Why Your Digital Product Is not Promoting — and The way to Repair That [Expert Insights]

You’ve created a digital product, put it up in your web site and introduced it to your viewers. However regardless of the onerous work you poured into bringing your on-line course, e book, or different digital product to life, it’s not promoting. 

While you’re on this state of affairs, it’s tempting to surrender. To throw your arms within the air and declare, “no person needs my product — it was all a waste of time.” That’s the simpler choice. 

However you created your digital product for a purpose. Maybe you needed so as to add a brand new earnings stream to what you are promoting so you might cease buying and selling time for cash. Or possibly you needed to create a brand new means for individuals to work with you at a extra inexpensive worth level than your providers. 

Because the host of Imperfect Motion podcast, which is a part of the Hubspot Podcast Community, I recurrently have listeners write in, asking me why I feel no person is shopping for their digital product. And in my work as a digital product launch strategist, I’ve helped dozens of purchasers flip round merchandise that weren’t promoting. More often than not, they’ve been just some tweaks away from a extremely worthwhile product.

I’ve additionally been on this sticky state of affairs a couple of occasions myself. I’ve had some big digital product wins — promoting $20,000 price of a $20 Canva template, over $1 million price of a $197 information, and $400,000 price of a $2,000 course. However earlier than every of those success tales got here many errors and classes. Utilizing the identical methods I’m sharing on this article, I’ve rescued my very own merchandise that weren’t promoting and turned them round.

Whether or not you’ve created a low-ticket digital product or one within the hundreds of {dollars}, these are the commonest the explanation why it isn’t promoting — and easy methods to repair that. 

5 Causes Your Digital Product Is not Promoting [+ Solutions]

Motive #1: Your viewers doesn’t see the worth in your product.

5 years in the past, I constructed a digital product that flopped. My viewers stored asking me questions on advertising their companies on Instagram, so I created an internet course about Instagram advertising. Determined to make it probably the most precious course doable, I stuffed it filled with content material and knowledge. I knew it was precious, however hardly anybody purchased it. 

That’s as a result of I conflated worth with the quantity of content material contained in the course. I assumed the extra data I squeezed into my course, the extra my viewers would need it. I assumed {that a} complete course on every part somebody might probably learn about Instagram advertising can be perceived as precious. It wasn’t. 

If you recognize your product is bursting with worth, however you retain listening to “I can’t afford it,” or “I don’t want it,” chances are high your viewers doesn’t see the identical worth you do. Often, that’s as a result of your viewers doesn’t need to know extra issues — there’s already a lot free content material on the web. They don’t need to waste their time consuming much more content material. As a substitute, the worth to your clients lies in how shortly and simply you may assist them remedy an issue or obtain a metamorphosis. 

The way to repair it: 

1. Determine the end result of your digital product — that’s, the issue your clients will remedy, or the transformation they may obtain.
2. Tweak your advertising and messaging so it positions your product because the automobile to realize this final result, fairly than being a “complete” information.

When you’re struggling to indicate the worth in your digital product, the under podcast episodes will assist: 

Motive #2: It’s not the fitting supply on your viewers. 

As a podcaster, I stored getting requested, “Steph, how do I launch a podcast?”. After strolling a number of pals by the method, I made a decision to show it right into a digital product. I assumed a bunch program format would work finest as I might assist a number of college students on the identical time. However after I launched it to my electronic mail checklist, solely two individuals signed up. 

Confused, I surveyed my viewers to search out out why they didn’t purchase. The solutions had been clear: They didn’t need to launch a podcast in a bunch program format. They couldn’t decide to attending stay calls. They needed to launch their present in fewer than eight weeks, or they needed to work by it in their very own time, over the following six months. 

In case your product isn’t promoting, it might be that your assumptions about what your clients need had been mistaken. The excellent news is that after you discover out the place you went mistaken, a couple of tweaks to your product can result in a great deal of gross sales. I took my viewers’s suggestions on board, turned the group program define right into a self-paced information, and launched it once more. A 12 months later, that product has bought greater than 3,800 copies.

The way to repair it:

1. Ship your viewers a non-buyer survey to search out out why they aren’t shopping for your digital product. You’ll be amazed at what you be taught from the query, “Why didn’t you purchase?”
2. If a number of individuals provide you with related suggestions, it’s an indication that it’s essential to both tweak your product, or change the best way you’ve positioned it. 

Motive #3: They don’t belief that it’ll work for them.

When your viewers is studying your gross sales web page, they’re subconsciously looking for the explanation why your digital product received’t work for them. They could consider that their state of affairs is exclusive, and they also’ll have objections as to why your resolution received’t work. Or they may not belief you could ship the end result they need. 

Getting your viewers to know you, such as you, and belief you sufficient to purchase from you may take some time. Content material advertising is the important thing to this. I’ve had strangers come as much as me and inform me they really feel like I’m their buddy, as a result of they’ve listened to my podcast a lot. And sharing social proof (like testimonials and case research) helps to construct belief and overcome objections about why it received’t work for them. 

The way to repair it: 

1. Acquire and share social proof out of your clients and purchasers. Be sure that it’s not simply in regards to the final result they achieved, but in addition tells the story of the place they had been earlier than they purchased your digital product. 
2. Consider all the explanations a possible purchaser would suppose that it received’t work for them. Present them why it will work for them with real-life examples in your gross sales web page. Take heed to episode 529 of Imperfect Motion to learn to write 1,000,000 greenback gross sales web page.
3. Begin recurrently sharing content material on-line. It doesn’t matter whether or not you begin a podcast or a TikTok account, so long as you’re displaying up persistently in a single place. In episode 559 of Imperfect Motion, I coach a scholar by the method of figuring out what content material subjects might be handiest for her digital product launch.

Motive #4: They don’t learn about it.

Certainly one of my on-line programs was persistently getting fewer gross sales than any of my different merchandise, and I couldn’t work out why. Once I surveyed my electronic mail checklist, I used to be shocked. Greater than 75% of my subscribers didn’t even know the course existed. No surprise they weren’t shopping for it! 

“Construct it and they’ll come,” doesn’t apply to digital merchandise. You possibly can have probably the most precious course with excellent messaging and highly effective social proof, and nonetheless not hit your gross sales objectives since you’re merely not getting it in entrance of sufficient individuals. It is perhaps since you don’t have sufficient individuals in your viewers but, or it is perhaps that you simply’re not selling it sufficient on-line. 

The way to repair it: 

1. Overview your web site analytics. How many individuals are visiting your digital product gross sales web page? 
2. Decide to selling your product extra, and get inventive with it. Might you interview previous clients about their expertise? Might you give your viewers 24 hours to check drive the primary module? 

Motive #5: There’s no purpose why they need to purchase it proper now.

A human tendency is to procrastinate issues that evoke damaging feelings. Shopping for your digital product possible brings up damaging emotions in your potential clients, too. Spending cash on one thing — irrespective of how a lot they need it — would possibly really feel painful, and they also’ll delay the ache for so long as doable.

Apart from the ache of spending cash, your digital product possible evokes different damaging emotions. A exercise information requires them to set their alarm a complete hour earlier and stand up whereas it’s nonetheless darkish exterior. My information for beginning a podcast would possibly carry up a buyer’s worry of being judged. So somebody will delay shopping for it till the explanations to behave proper now outweigh the explanations to not. 

The way to repair it:

1. In case your product is in the stores at any time, contemplate whether or not the “doorways open” and “doorways closed” mannequin might work for what you are promoting, the place you launch it a couple of occasions per 12 months fairly than permitting purchases at any time. 
2. Alternatively, contemplate different limited-time incentives, resembling bonuses, to assist make your prospect’s determination simpler.  

I’m an enormous proponent of the stay launch mannequin as a option to encourage your prospects to purchase now, fairly than put it off. These are some podcast episodes that can assist you higher perceive how that might be just right for you: 

By creating your digital product and placing it out into the world, you’ve already conquered the onerous half. Now you start the enjoyable half: Understanding why it’s not promoting, making modifications, and measuring the affect of these modifications. You would possibly must work by greater than one of many above methods earlier than you see measurable outcomes. 

Consider it as an experiment the place every tweak you make brings you one step nearer to the successful formulation.