How to Market Digital Products: 14 Ways to Use Marketing to Promote a Digital Product

Last updated: January 23, 2024

Digital products are easy and accessible products to create that doesn’t require purchasing expensive inventory or issues and delays in shipping product. However, once you’ve finally finished creating your amazing ebook, digital download, or online course, the work isn’t over – it’s just beginning. The magic in digital products isn’t what you’ve created but the impact it can have by sharing it with others.

In this article, we will get down to the nitty gritty and share how to market digital products online so that you can make money and help people solve their burning problems.

1. Create a website for your digital product
2. Promote on social media
3. Build out a blog to market your digital goods
4. Share your product in online communities
5. Ask for customers to leave reviews for digital products
6. Create an affiliate program for your digital product
7. Send marketing email campaigns
8. Run advertising campaigns to generate leads
9. Send sales pitches to potential customers
10. Write and distribute a digital press release
11. Create tutorial videos about your products
12. Promote at online summits or in-person conferences
13. Host online challenges to help with marketing digital products
14. Build membership sites

How to Market Digital Products

1. Create a website for your digital product

Selling a digital product without an ecommerce website is possible but doesn’t scale well. It’s best to use a digital platform like Payhip to host your products online. You won’t need any fancy plugins or have to pay a monthly subscription to sell your products. With Payhip, you can start selling online courses, digital downloads, ebooks, software, and more.

If you research the best platforms to sell digital products, you’ll know that Payhip has built-in tools designed specifically for uploading digital products online with ease. And with a 5% transaction fee, you’ll only need to pay if you make a sale. So, while you’re building your site, you won’t be losing money. With no obligation to pay monthly subscriptions, you won’t need to worry about your free trial running out.

2. Promote on social media

Having an audience for your digital products is ideal to be able to have a big launch. However, it’s understandable that sometimes building the audience takes time, and you might be building it out your social channels while you launch your digital product. When thinking about how to grow your social media, the secret is to experiment with many different style videos, look at the level of engagement you get, and try to optimize to lean into the direction in which you get the best responses.

Experimentation and making videos and posts consistently is the proven method for getting results on social media. So, if you want to promote your digital products to a big social media audience, you’ve got to keep playing around and pumping out content. It doesn’t matter where you build your audience, whether it’s Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. By regularly posting photos or videos, you can attract customers and build an audience over the long haul.

3. Build out a blog to market your digital goods

On your website, you need to have an active blog where you post content to promote your digital goods. Keep in mind that the blog posts you write won’t be directly about the digital product you’ve created but will revolve around the same niche with tie-ins. You’re not going to write a blog post on “Ten Reasons to Buy the Ultimate Sales Funnel Ebook,” but you might write a blog post on “How to Create a Sales Funnel” with a lead magnet that convinces people to opt-in to your email list and a call-to-action to buy your sales funnel ebook. When running a blog, consistency is everything. You need to publish content at least twice a week for it to grow. Create a posting schedule that you can follow for years rather than just right now. Without consistency, your blog won’t grow as fast as you’d like it to be.

4. Share your product in online communities

To sell your digital product, you’ll need to promote it in various online communities. You might post in social media groups on Facebook or LinkedIn. However, think about other channels as well. Take online forums, for example. They tend to rank well in search results. You can hack sales if you find forum posts about your exact topic that are ranked on the first page of Google so that you can get direct traffic to your post from someone else’s community. Keep in mind some communities have moderators, so you’ll want posts to look natural rather than overtly promotional. Focus on building trust by sharing value and answering people’s questions by using your product as the solution.

5. Ask for customers to leave reviews for digital products

Social proof is crucial to your success when selling digital products in your business. While reviews might not directly lead to a sale, when people read the feedback your product has received, it helps potential customers make a buying decision about whether your course, ebook, software or any digital download is right for them. Don’t hide or suppress negative reviews either because sometimes that help convince people to buy products too. The reviews that aren’t helpful are the ones that are generic, such as “good product” or “I learned cool stuff.” If it’s short and vague, it may not be as helpful as a detailed review with pictures or videos that will convince people to purchase your digital product.

6. Create an affiliate program for your digital product

An affiliate program, or any referral program for that matter, can be an effective digital marketing channel for your digital downloads. An affiliate program is a marketing tactic that pays bloggers, influencers, and marketers a commission to promote your products and generate new business customers. They’re doing all the marketing work for you, but you only pay when a sale is made. You can find affiliates by reaching out and promoting your program to them, joining affiliate networks, and adding refer-a-friend programs when doing website or app development.

7. Send marketing email campaigns

If you’ve built up an audience and have an email list already, great! You can use this list to help you with the conversion rate for your new digital product. If you’re starting without an existing audience, you can create a lead magnet to entice people into signing up for your email list. This way, you can nurture your audience and increase sales as you roll out new products on your store or website. With email, you can use templates to help guide the design of your email. However, remember that a plain text email will always perform best when it comes to conversion rates, though they’re less professional than a well-designed email.

8. Run advertising campaigns to generate leads

Marketing your digital product will likely require you to spend on campaigns to help you generate sales. It’s worth noting that advertising isn’t just about creating an ad and watching millions of dollars worth of sales pour in. Just because you spend money doesn’t guarantee it’ll be profitable or even make a single sale. Like all marketing, the secret to mastering advertising is experimenting with different copy, images, videos, and call-to-actions is to figure out what resonates with people to compel them to buy.

9. Send sales pitches to potential customers

Most digital product creators will avoid doing sales to promote their products. Sales can be unsettling for some people because they fear being turned down. However, by consistently reaching out to people through their DMs or email inboxes, you’ll eventually receive positive responses. Those no’s will become easier and easier to hear with practice. The secret to a successful sales pitch is to keep it short and sweet. It should be at most three sentences. Basically, tell them who you are, what your offer for them is, and what you need from them in return, and a closing statement to incite a response or action.

10. Write and distribute a digital press release

Writing a press release to promote your digital products, new online course, or software can be a great way to build hype for your brand. The media often publish stories of new businesses launching, so this could be a great way to get people to talk about your product, especially if it’s newsworthy. You can find the email addresses of reporters online or by visiting the Masthead section of popular online magazines. The idea of getting news outlets to write about you offers an element of social proof that can yield you a new order or monthly customer. When writing your press release, focus on creating an unusual angle that’s relevant, timely, and attention-grabbing to entice people to write about you on their site. Creating a business or entrepreneur media kit on your website will allow journalists to find photos, logos, and other essential information to help them write their stories about your brand and products.

11. Create tutorial videos about your products

You can market your digital products by creating tutorials on YouTube. This doesn’t work for all product types, but if you sell software, this could be a helpful trick. Often, people turn to tutorial videos to learn how to do something. If you sell software that helps people solve that problem, people will likely sign up to use your application. Producing tutorial videos about products creates value for your online business and makes it easier to sell your products. Alternatively, if you sell educational ebooks or online courses, you can create tutorial videos where you teach general information in the videos and the advanced content in the gated section of your website.

12. Promote at online summits or in-person conferences

You can promote your digital products at online summits or conferences as part of your digital marketing strategy. Often, a keynote speaker at these events will share unique information that provides value and trust, and this positions them as an authority on the topic. At the end of the talk, they’ll promote their website, where you can purchase digital products, online courses, or other paid content as an upsell. Speaking at these events aims to help you build credibility so that people want to buy from you. You can spend your one-hour slot sharing tips and tricks you’ve learned over the years and share how your product will help them even more.

13. Host online challenges to help with marketing digital products

To promote digital products, you can host online challenges. For example, if you have a fitness course as your digital product, you might host a fitness challenge to boost sign-ups and engagement of your product. Coming up with ideas for challenges doesn’t need to be complicated. For example, a fitness challenge could involve completing daily workouts, doing as many classes in a month as possible, or beating your records. You can offer tutorials and videos for people to help them get started.

14. Build membership sites

You can use a platform like Payhip to create membership sites for your digital products. If you sell multiple digital products, a membership site is an excellent way to promote them. It’ll be like running an online store, as you’ll have various products that you sell in a monthly membership subscription. So, you need to know some ecommerce marketing to attract people to your site. Membership websites can host various pieces of content, such as multiple online courses, a collection of ebooks, or any other digital download you can sell online. Since there will be various content for people to consume, they’ll feel like they’re getting more value, which keeps them hooked on your business for months on end. You don’t need to spend money on a Shopify or WordPress website for your membership site to make this happen, either. Payhip has a free plan that allows you to only pay a 5% transaction fee for every sale you get. So, instead of paying a monthly subscription, your customers are paying you.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to market a digital product, it’s time to work on your promotional plan for its big release. You’ve poured hours into creating a sellable product, but it’s not until you get those sales that all that hard work pays off. You can go deep on one of these promotional activities or try a few out to expand your reach. Selling digital products on your own website instead of a platform like Amazon allows you to have more control over your products. If you’re thinking about promoting your digital products, sign up for Payhip today.