Few things will grant you financial freedom in your service-based business like a loyal community of true fans that can’t wait for your next product drop. In fact, it was argued by Wired writer Kevin Kelly in 2008 that if you can create 1,000 true fans of your brand as a creative, you will be able to make $100,000 per year passively. A concept since proven many times over.
But building that loyal community of true fans is going to be impossible if you don’t shift the way you look at your offer suite from being a series of transactions to a series of touch points in your relationship.
In fact, every offer and digital product you create offers a powerful opportunity for you to convert a complete stranger into your biggest fan if you approach it correctly. So today’s post is dedicated to helping you fine-tune your digital products to immediately spark repeat sales, referrals at scale and a growing collection of loyal fans.
Shift Your Mindset Before You Do Anything
If you’re anything like most coaches and you’re still taking clients while developing your digital product offer suite, you’re not willing to take on any more work unless you can be confident that it will move the needle.
And I respect the fuck out of that because you should be discerning!
So let’s make sure that we set ourselves up for success with today’s strategies by laying the mindset foundation first. As I always say, there is no amount of money or marketing or fancy tech in the world that can make your business successful if your mindset isn’t right.
So before you roll up your sleeves with today’s actionable takeaways, it’s crucial that you shift your perspective around the roll your digital products play in your relationship with your audience. The biggest difference between digital product stores that convert around the clock and those that sit stagnant for months is the successful stores treat every piece of a product as a relationship-building touchpoint.
That means before you go any further, you need to shift your mindset to see transactions as touchpoints and every page of every digital planner or journal or course workbook as an opportunity to make them fall in love with you.
Which of course means, you need to see those opportunities as another opportunity to make a meaningful difference in their life and allow them the chance to experience pride as a result.
8 Money-Making Mindset Shifts You Need To Make To Be Successful With Digital Products
1. From Transactions to Relationships: Shift from viewing sales of digital products as mere transactions to seeing them as opportunities to deepen relationships with your audience. Every purchase is a step closer to a loyal community member.
2. Value Beyond the Sale: Recognize the value your digital products bring to your audience beyond the initial sale. This includes the impact on their lives, the solutions provided, and the ongoing support through your content.
3. Quality Over Quantity: Focus on the quality of your digital products rather than the quantity. A well-crafted course or product that genuinely helps your audience is more valuable than numerous low-effort offerings.
4. Community Engagement as a Priority: Prioritize engaging with your community and gathering feedback to improve and tailor your digital products. This engagement shows you value their input and are committed to serving their needs.
5. Long-Term Vision Over Short-Term Gains: Adopt a long-term vision for your digital products. Consider how each product fits into your overall brand and how it can contribute to building a loyal fan base over time.
6. Empowerment Through Education: Shift from selling a product to empowering your audience through education. Your digital products should aim to educate, inspire, and enable your audience to achieve their goals.
7. Authenticity in Every Offer: Be authentic in every digital product you create. Your audience is looking for genuine solutions, and being authentic in your offerings will build trust and loyalty.
8. From Passive Income to Active Community Building: While digital products can provide passive income, shift your mindset to see them as tools for active community building. Engage with your customers post-purchase, encourage them to share their experiences, and create spaces for them to connect with each other.
Incorporating these mindset shifts can help you transform your digital product suite from a series of one-off transactions to a cohesive strategy for building a loyal and engaged community around your brand.
How To Nurture Your Client Relationships Through Every Digital Product Touch Point
Every Queen in the coaching industry is obsessed with building a thriving community and wielding her influence to empower her clients to improve their lives. But very few realize that their existing digital products are a goldmine of opportunities to do that passively at scale.
Let’s break down some practical and actionable steps you (or your assistant) can start taking in the next 30 minutes to make a meaningful difference in your lifetime customer value.
Practical Strategies for deepening your connection through every product
- Include a letter from you inside the product pages
- Add links or QR codes leading to videos that take them behind the scenes of creative it and the story of why you did or deeper into the subject matter itself
- Invite them to your private community in the delivery file, the delivery email and the product itself
- Send a personalized email, hand-written note or FB message after the purchase
- Have your VA follow them on various platforms or set up an automation to do it through a tool like Zapier to be even more cost-effective
Incorporate Buyer Feedback
The more you allow your customers and clients to feel seen and heard through your offers, the sooner you will start triggering stampedes of them to your sales pages. The best way to do this is to leverage the questions and comments they give pose for each of your products.
Keep a swipe file or develop a system that works for you for tracking customer service questions that come in organized by each offer you create. Those questions indicate gaps you can fill with content inside your community and in your next round of product updates.
Gamify your offer suite using tools like Gamipress plugin for WordPress
One of the most common questions I get when it comes to website and UX development is how to gamify a website, or membership or course to increase engagement and loyalty.
This topic has been trending even more lately with the recent release of Alex Hermozi’s Skool app which almost immediately became a toxic incubator dominated by male shovenists. Since women are uncomfortable bringing their clients onto that platform but many users seem to enjoy Skool’s leaderboard and scoring system that rewards community members for participation, I have to introduce you to Gamipress WordPress Plugin. It offers all the same trendy features and its open source which is why I will again remind you to move your site to WordPress if you haven’t yet.
Through Gamipress you can encourage buyers and clients to come back to your website daily to engage with your content, share your content and improve your SEO scoring which will attract more organic buyers.
Focus On The Final Stages Of The Heroine’s Journey First
Create products tailored to the final stages of your clients’ heroine journey first to attract active repeat buyers before creating content for those in the awareness stage. Recently I recorded this free video training where I show you how to map your entire offer suite and content strategy to your clients’ heroine journey. At the end, I explain how important it is to focus on targeting clients toward the final stages of that journey first rather than those at the beginning. This is the most common and expensive sales mistake I see coaches and service providers make daily.
Why Is It Crucial To Reverse Your Sales Funnel?
- Buyers in the final stages of the journey will be more active in your community
- They are more likely to refer new members
- They will be less overwhelmed by theory and more interested in providing peer-to-peer feedback and support on your behalf
- When the beginners come you will already have the pond stocked with community members that will answer questions and give support as if they were getting paid to do it
- If anyone tries to rip off your products they will come to your defense in a major way!
Upselling From Your Digital Product Delivery Files
If you are selling digital products like planners, workbooks and courses then odds are you send a delivery PDF and email automatically when someone makes a purcahse. However, most of the time I see delivery files that do little more than leave a quick thank you note and the link to download the product.
If you have fallen into this trap, fear not because I am going to show you how to make a few simple tweaks to your digital product delivery files to immediately move the needle.
Digital Product Delivery File Checklist:
- Add your picture for additional brand recognition
- Add a link to leave you a Google review
- Add a special coupon code for a related product
- Add a link to join your community/facebook group
- Add a special offer to join your membership
- Add frequently asked questions relevant to that specific product
- Add a link or QR code to a video training or video walkthrough of the product with your personalized tips for making the most out of every page.
- Add a link to become a free member of your website to earn special perks using GamiPress
- Invite her to join your birthday club where you automatically send out a free digital product gift during her birthday week
You can see how each and every one of these money-making tasks will go a long way to deepen your relationship from the very first sale and nurture them from a stranger into a lifelong fan.
The best part?
These tasks are really simple, can be performed by a via, and you can create a template like the ones below to streamline the process even further. You can even see how I add links to Canva training videos for anyone who purchases a template in case they don’t know how to use it. This is intuitive and preventative customer service that builds trust & Youtube stats simultaneously.
As you can see, the most successful coaches, digital product sellers and membership site owners don’t treat their sales as transactions. They treat them as opportunities to provide a meaningful ripple effect in someone’s life and community to extend their own legacy. They treat them as a way to make impact at scale. They treat them as a way to deepen their connection with their audience and if you follow in their footsteps with my actionable advice, your true fans will set you financially free too.
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