10 pro tips to improve conversion rates for your digital product
For a digital product to be truly successful, great design and technical excellence at a fair price is just not enough anymore. In reality, the old adage, “Build it and they will come” is far-fetched nonsense. Markets are crowded and competition strong within any given industry. This is why delivering a digital product to the hands of users is often just the beginning of a bumpy road. How to make sure your product will work with a positive ROI? You can start with improving its conversion rates along the whole length of the marketing funnel.
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But how to get people to buy and use your product?
Whatever your digital product is – an app, a platform, a portal, a service, etc. – building your user base is a question of marketing. You know exactly who the product is designed for, who will benefit from using it, but how do you reach out and convince them? How do you get people who are interested in your product to follow through and click BUY? How do you convert leads into customers?
The answer lies in the classic marketing funnel. While it’s not a perfect model (there’s surely no such thing!) it can help with starting properly. We encourage you to test, review and improve your funnel to make it fit your needs and business goals!
The marketing funnel
In all its versions, the marketing funnel offers a description of the marketing and sales process; the stages a person goes through from being aware of your product through to acquiring it.
Just to be clear, conversion is the goal. Conversion is that point when a lead does what you want them to do: commit to a purchase, download an app, subscribe to a service… The funnel lays out the stages that must be covered to take an initial interest, turn it into a committed purchase, and beyond. Let’s look at each of the stages, in turn.
The Awareness Stage
Goal: Let them know about your existence and keep them coming back.
People can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist. The awareness stage is all about saying, Here we are! and We’re safe, you can trust us!
You need to get the message out there and in front of your target group of potential customers and users. Maybe you need to introduce them to your brand, maybe they know your brand but not your latest digital product. Raising awareness includes making a splash on social media, maximizing the traffic to your website, and bringing your ‘shelf’ in the app stores to their attention.
- Digital product conversion tip #1: Social media – Social media is ideal for awareness-building. Use organic posts and paid campaigns to get the message to your existing audience and encourage new audiences to find you. The key is knowing which platforms and networks will work best for your product. In broad terms, Facebook is good for reaching consumers directly, LinkedIn and Twitter are more popular for reaching out to other businesses. It depends who you’re pitching to.
Pro tip: Always fit your main marketing channel to your audience. Maybe Facebook is too “Boomerish”, and your Gen-Z customers are awaiting your presence on TikTok, instead?
- Digital product conversion tip #2: Blogging – Social media posts are limited, both by the platforms themselves and your audience’s attention span. A blog is an opportunity to expand on your expertise, demonstrate your leadership in your field, and follow through on the interest you’ve created on social media. Regular posts will help you rise up the Google rankings, as will the right SEO strategy: at this stage, the keywords don’t have to be related to your product (though it would be cool if they were!) but to the interests of your target audience – for example, if you have an app for collaborative, virtual meetings, you focus on topics and keywords around remote working. Needless to say, the quality of your blog content is important; both for search results and for grabbing the attention of your audience.
Pro tip: when thinking about the content that is published on your blog, put the needs of your potential customers first. Answer their questions, share your knowledge. And be patient when waiting for results.
The key to the awareness stage is to use your tools and techniques to target the right people. Not everyone you reach will become a customer but the idea is that everyone you reach could be a customer. If you’re reaching people who are not (and likely will never be) interested in your product, you’re wasting time, money and effort. Focus on people potentially interested in doing business with you.
The Consideration Stage
Goal: Establish credibility, and get their email address.
Consideration activity is focused on people who already know who you are (thanks to the awareness stage!). But basic brand awareness, while important, isn’t enough. After all, they won’t buy from you if they don’t trust you.
The consideration stage is about building that necessary trust. You want them to feel that they can buy/download with confidence. Trust comes via many routes, including establishing yourself as a provider of reliable information and advice (and expert in the field), and reviews and referrals from satisfied customers. A successful outcome of the consideration stage is the potential customer giving you their email address or other contact info.
- Digital product conversion tip #3: Lead magnets – Create free content for your visitors, e.g. ebooks, checklists or webinars that relate to their areas of interest (and which continue to establish you as an authoritative expert). These materials will be available for them to download after leaving an email address. This is also a good way to check which topics are most interesting to your visitors.
Pro tip: the best ideas for ebooks come from customers and users. Research a topic that is problematic for them and prove your expertise that way.
Digital product conversion tip #4: Optimized landing pages – Set up a landing page dedicated to your digital product. This enables you to simplify the communication: a clear narrative, a focus on product features and benefits, relevant testimonials, and a single call to action.
Pro tip: when creating a dedicated landing page, make sure it has one, very clear and meaningful goal. Too many features, information, calls to action, etc. will ruin your efforts.
- Digital product conversion tip #5: Use popups and banners – To promote and call attention to the above, use website popups and banners in order to keep users focused on your goal.
Pro tips: while popups and banners sound like an unpleasant memory from the internet’s earliest days, they actually… work. The trick is to serve them up in a moderate manner, without being too pushy. Nobody likes that!
At this point, you have a kind of unspoken, interim agreement: giving you their contact details is effectively an invitation to send more specific information about the product. However, this is also a sign of trust that you can’t afford to foul up.
The Preference Stage
Goal: Focus on leads likely to make a commitment and persuade them.
By now, leads know who you are and your place in the market (a trusted expert, remember). Now it’s time to focus on the product and make your case more directly. At this stage, they’re ready to buy, they just need to be convinced to buy your product and not someone else’s. The likelihood is that your product is one of a number of possible purchase options. To persuade them that yours is the one for them, it’s not enough to just emphasize your product’s features or quality or price, you must show why it is uniquely preferable to all the other options available.
- Digital product conversion tip #6: Warm up your interested leads – Use your email address list to stay in touch with your leads. Send emails tailored to their interests, offer your lead magnets, maybe send some discount codes or invite them to an event or meeting. And while you regularly remind them of your existence, tell them about the product and it’s unique value proposition. Ensure they know how your digital product will improve their lives. (At this stage, case studies, reviews and testimonials are useful tools.)
Pro tip: sometimes, the customer’s decision process takes a long time. Sometimes, it happens in regular cycles (every season, every end of the month, etc.). To make sure they don’t lose touch with your brand, adjust the length of your ‘nurturing’ process to the length of their decision-making process.
- Digital product conversion tip #7: Invest in good CRM software – The right software (Hubspot, Sales Force etc.) will help you track your leads, prompting the sending of automatic emails and notifications, taking some of the administrative burden off.
Pro tip: make sure you invest in this kind of tool very carefully: usually it’s not software that you can change easily. Do your research, and speak with the tool’s sales representative openly, so they can help you with choosing the right solution.
While you’re focused on the specific virtues and benefits of your digital product, don’t forget to continue with the bigger picture factors. For example, emphasize the values that your brand (and product) share with your leads.
The Purchase Stage
Goal: Make the sale.
In a sense, this is less of a stage and more of a moment. But you can’t afford to relax your efforts because in a very real sense, this is the make or break moment.
- Digital product conversion tip #8: Optimize your checkout page – A smooth purchase process is essential (frustration at this stage can result in abandoning the purchase part-way through and it’s a shame to ‘lose the race’ just as you’re about to cross the line). Polish the user experience, ensure you’re answering all the standard questions, and maybe offer an option like live chat to deal with any problems or non-standard inquiries.
Pro tip: investing in the help of an experienced UX product designer can save you a lot of money. Here’s an interesting case study of how a very simple UX adjustment helped an ecommerce company to improve annual revenue by $300 million.
- Digital product conversion tip #9: Use software to understand your leads/customers on-page behaviour – Packages such as Hotjar can help you optimize the purchase experience, allowing you to see where on the page users spend the most time, where they get stuck, and get feedback on the different page elements.
Pro tip: if you know what to track and measure, research can be very effective and give you tons of interesting insights that can be easily transformed into improvements. However, don’t measure things just for the sake of it, usually it’s a waste of time focusing on so-called “vanity metrics”.
- Digital product conversion tip #10: Target the ‘maybes’ & ‘not sures’ – Use marketing automation tools to pick up on hesitant purchasers. For example, if someone abandons their shopping cart part-way through the purchase process, you can message or email them, offering a discount or other incentive, or even suggest an alternative product .
Pro tip: the devil is in the details. Various tools (like Hotjar, but it could be any other, similar tool, even Google Analytics) and indicators, such as bounce rate, can highlight potential omissions in the user’s journey.
Ensuring happiness with the purchase process is all part of creating loyal customers, people who will return to buy again.
The Loyalty Stage
Goal: Future sales, more customers.
The customer has the product, you have their business and/or money. The transaction may be over but the relationship is just beginning.
First of all, based on their purchase experience (and the quality of the product) the customer will have an attitude toward you and your business. If they’re unhappy about it (‘buyer’s remorse’) they are unlikely to buy or acquire your products or services in the future. If they are really unhappy, they may use their voice to discourage others too, via reviews, online commentary, complaints, etc. However, if they are satisfied with both the product and the purchase process, not only are they more likely to return and purchase again, you also have the beginnings of customer loyalty.
Now, those reviews and online commentaries are endorsements that supplement and boost your marketing messages. Congratulations, you have an independent advocate who will help bring new leads to your marketing funnel.
- Digital product conversion bonus tip – Once you have your advocate, your fan, you need to keep them. People expect their loyalty to be rewarded, so consider using discounts, reward schemes, referral incentives, and early access to new products or complementary services, etc.
Pro tip: if you really care about the quality of your service it’s worth going the extra mile. Ask your users about the experiences they’ve had. Your, or your team’s beliefs on how happy the users are can be biased, and ultimately, even false. Conduct research (using tools or by simply contacting users and chatting with them) regularly to track how improvements are influencing customer’s satisfaction.
Summary on tips to improve conversion rates
As a framework for marketing your digital product, the funnel offers a structured and strategic approach. By implementing the tips at each stage of the process, you are appealing to a unique group of potential clients, not only encouraging them to make a purchase but to become a long-term fan who will act as an enthusiastic advocate for your products and services.
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