Which way to Market Digital Products

So you've worked hard in creating your very first (or latest) digital product, congratulations! The next step naturally is to market the product and get it in front the users you made the product for.

Promoting digital goods and making sales can be difficult, but there are some strategies you can use to get in touch with as many potential customers as you can and generate a substantial earnings. In this guide, you'll learn some promotional techniques you can use in order to kick off the process.

skip ahead:

•         What is a digital product?    
•         12 methods to market digital items and generate sales
•         Sell your digital items and earn more sales

What are digital products?

Considering how many people consume information online -- 5.18 billion people to be exact -- many entrepreneurs turn their expertise or expertise, however it is to create digital goods that which they sell to interested customers. The digital goods include:

• eBooks
• Video courses
• Music and audio files
• Graphic templates and website
• Photos and videos from Stock
• Software programs
• Mobile applications
• Coaching programs
• Podcasts
• Memberships

12 ways to promote digital goods and increase sales

For you to market your digital items and increase sales, follow these ways to go about it:

    Build an online shop or site    

The first step for marketing your digital products is creating a virtual online storefront or website will direct customers to where they can buy from you.

There are a myriad of methods to do this. There are online store builders such as Shopify or Gumroad. These platforms are feature-rich and allow you to build eCommerce websites from scratch with little to no coding knowledge needed. With these store builders, you can sell all kinds of digital goods, such as:

• eBooks
• Online video courses
• Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
• Music and audio file
• Memberships
• Digital art
• Videos and photos from stock
• Website templates
• Event tickets, etc.

Gumroad caters to beginners of all levels and complete beginners, as evident by their headline, "Go from zero to $1". Shopify on the other hand, caters to people with varying levels of expertise.

The two tools provide a broad selection of storefront templates as well as a drag and drop website editor that allows you to customize templates to fit your branding requirements. The tools also provide resources that can help you increase customers to your site. Shopify in particular allows you to download add-on apps to enhance the functionality of your store as well as integrate with third party apps to streamline processes.

Another platform which you could use to create a website or online storefront include:

•         WordPress.org
•         Squarespace
•         Wix
•         Weebly

Unlike Shopify, Gumroad, and  the like, these services are free to use. But they're self-hosted solutions which means you'll have to buy:

• The domain's name ($10-20/year)
• Web Hosting ($3-30/month, contingent on plans and platform)
• Premium theme ($100-200 once-time payments)

They allow you to create any kind of website you want, and you can add eCommerce functionality by downloading plugins like WooCommerce, EasyDigitalDownloads, and MemberPress.

    Participate in an online marketplace    

If you're just beginning your journey to creating and selling digital products You might wish start by joining a marketplace before you start your own site or store. The marketplaces that you could join are:

• Amazon to store eBooks as well as audiobooks
• eBay - for various digital items
• iTunes - for songs, podcasts and videos
• Envato to provide template designs for websites and graphics, stock photos and videos and royalty-free songs
• Udemy is a platform for online classes generally
• Creative Market  Fonts, graphics, and templates to create creative ideas

However, the negatives the downsides of markets are:

• They typically make a profit from each sale you achieve
• Your products are placed against similar offerings that are made by other companies. It reduces the chances of making as much money as you can.

    Create a compelling sales page for your product    

This is a factual aspect of selling digital products: At the start the customers will not know who you are, so they'll be less inclined to make purchases from you until you explain to them what they can expect from you. This is particularly true when you sell eBooks and online courses.

Contrary to what many people believe there is no need to be a skilled copywriter to create a captivating selling page. All you have to do is address the following question to your intended customer: Is this product right for me?

There is no need to list every aspect of the digital item. You should instead focus on

• How your product can assist them in solving their issues
• Why should they choose this product (instead of similar products out there)

Here's a sample sales page created with for an instructional design course. Note how the text above the fold clearly defines the target audience the course creator is trying to reach, i.e. Teachers looking for ways to utilize their teaching skills within high-quality educational institutions.

Providing prospects with proof that other customers have used your product and have benefitted by it is one of the best ways to turn them into paying customers.

Why? Because you're not the only one telling them of the value of your product; other people are confirming that, too. They believe: "If this can work with others, surely it will also work for me".

    Your website should be optimized for search engines    

If you're trying to create a strategy for promotion so strong that you'll still being making sales automatically months ( or even years) after implementing it Try search engine optimization (SEO)

There are three kinds of SEO: on-page, off-page, and technical.

On-page SEO involves using relevant keywords for niches or products within your web copy. In order to determine the best words to include in your product and/or sales pages Consider the following question: If someone was to locate my item which term(s) should they search for in Google?

The terms you use are the keywords. It is possible to use keywords or SEO tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Ubersuggest to find similar keywords and their respective numbers of searches. After you've identified your keywords, use them in your titles, subheadings, body copy URLs, meta descriptions and alt text for images and so on. When Google's crawlers index that website, they will know exactly what the page is about and will rank it accordingly.

In the end, it is about improving the performance of a server or website so that search engines are able to index and crawl your website effectively. This includes increasing speed and user experience and structuring the data of your website.

    Design a content marketing funnel    

In the event that you're selling your digital product through a website (as opposed to market place), you can create informative blog posts video, blog posts, or social media posts to educate the public about your industry as well as your product(s).

Similar to your product pages it is possible to optimize blog content for search engines and also include keywords. So even if your products pages aren't ranked, your target audience can nevertheless find you via your blog post that is ranked.

Alongside driving traffic and leads to your website, pertinent information also aids in building credibility and position yourself as an authority in your industry.

    Build an organic social media presence    

"You could just record in TikTok and it doesn't have to be perfect," she shares "It's authentic and real, and people know me for being a transparent and authentic person."

For the purpose of growing your presence on social media, create and post posts (images or carousels, brief videos, longer videos, infographics and so on.) which educate the public about your industry/niche, explain why you start creating products in that niche and promote the benefits of these products. If you've got customer reviews you can share them with your social media platforms.

Growth might seem slow at first, however if you publish content consistently the people will begin to visit your site. As they do, interact with them and build friendships by liking and responding to their comments as well as sharing posts and giving shoutouts to people who have purchased your products.

    Run pay-per-click ads    

Building an organic presence on social media takes quite some time before you can reap the rewards. But if you're looking to get your product noticed by a large number of people quickly consider using pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Like you may have guessed, the pay-per-click (PPC) is a marketing method that demands that you only pay for ads that people are likely to click.

There are two kinds of PPC advertisements such as paid social media ads and paid search ads.

Through paid social media advertising it is possible to run ad campaigns across the social networks that your intended audience is using. Before you start your campaigns you'll define the behaviour, demographic, and interests of your audience, so your ads will appear in the feeds of people who are likely to buy from you.

Paid search advertisements, on the other hand permit your advertisements to appear on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) when your target audience makes commercial searches -that is, they are looking for something they can purchase.

To increase the chances that your ad on PPC will be hit, try the following:

• Make use of high-quality and visually appealing images for your advertisements.
• Use compelling, but succinct copy to describe the benefits from your service
• Provide a clear call-to-action that explains to viewers the next action to follow after watching the ad

    Create an email list    

Content marketing, SEO, as well as paid ads are excellent ways to promote digital items However, what happens if Google and all social media platforms go out of date (or crash)?

The idea may sound a little flimsy, but look at what happened to platforms like MySpace, Friendster, Tumblr and Vine. You probably haven't even thought of some of these sites in the past few years. If this happens to the principal networks you use for promoting your products and services, then your company will be out of date, too. You'll lose your audience and need to begin from scratch to build your base of customers.

Things don't stop after the person has given them their email addresses. It's important to keep up with relationships with your customers and keep your company in the forefront by consistently communicating relevant and helpful emails to the recipients. For this to be easier, you can use tools for marketing via email like MailerLite, ConvertKit, and ActiveCampaign to automate your emails. It is also possible to segment your email list based on subscribers' behaviors or interests -- and create personalized emails to each group.

The automated emails will:

• Inform your customers regarding the reason you have chosen to conduct what you do
• Tell them how your product can help them solve their problems
• Let them know more about your industry
• Inform them of any special offers, discounts or other special deals they could benefit from.

    Use an influencer as a partner    

Because the influencers have already established their audiences and have established audiences, working with them could make a fantastic marketing strategy for your product. Based on the type of influencer you're working with and the amount of followers they have, and the results you want to get, you can pay monetarily or give them freebies in exchange to have your products featured on their posts.

Another possibility is to set up an affiliate program where influential people can sign up to help promote your products to their audience with the promise of a revenue share on purchases made through the affiliate link they have created.

Whichever route you decide to go with -- be it directly marketer marketing via influencers or affiliate marketing -- working with reputable influential people in your field will help you reach out to people you wouldn't have access to otherwise. The positive impact of this also affects your own brand and increases the likelihood of conversions and sales.

    Create and implement a pre-launch promotion strategy    

Do you know anything better than promoting the digital item after you have launched it?

Promotion of your digital product prior to the launch!

The process of preparing and running the pre-launch campaign will help create buzz about your product prior to its introduction into the marketplace. Through this method it is possible to create an online community of potential buyers who are ready to purchase your product as soon as it goes on sale. Not only does this help to avoid the dreadful sensation of not having sales for the first couple of days however, it will also teach you more about promotion which means that the whole process will be easier as you continue promoting your products.

There are many methods to attract attention for your product pre-launch. There are several ways to do this:

• Share clues on social media regarding the type of product you'll introduce.
• Publish posters and cover pictures of your forthcoming product on your site to inform people that you have a new product on the way
• If the item is an eBook, you can provide your email subscribers with a link to read the first couple of pages
• Organise a contest online where the prize is the first access to your latest product after it launches

A pre-launch campaign assist you in promoting the product but it can also give you a rough idea about the number of sales to anticipate from potential customers who have stated their desire to purchase your product post-launch. Additionally, you'll build an established customer base who you'll be able promote new items with ease.

    Give discounts and other freebies    

Just like with physical items, providing discounts and freebies when you promote your digital product will draw customers in and encourage them to buy.

For digital goods, discounts may be as low as $X off the initial purchase, and up to X% discount for Black Friday, while freebies can be a free email course, additional content as well as bonus chapters. Additionally, you can add smaller digital products for bulk purchases in order to increase the number of the units you sell of your digital product.

In addition to encouraging customers to try your products Discounts, freebies, and discounts also help you build credibility and trust with your customers, increasing your chances of generating word-of mouth marketing as well as repeated purchases. You can also use discounts and freebies to boost sales on other digital items you sell.

    Host an online challenge    

Contests and hosting challenges online isn't just a great way to engage with your existing clients, they're excellent at preparing prospective customers to be more inclined to purchase your digital products -- provided the challenge assists them in achieving a goal they're working towards.

An excellent example for this would be the Avocadu's 21-day fat loss challenge, posted in front of the public on its website.

Avocadu sells recipes eBooks as well as a weight loss program dubbed the Yoga Fat Loss Bible. Even though Avocadu has lots of positive customer reviews on its web pages for sales, it knows that customers will more open to paying for products when they experience it at no cost. It's the reason why the challenge to lose fat will be used for.

If someone takes the test without cost and gains weight is likely to purchase the Fat Loss Bible program than one who has read reviews about the program.

To make a winning contest or challenge, you must ensure three elements:

• Participants are required to participate during a set amount of duration. For Avocadu it's 21 days. In your case, it could be five.
• The players play by making use of (or being urged to utilize) your digital products and lead magnets.
• The challenge provides room to upsell your paid digital product (or the complete versions of your lead magnet) at the end.

Market your digital products and increase sales

Digital products that are sold online could be a very lucrative side hustle. Your product will not simply sell itself by a new. You must make the effort to promote it to your target audience.

The strategies for promotion outlined in this article can help you sell your product, however, you'll have to be willing. It's not necessary to test the entire list at one time; pick one or two to begin with and try them out. It may take time before you see results If you're consistent then you'll benefit as you figure out the advertising methods that are most effective for your product.

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