Growing digital products, especially in today’s day and age with an oversaturated market, isn’t the easiest thing to do. People are not downloading and trying applications like they used to. Why not take a personal arbiter to showcase the download slowdown? Look at your own behavior and be honest with yourself, how many times did you sit down with your smartphone, fire up an app store and search for novel apps? There’s a big chance you probably don’t even remember the last time you did this.
That’s because, people are not downloading and using new apps as much as they did before (meaning roughly around 2010-2016), one culprit being the oversaturated market. Even though the number of downloads is on the rise, the number of unique apps that are being downloaded is getting down. It’s harder to make it big nowadays, it’s not impossible. You either need to have a unique idea (hard) or you just need to take an existing idea and do it better than your competitors (easier).
Even if growing digital products so that they reach success doesn’t have a clear cut recipe to it, there are a few steps that help.
First, pick a name that is representative of what your product does. Even though your product is technically on the market, if it hasn’t grown out of proportion, there is still enough leeway to name your product to something more appropriate to what your app does, such as Appointfix which comes from appointment.
Start a blog
Starting a blog is an important part of growing your business, as it provides the dual benefit of educating your focus area while also bringing new prospects to your business. Plus, you might even find that writing about things and avenues that are in your niche might even be quite fun. For example, if you happen to be a contractor working with fellow the blog over at FieldVibe is probably a good match for yourself and can be used for inspiration.
Track good KPIs. For example, high traffic to your blog is generally a good indicator, but the better KPI to focus on is how many of those blog visitors are actually getting converted into customers, which is harder to figure out but worthwhile. A good book that we recommend in getting to help you figure out the right KPIs for your business is Measure What Matters by John Doerr.
Reach out
With the advent and propagation of social media, you’re bound to find a variety of influencers to your niche. Generally, influencers do expect something in return for giving a shout out to your product, and the nice thing about digital products is that you can always give them a free subscription, that practically costs you almost nothing (depending on the type of digital product you have, of course).
Prepare your tech stack. Once more and more people start to use your product, you need to start thinking about maybe upgrading your tech stack – servers, bandwidth, refactoring code, using other technologies or maybe even expanding your technical team.
Focus on marketing
The thing about apps is that a lot of people believe that once you develop or build the product, then you’re done. Unfortunately, that’s where most people’s applications fail over the years. Of course, it depends on the complexity of the digital product, but generally the hard part comes after building the product – figuring out if the positioning of the product is right, if the product gets validated by the market, and getting your product out there. That’s why most of your budget should go into marketing your product, not building your product.
Have a thorough team selection process
There’s a high chance that by growing your digital product you also need to extend your team. Good talent is sparsely found, and that’s why your selection process should be top notch – either by using an external HR company to conduct your hiring, or by figuring it out by yourself by learning what to look for. A good book that might help any aspiring CEO with growing digital products is Hiring Success, by Jerome Ternyck – highly recommended.
If you decide (or don’t have the budget) to hire someone, then what you could do is figure out the perfect qualities you would like to have in an employee / fellow colleague, and go from there. As for what are the best channels to recruit employees from, check out this chart.
Conclusion
Growing digital products is a difficult endeavor, one that has been made even difficult by the huge sums of money that revolves around in the industry. The good news is that by having a unique idea or one that’s better than the competition, you get to attract interest and financial interest from important people. By following the tips discussed in the article, you’re bound to make a few good steps for growing your digital product.
