Digital product sellers have many challenges in today’s competitive market. But to be successful there are daily priorities that must be accomplished. It’s a good idea to add some of these daily tasks to your to-do list and begin to establish a routine to see results faster.
1. Customer Support and Communication
Without customers, digital product sellers do not have a business. So increasing the customer base, nurturing those customers, attracting potential customers and supporting them should be one of your top daily priorities. Engaging and nurturing your customer base is essential for building trust and loyalty. By implementing a proactive customer engagement strategy, you can foster lasting relationships and encourage repeat business for your digital products. Consider the following practices:
Email Strategies
Use your email service provider to add tags and segment you list based on interests, purchase history of a digital product, lead magnet or survey results to deliver tailored content and offers.
Personalize all parts of the email experience, from the confirmation emails to a welcome sequence for sales of digital products or lead magnets and regular email correspondence. This is the first opportunity to influence the customer experience. The confirmation email that is sent when a customer subscribes should be friendly and warm, not the standard generic form that is provided. Welcome sequences should convey your personality.
Answering Questions
Be available to answer questions and offer helpful advice. People are looking for connections with others and the first step is to be available. And if you are an “expert” in your field, it is natural for your customers to seek your advice and help. Make it one of your daily priorities to reach out to customers in one way or another. Keep in touch on a regular basis.
I get a lot of questions about software and tools to use. I have used a lot of different tools over the years and have my favorites. However, I like to offer options. Just because I am a fan of Trello, doesn’t mean that others may not like Airtable or Asana better. Sometimes it is a matter of personal choice.
The same is true with Photoshop. I love using Photoshop to create digital paper and add interest to backgrounds. However it has a learning curve and the high cost is prohibitive for some people. So I also use other programs that have many of the same features without the cost.
Troubleshooting
Customers may have tech problems using a digital product, or downloading. If you are selling a product in Excel or Google sheets, it may be helpful to offer additional instructions with the digital product to help with tech problems. Or provide a video. I have seen on ETSY many such products come with a “getting started” video to help people download and personalize products. Making your products more accessible to your customers and potential customers are daily priorities.
If you sell a digital planner, a good business strategy may be to include a video on uploading it to a device and using it. If you are proactive in thinking about what problems your customers could have it is an effective way to help you provide support and reduce problems.
If a customer has ongoing issues, email and follow up with them to make sure the problem is resolved. Ask for feedback and be prepared to listen. This may give you some ideas to implement which will avoid the problem in the future.
2. Marketing and Promotion
These daily priorities can include a wide variety of activities from marketing efforts to social media engagement. Pick from these areas to include in your daily routine:
Email Marketing
Use a set schedule for your email marketing, whatever your normal schedule is so your target audience will get in the habit of hearing from you. If you go too long without contact, subscribers will forget about you and you will have to begin again. In my welcome sequence, I let my customers know when and how often they can expect to here from me and to “white list” my emails so they are not sent to spam.
You can schedule emails in advance, especially emails about special sales or bundles. You can also use a calendar or master list to identify affiliate launches (as well as your own) to help you when writing emails. Doing specific tasks using tools save energy and are part of an effective time management plan.
Social Media Marketing
Promoting to social media platforms should be one of your daily priorities, although you do not have to post daily. You can use schedulers to help you schedule a week’s worth of content ( or a month) in advance. Once you know your launch schedule and have a digital marketing schedule, affiliate launches, and events use tools to set up those posts so it is not a daily activity. Note” it is not necessary to include all social media accounts. If your audience favors Facebook, then direct your efforts there.
I post to Pinterest once a month using Tailwind, and my blog posts are posted to IG, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter weekly using MissingLettr. Set up a schedule that works for you and manages your valuable time. Do as many tasks in advance as possible when you have limited time.
Monitoring Ads
If you are using paid ads on any of the platforms as part of your marketing strategy and one of your daily priorities is to review those ads daily. Especially if you set up a pay-per-click type ad. If the ad is not performing, then monitoring it will be more valuable than letting it continue. Try changing the ad content, using different demographics and perhaps changing the images.
Use a calendar to keep track of any ads you are running. Make sure you have a clear call to action. Use a variety of stories, video and photos to engage viewers.
Analytics and Metrics
Use data to determine what is working. If you use Pinterest, use their analytics to determine what content appeals to your audience. Use the demographics to learn more about your audience. Which pins do they like and create more of those.
If you use Instagram, which posts are resonating with followers? On Twitter, which tweets got comments? On Facebook, which posts got responses? Use all of this data to help you take a closer look at what your audience responds to. The data and information will give you valuable insights into your audience.
3. Digital Product Creation and Maintenance
Content Creation
Whether you are creating a new product, revising an old product or creating a new lead magnet to attract subscribers, content creation is the heart of a digital content creators business and one of your daily priorities. Creating content is an important element for any business.
I try to streamline the days where I do certain tasks for creating products. This system seems to take less time than trying to do a variety of things each day. I will work on new products certain days of the week, revise old product on other days, refine sales pages and lead magnets on different days. I do not do all of these on each day.
First, it would be confusing to my mind to do every task each day, as well as overwhelming. I like to batch my tasks so I am doing a like task repeatedly. So I will make several covers in a day for different products, or create background papers all at once, or write several different sales pages for an hour.
Second, it is more productive to focus on one task at a time rather than try to do it all. If you want to boost productivity, batch like tasks together. Especially when creating new products. If you sell dated calendars, have a time set aside to regularly update those calendars so they are always fresh and current.
Shopping Carts
Whatever type of shopping cart you may have is going to be dependent on payment processors, delivery systems and email providers. If one of those has a hiccup, everything starts to stall. Recently a PayPal update caused several days of headaches for my shopping cart. Nothing was working right and I found out later, lots of sellers were affected.
You need to routinely check your links for downloads, make sure that links are not broken and tools like dropbox are functioning. Use your shopping cart to “buy” your product like a customer would and make sure that the process is working on every single product.
Set aside time to ensure your website links are functioning, no broken links, no pages that are “not found” so customers will have the best experience. Review and upgrade your webpages on a regular basis. Add flipbooks if you sell planners and journals. Add more detail if you sell graphics, and constantly revise .
I took a quick course 3 months ago to view home pages that attract more customers and when I viewed my own, I was disappointed how it looked in comparison to others. Now, to be fair, the other home pages I was viewing were all coaches and not selling products, so their home page was very blank and minimal–not a look I like. But my own page had a planner that was just “over colored” for a printable planner. It was pretty, but not practical. So I put that on my to do list and got it done.
I hope this was helpful and you rethink how you schedule your daily priorities each day on your to-do list. By doing these 3 types of tasks on a daily basis, you will simplify your day and focus on the most important tasks.
Do you include a daily task that is not on my daily 3? I would love to hear more, drop a comment or email me at hello@creativeplr.com.