Which way to Market Digital Products

You've put in the effort in creating your very first (or newest) digital product, congrats! The next step, of course, is to promote the product and get it in front the users you made the product for.

Promoting digital goods and making sales isn't easy, but there are some tactics you can employ to reach as many prospective customers as you can and generate a substantial earnings. In this guide we'll teach you some marketing methods you can employ to start the ball rolling.

skip ahead:

•         What are digital products?    
•         12 methods to advertise digital products and increase sales
•         Sell your digital items and earn greater sales

First, let's define digital goods?

Considering how many people consume information online -- 5.18 billion people, that is to say, 5.18 billion people. many entrepreneurs turn their expertise, whatever it may be to create digital goods that which they sell to interested people. The digital goods comprise:

• eBooks
• Video courses
• Music and audio files
• Templates for graphic and web sites
• Photos and videos from Stock
• Software applications
• Mobile applications
• Coaching tools
• Podcasts
• Memberships

12 ways to promote digital products and make sales

To promote your digital products and make sales, here are a few steps to take:

    Build an online retail store, or site    

The initial step in promoting your digital product is creating a virtual storefront or website that you'll direct people to so they are able to purchase from you.

There are a myriad of methods to achieve this. You can use online store builders like Shopify and Gumroad. These feature-rich platforms permit you to create online stores completely from scratch, without any technical knowledge required. These store builders allow you are able to sell all sorts of digital goods, such as:

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

Gumroad is a great option for complete beginners and complete beginners, as evident by their tagline, "Go from zero to $1". Shopify on the other is a company that caters to users who have a wide range of experiences.

Both tools offer a wide variety of templates for online stores as well as a drag-and-drop editor for websites that allows you to customize templates to fit the requirements of your brand. Additionally, they offer tools that can help you increase visitors to your online store. Shopify, in particular, lets you download additional applications to improve store functionality and integrate with third-party apps to streamline the process.

Some other platforms which can be used to construct an online storefront or website include:

•         WordPress.org
•         Squarespace
•         Wix
•         Weebly

Unlike Shopify or Gumroad  the like, these services are free to use. However, they're self-hosted services which means you'll have to purchase:

• The domain's name ($10-20/year)
• Hosting for Web ($3-30/month, based on the 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.

    Join an online marketplace    

If you're new to creating and selling digital products You might wish to first join a marketplace before creating your own website or store. A few marketplaces online that you can join include:

• Amazon - for eBooks as well as audiobooks
• eBay - for various digital items
• iTunes is a platform for songs, podcasts, and videos
• Envato - for website and graphic templates as well as stock images and videos and royalty-free songs
• Udemy is a platform for online classes generally
• Creative Market  Fonts, graphics, and templates for your creative endeavors

However, the negatives, of marketplaces are:

• They usually make a profit from each purchase you make
• Your products are placed among similar items by other designers. The result is that you are less likely of making as much money as you can.

    Create a compelling sales page for your product    

This is a factual aspect of selling digital items: At the start the customers will not know who you are, so they're less likely to purchase from you unless you demonstrate to them the reasons why they should. This is the case especially if you are selling eBooks and online classes.

Contrary to popular opinion it is not necessary to be an expert copywriter to craft a compelling sales page. What you need to do is ask the following question to your intended audience: Is this suitable for me?

There is no need to list every detail about the digital item. Instead, focus on:

• What can your product do to help them solve their problems
• Why should they choose it (instead of the other products similar to it out there)

Here's a sample sale page designed to promote an instructional design course. Note how the text over the fold is clear about the target audience the course creator wants to reach, i.e. educators looking to use their educator skills within high-quality institutions.

Showing potential customers that real users have tried the product and gained from it is among the best ways to convert them to paying customers.

Why? because you're not the sole individual who's confirming your product's worth; other people are confirming the same. They consider: "If this can work with others, surely it will work for me, too".

    Optimize your website to be search engine friendly    

If you're trying to implement a marketing strategy with enough force that you'll be making sales on autopilot months ( or even years) after you've implemented it, try search engines optimization (SEO)

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

On-page SEO involves the use of niche- or product-related keywords within your web copy. In order to determine the best words to include in your sales and product pages Ask yourself the following question: If someone was to locate my item then what term(s) should they enter into Google?

These terms are your keyword. It is possible to use keywords or SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Ubersuggest to discover related keywords and their search volumes. When you've found your keywords, use them in your titles, subheadings, body copy, URL, meta descriptions images alt text and so on. As Google's crawlers scan the website, they will know exactly the content of the webpage 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 site effectively. This involves increasing page speed, improving user experience, as well as structuring data on the web.

    Design a content marketing funnel    

In the event that you're selling your digital item via a website (as instead of an online marketplace), you can create informative blog posts video, blog posts, or social media posts that educate people about your area of expertise and your product(s).

Just like the product pages you have, you can optimize the blog posts to be search engine friendly by using keywords too. Even if your pages for products don't rank but your intended audience could be able to find you with your blog post that is ranked.

As well as driving leads and traffic to your website, pertinent information also aids in building credibility and make yourself appear as an authority in your field.

    Create 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 as a sincere and genuine person."

In order to increase the number of followers on your following on social media sites Create and share posts (images carsousels, images, short videos, long videos, infographics such as infographics, images, etc.) to educate your audience about your industry/niche, explain why you start creating items in this niche, and extol the benefits of these items. If you have reviews from customers you can share them with your social media channels.

It may seem like your growth is slow initially, but If you regularly post content, people will start to flock to your page. While they are there, you can interact with them, and establish relationships by liking and replying to their messages and sharing their content, as well as giving shout-outs to those who've purchased your product.

    Run pay-per-click ads    

Building an organic social media presence takes quite some time before you start reaping the benefits. If you want to put your brand visible to a wide audience quickly you can try paying-per-click (PPC) ads. You've probably guessed that the pay-per-click (PPC) is a marketing system that requires that you only pay to advertise on websites that people are likely to click.

There are two types of PPC advertisements: paid social media ads and search-related ads paid for.

Through paid social media advertising You're running ads using the platforms your target audience uses. Before you begin your campaign you'll define the behaviour, demographic, and interests of your customers, so your ads will appear in the feeds of those who are likely to buy from you.

Paid-search ads however permit your advertisements to appear on Google results pages for search engines (SERPs) in the event that your targeted audience makes commercial searches -which means they're searching for something to purchase.

To increase the chances of having your ads clickable, follow these steps:

• Utilize high-quality, visually appealing visuals in the advertisements.
• Use compelling, but brief copy to present the advantages for your products
• Make clear a call-to-action that explains to viewers the next action to follow after watching the advertisement

    Make an emailing list    

SEO, Content Marketing and paid ads are all great promotion methods for digital products, but what happens if Google and all social media platforms go out of date (or crash)?

It may seem a bit far-fetched but look at what happened to social media platforms like MySpace, Friendster, Tumblr as well as Vine. I bet you haven't considered any of these sites for some time. When this happens to the major networks you use for promoting your products and services, then your company will be obsolete, too. You'll lose your audience and have to start from scratch to build your base of customers.

Things don't stop after people give them their email addresses. It's important to keep up with this relationship and keep your business in the forefront by consistently emailing relevant, useful messages to your customers. To make this process easier, you can use tools for marketing via email such as MailerLite, ConvertKit, and ActiveCampaign to streamline your email marketing. You can also segment your email list according to the behavior of subscribers, interests, and preferences -- and create personalized mailers to every segment.

These emails that are automated should:

• Give your subscribers information about why you do what you do
• Show them the way your product could help them solve their problems
• Help them understand more about your industry
• Inform them of any coupons, specials or offers that they may be able to benefit from.

    Be an influencer    

Because influencers already have established audiences using their influence, working with them may be a great promotion strategy to promote your brand. Based on the type of influencer and the size of their audience and the outcomes you're looking for You could pay them a fee or give them freebies in exchange to have your products featured within their articles.

Another alternative is setting an affiliate program that celebrities can join for the purpose of promoting your product to their audiences with the promise of a revenue share for purchases they make through their special affiliate links.

Whichever route you decide to take whether it's directly marketer marketing via influencers or affiliate marketing -- working with reputable influential people in your field can help you tap into audiences you mightn't have had access to otherwise. This also positively impacts the image of your brand, and improves chances of conversions and sales.

    Develop and implement an early-launch marketing strategy    

You know what's more effective than advertising your product's digital version after it has launched it?

Promotion of your digital product prior to launching it!

The process of preparing and running the pre-launch campaign will help generate buzz for your product before it hits the marketplace. Through this method it will help you build an audience of people that are eager to buy your product as soon as it goes on sale. This not only helps to avoid the dreadful feeling of no sales in the first few days, but it also teaches you more about promotion which means that the whole process will be easier as you continue promoting your products.

There are many ways to generate interest in your products prior to launch. These are some of them:

• Post clues on social media regarding the type of product you'll be launching
• Create posters and images of the upcoming item on your site to let people know that there's an upcoming product to be released
• If your product is an eBook then you may mail your subscribers an email hyperlink to go through the first couple of pages
• Organize an online challenge and the prize for the winner is the first access to your latest launch product

A pre-launch campaign assist you in promoting the product but it also gives you an idea of the amount of sales you can anticipate from potential customers who have stated their desire to purchase your product post-launch. You'll also establish an established customer base who you'll be able promote new products with ease.

    Offer discounts and other freebies    

Similar to physical products, offering discount coupons and other freebies to advertise your digital products could attract potential customers and motivate them to buy.

In the case of digital products, discounts can be as low as $X off your first purchase or discounts of X% for Black Friday, while freebies could include a no-cost email course, additional content or bonus chapters. You can also make smaller digital goods in bulk purchase to help you sell more the units you sell of your digital item.

Apart from encouraging people to try your products discount coupons and other freebies will also build your credibility and trust with clients, which can increase the likelihood of word-of-mouth marketing and repeat purchases. Also, you can make use of discounts and freebies in order to upsell other digital products that you create.

    Host a contest online    

Hosting contests and challenges online isn't just a great way to engage with your current customers. They're excellent at preparing prospective customers to purchase your digital item provided that the contest assists them in achieving a goal they have

An excellent example for this would be Avocadu's 21-day weight loss contest, which is posted in front of the public on their website.

Avocadu sells recipe eBooks as well as a weight loss program called"the Yoga Fat Loss Bible. Even though Avocadu has lots of positive customer reviews on its web pages for sales, it knows that customers are more likely to purchase paying for products when they're able to experience the product for free. This is what the fat loss challenge will be used for.

Any person who takes on the challenge for free and loses weight is likely to purchase the Fat Loss Bible program than one who has read reviews on it.

To make a winning challenge or contest, ensure three factors:

• The participants are there for a certain amount of duration. In the case of Avocadu, that's 21 days. For you, it could be as low as five.
• It is played out by people engaging in (or being encouraged to utilize) your digital products or lead magnets.
• The challenge gives you the opportunity to sell your paid digital product (or all versions of the lead-generating product) in the end.

Market your digital products and get more sales

Making digital goods can be an incredibly lucrative side business. But, the product you sell won't be sold by magic just because of existing. You have to make an intentional effort to market it to the people you want to reach.

The promotional strategies outlined in this article will help you sell your product, however, you'll have to work hard. It's not necessary to test all 12 tips at once Choose a couple to begin with and try them out. It can take some time to see if they're effective, but if you're consistent then you'll benefit and discover the best marketing techniques that will work for your particular product.

Check out our strategy guide for free here for additional tips!