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Having digital products in your business, especially as introvertpreneurs, can be so beneficial for creating extra income. There are so many different products you can create that include workbooks, courses, masterclasses, or planners, just to name a few. Once created for your target audience and set up, you can have a passive revenue stream flowing into your business. All you need to do now is market your product to get it in the hands of those who need your product with the help of these tips. Learning what is involved with marketing a digital product will help it sell.
Our guest on the podcast today is International Marketing Strategist, Danielle Mitchell. For the past nine years, Danielle has dedicated her life to empowering businesses and her community. As an international Marketing and Social Media Strategist, she has worked with some of the world’s leading companies including L’Oreal, Kmart, Sears, and Coca-Cola. With a background in search engine marketing and optimization, she has helped companies to gain leverage and digital visibility across the world. Danielle founded Average Black Girl in 2015 to propel emerging multicultural businesses through digital marketing, web and graphic design, project management, and strategic partnerships.
She recently launched Above Average University, an online school that provides bloggers and entrepreneurs with the tools and resources to catapult their businesses through marketing and social media strategies. Danielle specializes in creating marketing collateral for service-based businesses. Services include Web Design, Courses & Masterclasses, Planners, Journals, and Workbooks. She also maintains a blog where she interviews business leaders in various industries and provides her expert tips and advice on navigating the world of business, and lends her hand to media outlets such as BlackDoctor.org, where she creates content on work-life balance, health, and fitness to inspire African Americans.
In this episode, Danielle and I dive into how her love of marketing began, creating a digital product for who you were 5 years ago, being consistent with your marketing strategy to make an impact and reach more people, how pre-sales for your product can be very beneficial, and creating products for different audiences as you grow in your business, and much more.
The Love Of Marketing Led to International Marketing Strategist
Have you ever just had a knack for something? For Danielle, she loves marketing and that’s exactly what she went to school for – studying Business Marketing and Management. She interned and worked with some major companies all while moving around the southeast. When she started her online business and personal brand, Average Black Girl, she realized that she wanted to make it her full-time job. She moved back home with her parent and invested her pension of $5,000 into making things work. She knew it could either go south really fast and go back to her 9-5 job or she could really make it for herself.
With her leap of faith, she has been able to help service-based businesses with their marketing collateral like workbooks, planners, masterclasses, webinars, or even things like social media templates and a website for your business. She is able to help you create and market your business through your services or products. Whether you are a fitness coach looking to creating a nutrition workbook or fitness journey planner, or a mindset coach looking to create a workbook for your clients to deepen their practices, Danielle’s business can help you achieve your goals.
Who Are You Creating Your Products & Services For?
When it comes to creating your products for your business, it can be easy to get caught up in the imposter syndrome or negative self-talk about your product not being good enough. What is important to remember is that when you are creating a digital product is to focus on creating something that you may have needed 5 years ago because if you are creating a journal, planner, or workbook, the end-user is filling in those lines that you’ve created, not you. You are helping to jumpstart their brains in whatever transformation you are taking them through, but then it is up to them. Otherwise, you will get caught up in not knowing how to move forward because you’re stuck. As Danielle says, you can’t teach yourself anything currently because you already know everything, so when you focus on yourself from a few years ago, it gives you something to work with.
What do you wish that you would have known?
What do you wish somebody would have told you or showed you?
Once you figure out what transformation you want them to have, no matter how big or small, then you can create and sell your product. Danielle’s advice to those who are still in the process of coming up with your digital product is to think about what people ask you about all the time, what kind of tasks do you do at work that may be in your work description, or outside of it? That is what you can sell.
Digital Products and The Level of Competition
You’ve got your product all figured out, but now you see that there are other products like yours on the market already. Have you ever gotten in your head about why anyone would want your product with the level of competition surrounding your product? Danielle says that competition is a great thing because it means that in your industry, it’s already been proven that people want it. Take this example she gives below.
“I always think about the beauty industry. I hear that all the time. Oh, my God, the beauty industry is oversaturated. And so what? So what if it’s oversaturated that just means that lipstick isn’t going out of sale anytime soon, shampoo, conditioner, makeup, none of that is, so you can get a piece of that pie, right, your goal isn’t always to dominate.”
You can be profitable with your products. It’s about growing year after year by building a community around you, your brand, and your product. Those who are like-minded will be attracted to your products and will buy. Danielle explains that when you have an abundance mindset, these things are easier to think about instead of coming from a lack mindset.
Struggling to Create a Marketing Strategy for Your Business?
If you find yourself struggling with the marketing aspect of your business, then work on these two factors. Being consistent and building connectivity. Consistency is much more important than being perfect. People are more driven right now by authenticity than perfection. So showing up on a continuous basis show that you want to make an impact on the people surrounding you and reach more people, the ones you don’t know. If you want to grow in the digital space, word of mouth isn’t the best marketing method to rely the most on. The best way to grow then is by posting daily and if it overwhelms you, then you can outsource this to someone who can do it for you.
The other factor is building connectivity or building the know, like, and trust factor. You want your audience to get to know you. This doesn’t automatically mean that you share everything, but it does mean that you can be vulnerable, and being transparent without giving away too much. For the like portion, you can share silly things, you can share your family, or things like this that people can relate to. When it comes to trust, people want to know that they aren’t getting scammed, so when you show social proof with success stories, or if you have done this on yourself, share that.
When it comes to implementing this online, Danielle shares that video is king right now. And I have a great resource for working with video as an introvert from a previous podcast episode on Video Marketing. When it comes to video, not only do you want to be engaging, but if you are a service-based business, you want to show about yourself. Selling as a service-based business is different than a product-based business where the product, you’re selling the lifestyle, you’re selling the products, the benefit, the transformation, and how it makes you feel. For the service, you’re selling you. What makes you that expert in whatever you’re trying to sell, you got to sell yourself, plus the course or the product, so it’s a little bit of both, but it’s different.
Should You Do a Pre-Sale Strategy for Your Course or Digital Product?
Are you a fan of market research? A great way to incorporate this with your digital product is by doing a pre-launch or a pre-sale strategy. It is also a great motivator for you to finish. There are two different ways that Danielle mentions as examples. If you are creating a course, she says you can drip release the course. Once you figure out your sections, chapters, and what they will look like, you can begin doing the drip with pre-selling the first section or chapter and the next few each week.
Another strategy Danielle mentions, especially for those who are brand new looking for social proof, is by offering a discounted rate in exchange for a review. If you want 20 reviews, then the first 20 to buy will be discounted. This allows you to really utilize those testimonials later. I have used a similar approach to this with something I have released before with founding members. You can build it out and drip the content to them before your official launch, and later you can add in anything as a new section depending on the feedback you get.
Creating Products for Different Audiences Under Your Main Brand
Being a multi-passionate entrepreneur is my middle name! I have my main brand and 2 others that are separate. When it comes to creating products for different audiences, Danielle says that as you grow, you really get to know your audience and you will start to have different audiences from that main audience group. From there you will of course have the different demographics, but you want to take it a step further by figuring out the psychographics. Their hobbies, needs, and what makes them tick. This allows you to market your products to them based on those different factors.
I think a lot of people who are multi-passionate struggle with that. I have so many different people I want to talk to, when should I talk to this person and that person, but I feel like there’s definitely a way to make it streamlined in your marketing, which is why Danielle says it’s important to brand yourself. You want to be specific. You want your brand to be profitable, but you can include multiple steps. When she made her books that are on Amazon, a prayer journal, manifestation journal, weekly nutrition journal, and so many different ones, she created them for different people. She branded them purposely under Danielle Mitchell, and not under her business, Average Black Girl because she knew that as your brand grows, so does your personal brand.
The Two Main Ways of Marketing Being Used Today
Marketing is a two-way street. Most people think of the hunter method, which is where you’re hunting, you see your target, you grab your gun, and boom they are ready to go. You think that you should have all of these people coming to you, but this only happens 30% of the time. The second method is the gatherer method, which happens 70% of the time where people are going to come and buy from you and they’re going to actually convert. This is where you are harvesting crops from your field, and from consistently planting your crops season after season, comes growth and allows you to gather and harvest weekly. Knowing this mindset is why consistency is key. You can run an ad and you can do some of those faster methods, but you want to, at the same time, have some consistent marketing. Otherwise, people are going to see that you haven’t posted in however many months and may consider you to be scammy. People want to check you out online, on Facebook, on Instagram, or any other social media platform to make sure that you are real, and being consistent helps you do that.
Danielle gave so many amazing marketing tips on this episode of the podcast today about the hunter and gatherer marketing methods, being consistent with your marketing strategy to make an impact and reach people, how pre-sales for your product can be very beneficial, creating a product or service for who you were 5 years ago, and creating products for different audiences as you grow. Be sure to grab both of Danielle’s freebies, Workbook: How to Make Money with Marketing, and Email Course: How to Monetize Your Business if you are wanting more help around how to market your business better and make money in the process. She has so much knowledge around these topics, so be sure to follow her on her social platforms as well.
Which of Danielle’s insightful marketing tips spoke to you the most in terms of your business?
a breakdown of this episode
[1:16] Danielle’s love of marketing and her journey to International Marketing Strategist
[3:33] You are creating your products for who you were five years ago
[5:50] The level of competition with the product you are creating and selling
[12:23] Danielle’s advice for those who struggle with marketing and creating a marketing strategy
[18:14] Thoughts around doing a pre-launch strategy or a pre-sale strategy with your digital products
[22:58] Being multi-passionate as an entrepreneur and creating different products for different audiences under your main brand
[27:55] Danielle’s personal favorite marketing method to use
[30:11] The two ways of marketing: hunter method and the gatherer method
[33:20] Danielle’s two freebie offers for monetizing your business and how to make money with marketing
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