Do you feel overwhelmed by the number of self-proclaimed sales gurus and quick marketing schemes claiming the power to help you get rich quickly by selling digital products?
You’re not alone, but you may be surprised to find out that there are really only three ways to increase sales in any business: increasing views, boosting conversions, and encouraging repeat buyers.
Within this post, I’ll be exploring how you can take charge of your views, conversion rates, and sales to build a more lucrative PLR business.
Increasing Your Views To What Your Offering
You can’t sell a product to people who don’t know it’s available to them, so the first step to increasing sales is to focus on increasing views.
Whether you’re running your own website or selling anywhere on the internet, relying on marketplace listing such as eBay, etc. or building a social media movement, you have to get the word out there about your product.
Not all views will turn into a sale, but every sale will start with someone who views your product.
Making Those Views Turn Into Conversions
Conversion rates can seem complicated, especially for first-time sellers. Essentially, a “conversion rate” is just a phrase to describe the percentage of viewers who take the action you want them to take on your site or in relation to your product.
For example, if 100 people view your product in an hour, thirty of them make a purchase and ten sign-ups for your mailing list, you have two reliable metrics to form a conversion rate.
In this case, you’d have a thirty percent conversion rate for sales, and a ten percent conversion rate for a marketing outreach. Views are essential, but they’re not the only piece of the puzzle. You have to boost conversion rates, especially your conversion rate for sales.
Making More Sales With Repeat Buyers (Your Customers)
Some digital goods are purchased once, and customers have no real reason to make a repeat buy. This is where you’ll need to offer supplementary content to keep repeat customers coming back for more. By consistently releasing new products.
Look for ways to upsell products, using such methods as sale funnels. Also, building a customer base email list will encourage past customers to buy more in the future giving your customers regular content updates.
Increase Views Of Your Offerings
Do you want to know the best ways of increasing views of your digital store or wherever you’re selling PLR products? Since every view is a potential sale, this is one of the single most important aspects of marketing your content. Learn how to boost views and sales by following a few simple guidelines.
What are Views?
Essentially, a “view” is any web traffic going to your store, or a page that contains a purchase button. A view isn’t always a precursor to a sale, but you certainly can’t make a sale if no one is visiting. So, it’s very important to direct traffic to your product or store, whatever it may be.
Where To Find Visitors
The first step to building your views is to start actively seeking out your target audience. You need to know who’s most likely to buy your product, and how to best market your digital goods to this particular group. Does your product meet a need within a niche audience or special interest group?
Look for communities dedicated to things related to your product online, especially through social media.
Start a blog, and encourage discourse in the comments section. Join forums, and cultivate a Twitter following. The more you can boost your web presence, the easier it will be for you to direct traffic to your products.
Free Traffic Vs. Paid Traffic
You can always pay for advertising, but results may be mixed and certainly aren’t guaranteed. This is especially true for prepaid advertising like banner ads because most people are conditioned to ignore them. Pop-ups will almost certainly be blocked by software programs, so a paid pop-up isn’t likely to even reach your audience in most cases.
Paid social media posts can have some influence, and can drive traffic to your web store. They can also be expensive if you’re wanting to drive heaps of traffic to your product or store, so you’ll need a fairly substantial upfront investment if you plan to make targeted and suggested posts part of your plan.
There are also a wide variety of free options. Some, like taking advantage of affiliate network access included with your e-commerce platforms service offerings, may require some profit-sharing at the point of sale, but this small fee is negligible for most sellers.
Others, like actively courting social media users and forum posters, are completely free.
Affiliate marketing can help you reach potential customers who are otherwise completely beyond the scope of your own organic marketing reach, and is almost foolproof. Hitting the community pages is completely free, but will require more effort on your part.
Build a Following. Become Part Of a Community
If you join online communities only for self-promotion, you’re not likely to reach your full potential for success.
Potential buyers don’t typically like to be seen as marketing fodder, so it takes a bit of finesse to promote your product within established groups. Don’t let your eagerness to make a sale make the people you’re courting resentful of your presence; become part of the community.
Contribute meaningful commentary, advice, and questions to the group. Communicate as if you have nothing to sell, and allow your target audience to build trust in you. When you actively work to build a following, you’re cultivating a group of loyal customers who are more likely to purchase everything you release and to follow your updates.
Random customers may make one purchase, but your following can almost always be counted upon to support your products if they’re of reasonable quality and your part of their social circle online.
Forums: Be a Leader and an Influence
If you’re not part of an active online forum, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that forums are outdated. Far from obsolete, the online forum is still a thriving method of communication, forums have just gotten a bit smaller and more tightly knit.
Hobby groups may exist as Facebook groups, for instance, but social media has yet to completely replace the forum. Don’t neglect the power of the online message board, sign up for the ones where your target audience is most likely to spend time, and start participating.
Don’t just market your product, offer valuable insight, and become a community leader. Your signature line is the perfect place for a link to your web store, for instance. There’s no reason not to promote your products on an online message board, just be sure that’s not all you’re doing or you’ll quickly be ignored.
Social Site Groups, Facebook Groups, Google+ Communities, LinkedIn, Etc.
Social media may not have replaced the online message board or forums when it comes to special interest community groups, but it’s also not a force you can afford to ignore, either. If you don’t already have a social media presence, start building one.
Join Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and put some time into your profile. Then, start looking for the groups and communities on those sites most likely to have a need for your product and start participating in conversations.
Again, focus on becoming part of the community, not solely on marketing. You’ll be able to naturally self-promote in no time, and your pitch will be more powerful when the people to whom you’re marketing feel as they know you a bit better.
Conclusion
Get out there and start joining groups! Whether your digital product is ready for the market or not, it’s never too early to start building the relationships among what will become your target audience.
Remember, everyone you meet in these groups and everyone you interact with is a potential view of your product page, and every view is a potential sale.
So get out there and start making friends, when you’re ready to start promoting in earnest, you’ll have a built-in community of friends and acquaintances who will flock to view your sales pages.