In my career, I’ve worked with too many businesses (both startups and established companies) that just can’t understand why someone wouldn’t buy their digital product after just one or two exposures.
Here’s one of those stories.
Why Aren’t People Buying My Digital Product?
I can’t even count how many times the creator of a brand new digital product has asked me this question. When I talk about “digital products,” I mean online courses, online trainings, subscription services, ebooks, and other products in that realm.
When you create something you’re passionate about, it’s easy to have the expectation that everyone else will be passionate about it as well. If you didn’t think it was a great idea, you wouldn’t have built it, right?
That’s why it’s important to step back and review how and why people buy digital products.
From 0 to 1,000 Leads in 30 Days
Here’s our before scenario. A digital product getting zero traction. No sales, no leads, no interest. Is that because it’s a bad product? Not necessarily. It was probably because the website was trying to take visitors from oblivious (no knowledge of the product) all the way to purchase in just one visit. No free trial, no valuable resource, no education. It just wasn’t working.
This client spent hundreds of dollars driving traffic to their site and saw literally zero results. No sales. Not a single one.
That’s a hard pill to swallow for a startup digital product owner.
In comes FunnelZone.
In less than a week, we launched a fairly simple funnel that looks like this.
Traffic: In this case, we used Facebook ads to drive to the free lead magnet. While we were at it, we tested audiences and messaging to see where the digital product would perform best.
Free Lead Magnet: We whipped up a quick, good-looking PDF with information that we knew would be relevant to potential customers of the digital product. The Facebook ads promoted the valuable lead magnet (and didn’t even mention the digital product). The lead magnet landing page was simple but effective: title, bullet points, form (first name and email address only).
Thank You OTO: OTO stands for one time offer. This tactic puts scarcity and urgency on the deal. It’s one time; they’ll never see it again. In this case, it was a huge discount on the first three months of subscription. This pricing level is truly only offered in the OTO and nowhere else. They’ll never see it again, making it more powerful and enticing.
The power of the one time offer is timing. If we had advertised the exact same offer to a completely cold audience, results would have been dismal (trust me, we’ve seen it before). By showing the offer immediately after free lead magnet opt-in, leads are already in the buying mindset and thinking about your product. The thank-you page is one of the most under-used marketing spaces, and we’re out to change that.
Email Sequence: In this scenario, we set up two different automated sequences: one for people who took advantage of the one time offer, and one for those who didn’t. If they took the one time offer, they moved into customer sequence. If they didn’t take the offer and become a customer on the spot, the automated sequence focused on providing more value, educating the lead, and encouraging them to try the no-risk free trial.
BONUS! Retargeting/Lookalike Audience: After the first month, we had a solid list of leads. We were communicating with them by email, of course, but we also used retargeting ads to continue to push the free trial. We also used the same list of leads to create a lookalike audience in Facebook, which cut cost per lead even further in subsequent months.
Results: People Are Buying the Digital Product
Remember, before the funnel, there were zero results after hundreds of dollars in ad spend. After 30 days of running this simple funnel, the digital product had 1,000 at $.87 each! This cost-per-lead trend continued well beyond the first month, and even decreased a bit with the lookalike audience data.
The first month was without the thank you page OTO, so we didn’t have stats on that. But now several months in, the digital product is covering ad costs just on the OTO. All additional revenue (upsells, ongoing monthly fees, etc.) are bonus.
Instead of spending hundreds of dollars with zero results, the client is now spending less and seeing more return. THAT’s the power of a well-built funnel.