, gender, education, location,
and profession) and psychographic questions (such as hobbies,
interests, biggest challenges, primary goals, and resources for
new information.)
#3. Search for relevant online communities - You can use social
platform communities, like Facebook Groups, and online forums
to join relevant conversations and answer thread questions.
For example, if you’re in the healthy eating category, you can join
a Facebook group like Skinnytaste Community: What’s Cooking
Tonight? and strike up a conversation with 212,433 members.
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As you build rapport and relationships among folks in these online
communities, ask members individually if you can send a survey or
set up a one-on-one interview. Not everyone will say yes, but not
everyone needs to, either.
#2. Search for relevant books on the topic - You can easily use
Amazon to find books written about your digital product topic and
scope out the market for your niche.
The larger that scope is, the better. If there’s a large number of
reviews and products in your market, that’s a good thing. Rather
than competition, it indicates there’s a significant market need for
your topic.
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With over 3,500 reviews, this topic might be worth pursuing if
you’re in the health and fitness industry.
But don’t stop at finding a popular book. Dive deeper into your
Amazon search by perusing the reviews because there’s potential
gold to be found.
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You can pick up on finer details about the target audience’s
problem, what’s missing in resolving the problem, and what’s
lacking in the market.
Again, pay attention to how you can solve your prospective client’s
biggest problem and deliver a specific result in your digital
product -- if you’re doing that, your product is on the right track.
With all these ideas at your disposal, the world of digital products
is yours to leverage.
All you need to get from start to finish is the right roadmap.
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The most popular types of digital
products to sell online
Want to know the most popular digital products to sell online?
Access this list of the most profitable categories before you create
your next product.
You’ve been thinking about selling digital products online for
some time now, but you’re stuck.
Don’t worry -- with the right info in hand, deciding which digital
products to sell online doesn’t have to be so mind-boggling.
Ready to get started? Let’s roll out with our first format -- the
written word.
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Launch your online business with the
written word
For all you authors and writers out there, this format is one of the
most common digital products out there, so there’s undoubtedly a
market demand for it.
This format not only require little-to-no heavy lifting to create, but
it’s also easy to consume. You can distribute written digital
downloads with ease, and coupled with their low cost to produce,
they serve as great marketing tools.
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Sound like something you want in on? Let’s dig into the details,
then.
Ebooks
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Regardless of the file format you choose, ebooks should feel like a
comprehensive piece of content with a beginning, middle, and
end. Although it doesn’t have to be as long as a traditional
paperback, it should still feel like a complete “book.”
Guides
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And as a bonus, you can accompany your text with visuals to
enhance your reader’s learning experience, making it
advantageous to offer both the written and visual aspects within
your guide.
After all, readers like their images to be coupled with text. People
follow directions 323% better if you include both text and
illustrations.
Templates
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Say you’re a savvy copywriter and you’ve sent and tested enough
client emails throughout your career to know which sequences
bring in the highest open rates and conversions.
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Documents
All in all, written digital products are a popular way to go: they’re
relatively inexpensive to produce, and your audience can easily
download and consume them on their own time.
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Before we move on to the next format, let’s quickly cover who
benefits most from this category.
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Which means there’s a big opportunity here for visual creators to
capitalize on selling digital products that both engage and elevate
their audience’s education. Let’s check out the specific categories
and formats that design-related content tends to fall into.
Photography
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In a survey of 300 marketers, 40% of professionals say they use
stock photography most frequently of any type of visual, making it
the most prolific format in their marketing efforts.
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Think those ranges seem high? For someone at the top of their
game, it’s anything but. As an example, consider the case of the
professional landscape photographer, Max Rive, who sells his
images directly on his own site for $897 if printed with a bamboo
giclee finish.
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As far as industry trends, the graphic design industry is expected
to reach $15 billion in revenue as of 2019, which is an annual
growth of 2.4% over the past five years:
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And these days, people love infographics. People share
infographics 3x more than any other type of content, and
infographics can increase your web traffic by up to 12%.
So if you can turn complex data and stats into something visually
simplistic and aesthetic, designing infographics is a great option
for you.
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Interested in creating infographics but don’t know where to get
started? One of our favorite tools, Canva, offers over 50,000 free
infographic templates on their design site.
Custom illustrations allow for brands to stand out with their unique
look and feel in a way that stock photography never can.
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And authentic branding is important, with 91% of consumers more
likely to purchase from a business perceived as authentic.
Tip: As you’re creating custom digital art for your customers, keep
in mind the importance of color consistency. Color increases
brand recognition by up to 80%.
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By offering unique digital art, whether for the end user or for
businesses, you’ll be able to provide something very unique to
your audience.
Our next digital format accomplishes the same thing but through
individual components.
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Thinking about selling a particular font or typeface as a digital
product? Here’s a pricing chart to reference to make sure you’re
finding the best royalty rate. Use your base price of n and increase
your price according to each multiplier when you hit the next tier
of pageviews:
• Similar icons - useful for simple actions and concepts that are
easy to understand.
• Example icons - useful for representing things that are
commonly associated with an action, object, or concept.
• Symbolic icons - icons that represent an action, object, or
concept at a higher abstraction level.
• Arbitrary icons - icons that aren’t intuitive to understand. They
need to be introduced and familiarized over time before
becoming universally known as an industry’s standard.
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Finally, for those of you creating logos, here are a few key colors to
keep in mind -- famous brands have had much success
with primary colors and black (i.e., blue, red, yellow or gold, and
black or greyscale):
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So if you have a knack for design, then consider selling logos,
typefaces, or icons to leverage your skill set online. A good selling
point for you is that you can help increase the important brand
consistency required for growth.
We’ve got two more categories within visual products for you.
Templates
Which means the sky’s the limit. You can sell templates for slide
presentations, marketing collateral, brochures, sales sheets,
infographics, and the list goes on.
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So there’s definitely a market to find with templates. The only
guiding rule with creating templates is this: it needs to be
customizable and tailored for the needs of your specific audience
without being so constrictive that it’s too niche to sell.
The same rule goes for our final visual product, as well.
Printable products
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This gives your audience the convenience of not having to shop
around physically to find what they need, and it gives you the
opportunity to really stand out from the rest with your unique
designs that are exclusively available through your store.
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Now that you're well-versed on the various visual formats, let’s
uncover the matching audiences.
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And here’s another stat for you. Each person in the US watches an
average of 1 hour and 17 minutes of online videos daily.
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Short films, stock videos, and documentaries
You can sell your films to entertain your audience directly and also
as b-roll or educational footage for other content creators to use.
That said, the video format isn’t just for creators who like to hang
out behind the camera lens. It’s for illustrators, too, as you’ll see in
the next format.
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Animations
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Basically:
As usual, let’s take a quick segue into who video products work
best for.
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• Course creators and educators who want to include video
tutorials in their educational content.
• Storytellers, authors, and writers who want to turn their ideas
into films.
• Entertainment customers who want to purchase their favorite
animations, films, or videos to watch at leisure.
• Bloggers who want to complement their online content with
videos and vlog material.
Whether for entertainment or marketing purposes, video is
consuming more of people’s attention, making this a great format
to engage audiences with your digital products.
Now, lend me your ear for our next product type today.
Let’s take a look at what the market for this format looks like.
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More than 50% of the US population over the age of 12 regularly
listens to online radio:
All these stats point to a growing market for digital music creators,
which means you have a great opportunity to create and sell items
from your sound library.
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And now more on who you can serve.
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How the market for educational digital
products is expanding
This one is definitely a growing field.
All of them.
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Another great way to serve your audience through educational
content is to create a membership site that serves as a hub for all
the resourceful info you provide related to your area of expertise.
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As far as audiences go, here’s who to serve with your educational
digital products.
And that wraps up the most popular digital products to sell online.
Phew -- congrats on making it through your list of choices.
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The comprehensive guide to pricing
digital products and profiting
The right price can drive sales through the roof, while the wrong
price puts them in the ground. Learn the best way to price one-
time digital downloads.
Pricing.
Price correctly, and you’ll get increased sales, loyal customers, and
an enviable brand reputation.
There are several steps to picking the best price for your product,
from calculating your expenses to determining the value that your
customers see in your product. Today, we’ll take you through all of
them.
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First up on the docket is figuring out how much it costs you to
create and launch your digital download.
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On the plus side, cost-based pricing is straightforward when it
comes to justifying your price to your audience.
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Now, I know what you’re thinking: Letting people know how much I
want to earn from my product? I’ll never make a sale!
In other words, some shoppers will choose to pay for a higher but
transparently priced product even if it makes financial sense to
buy a cheaper competing product.
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Unlimited Brewing used a transparent pricing model from the
company’s beginning and believes that it has helped to build
customers’ trust in their brand.
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What is value-based pricing?
They released a car model in the early 2010s that was very close to
a Toyota car model but cost around $28,000 more than the Toyota
version.
Despite this price difference, the Aston Martin model was made in
the same factory and by the same workers as the Toyota model.
So even though the two cars were very similar in appearance and
function, the value Aston Martin’s audience assigned to
purchasing an Aston Martin car likely contributed to its being
priced higher than the Toyota model.
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Now that you’re aware of two major pricing strategies, how do you
determine which one is the best fit for your download?
Let’s tackle figuring out your expenses and after-tax profits first.
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What are the costs associated with selling digital files?
Even though it’s entirely possible to sell and profit from selling
digital downloads online, there are often more hidden expenses
to creating a download than most creators realize.
In the beginning, your only expenses are the time it takes you to
write the ebook, a Canva or Venngage subscription so that you
can format it nicely, and an editor to give it a few touch-ups before
you publish it.
But you also need somewhere to host and sell that ebook.
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Selling ebooks on your website can be the more affordable
option, but you’ll still need to minimally buy a domain name and
website builder or storefront for that.
As for taxes, we aren’t just talking about paying income tax; your
country, state, or city may also require you to collect sales tax on
whatever downloads you sell plus pay use tax on items you
purchased to produce your digital download.
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We know that sales and use tax can throw even veteran creators
for a loop, so let’s take a moment to refresh your memory.
Sales tax is an additional tax that you pay on top of the price you
paid for an item, and something that your state may require you to
collect from your customers.
Besides sales tax, there’s a good chance you’ll need to pay a use
tax on the items you purchased to create it.
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Now with all of the expenses, taxes, and fees that come along with
being a digital product seller, you’re probably wondering how you
could ever profit from selling one-time downloads.
The good news is that it’s not as hard as it seems, and you don’t
have to charge triple digits to see a profit -- just consider the
examples below.
However, while keeping a low price will attract more leads, you
don’t want to set such a low price that you have to double-time to
hit your profit goals.
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For instance, conversion copywriter and co-creator of Copy
Hackers, Joanna Wiebe, sold $10,000 in ebooks in the first week
after their release.
Joanna has sold over 5,000 ebook bundles since her books
launched in late 2011.
Scott Britton, on the other hand, made $1,000 in the first eight
days after releasing his first ebook priced at $2.99.
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He didn’t write his ebook from scratch, either; instead, he hired a
ghostwriter to put together a manuscript using a series of emails
he already had on hand and which he could later refine.
Excluding the time it took him to create the initial content, Scott
estimated that it took only six hours of his time for the ebook to go
from its inception to being published.
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Once you’ve narrowed down your prices to a handful of options,
then it’s time to test.
While there are multiple ways that you could test your prices, three
of the simplest methods are:
One of the simplest ways to see if your prices are realistic is to see
how they compare to your competitors.
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For example, let’s say that your digital download is a 60-page
ebook about urban agriculture for city dwellers.
Even though it’s full of the information you know your audience
needs, you’re afraid that the price tag -- $125 -- is too steep.
Do they like the content? Did you get as many sales as you were
hoping for?
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Do this until you reach a point where you’ve reached the
maximum amount of customers who are willing to pay for what
you have to offer, whether that’s your 60-page ebook or
something shorter or longer.
Your pricing journey isn’t over just yet after this, though most of
the hard work is done. From here, once you’ve analyzed the data
and settled on a price, it’s all about maintaining your best
practices.
Here’s how.
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Best practices for selling a one-time
download
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But just what makes email a high-ROI marketing tools?
Perhaps it’s high conversion rates, with one report finding
that 17.75% of emails resulted in a conversion in 2018.
Most importantly, you can use this point of contact to nurture your
customers, learn more about their needs, and provide valuable
information.
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Pricing strategy #2:
Use your one-time download to promote other
products
(Just don’t use too many CTAs. Few people want to buy an
extended sales pitch.)
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Bundling, on the other hand, involves putting multiple products
together and selling them as a package, usually at a slightly lower
rate than if they were purchased separately.
Of course, tactics like discount codes and bundling will only work
to a certain extent. To increase your chances of sales success, you
should make your download’s value readily apparent to your
customers.
Entertain them?
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To that end, you don’t want to limit your value exclusively to your
product -- it should also be apparent in your customers’
experience (CX), which is a term for the cumulative interactions
your customer has with your brand over their lifetime.
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from the get-go -- just continually seek feedback from your
audience about what could be better, and do your best to act on
those suggestions.
Once you’ve made your value apart, it’s time to release your digital
download to the public.
But that doesn’t mean your first few products will be hopelessly
undervalued or so expensive no one will buy them.
• Pick a price that will cover your expenses, taxes, and desired
profit.
• Compare the cost- and value-based pricing models to see
which works best for your audience.
• Conduct audience and customer research to learn how to
more competitively and profitably price your products.
• Test your prices using methods such as an MVP and/or A/B
testing.
• Follow pricing best practices such as making your product’s
value apparent, giving your audience an excellent customer
experience, and encouraging customers to join your email list.
As you can see, pricing one-time digital downloads doesn’t have
to be complicated, but if you want to profit from them, it does
have to be thoughtful.
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Ready to sell your own popular digital
download?
As you can see, there’s a popular digital product for every creator
to sell.
Let’s sum it up. Here’s a list of the most popular types of digital
products to sell online:
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4 strategies for launching your info
product
Why? Because it’s critical to get this one right before all the others.
A staggering 69% of email recipients report email as spam based
on solely on the subject line.
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Fortunately, with many email management systems today, you can
A/B test your subject lines to find the most effective option for
your audience. As you try different options, test subject lines that:
• Instill curiosity
• Have humor
• Touch on pain points
• Are personal
• Are straightforward
After that, the next ingredient to test is email segmentation.
This can significantly boost your open rates, like in the case of
customer relationship management (CRM) firm SuperOffice, who
increased their open rate from 40% to 90% after sending an email
to a segmented list.
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39% of marketers reported higher open rates after segmentation,
and 24% of the same experienced better deliverability and
increased sales leads.
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So, be sure to focus on copywriting and sales messaging that
resonates with your audience, ideally by using your audience’s
exact words in your copy.
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How many emails you send and in what order are ultimately up to
you. As long as your email content is simple, personalized, and
benefit-driven for the audience, it’s golden.
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The key thing to remember is that the primary purpose of the
webinar should be to educate your audience, not sell your
product.
This allows your prospective clients to get to know, like, and trust
you. Rest assured, you’ll still get the opportunity to sell your
product at the end. In fact, thanks to having built up your
credibility and trust with the audience, it’ll be a far easier sell.
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• A limited offer - this creates scarcity and an urgency to
purchase your info product
• Credibility - build trust among your attendees by showing
them why they should choose you and your info product over
competitors to solve their problem
• Social proof - include customer testimonials and evidence of
other people getting results from using your info product
This last webinar component is particularly effective because
people trust reviews, ratings, and testimonials from other people a
lot.
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sure to capture positive feedback, screenshots, comments, and et
cetera that you can use to build your credibility during your
webinar.
Our next strategy also helps build trust, though it isn’t quite so
high-stakes as a live event.
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Your free content, often in the form of a lead magnet, can be used
during the “awareness” phase of the three buyer’s journey
stages as a tool to help educate your potential clients about their
problem.
As you can see, you have plenty of options when creating lead
magnets and giving away free content.
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OK. Beyond lead magnets, we’ve got one final launch strategy for
you.
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To create an impactful social media campaign, follow these eight
simple steps:
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If you’re curious about which channels to focus on, the most
popular content channels are YouTube, Facebook video, and
Instagram. 48% of marketers prioritize YouTube as the social
media channel of choice.
In a nutshell:
Deciding on which info product to create and sell as your first one
doesn’t have to be a tough choice with the right research and
tactics in place.
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Once you’ve made your decision on the type of info product to
create and sell, the rest falls nicely into place with a few simple
steps.
To summarize:
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The complete guide for promoting and
selling digital downloads
Creating a conversion-ready audience for your digital downloads
is easier than you think. Here’s how to do it in four straightforward,
proven steps.
It’s difficult to imagine in this day and age, but it’s true:
Only seven of Emily’s poems ever saw the public eye during her
lifetime, and Poe spent most of his days desperate to make ends
meet.
They were both brilliant writers, but they suffered from a critical
failure to market (among other things), and their works -- pieces of
literature that form the foundation of many language classes today
-- languished in obscurity.
Which is where this article comes in. Today, we’ll walk through a
four-step system for promoting your digital downloads, so
whether you’re putting a new ebook on the market or selling
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creative assets, you’ll land your first customer -- and many more
like them -- in no time.
It starts, of course, with figuring out exactly who that customer is.
But if you’ve already prepared a product, don’t worry: you can still
market to your future customers effectively, you just need to put in
a little homework and find them.
And it does have to be in that order. While blogging and SEO can
draw customers to you, if you’re a first-time creator, you’re going
to have to find them first.
Now here’s the good news: someone else has already done the
work for you.
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Here’s what I mean. Let’s say you have an idea for a product that
will help other entrepreneurs manage their time -- maybe it’s a
printable planner. You’re passionate about maintaining a healthy
schedule and want to help others do the same.
You start with heading to the trusty Google homepage and typing
in a relevant keyword string -- make it something specific to your
idea like “digital planner for entrepreneurs” -- and then look at the
top results.
How do you know these are your competitors and they’re worth a
look at?
You won’t find subpar entries in the first ten organic entries on
Google’s search engine results page (SERP), I guarantee it.
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The higher ranked the page is, the more you can bet that:
Fortunately, you only really need to focus on the first three entries
on the SERP. 55% of all clicks go through those, with each lower
ranking receiving less and less user attention.
But, let’s set aside the intricacies of page ranking and get back to
your audience.
Start by following the first link on the SERP. In this case, it’s a list-
style article for paper planners.
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Now, scroll down to the bottom of the page where the comments
section is to find a treasure trove of audience information.
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From here, go back to the SERP and look at the comment sections
on the other two top-ranking pages. Do you notice similar
themes? Are people voicing their frustrations and identifying
challenges that your product can help solve?
Be sure to check out the social profiles of the websites in the first
three slots, by the way, for even more audience insights.
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However, a small caveat is necessary here:
While personas are an important step, they can’t be the only one --
and they can’t be used in lieu of real customer and audience
interactions.
Yeah, you might get Shakespeare out if you wait long enough, but
it’s not scalable or predictable.
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You have to talk to the people who will be in your audience to fill
in the gaps and challenge your assumptions, which means joining
the conversations they’re already having.
Combine that with the fact that 66% of marketers say they struggle
to understand their audience and 39% of professionals say that
improved understanding of their customers is their top priority,
and the answer is clear.
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It’s not just worth it to research your audience and build actionable
personas, it’s critical for success.
It’s also an absolute necessity for moving onto the second step --
the packaging.
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The elements of your sales page, which is the packaging that
wraps around your digital download, should inspire trust and
intrigue in equal measure.
Ironically, this makes the packaging for digital products even more
paramount than it is for physical products. At least with paper
products, ‘only’ 70% of your potential customers will judge the
merit of your brand based on the packaging.
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I.e., the language has to be readable, the calls-to-action have to be
clear and directive, the layout has to make sense, and the
performance has to meet user expectations.
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At least, that’s what practically every business -- from HubSpot to
Bank of America -- discovered when they created designs that
catered to their specific users.
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It’s not as simple as throwing a link out there with a hashtag. While
some products do indeed go viral, very few successful and
sustainable businesses were built with lucky timing.
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Why? Because 95% of consumers will choose a business that
provides content to move them through every stage of the funnel.
And moreover, it’s not hard to create and execute great content
that does just that.
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So you’d probably want to start with a piece of content explaining
the basics like you see MobileMonkey doing below.
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After users have entered evaluation, MobileMonkey then shifts to
bottom-of-the-funnel content by providing interactive demos
with chatbot templates.
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There are no immutable rules about what a content plan should
include. The only guiding precept you need to remember is that
as long as there’s content in the plan coinciding with each stage of
the funnel, it’s a plan that will cater to users whether it’s their first
visit or their fifth and keep them moving towards conversion.
They’re not selling anything with this content, but they are smartly
capturing a lead -- me -- moving through the evaluation stage and
putting me squarely where you want your audience to land with
your content.
In an email list.
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Step 4: Set up a lead-nurturing email
funnel
The value of an email list for selling digital products really can’t be
understated.
But when it comes to email marketing, that kind of ROI isn’t just
believable, it’s the real results from a company that sells paper
bags.
Granted, the average ROI isn’t quite so high, but the fact
nonetheless remains that email marketing is the top-performing
channel out of all forms of marketing, including the channels we’ve
talked about today.
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So why do marketers love email so much more than any other
channel for marketing?
For the same reasons you’re going to love it, too: because
their top marketing priority is to convert contacts into customers.
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The secret to pivoting on this lead-loving marketing channel and
selling more digital products isn’t actually much of a secret at all --
at least, not if you’ve read our recent article on converting
subscribers into customers, but if you haven’t, the process is
basically this:
And more importantly, they’ll bring your profits along for the ride.
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• Don’t use personas as a cop out from customer interactions,
though. The best products and marketing campaigns are built
from real conversations with real people.
• After you have a firm grasp on your audience, prepare the
packaging around your product -- the website, the marketing
messaging, and et cetera -- to suit their tastes.
• While there’s no hard-and-fast design guideline for packaging,
there’s at least one rule you can’t break: whatever you create
to sell your product has to be usable for the people you want
to buy from you (which is why you have to understand them).
• Once your sales page is ready for your audience, you need to
create and execute a solid content plan.
• At its most basic, your content plan should include material
that nurtures visitors through every stage of the funnel from
top to bottom.
• As for delivering that content and greasing the funnel, an
email list is the perfect channel with a seriously impressive ROI.
Set up a separate email funnel to direct users between the
stages and nourish them until they’re ready to convert.
If you market your products with the steps in this plan, you’ll have
more than prospective leads on your hands -- you’ll have people
as eager to be your customer as you are to have them convert.
And that, I think we can all agree, is the perfect symbiosis between
creator and customer.
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