How to create products that sell

How to create products that sell?

A good product idea doesn‘t necessarily guarantee you to sell it. Just creating a product for the sake of creating it, is not feasible. That’s why you need to create products that sell.

So how to get this done? It all starts with the idea. You have an idea for a potential product that could change your client’s life to the better. But to make sure that the idea sells, you need to consider certain elements to guarantee results. Let’s take a look at them.

Aspects to consider to create products that sell

Keep your ideal customer in mind. 

First, you need to keep your ideal customer in mind.  You create your products for them and not for you. Therefore, consider what they need and how the product will solve their problems best.

• What issues do they face?
• Which features need to be included?
• Which pain points get solved?

To make sure you create your product for your target group and don’t create something that fails their needs, create your product by interacting with your clients. It is hard to come up with a great concept if you sit in your silent chamber. The best ideas emerge while you work with your clients.

Consider Client preferences when designing the product

When you think about your product design, you should consider the preferences of your clients. Do they prefer to read? Are they visually triggered? Do they like to listen to your content? Based on these preferences, you can decide what kind of product you should create.

This is especially relevant when you package knowledge into products. Here it is key that clients will consume the content.

However, this is also relevant for other products. If you are e.g. in the IT space, you must consider the latest user experience trends, how clients navigate, easy navigation etc.

Our preferences change over time – just think about the times when the iPhone was released. Everybody thought we will always need a keyboard with keys on a phone to dial. And look at the world today – Smartphones everywhere! Consider such preference changes in your product design.

Fit your product into your overall strategy

After you know what product you want to design and what’s the best way of consumption for your clients, you need to think about where in your strategy the product shall fit in.

Will this product be a stand-alone product to test a new market? Will it be an entry product for a higher-priced offer? Or shall it be the start of a series?

Depending on what place this product has in your strategy, you need to think about how you want to integrate other offers in.

Take the example of an online course that shall serve as an entry offer for your coaching or consulting services. If you know that the online course serves the purpose of upselling, then you need to consider this during your product creation. You need to drop some hints on your services in the course. Or you may want to send specific emails at specific chapters of the course.

Consider the fact that 90% of people taking a course will never finish it. Thus, placing an offer only at the end of the course, will miss out most of the upsell opportunities. You want to make sure that you avoid this to happen.

Make a test run

The best products are not created in the first run. It is a series of interactions between you and your clients that make a product a success. Therefore, give your most loyal customers a test run once you have finished designing your prototype.

You can either select a few people to provide you feedback for free. This is often done for books. Here, you get the book for free, read it, provide feedback and in return you are mentioned in the acknowledgements.

Alternatively, you can also offer your product for an introduction price. Here you explicitly ask for feedback or a testimonial in return for receiving the product e.g.  90% off. I would highly recommend doing this with existing clients first. Many people don’t appreciate “cheap” things and may get a wrong picture about you and your company. Your clients, however, appreciate getting more of you for a lower price because they know your worth.

Review and fine-tune based on feedback

After you have results from the test run, plan time to make resulting adjustments. Allot time to evaluate feedback and decide which adjustments you want to include and which ones not.

Feedback is important but always consider where the feedback is coming from. Is the advice coming from a paying customer or from a friend who will never buy it anyways?

Also consider how relevant the feedback really is. Often people have “nice-to-have” wishes that will not make any difference on the sales. Differentiate between essential changes that will increase your sales performance and changes that can be integrated when time is left.

Don’t get caught up into perfectionism.

The price your ideal customer is willing to pay

The best product is worth nothing if nobody will buy it. And one part of the purchasing decision is the price.

If you want to create a product that sells, you must find the right price point for your customers. There is no perfect recipe for finding the right price point. You can take a look at competitors, make a bottom-up calculation, compare it to other products you already sell successfully just to name a few strategies.

Once you found a price you think works, you need to test it in the market. You can do different split tests and try various price points. Also, you can test different package options, offering discounts and bonuses or other price factors like free shipping.

Do not underestimate the influence of the right price on your product sales. Finding the right price point is essential.

Tease your audience to create curiosity

To sell your product successfully, start teasing your community before the product is officially launched. Build curiosity by dropping hints, sharing pictures from the creation process, ask questions on what your clients would prefer. Spread this over some weeks to increase the tension and prepare your launch.

In this way, you can prepare your clients and followers for the new product and create a need and desire for it before it is even launched.

Get your product out into the market

Once your product is created and you’ve run your first tests, then you need to make it available to the world. Here you need to focus on Marketing.

Think about different strategies to use in parallel like paid advertising campaigns, content marketing strategies, challenges, organic reach via your existing network, direct email campaigns or many other options that are available.

Remember that people need between 7 and 17 contact points before they realize your product even exists. Also consider that you need to be consistent over a longer time. You cannot only post one time and think now people will rush to get your product. Thus, you need to put it repetitively into their face. Speak and write about it all the time. Mix it into other pieces of content that you put out.

Even if you feel like you only talk about this topic and it seems to get boring for you, your clients may have heard about it for the first time. Therefore, keep your motivation high, show positive energy as if you spoke about it for the first time.

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As you can see, creating a product that sells is no luck. It all boils down to testing different strategies from the product design itself up to the marketing aspect. And your customers’ needs should be always the center of attention!

And if you don’t only want to create products that sell but you also want to find out more about selling online, then check out this article here.