You’ve been working hard on your blog and website.

You have invested (time and money) in graphic design, content marketing, SEO and so many other necessary skills to increase the visibility of your blog.

You may have even taken a course on blogging or digital marketing to take your website and business to the next level.

And that’s how you created a first digital product. You know that digital products are a good way to start monetising all these efforts through your website and blog.

However, digital products have a specific lifecycle. Exactly like any other product. They are created to fill one need in the market, and once this need is filled, it’s done. They’ll start generating less and less income until they disappear.

They’re still worth it, because the benefits that you get from it are higher than what you invested in creating and launching them. But you don’t want your digital product to fall by the wayside.

And you’re right, because you should be getting the maximum value of your digital products.

And how can I maximise the benefits of my digital product?

Good question.

Basically, you can do it in two different ways:

1. You can offer a side product or service to compliment that digital product.

This is the most common way to make your clients buy again from you. There are a lot of examples of online businesses that implement this strategy.

Apple, for instance.

If you have ever bought something with Apple, you would have probably realised that once you add a product to the basket and are about to check out and pay for it, you’ll get a series of accessories that complement the product you were going to get.

That’s a good way to increase the amount of your average purchase per client.

If Apple’s website were only offering an iPhone, this product will have a specific lifecycle, as the number of people in the world is limited. They’ll know that they could sell X products, and after that the need that they target in the market will be covered.

However, by offering side products, they guarantee that their products are sold over time. We all lose our headphones, break our phone cases or simply want to upgrade to a new iPhone, right?

2. You can adapt your digital product to target a foreign market

If you have already covered the needs of a market, you can adapt your product to cover the needs of a different market. It sounds obvious, right? Well, you’d be shocked of how many businesses are losing clients because they’re not aware of this technique.

This is the case of most best-sellers. Harry Potter, for instance:

The first Harry Potter book was published in the UK in 1997. In 2000, three years after its release and success in the UK and USA, the book was translated into Spanish. Boom! New market, new sales.

Nowadays, Harry Potter has been translated into over 65 languages and more than 100 million copies have been sold all over the world.

It’s pretty clear that the investment in translation services here has been worth it, right? This is a clear example of how you can translate your digital product to target new market and escalate the sales of your business.

It’s this last case on which I am going to focus today.

How to translate your digital product to maximise its benefits

 

1. Adapt and localise your product to the market you want to target

When you’re targeting your digital products to a different market, translating words isn’t enough. You’ll have to face cultural differences as well. You may even have to naturalise some parts of your product to clarify concepts, or use different examples to explain these concepts.

For example, if you’re selling an e-Book about finance, you may consider changing the currency that you use through your explanations, or clarify concepts that may not be obvious for a different culture.

As you can see, adapting a digital product is more than using Google Translate to get every word into a different language. I’m tired of reading articles that recommend using Google Translate to save money. If you use Google Translate, you’ll be losing clients because no one will understand your texts.

Further reading: How to adapt products to target a foreign market.

2. Translate the marketing texts that you’re going to use to market your adapted product

When you’re calculating the investment to adapt your digital product to a different market, make sure that you also count the marketing materials that you’re going to use to market your new digital product.

You’ll need to have a landing page written in the language of your new targeted audience so people can buy your product. If you’re going to use an email marketing strategy, make sure that you communicate with your potential clients in their language, and the same applies if you’re going to use a content marketing strategy.

There must be a strategy behind every new launching. Make sure that every piece of communication is adapted and translated for your new audience.

3. Establish your objectives for the launch of your new digital product

Before launching a new digital product, you need to bear in mind two important things:

• What you need to invest to get your new digital product ready.
• The number of sales you need to make the investment worthy.

Obviously, the benefits of the sales must be higher than the initial investment.

The good thing here is that you have already launched this digital product for your current audience, so you already know how many sales you are likely to achieve. If your digital product worked well (and it must have worked well if you’re considering getting it translated for a different audience), it is likely that it’s going to work well within a different market.

Then, you’ll have to put all your efforts to reach that goal of sales to make your investment worth it.

4. Grow your audience within your new targeted audience

If you have an audience before launching your product, it will be much easier to make your potential clients buy from you.

Because they’ll know you already at the moment of the launch.

Before launching your product, (and you can work on this while your digital product is being adapted for your new audience) you should be working on growing your audience within the targeted market where you’re going to launch your digital product.

How?

[Tweet “You need to collect emails of potential clients to inform them when you’re product is ready.”]

You can offer exclusive information about your product or valuable information related to your digital product in exchange for their emails.

Average conversion rates online are around 1-2%. That means that you’ll need around 100 subscribers to get one sale. Although if you plan your strategy correctly, I’m sure you can get around 5%.

Then you can do the maths. The more subscribers you get before launching the product, the more sales you’ll get at the moment of the launch.

5. Back up your new digital product with social proof

If you have already launched your digital product within your current audience, you’ll already have feedback from people. Ask your current clients how your product helped them and what they achieved thanks to it.

Let them speak for your brand to convince potential clients to buy it. Positive feedback is one of the most powerful marketing techniques.

 

 

Have you got a digital product that you’re currently selling? Have you ever considered increasing your sales with one of these techniques? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences about this, leave a comment below!