This is the second to last episode in a series of 10 podcast episodes/blog posts all about digital products. Check out the other posts in this series below.
1. How to Create Digital Products That People Actually Want
2. 8 Digital Product Ideas for Your Service-Based Business
3. When is the Right Time to Create Digital Products?
4. How to Find the Time to Create Digital Products
5. 5 Ways to Validate Your Idea for Your Digital Product
6. 5 Limiting Beliefs Keeping You From Creating Your Digital Product
7. The Tools You Need to Sell Digital Products
8. Digital Products vs Courses – Which Should You Create?
9. Your Digital Product Launch Questions Answered
10. Digital Products Not Selling? Here’s What to do
Creating a digital product is one thing but actually launching it is a whole other topic in itself.
During this 10-part series, I’ve spoken a lot about product creation but in today’s episode, I want to answer some questions about launching a digital product. These are questions that I’ve been asked by you when I asked what questions you had about launching a digital product on Instagram.
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How long does it take to launch a digital product?
This first question is an interesting one…
How long does it take to launch a digital product?
In all honesty, the answer varies depending on a number of factors.
- How big is your audience
- How engaged are they
- How consistent are you with your marketing
Let’s look at some examples.
Let’s say that you have an audience of 2000 followers on Instagram but you’re quite new to building your email list and you have about 100 people on there at the moment. If you know that your audience on Instagram is highly engaged and you know that the demand is there for your product, you could launch it within a month.
However, if you don’t get much engagement on Instagram, then I would work on building your audience, particularly your email list before launching your product.
The average conversion rate from your email list is usually 1-3% during a launch. Sometimes this can be higher and sometimes it can be lower. But let’s take 1% as an example. If your goal is to sell 10 of your product then you would need an email list of at least 1000 people. Now this isn’t set in stone because if your email list is very engaged, you could have 500 people on your list or even 250 and still make 10 sales. So whilst your audience size does have a part to play in this, the most important part is how engaged they are.
How consistent you are plays a huge part in how engaged your audience are. If you show up consistently whether that’s showing up on Instagram stories daily, emailing your list weekly, publishing a new podcast each week and you’ve been doing that for a long period of time, you’ll probably find that as long as your message is reaching the right people, you won’t need to do a lengthy warm-up campaign before launching.
Another factor to consider is the product that you are wanting to launch. If you’re launching a product that will be available for purchase all the time, I’m actually a big believer that it’s much better to work on making your product the best it can be and getting it out there as soon as you can. The reason for this is that you can grow your audience over time whilst still having a product to sell. You’ll still need to warm up your audience before you launch so isn’t it better to focus just on product development so that when you are warming up and growing your audience, you could still be making sales.
However, if you’re planning on launching a course, program or membership where there will be a limited time for people to join, you will need to focus more on audience building and nurturing in the lead-up to the launch so that you have an audience of interested, engaged potential customers to launch to.
The launch period including building your audience, nurturing them and then launching to them can be anything from 90 days to 30 days or even less in some cases.
Can I launch a digital product with a small audience?
The next question I received was…
Can I launch a digital product with a small audience?
I feel like I’ve covered a lot of the answer to this in my answer to the previous question but essentially yes, you most definitely can.
Something I recommend is launching your product to a smaller group of people first before going ahead with a bigger launch. By doing this, you are able to do a number of things.
The first thing is that you can use this to validate your idea. I talk more about validating your digital product idea in episode 22, part 5 of this series so if you haven’t yet listened to that episode, take a listen after this one but one of the ways to validate your idea is to pre-sell it. This can also be known as a beta launch or founding launch.
The idea behind this is that you validate your idea by selling it to a smaller group of people first. If it’s a course that you’re creating, you can then either teach your course content live or you can let them know that you will be creating the content as you go and that the content will either be dripped to them over a period of time or they will get access to the course in X weeks or months.
Now, this only works with a small audience if you have people in your audience that you know your digital product will be suitable for and you have a pretty good idea or not as to whether they will buy it.
The next reason I love launching a product this way is that you can use their feedback along the way. You can take it on board and modify anything before doing a larger launch to a larger group of people. If there are questions that come up that you haven’t addressed in your product, you can include it.
The final reason I think launching a product to a small group of people first is worth doing is that you can gather testimonials that you can then use for your next launch.
So often we focus on needing to do this great big launch and having a huge audience of people to sell to but when you’re in the beginning stages of your digital product journey, this can feel overwhelming. By doing it this way, you will feel less overwhelmed and more confident in what you are creating.
Should you do a big launch for your first digital product?
Onto question number three. This question is the complete opposite of the last and that is…
Should you do a big launch for your first digital product?
My honest answer, and whilst it may contradict the answer I gave to the last question, is that it is completely up to you. I know that there are some service providers who love marketing, are really good at it and have built up a loyal audience of people. They also have an audience of people who have been repeatedly asking for something that they have not yet created and now is the time.
If this sounds like you, then by all means, do a big launch for your first digital product. There are no right or wrong answers here. The way you launch depends completely on your personality, your business and your product.
There are most definitely business owners who have had huge success with a big launch for their first digital product so it can be done but at the same time, it’s okay to launch small too.
What can I do to warm up my audience before a launch?
The last question I’m going to answer in today’s episode is…
What can I do to warm up my audience before a launch?
Whilst marketing is something that can be adjusted to suit an individual’s personality and business, there are some essential things that you can do to warm up your audience before a launch.
1. Talk about it
The first is talking about the product you have coming up. I remember when courses and launching became a big thing in the online business world and there was such secrecy around talking about new offers until the launch day. People would hint that something was coming but would give next to no more information about it until the day it launched.
Looking back on this now, I find this to be absolutely crazy. We need to be talking about our offers in the lead-up to the launch in order to warm our audience up and to prepare them for what is coming.
About a month before (or slightly longer if you’d prefer) begin talking about your offer. Tell your audience what it’s called. Let them know what it’s about. Share the launch details and go behind the scenes to share what you’re working on so that they can get excited about it with you.
2. Target your content to the subject of your product
It goes without saying that our content should be tied in with what we are promoting at the time and it’s no different with your digital product. When you’re selling 1:1 services, your marketing is focused around the particular service you are selling so you need to do the same with your product. For example, everything that I am creating now in terms of content is focused on creating, launching and marketing digital products. This is because I’m working towards the launch of Expand Your Brand which is focused on this topic.
So depending on how long your launch period is, ensure that you are targeting your content towards your product in the lead up to your launch.
3. Focus on growing your email list
I’ve been in marketing for about 16/17 years now and if there’s one thing that’s stood the test of time, it’s email marketing. It’s not going anywhere.
Focusing on growing your email list in the lead-up to a launch is something else that I recommend to warm up your audience. If you don’t already have one, create a lead magnet that relates to the product you will be launching and start promoting that lead magnet as soon as possible to begin building a list of interested subscribers.
But that’s not all you need to do, you should also create an email marketing plan so that you’re nurturing your subscribers and not just leaving them to go cold.
Be sure to check out the other posts in this series. Here’s a reminder of them again.
1. How to Create Digital Products That People Actually Want
2. 8 Digital Product Ideas for Your Service-Based Business
3. When is the Right Time to Create Digital Products?
4. How to Find the Time to Create Digital Products
5. 5 Ways to Validate Your Idea for Your Digital Product
6. 5 Limiting Beliefs Keeping You From Creating Your Digital Product
7. The Tools You Need to Sell Digital Products
8. Digital Products vs Courses – Which Should You Create?
9. Your Digital Product Launch Questions Answered
10. Digital Products Not Selling? Here’s What to do
If you’re looking for support, accountability and guidance in building digital products into your business, be sure to check out Expand Your Brand, my 12-month high-touch group program for online service providers who want to grow their audience, launch their digital product and make consistent sales.