Why Your Brand Needs Digital Products
Are you ready to scale your income growth efforts
Tomorrow myself,
founder of Please Hustle Responsibly and Corey Gumbers founder of plan on discussing building and selling products during our “Shh, We’re Talking Livestream” at 6:00 pm MTN/8:00 pm EST (that was a long sentence LOL!) Online entrepreneurs wear a number of different hats: content creator, brand advocate, sales associate, speaker, marketer and more. However, at the end of the day we’re building businesses.We have to actually sell something.
Or, several somethings-consistently in order to for our business building efforts to become sustainable. The hardest moments in building an online brand in my opinion are the following: scaling, switching to a sales strategy and consistently building your list. Fortunately, all three of these activities are deeply intertwined. If you haven’t begun building out digital products or have had a mixed experience doing it-I’m sharing some thoughts and strategies below as well as 5 reasons why digital products are so important when building an online brand.
Affiliate Disclosure
“In order for me to support this newsletter, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please note: As an Amazon Associate I may earn income from qualifying purchases that you may make if you interact with an Amazon Affiliate link associated with Creators Getting Paid”
Reason #1-Serve When Your Audience is Available
This year I started to notice something personally and with my audience. They are excited to work with me, to learn from me and more. The issue that I’ve noticed is that sometimes I’m just not available for a “live” workshop. But, I do watch replays and love it when creators provide the option to access a workshop after a “live” presentation. Sometimes your audience is available when YOU are. Digital products allow you to answer a question and support your audience/community member when their schedule permits.
Scale-Teach one to many
List-Create an opt-in to your specific product (growing your list)
Sales-Sell during the workshop
Reason #2-Saves Creators Time
Are you getting asked the same question over and over again? You could design a free tool or resource that helps with the initial question. Then, you can build out a product that answers the rest of the question that your audience needs help with. Instead of offering 20 1-on-1 coaching sessions, once your offer starts selling you might decide to raise your coaching rate and lower the number of sessions that you would be available for.
Scale-Answer the same question with a tool that provides consistency in the answer given and is able to help numerous people at the same time.
List-Have your audience opt-in to the free tool (growing your list)
Sales-Sell your solution via an email sales funnel
Reason #3-Scale Your Income
Without YOU Having to do ALL the Work
One of the most interesting things that I notice over and over again when speaking with creators is how often they have to actually DO THE WORK in order to make the sale. You’re probably thinking to yourself, of course we have to do the work. What I mean is this:
Set aside time to coach your 1-on-1 client
Be available at different times for your high ticket clientele
Run the workshop
Host a livestream
Audit a product offering (etc.)
None of these product offerings are a bad thing. But there’s a point when you’re just not going to be able to do the work. You’ll naturally hit a capacity issue.
Reason #4-Platform Your Expertise
Don’t wait for someone else to uplift and highlight the expertise that you’ve developed. Building, marketing and selling digital products gives creators the opportunity to share their work in a way that is most authentic to them. Platforming your expertise via digital product can take shape in a number of different ways.
A book that compliments a signature talk or area of expertise
An on-demand workshop that helps your audience with a very specific issue. I’m building an on-demand workshop called “How to Make Money on Substack”
Host an online conference such as The Latinas in Podcasting Virtual Summit and the Latinas in Podcasting community.
Reason #5 Cultivate an Army of Brand Advocates
Many creatives don’t have affiliate programs connected to the products that they’re selling. Products provide an opportunity for fans and supporters of your brand to shout out your work and get whatever you’re doing in-front of adjacent or aligned audiences. It can be difficult building an online brand and having people actively (and unprompted by you) sharing your work is a great way to connect people to your brand.
Thank You!
(And What’s Coming Next)
As always, I want to say “Thank You” to all of the free and paid supporters of Creators Getting Paid-without you, none of this would be possible.
Summer is Almost Here….
While I tend to work more during the summer, that doesn’t mean that YOU have too LOL! I know that people are heading out on vacations, visiting friends and family and doing other things.
I will continue to offer Q & A hours, am currently batching a number of creator conversations and will continue working on making Creators Getting Paid a welcoming community and resource for you. Please let me know if there’s a topic that you would like me to cover or a creator who is doing cool things that you think I should know about.
Excited for tomorrow!