5 Ways To Recession-Proof Your Digital Product Sales

The recession is slowing sales down for creators across the board. If your digital product sales feel sluggish, well at least you’re in good company. When budgets get tight, people stop buying. But the creators who are thriving are the ones who understand one skill: customer acquisition.  Customer Acquisition is basically just how good are you at convincing new people to buy from you. If you are good at finding new customers, you’ll never go hungry. So if you feel like you’re stuck on a hamster wheel, constantly searching for where your next customer is going to come from, this is the article for you.  Because here’s the truth, there’s three ways to grow a business, get more customers, get them to spend more, and get them to come back. In this article, I’m going to focus on getting more customers by giving you 5 strategies to boost your customer acquisition. I’m Scott Moran, the co-founder of SamCart, the commerce platform for creators. And what I’m about to show you is pulled straight from a book we have called the The Ultimate Guide to Customer Acquisition. If you like the 5 strategies we outline below, head here to grab a free copy of this book to get 10 more just like it.  We’ll start with #5...

5. Fewer Pages means higher conversion

When was the last time you went to buy something, and really enjoyed when the seller dragged the process out? Made you wait, answer a bunch of questions, even repeat steps before you could buy?  Of course not. This is the age of Amazon. The age of Apple Pay. We want to find the right product, buy it, and move on. Customers want simplicity, not complexity. Which is what makes the typical e-commerce journey so confusing!  Somewhere in the last few years, complexity became the norm. Stop me if this sounds familiar, but let’s say I found you on social media today, and wanted to learn more. So I probably click the link in your bio or in the video description. Which likely takes me to your homepage. Then I click on products, read up on a few different things you sell, decide which one I want, click over to a sales page, click checkout, fill out a bunch of information, and then finally submit my order.  That’s 5 clicks and at least 4 different pages to load before I can buy! And if we’re being honest, that’s sort of a best case scenario! That doesn’t even account for the really complex stuff that we all build because someone told us we needed some complex, multi-step marketing “funnel”.  SamCart creators believe in simplicity over complexity. That’s why our templates all follow our single-page design, where your audience can discover what you have to buy, place their order, and even add more to order all from the very same page.  When it comes to customer acquisition, we wanted to quantify just how important it was to have simplicity over complexity. To counter the “funnel myth,” we got a think-tank together and tested one very simple hypothesis: If you shorten the path from discovery to purchase, conversions will be higher. To say it plainly, “Screw those long, complex funnels. Delete the unnecessary pages and make more money.”  So we got a bunch of people together and ran a big collective test to shorten the buying process. All we did was have everyone agree to combine their sales page and their checkout page. In short, remove just one page from the sales process. Nothing revolutionary, just one fewer click, one fewer page load.  And wouldn’t you know it, simplicity wins again. One hybrid sales/checkout page converted 24.9% higher than having two separate pages! So the next time you’re tempted to created some huge, complex, 11-step “funnel,” remember this test.  Which brings me to #4.

4. Shorter checkout, higher conversions

The premise here is super simple. If we make it easier on our customers to buy, more people will buy. So we took a look at the SamCart database and tried to find out what happens when buying is physically shorter. So instead of requiring every single visitor to type out their first name, last name, email address, billing address, shipping address, password, phone number, blood type, social security number, and name of their firstborn child…what happens when we shorten the process?  We dove into the SamCart database and the numbers were wild. When you cut out billing address and shipping address, conversions rose by +35.1%! A whopping 35.1% boost to conversions just by removing unnecessary fields when your customers are buying.  When was the last time you bought your own products? Head back to your own sales process, and think about what sorts of information you’re asking for right now, that you really don’t use.  With SamCart, you can open up and product, and visit the Checkout Form settings inside of the drag and drop builder. That’s where you can turn off unnecessary fields with a checkbox or two. Leaving you with a highly optimized checkout experience, that looks great on mobile, and converts 35.1% higher than what you had before.

3. The New Lead Offer

What are you asking your newest subscribers to do first? I mean right after they register for a webinar, download a free lead magnet, or even just plain ole join my newsletter type stuff. Someone gives you their email, what are you asking them to do next?  Because if your answer isn’t, “I give them a special offer to become a customer”, then you are missing out on a huge chunk of new customers right now. Your new subscribers are your hottest leads! And it’s criminal how many creators I see simply show some “Thanks for subscribing!” Message on the screen after you join their mailing list.  If you want to boost your customer acquisition, let me show you what SamCart’s top creators all do. After someone joins your mailing list, give them a special offer to buy something. A 20% discount on your best selling course, a quick downloadable template, or the recording of a strategy session with a client…give them an offer that is easy to say “YES” to right there on the spot.  As for how to make this happen. Here’s what we recommend…use one of our single page templates like Masterclass. Add a quick success message at the top, and a countdown timer that expires 48 hours after someone hits the page. Add the details about whatever you’re selling your hottest new leads. Then send your new subscribers right to this one SamCart page to learn about your offer, get exited, and buy.

2. Social Media Flash Sales

This is one pretty simple. Creators who give their audience more opportunities to buy, win. So put more buy buttons on the internet! Toss out 2- or 3-day flash sales, and let your audience jump on special discounts.  The king of this strategy? King Ashley Ann, find her @KingAshleyAnn on Instagram. Ashley and her team are constantly taking different trainings, templates, resources, and more and creating quick 2 or 3 day flash sales. As a result, their customer acquisition machine is constantly pumping, which creates excellent opportunities to turn those customers into repeat customers, and grow their bottom line.  To follow Ashley’s lead, head into SamCart and turn any page you’ve already created into a template that you can use over and over again. Kick off your own flash sale by creating a new product, using that template you love, slapping a countdown timer on the page and sharing with your audience.  What happens next? Customer acquisition city just by giving your audience more chances to buy.  And the final customer acquisition strategy for creators is...

1. The Bundle Offer

This is a fun one. I want you to think about how informercials work for a second. I’m not saying you should emulate the crazy over the top behavior of the Shamwow guy. But I am saying that final screen of every informercial is a powerful lesson in convincing more people to buy.  You never get just one Flex Seal. You get flex seal, a second can, an applicator pen, flex patches, a 12 month guarantee... The point is, informercials sell a lot of stuff because they present an offer that is more valuable than the sum of its parts.  So how can us normal creators replicate this? Consider what else you could bundle into your top selling products? What extra downloads, bonus trainings, extra little services, or powerful guarantees could you include that would tip the scales and convinced more visitors to become customers?  Using SamCart’s bundled products feature, you can create overwhelming value by showing your visitors that they are getting a ton of stuff when they buy. And because we are all digital creators, you can create your own bundle without taking on a dime of added cost. Giving away more digital stuff is cheap, and it’s a powerful way to convert more customers.  Customer acquisition is a superpower. But thankfully, you don’t need to be an expert to get the results you’re after. If your sales are feeling sluggish, and finding new customers is giving you heartburn, then make sure you grab the The Ultimate Guide to Customer Acquisition. It’s 100% free.  10 more strategies just like these 5 are waiting for you there.