How to market your first digital product - (Top 5 strategies)
Transcript
Congratulations! You’ve made your first digital product. Now how do you market that ebook, or pdf guide, or online course, or whatever you’ve made? Or maybe you haven’t finished making your product yet, but you’re thinking ahead to the marketing part. You planner, you. Fortunately, I’ve put together some marketing tips in this video that will help you get folks excited about buying your product even if you haven’t finished making it yet. Let’s get into it.
Welcome to “First sale to full scale,” a 10-video series that covers the journey from making your first digital product to running a full-scale online business. This is video 4 of the series and, today I’m going to share our top five strategies to help you market your digital product and get people eager to buy. Let’s jump into the first strategy.
Strategy number 1: Email marketing
Topping our list is one of the most effective marketing strategies, and that’s email marketing. If you haven’t already built an email list, definitely check out the first video in this series where we talk about how to find an audience and build your email list.
Email marketing is still a highly effective marketing channel, and with email automation, you can build a sales funnel that will continue to market and sell your product while you sleep.
For most digital products, we recommend creating some kind of lead magnet to get people to sign up for your list, and then using a five-email drip sequence to sell your product. That’s a series of five emails that will go out to new subscribers automatically on a schedule, with each email designed to pull the subscriber further and further down the funnel, so that by the last email, they’re ready to buy.
In this video, we go in-depth on the five-email-drip-sequence and how to set that up in Podia. For now, I’ll explain the purpose of each of the five emails.
Email 1: Introduce and engage — Use this first email as an opportunity to introduce yourself and ask a specific question related to the problem they might be experiencing.
Email 2: Share key insights — In this email, you’ll share specific knowledge or insights that solve the problem you mentioned in your previous email.
Email 3: Reveal your solution — Now that your new subscriber trusts you and sees you as an expert, explain how your product can solve their problem. This is what we call a soft sell. You’re not trying too hard to get them to buy, but if they’re convinced and ready, you want to give them the opportunity.
Email 4: Overcome objections — Use this email to address some of the common concerns or questions that might make them feel hesitant or hold them back from buying your product.
Email 5: The final pitch — If they’ve made it this far and you’ve done a good enough job answering their objections, it’s time to sell, sell, sell!
We recommend scheduling your first email to go out as soon as they sign up for your list, with the others following in no more than two or three day increments. You could even send them out daily. Many people join an email list already primed to buy, so don’t let too much time pass before you turn those subscribers into customers.
Strategy number 2: Guest post
Guest posting for an online publication or another creator with an established following can be a great way to introduce yourself to a new audience. This strategy can work as a way to build your email list as well as selling your digital product. On the Podia site, we’ve got a great article with best practices for making the most of this strategy. I’ll link to it in the description so you can check it out. For now, let me cover some of the highlights.
Find creators or publications with a following that looks like your target audience. The more alike your audiences, the more value you’ll be able to provide and the better your chances of winning over some new folks.
Center your proposal around providing their audience value. The next best thing to directly providing value to our audiences is pointing them to people or resources that will help them.
Offer yourself with no strings attached. More often than not, the person or publication for whom you’re guest posting will give you an opportunity to tell people who you are and where they can find you online. In some cases, they’ll even encourage you to make a sales pitch. Don’t go in expecting this, but be ready to sell if they give you the opportunity.
Don’t just go after the big names. While it’s definitely possible to work your network and connect with someone who has hundreds of thousands of followers, marketing data suggests that guest posting is most effective, meaning you get a higher percentage of engaged subscribers, when guest posting for micro-influencers, or influencers with an audience size between 1,000 and 100,000.
It’s important to note that while this is a powerful strategy, building the relationships necessary to make it work takes time, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t get a ton of yes’s right away.
Strategy number 3: Host a free webinar
Webinars are a fun and engaging way to sell your digital product. They’re similar to the email marketing strategy in that you typically offer some kind of free value to get people to show up, then use the webinar as a kind of live sales funnel, encouraging attendees to buy your product by the end of the session. We made a whole series about webinars, including equipment recommendations and tips for making them more engaging, which you can check out here. For now, just remember these tips:
Get people to attend by promising to solve a small problem related to your product.
Be sure to fulfill your promise with the content of your webinar.
Explain how your product could solve a bigger or related problem.
Consider offering some kind of bonus or deal to people who buy your product within a certain window.
And a bonus tip for webinars. Live webinars can be really engaging, but pre-recorded webinars can be just as useful as a sales tool, or even as a stand-alone digital product.
Strategy number 4: Get customer reviews
Reviews provide a vital piece of the marketing puzzle: social proof. But how do you get customer reviews before you’ve gotten customers?
Two words: Beta-version.
Find a group of 15–20 people. These could be people in your audience, friends, or even family, but try to get folks who are most like your target audience. Invite them to be a part of a special group who gets access to the “beta-version” of your digital product in return for their honest review.
Most people will be excited to get access and happy to share their review, though you may need to give them a gentle nudge. When asking for a review, ask for specific feedback about their experience with your product. Ask them for stories of how it helped them or solved their problem.
You can use these reviews on social media, in your email marketing, in your webinars, and most importantly, on your sales page, which is what we’re going to talk about next.
Strategy number 5: Build a sales page
Even before you’ve finished making your product, you can build a sales page and even start getting sales prior to launch. In the next video in this series, we’re going to do a deep dive into what makes an effective sales page. For now, in addition to a big, beautiful buy button, consider including the following:
A product description. When describing your product, focus the content on your potential customer’s problem and the specific way in which your problem solves it.
Testimonials. Social proof helps potential customers feel like they’d be making a smart decision by purchasing your product.
Frequently asked questions. Take this as an opportunity to address common concerns, questions, and objections.
A creator bio. It may seem like talking about yourself on a sales page would be counter-intuitive, which is why your creator bio is not going to be about you, but about your customer. Or put another way, it’s about how you became aware of their problem, and what qualifies you to create a solution.
An email list sign-up. Not everyone who visits your sales page will be ready to buy right away, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future. Your email list provides a way for them to stay connected to you, opening up the possibility that they’ll buy something from you when they’re ready.
And those are our top five strategies for marketing your digital product. If you have an effective marketing strategy we didn’t mention, tell us about it in the comments. In the next video, we’ll go into even more depth on building an effective sales page, but for now, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.
If you found this video helpful and you want more content like this, click the subscribe button and hit the notification bell so you’ll be sure not to miss any future videos. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
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