3 Reasons Your Digital Product Isn’t Selling

Have you created an online course or membership to add an extra income stream into your business, but it’s not selling? 

You’re not alone. 

There are usually 3 key reasons why your amazing new product isn’t getting the volume of sales that you hoped for. 

1. Not enough people are seeing your digital product 

There are an abundance of absolutely amazing offers that are life-changing on the internet …that aren't making any income. 

This isn’t because they suck! It’s because not enough people know they exist. 

There’s two reasons for this – lack of audience for that online business, and then not enough of them are seeing the offer. 

A typical conversion rate for an online course or membership is 1%. So you can assume that 1% of your email list will buy during a promotion. 

Sure, you can certainly find digital products that sell at a higher rate than 1%, but if you know that 1% is normal, you can then reverse engineer your success. 

If you need 100 people on your email list to get 1 sale, how big does your email list need to be in order to hit your income goals? 

Suddenly it all becomes clearer!

This is why building an audience in between launches, and nurturing that audience is so important. Focus on growing your email list, and don’t just leave your amazing product sitting on your website with no traffic. 

2. There’s no reason to buy now 

If your digital product is available all the time, and the deal is the same right now or next week or next month, why would I buy it now? 

There’s only a very small percentage of people who are ready to buy now. Studies show this is a measly 3% of your audience. The rest of your audience has to be convinced that a product is something they need. 

So if only 3% of your audience are ready to buy, and it’s normal for only 1% to convert, what can you do to help them decide your product is useful to them. I will cover a bit more on creating value in the next point below, but one way you can switch this up quickly is by using urgency in your marketing. 

Urgency is when what you’re offering has some kind of offer that expires. This could be once spots are full, like only 10 spots available (scarcity). Or it could be that there is a limited time only bonus available – this is great if your product is available all the time. Or most common, urgency is created when the product is only available to purchase for a limited time. This removes the issue that consumers tend to delay their decisions about purchases if they can. If the doors close on your digital product on a certain date, then people are compelled to act now! 

Just a point before we move on – use both urgency and scarcity in an ethical way. By this I mean don’t lie! Don’t fake it, no matter what the internet marketing gurus tell you. Obviously this is due to ethics, but there’s something else at play here. If you are making something up in order to get more sales, and you’re a decent human being, this is going to make you feel gross about your own offer. Hello self-sabotage!!! 

3. People can’t see the value in your digital product 

Ouch! I know it’s hard as the creator of a digital product to consider that the offer isn’t compelling. 

Especially after the hours of time and passion that you poured into this project (one reason I’m a big fan of selling a digital product before you create it). 

But the faster you can remove yourself emotionally from the whole equation, quite frankly, the better. 

However if your digital product isn’t selling, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a failure straight away. 

It could mean that your potential customers don’t see the value in it. And that’s something you can fix, especially if it is in fact, valuable. 

So let’s quickly review your digital product. 

• Is it clear who the product is for, or are you trying to attract everyone?  
• Is it clear exactly what problem the product solves?
• When you talk about the product, are you sharing the outcomes that a potential customer is likely to experience? 
• Are you speaking only to the 3% of people in your audience who are ready to buy, or are you working on changing mindsets with the remaining 97%? (both is best!)
• AND do you have incredible bonuses that simply make your offer irresistible? 

If not, then it’s time to up the way that you’re presenting the value. This, in a nutshell, is what marketing is.