I wanted to open this blog post with a joke, but I really don’t want to “taco” it…
Ahem…
Have you ever heard the old saying that Mexican food basically consists of the same thing? Meat, vegetables and some kind of “clothing”. That, and having spent the last two weeks dressing up Barbie with my six-year-old, got me thinking about marketing and digital products.
The mind boggles, but there is a connection, I promise.
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Digital Products and “Periphery” Customer.
Creating digital products is a great way to share your skills or knowledge with a part of your audience or customer base that may not already be buying from you. Customers who follow you but don’t buy your digital products usually fall into one of three categories: logistically inept, financially inept, or DIYers. I call these people your “area” customers.
LET ME EXPLAIN…
These people love what you do, follow your business on social media, and even interact with you in some way…
but they don’t buy from you. This is usually because;
- Logistically, they cannot access you. This could be due to time zones, your store location, or even shipping costs. The list is endless, but usually there is some logistical constraint that prevents them from buying.
- Financially, they can’t afford you. This can be for a variety of reasons, but often it’s because your offer is limited to a certain type of budget – of course, because you’ve earned it as a reasonable business owner and your target market fits into one of the higher boxes on the form “household income”.
- They want to do it themselves – DIYers sometimes come as a result of examples 1 and 2, or as a result of some eager need to be in charge of creating and building everything in their lives from scratch, but whoever the reason, they can be found wandering around businesses trying to figure out how to do it all themselves.
Identifying these “periphery” customers allows you to better understand your business, but it doesn’t mean you have to change anything to accommodate these people. I cannot stress this enough…
DON’T CHANGE WHAT YOU’RE DOING!
This is where a solid digital product can come in and sweep all those wonderful people away, giving them an accessible, in-budget and self-driven service. It’s great for them because they “work with you” remotely, and it’s even better for you as a business owner because you can create passive, semi-passive and potentially very scalable products that add to your inventory.
Digital products allow you to reach people you wouldn’t normally and create something that can be sold over and over without any effort on your part.
Winner!
But it is at this point that my clients often get stuck.
They know their real market and niche so well that the idea of introducing a new customer avatar into their business completely baffles them. Or, there are so many potential additional positions for the market, they don’t know what action to take next to move forward.
That’s where Barbie and Mexican food come in.
Introducing Business Barbie Eating Nachos
Essentially, as mentioned earlier, Mexican food is the same front wrapped in a new outfit.
Is Barbie exactly the same? whether she’s a First Responder, an Olympian, or a Princess every day, it doesn’t matter — after all, she’s still Barbie (with her overly eager smile and her infuriatingly tiny waist), just with a different outfit.
If you apply the same “sending” principles to your digital products, you can’t go far wrong.
You may be writing a book but know that it will appeal to more than one type of reader – great. Don’t try to appeal to everyone, because as you know, it doesn’t appeal to anyone.
Instead, write the content in a super-general way that shares all the skills and knowledge you want to impart, without being specific to your client. i.e. naming them directly.
Then, simply give the book “missions” that are specific to the consumer you’re trying to appeal to.
The same goes for digital courses. create the product content to do the job, but then tailor your marketing, imagery and copy to appeal to the customer(s) you’re trying to attract.
When it comes to making a purchase, especially a digital product, people really don’t care that they’re buying 6 videos, 4 PDF downloads, and an eBook. what they buy is transformation.
Always remember: People buy the effect a product can give them, not the content of the product.
A good example of this is a nice outfit.
You don’t go out and buy 6 meters of fabric, 6 kazillion stitches and a zipper… you buy how touch when you’re in it. You buy the transformation, the feeling, the result.
How to apply the Barbie-Mexican Food Principle to your own products
Let’s take the very specific position of wedding etiquette. (Go with me, this is a real life example from an Academy member)
My student came to me with the idea of creating a book (and eBook and course, because why shouldn’t you reposition yourself in many types of products) about wedding etiquette. His extensive experience in the industry had told him that there were principles that applied to ALL types of marriage, regardless of ceremony, location or religion! These basic principles were the cornerstone of all marriages.
But, that won’t sell. Because it’s too general.
So, applying the Barbie/Mexican food principle, I explained that he could literally package the result to any type of customer he liked.
Create the content – broadly applying its principles to the book copy by incorporating all the key messages of wedding etiquette and being specific, only where necessary.
From there, my student was able to create and sell multiple titles and cover designs (all within his branding guidelines, of course!) to promote the book at each specific type of wedding ceremony. These included titles such as:
Etiquette essentials for your church wedding
Basic etiquette for your civil ceremony
Etiquette in your Vivaha…
etc etc
You get the idea.
The same goes for a digital course created by a student of one of my other courses who is a highly sought after hypnotherapist. She wanted to address stress as she saw it as the most common issue her clients had in the region.
But as we all know, anxiety can be caused by many triggers, so we set out to create a course that solved the problem (because the problem remains the same regardless of its attire and therefore the solution, the content of the course, is same). We then created appropriate headlines, cover images and copy to appeal to just three of the most common “triggers” for this issue.
It’s the same course, because the result and the solution are the same, but it’s dressed up to appeal to the right people and guarantee a sale.
It is important to remember with digital products…
This is not about cheating or creating the appearance of multiple products just for the sake of it. it’s about providing the easiest visuals for your customers to identify with.
It’s about saving time and energy (or, as one of my Strategise clients says, “pushing the easy button”) when one product is clearly a solution to many problems.
This only works when the solution, i.e. your product, is the same solution that can be used to solve many problems.
It’s about putting your products in front of the people who need them and engaging them in the right way.
This doesn’t work when the solution is different or when you’re trying to solve multiple problems. If this is the case, consider splitting your content into multiple products or creating specific products with even more specific solutions.
Don’t try to wrap Barbie in a fajita or bake her in enchiladas…
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