With 2015 coming to an end, you may be looking at your digital products and trying to work out how you can improve on the sales you have made this year. There are various definitions of ‘Digital Products’, but essentially if your product is something which is digitally based with no physical components or manufacturing required, it can be classed as such. If this sounds like your product, here are three ways which you may be able to increase your sales in 2016.
Create an App
An app for delivery of your product can provide you with a platform for all your products to be offered to a customer in a simpler and more efficient manner. By creating an app and putting your content on one platform, it enables you to display your whole range of products to a customer who originally only bought one but may be interested in your whole range.
Why an App Will Work
Creating an app, as discussed above, will offer an opportunity to present your whole portfolio of services and products to a customer. By creating an app you will be taking advantage of the developing accessibility of the internet, people can use your product at any time, anywhere using an interface they carry everywhere with them; iPads, tablets or smartphones. It also offers the opportunity to offer customer support based instantly through an interface you have created and can control.
Using Performance Marketing
Performance marketing is a specialised term which is often confused with ‘affiliate marketing’; the two should not be confused. Performance marketing is a model which is dependent upon using a network of suppliers, often members of the public, and offers them a percentage of the final sale as reimbursement. This differs from ‘affiliate’, which is based upon pay-per-click and leads generated.
Why Performance Marketing Will Work
Performance marketing is ideally suited for selling digital products as it saves you time and money on physically sending the product to a seller, which is the critique of traditional magazine-type selling models, and gives you a method of expanding your reach to people who may not have considered your product before. By using the ‘Performance’ model, the people selling your product are active-users of your product already; meaning they have a pre-existing understanding of the product and how it may be able to offer benefits to others, and so can help promote it effectively. Websites such as Click Booth provide a simple way to optimise your performance model, as they manage access to products and orders saving you the trouble of having to do so.
There are other benefits as well though: it saves you on the cost of mass-marketing a niche product, it allows you to save money on staff costs as you will not require a team to promote your brand, and it will enable you to gain feedback from the people who are both selling and using your product, which means product development can be based directly on customer feedback.
Embrace Social Media
Social media offers the opportunity to offer your digital product to those who are already dependent upon digital products to carry out various aspects of their daily lives; communicating, planning social functions and following the lives of family and friends online. By doing this, you will be tapping into an existing comfort zone with digital products and offering your product or service.
Why Social Media Fits with Performance Marketing and Apps
Social media is the perfect wrap for both ideas discussed above in different ways. With the app it offers the opportunity to extend the reach of your product in two distinct ways: it enables you to make your product functional and useable with an already established forum which millions of people feel comfortable using. It also allows for you to promote your product via sharing progress that users have made with your app, sharing what the customer has achieved and created using the service which you provide straight to their social media network.
Social media marketing offers a simple, and effective, way for people to share your product to their friends, family and colleagues. By creating a presence on social media sites you are both expanding your own direct reach, and providing support for sellers making them more effective with their task being much simpler.
By using either the app or performance marketing model, you will be able to offer your product to a wider audience and create sales. By embracing social media you are both making your job easier, and things easier for those promoting your product.
