Have you ever had a favorite movie, song or book? Duhh! And what happened over the course of a few weeks? Did you watch that movie a few times or play the song on repeat? Mhmm. Then after some time (maybe a week, a month, a year), did your favorite song become old and overplayed? Guilty! This cyclic behavior happens all of the time. And it happens because we constantly crave new things.
In your life, this cycle is called "Yes, I'll upgrade to the latest iPhone!" or "Sure, I'll lease the latest model for an extra $50/month!"
In business, we call it the sales cycle.
The sales cycle is the reason you were frustrated when your e-book, PDF or DVD sales plateaued. When selling a digital product like the ones listed above, most of your sales come within the first few weeks it hits the market. You'll notice a pretty significant increase in revenue when you release the product and then after a few weeks your sales will drop off. Months after your ebook is released, your sales will become almost nonexistent. Surprised? We're not.
It's not like we're saying its your fault! This is the nature of selling a product. Unless it can consistently deliver value, it becomes obsolete to the consumer. It loses it's novelty.
If you don't believe us, here's an example of how the sales cycle got the best of one of the greatest athletes in our generation. Meet Neymar.
Your follower count means nothing. Neymar has 180,000,000 followers (yes you read it right) and an unsuccessful digital product.
He is one of the biggest celebrity athletes in the world. His follower count rivals the Kardashians. 85 mn on Instagram + 35mn on Twitter + 60mn on Facebook (that's a lot of followers!).
Neymar's app looks great!
There's no denying it. Neymar's app looks awesome! At first, the $15 million he put into creating a 4K video product, fancy editing, and a quality mobile app experience for his fans seems well worth it...but after further inspection, we realize his app isn't making any money. How come?
The $15 million dollar flaw
Neymar, with 180 million social media followers and $15 million to spend on his app, created a product that eventually failed. You can still check out Nabutfit on the app store, but the company is closed for business.
How'd things get so bad?
Well, remember earlier when we talked about movies, songs and books? Consumers like new things. They want something that will continue to add value, otherwise they'll move on to the next, latest version of it. This is why you sold a ton of e-books in the beginning of its release, but are now struggling to push any out the door. This is the sales cycle at its best, and inherent worst.
This concept is also the same reason Neymar's app failed. It didn't matter that he had 180 million followers on social media. The product he backed failed to stay current and relative. It neglected to deliver new exercises and fresh insights each week. The app and the services embedded in it became stagnant and consumers left in search of the "next best thing."
So what specifically went wrong?
- Old content - The videos in the app have remained the same since it first launched over a year ago. Every time a consumer comes on the app, they see the same workouts, insights and content. What's worse, they have no way of engaging with Neymar (their supposed "partner in health") to talk about the content they no longer care about. Recipe for disaster.
- No sales tactics - If you look at Neymar’s social media, he hardly mentions his app, talks to consumers about its benefits or encourages his subscribers to engage in a community discussion. Consumers can see right through his lack of passion for the product.
- No social proof - Consumers are smart, much smarter than you think. They want to see that other people are using the app and having success with the app. Neymar has nothing that indicates either are happening. Without customer success stories, or customers on his Instagram or Facebook to show that real people are seeing real changes with his program, consumers will believe it's just another celebrity pushing something he doesn't really care about ...
How do you prevent this from happening to you?
We will teach you everything you need to know in training. At the crux of it, you have to learn how to:
- Create new content consistently
- Adopt sales and marketing skills and tactics
- Engage with your customers
- Bake social proof into your marketing (website, Instagram Stories, Instagram, etc)
When you bring these things together, customers not only convert to a purchase, they maintain their subscription. And the more you can engage and build a community, the more viral you will go.
This is exactly what happened to Kayla Itsines. At 24 years old, Kayla was worth $50 million. Her app makes $60 million per year and her audience is over 13x smaller than Neymar's... Kayla shares new content consistently and has built a fantastic community.
Now for YOUR good news.
Both our product and our training will help you adopt the strategies Kayla used to amass her success as well as avoid the mistakes made by Neymar. Will some training, work and a little creativity, you will be on your way to building a massive brand around your digital business with Fitner!