#133 - Digital Product Blueprint: Step 4 - Connect Your Digital Product to a Client Attraction System

Getting someone to download your digital product isn't the finish line. It's the beginning of the customer journey.

Because if they never consume what you've created, they never get a result. And if they never get a result, they never experience your expertise or discover how you can help them next. 

In Step 4 of the Digital Product Blueprint, we're taking the digital product you've created and connecting it to a complete Client Attraction System.

You'll learn how to:

•  Map the journey from discovery → opt-in → consumption → quick win → next step 
•  Reduce the distance between someone saying YES and experiencing a result 
•  Choose where people will discover your digital product 
•  Create one clear call to action 
•  Write a simple 3-email welcome sequence that encourages people to actually use what you've created 
•  Set up a basic email automation without an expensive tech stack 
•  Test the entire experience from your customer's perspective 

Because your PDF, quiz, mini-course or private podcast isn't the system.

The journey you build around it is.

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Next week: Step 5 — POSITION. We'll work on the messaging that helps the right people recognize themselves in what you've created and actually want it. 

Mindset to Market is a Luminous Creative Production. If you'd like to learn more about our business coaching program and group coaching container, please visit us online at DeborahcSmith.com.

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Transcript

Later is a digital graveyard. Later is where great digital products go to die. I'll read it later. I'll watch it later. I'll go through the workbook later. I'll listen to the podcast later. And then later never comes. So if you're creating a digital product to attract potential clients into your world, getting someone to download it is not the finish line. It's not the end goal. In fact, it's the very beginning. It's the starting line of your customer journey. Because if they never consume what you've created, they never get any result. And if they never get a result, they never experience your expertise. They never build any trust with you. And so they probably never discover how you could help them next. And so in step four today of the digital product blueprint, we're talking about how to connect your digital product to an intentional customer journey that gets people to actually devour your content and come back for more. So yes, we're gonna talk about delivery. We will talk about email and a little bit about technology. But this episode is really about something much bigger, which is the experience that you create After someone says yes. So let's get into it. Hey there. Welcome to the Mindset to Market podcast, your go-to space for practical tools and solutions to the everyday challenges of being a creative and soulful entrepreneur living in a material world. I'm your host, Deborah Smith, a holistic business coach and marketing strategist with 17 years of experience. I help my clients bust through mindset blocks and learn daily marketing practices that balance personal wellness with financial growth and impact. I'm here to offer you support with creativity, mindset, practical how-tos, and getting into imperfect, messy action so you can experience daily breakthroughs as you grow. If you're a purpose-driven entrepreneur building an online business, you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Welcome back, friend. You are indeed listening to the Mindset to Market podcast, and I am Deborah Smith, and so glad to be here with you again today. Thank you so much for listening and being on this journey with me. This is part four of a special six-episode series called The Digital Product Blueprint. And today in step four, we're really talking about how to connect a digital product to a much bigger picture, a larger customer journey or system. So if you've been following along from week to week, congratulations, 'cause we've already done quite a lot. And so this week we're talking about the digital product that you created and connecting it to what I call your client attraction system. So if you're just discovering this series or this podcast for the first time right now, welcome. I do highly recommend that you go back to step one of the miniseries and then work your way forward from there. So that's gonna be episode 130 of this podcast. It's called Step One: Choose, and it's all about how to pick the right digital product for your audience to grow your business. And then also make sure to grab your copy of the free Digital Product Blueprint. It's a workbook that's linked below in the show notes. You can get it on my website. You can DM me if you can't find the link, because we're gonna work directly through the week four checklist today. And basically that workbook is really just a checklist designed to help you stay on track and kind of make sure you don't skip any steps. Okay, so let's connect the dots. The first thing I wanna cover in today's episode is really about what is a s- a client attraction system. So just-- it's important to understand that your digital product is not the funnel. It's not the client attraction system. It's just one tiny part of it. It's the actual piece of content that you've created, whether it's a video or an audio or a PDF or however the actual content exists. That's just one piece of the system. This is not the overall system. So your quiz isn't the system. Your private podcast isn't the system. The journey that you create around the actual digital product, that's the system. And so think about what actually has to happen every time somebody wants to get something from you. They discover who you are. They learn that you have a solution to the problem that they are struggling with, right? They become curious about something that you've created. They click a link. You offer them an opportunity to opt in some type of a form. They fill out the form and opt in. They then receive the thing that they're after, right? They get- immediately get a download or taken to a landing page that's got the piece of content, and they receive it. They open it, and then hopefully, fingers crossed, they actually use it. They experience some kind of win. They continue to hear from you, and they start to build trust with you because they've gotten some valuable support from you. And then eventually, some percentage of those people realize, "You know what? I think I need this person's help." That's the whole system, right? That is the system. And so there's places all along that journey where people can easily disappear. So I think that sometimes we give ourselves way too much credit as marketers. Like, if someone downloads your thing, we're like, "Yes, another subscriber, another new person on the list. We did it." And we're celebrating, how great that feels. But you need to be asking yourself the following questions: Did they actually open it? You've gotta check and see if they're actually reading it. Do they use it? Did they finish it? Did they complete it? Did it actually help them? Because getting access to the thing that you created does not equal transformation whatsoever, and in fact, a large number of people are gonna opt in for your thing and never even open it. It's so sad. They say, "I'll do it later," and then they never do it later. And so this is one of the reasons that I'm constantly telling people that more is not necessarily better, right? We don't need another bonus or another 30-page workbook or 12 modules when somebody could get the result that you can give them in, you know, two modules. So sometimes adding more value actually makes your product less consumable, and the goal is to have your content consumed. We want them to get to the end of the thing and get the aha, get the win. So your customer opens the thing that you gave them, and they think, "Oh, wow. This is amazing. I love it. This person is so interesting and so creative." And then they immediately think, immediately think, "Okay, I'm gonna do this later." And then they put it away, put it on a shelf, stick it in a folder- so if somebody does not take action immediately on your thing and connect it to some type of deeper value and get an instant reason to continue consuming it, then there's a really good chance they're not gonna consume it at all. I have experienced this personally so many times by creating products that were just misaligned for where my customer was at on their journey, and not making it something so easy for them to do right away. So when you're designing the delivery experience, I really want you to be thinking, "How can I reduce the distance between the 'Yes, I want that' and the win?" Right? How can I reduce the distance between the yes and the win? So your ideal customer finds you, and they say yes to your offer, and then how quickly can you help them experience something that's really useful for them? Now, let's think about this for a second. Let's say you're a financial planner. We talked about this in every episode so far, and you've created a retirement readiness assessment, right? So a way to assess how ready are you to retire. How much money do you have? Can you retire? The first step transformation that you're gonna give to them isn't gonna be, "Congratulations. You're completely prepared for retirement." Like, that would be ridiculous, right? They're way back at the beginning of their journey, so more likely the first win is something like, you know, "For the first time in my life, I actually know my retirement number. I know how much money I need to have for me to comfortably retire." That would be super useful, and that would also be the first step on their journey if they've never thought about this before. So if they're newly experiencing, you know, thoughts about retirement and looking for someone to guide them to take a first step, helping them figure out that retirement number, like what would it look like to retire? How much do I need to have saved? So useful, and now they're thinking about you as their guide, right? So let's look at another example. What if maybe you're a career coach and you wanna help somebody have a first step, baby, immediate win that's really useful? And so that win might look like, "I can finally articulate the three things that I absolutely don't want in my next job." Right? So maybe you create a tool to help them figure out what they don't want and get much more clear about where they're headed for their career. So your digital product doesn't have to completely solve their problem. It just needs to create movement and help them feel lighter about the situation, help them feel like they're-- have some momentum, and like they've taken a step in the right direction. So that momentum creates trust, and then they're, again, they're gonna see you as the guide So I wanna work through this with you step by step. So go ahead, again, download it if you haven't yet. Grab your copy of this checklist and take a peek, and let's actually build your client attraction system. So if you look inside the blueprint, look at week four, connect. Your goal this week is to connect the individual pieces that you've created into one overall intentional customer journey. And so the first thing that I want you to do is to actually map this out, a physical map of your customer's journey. So you can do this with a piece of paper and a pen. You can do this with sticky notes. You could do it in a Google Doc. It does not have to be fancy. This is not a design project. It's just for you to see it with your eyes one step at a time laid out in front of you. So you could literally draw a circle or a square for the six steps of this and put them one after the other on the piece of paper. And so inside the first-- or use the sticky notes, like I was saying. So on your first sticky note, it's gonna say discover. The second sticky note says opt in. The third sticky note says receive. The fourth says consume. The fifth says win. And then the sixth one and the last one says continue. Okay, this is gonna be the whole customer journey, and I want you to think clearly through how all six parts of that journey are going to happen for your digital product. So walk yourself through it. How does someone discover this thing? Step one, discover. How are they gonna find out about it? Is it linked to the bio on your social media? Is it part of a blog that you wrote and is, you know, living on a blog someplace or in Reddit? Is it in a Pinterest pin that they find when they're scrolling through Pinterest? Is it an audio? Do they hear you talking about it when you're a guest on somebody's podcast? Where are they going to first encounter and learn that this product, this digital product exists? Figure out how you want people to discover it and where it's gonna live, right? And put that on the sticky note or inside that box. Next, how do they opt in? Where do they actually click? Now, you could create a form inside your email service provider. We talked about that a lot in episode three. Or do they click on a Google Doc? We also talked about creating a Stripe offer or like a checkout page inside Stripe and then making it free. There's so many different ways that you can set it up, but you wanna make sure that you collect their email address. On the third sticky note, receive. What happens after they click and fill out your form or give you their email address? How does the product arrive? Like, how does it actually get sent to them? Is it, again, through email? Do you have to manually send it to them? Do they automatically get a Google Doc? If you're using Instagram, you could be using ManyChat. Maybe you've got an automation set up through ManyChat. There's lots of different ways that you could deliver the product to them, but we wanna make sure that they've received it and that you can check that they've received it, right? We wanna make sure that you actually get them what they asked for. This is a really important part because it's the automation part, and while it's... There's many different ways that you can automate this making sure... You wanna be able to track it. You wanna make sure that it actually gets delivered And then consume. So this is the question for the consume step is what is the first thing that you want them to do? So when they receive it in that welcome email or in that moment, you're gonna tell them immediately something that they can do right then and there that's gonna get them into the process and get them feeling that feeling of momentum. So even if they can't consume the entire digital product right there in that sitting, what's gonna get them started? And what's gonna make them feel excited to come back to it and consume the entire thing at a different time? So we've gotta hook them in to consuming the actual content. So that's the fourth step. And then win, right? What's the first win that you want them to get? And I think to, to go back to my examples earlier with the financial planner, you wanna think about the very, very first step on their journey and help them complete that step and get that win. So what's the first win that your digital product is gonna deliver to them? And then very importantly, what happens next? So once they've consumed your digital product, they've gotten the experience that you want them to have, they've consumed the content, they got the win, now what? How are we going to invite them to continue to interact with you, continue to follow your work, consume more of your content, and/or set up a call and talk with you? It could be, you know, giving them more resources that provide them an, a very simple next step. It could be an invitation to do a discovery call. It could be an invitation to listen to your podcast or go watch some of your YouTube channel. Somehow you wanna give them a next step, and it does not have to be a sales step. If it's a low-ticket offer that you offer them next, sometimes that's appropriate. It depends on what you do and what you sell. But basically, we're gonna map out those six steps so that you have a high-level overview of your customer's journey. Okay, so let's move on to the next item on your checklist, which is decide where people will find your product. So we're kind of working through each of the steps now, right? We want to decide where you want people to discover your product. And with this, I don't want you to think, "Oh, they're just... I'm just gonna put this everywhere." Okay? You don't need to promote this on seven platforms. Think to yourself, where does my ideal client already encounter me? Where do they hang out? Where are they likely to be consuming your content? Maybe it's on a podcast, maybe it's on LinkedIn, right? Maybe you're frequently a guest on podcasts or you do a lot of networking. Maybe they find you through Google. But I just want you to pick one or two places to start, and those one or two places should be where your ideal client is most definitely concentrated and likely to be hanging out consuming content. So we're gonna talk much more about the actual messaging and the positioning in the next episode in step five. So for now, we're just simply deciding where are the doors into this experience, okay? Just pick the platforms that you think make the most sense, one or two places that you want people to discover this digital product. Not everywhere, just one or two. All right. Checklist item number three, you're gonna create your primary call to action. So I want you to decide what do you want people to do? The primary call to action is very clear guidance on how to take that step that you want them to take. So one of the fastest ways to create friction is to give people 12 options. So if you're like, "Follow me, and then download this, and subscribe over here, and then listen to my podcast, and then take my quiz, and then book a call, and then, you know, buy this, join that," no. No, no, no, no, no. We just want one call to action. One call to action per piece of content, one call to action per email. And do not confuse the mind of somebody who's cold on the internet and doesn't really know you because what they're looking for is a solution and they don't wanna have to make a decision. They want you to have already made that decision for them and tell them, "Do this one action." So just think, what is the primary invitation that I want them to be invited into? So for this series is a good example. I just keep telling you over and over again, go get the Digital Product Blueprint. Now, for those of you who have downloaded it, you already know you had to opt in to get that - checklist, So my doorway is very simple. There's only one doorway in: get the Digital Product Blueprint. Somebody might discover me through the podcast. They might see a reel. They might read an email someplace that somebody forwarded to them. But I'm only giving them one place to enter in to get this content. You can download the Digital Product Blueprint. There's one opt-in form. So one call to action, one simple piece of guidance. All right, so you're gonna decide what the call to action is, and then checklist item number four is to write your welcome sequence. And now we've arrived at the part of this process that I think people dramatically underestimate. The emails that you send as a part of the delivery of your digital product, they are part of the product. They're not some negotiable piece of this puzzle. Like, we really wanna send thoughtful, compelling, and fun and exciting emails that really get people excited to open and consume your content. So your delivery experience does not end when you send them the link or when you send them the product. That's where it begins. And so I would recommend, highly recommend that you, you have an initial welcome sequence that has at least three emails in the series. And again, you can do this for free inside of an email service provider. And there, there's so many different ones that you can choose. I love Kit, and there's a link in the show notes to check out Kit if you haven't ever before. But let's talk through the three necessary emails in my opinion. And again, this is where you get to be creative and have some fun, show your personality, surprise them with how much, support you can give them, and nurture them. So email number one is the delivering the product. You're gonna give them what they asked for, make the link super obvious, tell them exactly where to start, and don't make somebody read your life story, right? Just give them the thing that they're after. Give them the value that you promised them. Make it easy to find, easy to click, easy to download, easy to consume. Then you're gonna send a second email, and I would recommend waiting a day or two. And that's just checking in. Did they get the link? Did they start it yet? It's support for getting it done. So, you know, you might wanna add a little bit of extra support to this email. "Hey, in case you haven't opened it yet, here's the link again. And then you can share with them what's the most common place that people get stuck when solving this problem? Can you offer maybe a helpful suggestion that gets them moving? Can you tell them how long it's gonna take? Can you, suggest how they can make the most of the digital product? And then the third email that I want you to send, again, I would wait a day or two, is how do they continue, right? So this is what's coming next. Maybe there's another resource. Maybe there's another episode of-- that they can listen to. Maybe there's a paid offer. Uh, maybe you invite them to reply and tell you how they're feeling about the product. Did they actually do it? What did they feel about it? Start a conversation, basically So you're not just gonna deliver this thing and then vanish. I want you to remember, this is the part where you get to connect. So these emails, they allow you to truly nurture this new person, and it builds familiarity with them. They start to get a sense of your tone, your style, and that's gonna help them discern and sort themselves either into your paid offer or not. So these emails, do a lot of heavy lifting for you because they help your ideal client decide whether or not they wanna work with you without you having to be on a sales call. And you're building trust, and you're moving them along the, the pipeline, right? Okay, checklist item number five is to set up your email platform and actually build the automation. Now, again, don't freak out. I- this is where I lose some people because they're like, "Oh, you said it was gonna be easy, and this was gonna be simple." But I promise you, this is so simple. I, I work with quite a lot of entrepreneurs who are in the very beginning of their online business journey, and everyone thinks the email automations and the tech part is gonna be this overwhelming thing. It's not. These platforms practically do it for you these days. And so this is all it is. Somebody fills out a form, they're automatically tagged something related to that form so that you can identify them later. They're added to your email list. They're sent through the automation that then automatically sends out an email. That's it. They receive an email. That's the automation. Now you have automated something. Again, if you're starting from scratch and this feels overwhelming, you really do not need some enormous, expensive technical situation. You can create an incredible amount of your product and this whole experience using free tools inside Google Drive. You've got Docs, and Sheets, and Forms, and Slides, and Folders, and PDFs, what have you. So use what you have, keep it simple, and then when you're ready to connect the email automation piece, which is where we're at here, then you are gonna need that email marketing platform. I personally use Kit, K-I-T. But I also have an account on just about every single existing email service provider platform because I have clients that are across the entire spectrum. So I'm platform-agnostic in the way that I teach, but personally, for my own systems, I choose Kit, and I kind of covered why in step three of the series. So, you know, I could talk more about it. What I will tell you is that if you're deciding which email service provider you want to use I would recommend starting with Kit because they have a free newsletter plan that gives you the ability to create one entirely automated email sequence for free, which means you can create this entire first customer journey without having to start paying and without adding another giant monthly expense to your business. But whatever platform you use, just don't overcomplicate this. Now, before we move on to the last item on the checklist, there's something else I want you to consider, which is how does your customer actually want to consume this thing that you've created? And this is super important. So I do not want you to think, "Well, what format do I love to create in?" I want you to think, how are they most likely to use it? So if you're teaching something visual, like if you're a designer and you have to teach how to design something, then video probably makes the most sense. If something needs to be calculated as a part of the process, then you might wanna give them a spreadsheet, right? Like a Google Sheet. If they're gonna consume this thing while driving or walking or commuting on a train, then an audio track is probably best, right? Podcast or something audio. And if it's something that they need to reference repeatedly, then you might wanna give them a simple PDF that's a checklist or a guide, right? Something that they can go back to and reference, like bulleted lists, numbers, check boxes, et cetera. So for example, for this free series, I created a checklist 'cause I know there's a lot of steps. And on their own, each step is very simple, but if you look at the whole thing all together, it could feel like a lot. So I gave you a well-organized, broken down into very simple digestible bite-sized pieces. It's a checklist. And I just wanna remind you that the fanciest delivery method is not automatically the best one. Like, what's cool is not necessarily what's best. People do not care about things being fancy. They care about getting a result. So the best delivery method for you is the one that your client is most likely to use Which moves us on to the final checklist item. Checklist item number six is to test the complete experience. Again, we talked about this last week, but this is so important. I just really need you to become your own consumer with this and seriously take this,, very seriously, and move through every step of your entire automated process one step at a time. Use a separate email address if you have to. Go find your landing page out there in the wild. Read every word as if you're your own consumer. How does it make you feel? Does it move you emotionally? Does it make you want to download this thing? Then look it up on your phone. Does it look the same on your phone? Okay, click the, the button. Fill out the form. What is your experience as a user? What pops up as a thank you once you've filled out the form? And then open the email that you send to yourself and read the subject. Does it get cut off? Does it make sense? Are people gonna automatically identify that this is the digital product that you just g- gave them? So really think like a consumer. Does this make sense to me? Would I want to open this email? Will I even see this email? Does it go to spam? All of those things. And then open it, click the link, download the product. Start using the actual product. Pay attention. How does it make you feel? Where do you hesitate and be like, "I don't e- this is too much for me"? Do you feel like you're missing something? Do you get confused? Are your instructions, simple enough to easily follow? Do you feel like there's something in there that you can do right away to get into, to action? Do you have to hunt for the link, or is it really easy to find? Did the formatting look terrible on your phone? Do you wonder what you're supposed to do next? Every single one of those moments is critical and very useful information for your customer journey. So I want you to fix the friction. We want this to be a seamless journey. They want your content, they get your content, and they're just floating along, consuming it, loving it. There's no friction. It doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be a clear and simple path. So the bigger lesson here and I wanna bring this back to something that we talked about throughout this entire blueprint process. A digital product sitting inside your Google Drive is not automatically a business asset. It becomes a business asset when you connect it to the bigger picture, to the whole system. And that's when it can start doing some of the work for you. That's when it's gonna start to relieve you of having to be present all the time. So someone can discover you while you're sleeping. They can join your list while you're out at a family party. You can-- You know, they can start learning something from you while you're working with another client. They can experience your expertise before the two of you have ever spoken, before you ever meet, and have already decided they might wanna work with you before they ever even meet you. And so when the system is built thoughtfully and strategically, you don't have to personally escort every single person through your entire business process. That's where some of the time freedom that we've been talking about begins. Because you've intentionally created a path that does not require you to manually operate every single step. This is my dream for you, my friend. This is what I love about my business, and I want that for you too. And please don't forget that if you have been following along this far, but you're starting to feel, a little bit overwhelmed, or if you have no idea how this is gonna work for your business, if you want specific eyes on the digital product that you're working on, or if you would really like help nailing this and getting this right so that you do not waste time, this is exactly the type of problem that I love to solve with my clients. So I do have a few spots still available inside the VIP version of this digital product blueprint experience, and that's where we can map this out together. And I'd be so happy to help you get this right and help you figure out where should people discover you. What is the right thing for your type of client? Where should they opt in? What happens after they join? What emails should I write to these people? What are-- What's the messaging that's gonna make them say, "Oh, hell yeah, I need that"? And what's gonna keep them moving once they get started? What's gonna make sure that they finish their journey and consume your product? So-- And then where does your paid offer belong? At what point do you invite them to come work with you? So if you'd like my help doing that, you're gonna find that VIP link with the details in the show notes, and I have a couple of spots open that I can still bring a couple people into this. Okay. Let's recap, guys. We have to just do a quick recap of this episode so that you feel complete. So first of all, we're gonna map the journey from discovery to delivery. We're gonna decide where people will find your product and create your primary call to action, then we're gonna write out the welcome sequence, and then we're gonna connect your email platform, set up the automation, and then we're gonna test the entire experience, creating one seamless customer journey from start to finish. So underneath every single one of these checklist items, I want you to remember one thing. Your goal is not simply to get people to download. Your goal is to get them to experience a transformation, and that means you wanna bring them on a journey, and all the steps that we talked about today create that journey. So help people consume, help them get a win, help them know what comes next. That's how a digital product becomes part of your client attraction system and really builds a step-by-step path that creates new clients for you. So next week we are moving on to step five, which is how to position your digital product, and we're gonna work on the messaging that helps the right people recognize themselves in what you've created and makes them actually really want it. So that's something to look forward to. And until then, go ahead and grab that checklist, check out the VIP offer please don't tell yourself that you're gonna do this later. That's where the ... your digital product dreams go to die. All right, and until next week, my friends, as always, may you enjoy this journey, have fun with it, be creative, and may you be vibrant