4 Tips for Successfully Launching Your First Digital Product

Are you thinking about launching your first digital product? Perhaps you’ve already released a product and didn’t see the expected results. Either way, you’re probably like most business leaders and developers; you want to see a surge in digital sales, organic traffic, and engagement on your website. 

The problem is that there are more online stores and digital products than ever before. You have to do a lot of things right if you want to reach your target audience and build your brand. 

Before I show you how to launch your next product successfully, I want to define the term “digital product.” In this instance, digital products are a service or virtual good that adds value to customers’ lives. Common examples include: 

-Software

-eBooks

-Videos

-Music

-Digital art

-Online courses 

Now that we’ve defined the term we will be discussing today, let’s look at 4 ways you can improve your digital product launch strategy and secure more sales. 

Use a Coming Soon Landing Page to Build Hype

A coming soon landing page is an excellent way to get visitors excited about your new product or service. Marketers use landing pages to drive visitors to relevant parts of their website. In this instance, a coming soon page is designed to attract people who may be interested in your upcoming release. 

I suggest using an eye-catching headline and copy that highlight the benefits of your product. Visitors will likely click through to your page if they can clearly see what they stand to gain. 

For instance, if you’re developing an analytics software as a service (SaaS), your headline might mention that customers can learn about their website traffic. The subheadline may emphasize that this could help the reader improve engagement and sales. 

If your product is far enough along in development, include a video demonstration. Research shows that adding videos to your landing pages can boost your organic traffic by a whopping 157%! Users are also more likely to place a pre-order if they can see your digital product in action. 

You should also include a prominent call-to-action (CTA). The CTAs you choose to feature will vary based on your specific goals. For us, we ask visitors to place a pre-order and join our email list. This strategy helps us capture early sales and build a list of prospects and a small group of excited customers.

Build Your Email List

Speaking of building your email list, I want to spend some time talking about how important email marketing is to your success. Believe it or not, 96% of website visitors are not quite ready to buy. When you consider that your product probably isn’t on the market yet, you can expect even fewer orders.

If you don’t ask these users to join your list, they may leave and forget your brand exists. Obviously, this situation is not ideal. 

The good news is it’s relatively easy to convince readers to hit the subscribe button. I recommend offering a lead magnet, like early access to your product or day-one discounts. Consumers on the fence about your brand may decide to take action if you offer a compelling lead magnet. 

Now, you have the opportunity to stay in touch with the people who are genuinely interested in your product. Use this opportunity to gather feedback, send beta test codes, and learn which features users would like to see added in the future.

You’ll have a better chance of making it big if you stay in touch with your audience through email and consider their feedback when developing or updating your product.

Develop a Robust Onboarding Program

One mistake I see many new marketers and business leaders make is they don’t put enough energy into their onboarding program. Think about the last time you bought a digital product online. Odds are, it came with a complete guide and plenty of blog resources you could reference if you got stuck. 

The reality is consumers expect this kind of experience every time they shop online. If you don’t have easily accessible guides, many people will stop using your product before they can unlock its full potential. 

You don’t want to lose a significant percentage of your customers due to a misunderstanding. 

There are a few ways you can craft a well-rounded onboarding program. We prefer to bake the onboarding into our software. When users open our digital product for the first time, they can take a guided tour where we explain how to use all of the major features available through our software. 

You can also publish plenty of helpful guides on your blog that direct users on how to complete specific actions with your product or service. For example, if you’re the owner of a course building SaaS, you might want to write a few blog posts that show users how to create a course from scratch. 

I also recommend highlighting your customer support channels in your app, your software, and your website. A whopping 63% of customers say they are more likely to return to a website if there’s an option for live chat. 

A fully developed onboarding and customer service program will help you create a better user experience for your audience, which is bound to lead to more sales and engagement.

Show off Social Proof

Finally, you’ll have a better chance of successfully launching a digital product if you showcase plenty of social proof. Social proof in marketing is a trend where people are more likely to make a purchase or take action on a website if they see that other people did the same thing. 

If a close friend suggested a movie you had never heard of, you would probably want to see it. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know the plot or the actors, your friend said it was good, and you trust their opinion. This situation is social proof in action. 

However, online shoppers will accept reviews and testimonials from anyone, not just close friends and family. In fact, 97% of online shoppers say another customer’s review has affected their purchasing decisions. 

Businesses with digital products that are already released can pull reviews from social media, popular review websites, and even their own website. Highlighting praiseworthy reviews on your landing page is an excellent way to build trust with first-time visitors. 

Trust badges are another effective way to build social proof. These small but powerful marketing tools show shoppers that your brand is respected by other well-known companies like McAfee, Norton, and PayPal. 

Research shows that adding trust badges to your forms can boost your conversion rate by 42%! This tip can help people who haven’t launched their first product and established businesses.  

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there’s a lot of thought that goes into selling digital products. You have to reach your audience across multiple platforms and convince them they need your product or service. 

The advice presented here today should help you create a framework you can take back to your business and use for your next big product launch.