A lot of times you need creative ideas for promoting a product but nothing particularly original comes to mind. Sometimes it's promoting a digital product... Sometimes it's promoting a physical product... Or even a coaching program or consulting offer.
With so much competition on the internet, it only makes sense to look for innovative digital product ideas that work.
In this article, we will talk about the 10 best ideas for digital product promotion. These are tips that you can apply even if you are on a small budget and still want to draw massive attention to your offer.
Digital products defined
Before we get started, let’s explain what the term “digital products” means. A digital product or a digital good is an intangible good that can be sold online. Digital products are downloadable to the buyer’s computer or mobile device.
Here are some examples of digital products: ebooks, whitepapers, software, apps, WordPress plugins, website templates and themes, Excel or other program add-ons, digital prints, designs, images, photography, training material, video courses, films, videos to help someone meditate, music, fairy tales and any sort of content in an MP3 format. These are just some examples…
Essentially anything that can be packaged into a PDF, MP3, video format or any other type of a downloadable file, is a digital product.
When it comes to acquiring, a digital product can be purchased once or come in the form of a subscription or paid membership. In this case, the content is hidden behind a paywall, and it’s accessible to members only. You may see newspapers use that sort of business model to promote premium content when you visit their website.
Promoting A Product
So many of our clients come to us because they have a product or service that they want to sell online.
They have a physical product, digital product, membership site, coaching offer or some other service that they want to sell. After all, that's why we're in business.
Sometimes it's a physical product to be sold on Amazon or Shopify. Other times it's a digital course sold on Kajabi or Teachable. For the sake of our conversation, the technology or platform is pretty much irrelevant at this point.
You Need Sales Material...
(Forgive me if you've already got sales material up. You'd be surprised how many people we talk to that want to promote a product online but don't have anywhere people can buy it!)
So the thing about promoting products online is there are a million different ways to do it. One commonality though, between all of them, is that you need to have some sales material to get a conversion... Somebody buying your stuff.
If you're selling a physical product, you're selling through an eCommerce listing on a Shopify store or through an Amazon storefront. If you're selling a digital product, then you need some sales material that paints the picture of what they're buying and what it'll do for them. You can use a video sales letter, a webinar, and an automated webinar, or it can be done entirely through email marketing campaigns and marketing automation.
The point is, you need to have a sales pipeline in place BEFORE you start promoting it.
Promoting A Digital Product - A Quick Test
If we're looking at promoting a digital product, what we'll do is we'll put them into two different buckets.
- If the offer is $1000 or more, meaning it is more of a complex sale, then we'll sell it from a webinar. So the webinar gives a great chance to generate leads, to bond with that prospect on the webinar, and then ultimately make a pitch at the end.That's the beauty about webinars, you can do them live or as an automated webinar. It is up to you in terms of how often you want to be sitting in front of your computer delivering this presentation. Most of our clients opt for automated webinars.
- If your product is under $1000, then we recommend a video sales letter or a multi-video launch sequence... Something that isn't necessarily an event. It's sales material that can be consumed at any time, all the time.You want to make sure that the sales sequence merits that price point. Meaning, if you're just selling a $37 eBook, then a video sales letter might be the way to go. If you're selling a $997 digital course that somebody logs into and they get a module a week, then you might need a multi-video launch sequence to justify that $997 price point.
Promoting A Physical Product or eCommerce Store - A Quick Test
If you're selling a physical product, then you at least need to have the listing on some sort of an eCommerce website up that has a sales page for each of the products in your pipeline.
It can be as simple as a Shopify store with sales pages for each item, including:
- A GREAT picture of the product
- A product description
- Product name
- Pricing information
- Add to cart or buy now button
- Products reviews
- Bundling option or product choices (think: colors, quantities, sizes, etc.)
Finally Getting Started With Promoting A Product
Now once we get to the digital promotion stage, there are hundreds of ways that you can promote a product. Here are some we like and recommend for our clients...
Content Marketing
Content is king. And anymore, blogging is synonymous with "content marketing." The word blogging just isn't cool anymore, I don't think.
Content marketing is where you blog and create regular content, posted to your website and/or social media. That content would attract an audience from the search engines or social sites, getting you traffic and exposure, ultimately helping you promote your product to the world.
Paid Advertising
You can go the paid route where you create Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google ads, Pinterest ads, Twitter ads, LinkedIn ads... And plenty of other places you can advertise.
With paid advertising, you're paying for every person who comes to your website or hits your sales page. Then, the revenue you're generating should offset the ad costs.
So if you generate $100 of revenue and it costs $50 to get that sale, then you just put $50 in your bank account (or in your pocket). So that times 1000 sales are where businesses, empires, product extensions, and global phenomenons are built.
Promoting the product effectively is the key, though.
What Our DFY Clients Do
What we do with a lot of our clients is a little bit of both.
Promoting A Product With Paid Advertising
We always start with a paid route, managing their traffic and doing lead generation for them... In short, working prospects through a sales funnel.
We always start with Facebook and Instagram traffic. Anymore, we always kick Google ads off early too, because anymore Facebook is a little bit wonky in terms of what they enable advertisers to do and some of the data that they recently took away that made their advertising so effective.
Almost 50% or our ad spend is going back to Google through Google ads.
That's always where we start. We always start with paid traffic.
Promoting A Product With Content Marketing And Organic Content
If you are promoting a product and you don't necessarily have an ad budget yet, or you don't have the money to put into advertising at this very moment, then the content marketing route is where you want to go.
At the end of the day, you want to build your platform. You want to grow your audience through the content that you publish.
That content can be:
- Videos like this one.
- Blog posts (also like this one)
- Quora answers
- Medium.com articles
- ... Or any other kind of article sharing sites that you can be an expert in
Everything should be designed to drive traffic back to your website, your product listings, and your business.
You're Always "Paying" Something
At the end of the day, whether you pay for your digital promotion in time or money, you're still paying for the product promotion.
I loved search engine optimization back in the day. I was good at it, and then Google decided to slap all of our listings. Overnight, multiple five-figure a month websites were halted in their tracks, suddenly producing zero revenue.
I can't be mad though - I let that happen. I let Google do that to my business because I wasn't looking anywhere else. I had no other traffic generation strategy. I was 100% relying on the search engines, and that is where we failed.
So about six years ago, I started getting heavy into paid traffic.
Facebook Ads Aren't The End All Be All
Now that Facebook ads have to start to become more saturated, it's harder to do it without content... Not impossible, just more difficult.
Ads are still extremely effective, don't get me wrong. They're just more effective when paired with a great content marketing strategy. That's one of the reasons why I always tell clients to do both, to make sure to have the ads up AND record some video for blog posts.
Take the time to dial in your content, to do content marketing the right way, and it'll reduce your ad costs long term because you'll be building a platform.
- Write blog posts promoting your products
- Start a podcast talking about things your prospects are interested in.
- The syndicate that material, the video or the audio, to whatever platforms let you syndicate that content to because that will grow your audience over the long term. You won't necessarily be as reliant on paid traffic or search traffic when you have both.
Have A Good Mix Of Marketing
In promoting a product, you want to make sure that you have a good mix of free organic strategy and a good mix of paid strategy.
The paid will oftentimes offset the organic in the early days, but you want to make sure to have both so you grow your brand and your following. If you don't and Google (or Facebook or LinkedIn or whoever) pulls the rug out from under you, then your business won't be shut down because of it.
Ways to promote a digital product
Now let’s look at how you can advertise a digital product to customers effectively and create buzz for your business.
Here are the most creative digital product ideas for marketing and selling online successfully.
1. Marketplaces for digital goods
One of the easiest ways to get a new digital product in front of the eyes of your customers is to sell it in a marketplace. There are different places you choose, and it depends on what your product is about.
For example, if you’re selling WordPress plugins a marketplace like Codecanyon would be where your audience goes for window shopping. If you’re selling digital or graphic designs, you may want to go to GraphicRiver or DesignCrowd.
Do you sell ebooks? Try Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and E-Junkie. If you’re creating training videos then Udemy or Skillshare might be the right place to promote your digital products.
2. Affiliate programs
So, you want to find customers for your business, right? Why not have others do the heavy lifting for you?
With an affiliate program, you can attract marketers, bloggers and small business owners who find your products complementary to what they already offer, and are willing to promote your products to their audience for a commission.
Use ShareASale or ClickBank to promote your affiliate product and attract potential partners. You can also create your simple referral program with ReferralCandy or by installing the AffiliateWP plugin to your WordPress website.
3. Live video
Using live video as a way to reach more customers is popular right now. You can start doing live videos to educate your audience and, of course, promote your products on social media at the same time.
Live video is very simple to do and costs nothing at all. Right now, the best platforms to go live are Instagram and Facebook.
4. Podcasting
Most entrepreneurs launch new products consistently to create new streams of income. When you know who your audience is, you likely get a lot of new digital product ideas that you want to create and sell.
Creating a podcast for a specific niche is a very effective marketing vehicle if you want to expand your audience and get your message across. Every podcast episode is a chance to educate listeners and sell them on your offer.
5. Product Hunt
Product Hunt is a paradise for digital product businesses. It’s where you “Discover your next favorite thing” if you’re passionate about technology.
So, if you’re promoting products like mobile apps, cloud apps or any kind of SaaS products you’d want to explore the opportunity of being hunted on ProductHunt. The product creator is called “Maker” and the person who discovers and promotes the new digital product is the “Hunter.” Anyone can be a hunter, even the maker of the product, but usually, you’d want to have somebody else talk about you.
Even ebooks have seen success on Product Hunt. The BAMF Bible is a good example.
6. Crowdfunding
Did you know you can get paid for your digital product before you even create it? With crowdfunding, you can.
It works by posting your project ideas on a crowdfunding website. Then, people who resonate with your vision can support to turn your idea into reality. You raise money to complete your project, and when you’re done, you ship the end product to your supporters. Crowdfunding platforms can be effective for promoting digital and physical products alike.
To get digital promotion ideas, visit Kickstarter and Indiegogo. They are both crowdfunding platforms for creative projects.
7. Co-marketing
An effective way to hack growth and generate sales for a new product fast is to create a co-marketing campaign. Co-marketing allows two businesses to work together on promotional efforts. Usually, the most popular brand will soft promote the other brand.
Now, let’s assume that you are new to the online space and you want to leverage the existing audience of another company or personal brand. When you establish a co-marketing agreement, you will be allowed to promote your new digital product to a targeted audience.
How will your co-marketing partner be compensated? Payment will come either through sales revenue (that is if you have created the product together) or by the commission if they act as affiliates.
8. Free samples
When you’re in the pre-launch phase of your digital product promotion, it’s a good idea to create anticipation and a buzz for your new offer. There are several ways to do that, but product sampling can work extremely well.
When you offer free product samples, you have a lot of benefits. One is that you can get real user testimonials. Another benefit is that your offer might go viral and have more people express interest in your upcoming launch. A third benefit is that you can get feedback and improve your product before you start selling it.
How do you go about offering free samples to promote your new product? There are many different ways, each with its benefit. You can run a contest on Facebook. This will target the audience that already follows you, and if they share it their friends may see it as well. You can publish your offer in forums, encouraging readers to visit your website to receive the product. You could also give your products to an online publisher, and they can run a contest to give away the product to their readers.
9. Landing pages
Promoting a digital product without having a landing page is hard to do. When you are preparing for a launch, you don’t need a full-featured website. However, a landing page is crucial to successful product promotion.
Use Facebook Ads to advertise using Facebook Custom Audiences. Make sure you install the Facebook Pixel first so you’re able to re-market to people who click on your ads. Also, give people the option to sign up for your newsletter and get notified of special offers you may have in the future.
If you’re promoting a training product, you can use sales webinars to generate demand. In this case, what you need to is create a landing page for webinar registration, prepare a webinar script with a call to action and, again, advertise on Facebook to gather registrations.
Here's a book that will help you understand how to convert your prospects into sales following a proven, automated sales funnel formula geared for conversion.
10. Blogger reviews
Having trusted people write about your brand is one of the top ideas for promoting your digital product effectively. People look for reviews before they buy. So, it is a good idea to reach out to bloggers, give them free access to your product, and ask them to write an honest review in return.
This will help you build interest with their audience, driving sales until you can create your buzz.
Smart Digital Promotion Ideas for Promoting a Product
So, there you have it! A list of the top 10 ideas for promoting a digital product. All of them are free or inexpensive, simple to implement and guaranteed to give your promo efforts a boost.
Products don’t sell themselves. You need to stimulate demand, and the smartest way to promote a new product while you are on a small budget is to tap into the audience of another successful brand. We listed some creative ways to do that, just keep in mind that you always need to reward the other party, either by offering a reciprocal service, or a percentage of the revenue.
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We'll get on the phone with you and walk through your offer, your product, your website, your promotions, all of that stuff and give you an action plan to get you started.