unlock the potential of digital products.

Are Digital Products The Revenue Boost You Need?

BY EMILY OSMOND

Emily Osmond is an online marketing strategist and educator, with a particular interest in helping educational-focussed online businesses to attract more happy customers.

Emily’s own online programs have helped more than 1,000 business owners worldwide, while her podcast – The Emily Osmond Show –launched as one of Apple Podcast’s ‘New and Noteworthy’ shows, and now boasts listeners in more than 100 countries.

Let me paint the picture.Imagine you sell baking supplies. You have hundreds or thousands of customers who are already purchasing their products from you to help them make their favourite desserts.

Now consider for a moment what else these customers might want or need….

Help with their biscuit decorating technique?

Recipes for ‘knock-your-socks-off’ cakes for their kids’ birthday parties? Or perhaps training to perfect those French macarons to the exact crispy yet chewy texture we all love?

This is where digital products – such as online courses, classes, guides or e-books – come in.

As opposed to physical products, which require managing inventory, handling logistics, and investing funds upfront into goods in the hope that your customers will buy them, digital products offer a huge opportunity to not only increase your profits, but to serve your customers in new and exciting ways.

In fact, the e-learning market was worth more than $210 billion in 2021 and it is projected to be worth a staggering $840 billion by 2030, according to GlobalNewswire.

And after helping more than 1,000 small business owners via my own digital products, I have been able to recognise patterns in what works best and the opportunities that this industry holds for businesses looking to diversify their revenue streams.

1. Create once, sell many times

There’s work upfront to create your helpful class or guide – whether you do it in-house or enlist outside talent to be your ‘expert’. But once that digital product is finalised, you can sell it 100 times, 1,000 times or 10,000 times or more. In other words: you now have a very scalable and leveraged offer in your business that requires little to no additional time or money to deliver it to your customers.

2. Expand your reach without expanding your physical footprint

If you own a local store and you have no ambition of expanding your physical footprint, but you know that you have a wider audience following you online, then you have an opportunity to create an online product to delight them with, no matter where they are in the country, or even the world. Added bonus: you’re no longer limited to the space of your physical store or the size of your team – you could serve thousands of customers in a single day online.

3. Increase your revenue, without buying more stock

A very attractive benefit of digital products is that you don’t need to invest huge funds into products ahead of time, organise storage or risk unsold goods. Whether you price your digital products at a lower price for higher volume, or a higher price for lower volume, you have the potential to add a highly profitable revenue stream to your business: no stock required.

4. Stay agile in a fast moving world

A key difference of digital versus physical products is the ability to test, pivot and refine in real time as you learn what appeals to your audience. For instance, perhaps your first online class didn’t sell quite as well as you hoped? Tweak the messaging, add another lesson based on feedback, or create a new course next week. You could even bundle your digital products with physical products to increase the overall order value, use your digital products as a lead magnet to grow your email list or promote them in a giveaway to grow your audience. The ways in which you can leverage digital products to help drive your business goals are really only limited by your imagination.

5. Build brand loyalty, serve your customers in more ways

Perhaps once your customer receives their product, there’s a QR code they can scan that takes them to a short video tutorial helping them to use their new purchase. There, alongside that video, is a special offer to purchase a more advanced tutorial to help them to really maximise their purchase. Not only does this help to support and delight your customers – and their engagement with your goods – but it can also drive up lifetime customer value, meaning that you can unlock more overall profit in your business.

Getting started with digital products doesn’t have to be complicated, and you can begin small and test the waters. I recommend choosing one small problem that makes the most sense to help your customers with. Next, decide on the format of your digital product – whether that’s a PDF guide, video tutorial, templates or recipes. I see my clients all too often putting off the creation – and finalising – of their online courses and guides because they get stuck in perfectionism. So adopt the approach that ‘done is better than perfect’ and remember that you can always expand on and update it later.

Then once your product is created, start introducing it to your customers through your website, email list, and social media. You can even invite a small group of customers to test it out and give you feedback so you know that you’re on the right track.

So it’s over to you: have fun and get creative introducing digital products into your business, and take inspiration from what you see other innovative businesses doing.

For more help creating your first digital product, check out Emily’s free guide at emilyosmond.com/free or get in touch with Emily at hello@emilyosmond.com