#134 - Digital Product Blueprint Step 5: Position Your Offer So People Understand Why It Matters

You can create an incredible digital product, build the customer journey, set up the automation…and still have nobody download it.

Typically, it’s not because the product isn’t good.

It’s because your audience doesn’t immediately understand why it matters to them.

In Step 5 of the Digital Product Blueprint, we’re talking about positioning: how to make your digital product feel like the obvious next step for the person you created it for.

The goal is to help the right person recognize themselves in your messaging and think:

“Yes. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

In this episode, you’ll learn how to use my simple positioning framework:

RIGHT NOW → QUICK WIN → BIGGER POSSIBILITY

You’ll also learn:

•  Why your audience is searching for relief, not your workbook, course or toolkit 
•  How to use the actual language your audience gives you during customer research 
•  How to turn a generic product description into messaging that feels urgent and relevant 
•  The three questions every digital product needs to answer 
•  Why strong positioning leads with a doorway, not the distant destination 
•  How to create your launch announcement and first promotional content 
•  Why specificity helps your offer stand out in a crowded market 

Your homework this week is to refine the messaging around your digital product, create your promotional assets, and share Version One with a small group of warm contacts before the public launch. 

Because people don’t buy the product you made.

They buy the future they believe it can create for them.

LINKS

📖 Get the FREE Digital Product Blueprint Workbook: DOWNLOAD NOW

🎧 Start with Step 1 of the Digital Product Blueprint: 🎧 EPISODE 130 

✨ Get hands-on support with Blueprint VIP:  JOIN VIP 

💬 Explore the Messaging & Revenue Reset: LEARN MORE

💌 Try KIT Email Marketing FREE: KIT AFFILIATE LINK

📩 Questions or want to share what you’re building?
hello@deborahcsmith.com

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.

Email Marketing: Start FREE with KIT
Join the Creator Network on KIT and create life-long fans and customers!

20% Off Sakara Plant-Based Meal Program
Use code DEBSAKARA at checkout for 20% OFF your first order with Sakara Life.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Mindset to Market is produced by Deborah C. Smith and designed to inspire and support big-hearted creatives in finding their own unique path, building a sustainable business, and creating financial, spiritual, mental wellness and abundance.

🎉 Work with Deborah Learn More
💕 Visit Deborah online at DeborahCSmith.com
💕 Follow on the 'Gram. @deborah_smith_coaching

Transcript

All right. Imagine that you've created an incredible digital product. You followed every step in the blueprint, you chose the right format, you designed a beautiful transformation. You built it. You connected this all to a, a really clear customer journey, and then you put it out there in the world, and womp, womp, nobody downloads it. And I've seen this so many times. It's almost never because the work is not fabulous, and it's not because you're not great, my friend. It's because the audience that it was designed for doesn't immediately understand why your thing matters to them. So today we're exploring step five of the digital product blueprint, and it's all about making your digital product feel like the exact thing that your ideal client has been searching for. So here's what I want you to get. When it comes to the online space, it's just not enough to have a, a really great product. Great products do not sell themselves. Clear and compelling messaging is what it's gonna take. 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. Hey there. If you're just joining us on this journey, this is part five of the Digital Product Blueprint series. This is a special six-episode podcast series that's designed to walk you through the strategic steps of building a high-converting digital asset, and our goal is to build something once that can start to do some heavier lifting for your business for years to come. So far in the process, we've covered how to choose the right asset to create for your business, how to design the transformation that it provides, building it to attract ready-to-buy audience members, and then last week we talked about connecting this to a larger customer journey. And so this week we are going to position it to sell. So if you're just joining us now, I do recommend that you go back and listen to step one of this series. That's gonna be episode 130 of the Mindset to Market podcast, or if you're listening to this in your email sequence, just make sure you're started with one and you follow along from there because they do all go in order, and this will make the most sense to you if you've already listened to the first four steps. And if you haven't done so already, I want you to pause the episode and go download your free copy of the Digital Product Blueprint workbook. It's just a checklist that's gonna keep you on track to do all these steps in a very simple fashion so you don't leave anything out, you don't miss anything. That's in the show notes of the podcast, or it's linked in the email where you got this episode. Um, and today's checklist is gonna make things really easy for you to get this work done, so make sure you grab that, and let's get into it And I just wanna start by saying that positioning is not about persuasion, it's one of the biggest misconceptions about marketing is that good messaging somehow convinces people to want something that they didn't already want, and I actually don't think about it like that at all. Nobody wants to feel like they're being convinced that they need something that they don't actually need. And nobody wants to be guided to get a product or, take a step or do a process that is just a distraction from what they actually need. So in my opinion, good positioning simply helps the right person recognize themselves and sort themselves into your world and into your offers. So that's like the difference between somebody saying, "I don't know. This is what everybody else has been doing. I think I need to do that workshop or buy that course," versus them understanding by reading your messaging and saying, "Oh yes. This is exactly what I've been looking for. This person understands me. This feels like it was made for me." So when we talk about positioning, it's clarifying and shining a light on the product that you created so that people can understand exactly how it's gonna help them and why it's for them. And the messaging that we create is the words we choose to share that position and the stories that we tell to clarify that position. So let me tell you just a quick story about my own former business experience. When I first got into entrepreneurship, I owned and operated a citywide plant-based catering company. We had a food truck. We had multiple food trucks. We had pop-up kiosks and lots of brand partnerships and lots of events. It was essentially an event company where the event was creating healthy food and juices and smoothies. But there was a very robust online component to that business, and in fact, the entire thing ran on email marketing and smart messaging, uh, that did the lion's share of the sales work for us. And so as I was building out the marketing plans for the various different revenue lines for that business, when I was new at it, right, I would talk about nutrients and meal plans and coaching packages and science-backed data for your health, and all of it was great, and all of it was true, but that was not what people were typing into a Google search, right? They weren't searching for nutrients and meal plans and coaching packages and science-backed data. They were searching for things like Quick recipes for more energy or weight loss meal plans or closest healthy lunch near me, right? So we need to think like the person that we're trying to support and think about what they're searching for and what they're struggling with, and then position our offers as the obvious solution to their... the way that they think about their problem, right? So your audience doesn't buy hard data and facts or, or details. They buy relief from whatever their problem is. They buy emotional outcomes, and they buy feelings. And so in order to correctly position your digital product to stand out and seem like it's exactly what they're after, we need to speak in emotional outcomes and speak in feelings-based words. And our messaging needs to paint a very clear picture of how they can get past their struggle that they're experiencing right now and get that relief. So let's take a little trip back to step one of the blueprint. Remember in the very beginning when I asked you to actually talk to your audience and do some research? If you did that step, I want you to go back and look at what you learned. Read the answers that people sent you when you polled them. Read the responses that you got to your inquiries. And we're not looking for product ideas. We're looking for their specific language. Like, how do they talk about their problem? How do they talk about what they think the solution is? How does your audience respond to those polls and queries that you did? And if you haven't done that step, now is a great time to do it. It's never, ever too late to do audience research. This is something you should be doing over and over again if you're gonna be the person who does the marketing for your business. So 90% of the time when you ask the right questions and you poll your audience, they're gonna write your marketing copy for you because they're gonna speak in the kind of words that they think in, and they're gonna tell you how they feel about the question that you asked. And so when I was thinking about preparing this episode, the easiest way for me to teach you how to craft really strong positioning is with a very simple formula. It's basically a three-step formula. So you wanna make sure that your messaging includes these three things, and you can go ahead and write these down. These are the three essential elements of this formula. The first one is right now The second one is quick win And the third one is bigger possibility. Right now, quick win, bigger possibility. Those three elements are critical to help your offer actually connect with people out there in the online space and get them to take an action. So you wanna make sure that you are positioning your offer as a solution to a right now problem that they are searching for on the internet. You wanna make sure that you position your offer to showcase that it will give them a very quick win, a first step they can take. And critical, you wanna make sure that you position your offer as one piece of something that leads them to the bigger possibility that they're actually after. Okay? So I got lots of examples for you in today's episode. So let's keep rolling with our financial planner, uh, example. She's created a digital asset that is a retirement planning workbook, and this eventually leads to her paid consultations, right? And remember we decided back in step four that when we talk about the financial planner's customer's journey, that her digital product needs to offer them just the very first step, right? A quick win. Something that they complete and feel like not only is the bigger task here now possible, but they're already in motion, and they have some momentum. And most importantly, that they have a trusted guide to continue on that journey with, right? The financial planner who created this first quick win for them is someone they can now trust to help them take that next step, which would be her paid offer to do a consultation. So if we look at that from a messaging standpoint, right, and a positioning standpoint, her marketing message is not going to be, "Download your retirement planning workbook." Right? She's not gonna say, "Download the free retirement planning workbook." At first glance, you might think the sentence "Download your retirement planning workbook" is exactly what she needs to say. It's telling them to download something free, and it's telling them what that free thing is, a retirement planning workbook. But let's deconstruct it. First of all, there's no emotional connection there whatsoever, right? But also it's missing all three of the key elements that I just mentioned. So a much stronger message to position this offer as the thing that they actually need right now would be something like, "Find out if you're actually on track for retirement in under 15 minutes." Right? So let's look at it. It's solving a right now current problem. They wanna find out if they're actually on track. Number two, it offers them a way to take immediate action. And number three- It points towards a bigger future outcome if they take that action. So the immediate action part is under 15 minutes. It's quick. And the bigger picture part is on track for retirement, the, the big thing that they're after that feels really ginormous to them and like something they can't tackle. So they need a baby step. Find out if you're actually on track. Do it in under 15 minutes, and that could lead to you actually getting to retire And so, I'm talking about the header on your, landing page where you're gonna be sharing this freebie. I'm talking about, the very first piece of copy that their eyes land on. If it's a podcast episode, if it's a landing page for the freebie, if it's, the copy that you put into a carousel slide for Instagram, or if it's the very first thing that you wanna put into your LinkedIn post, you're not saying, "Hey, guys, download your free retirement planning workbook." Instead, you're saying, "Hey, guys, find out if you're actually on track for retirement in under 15 minutes." It's the same product, but one doesn't really touch me any place emotionally. The second one tells me exactly what I'm gonna get and makes it feel like a quick way for me to start taking action on something that's been looming large for me. All right, let's look at the same formula with a marketing coach. Let's say she creates a guide to help people plan out their content over the next two months. So it's a content planning guide. It's a two-month content planning guide. That's the offer. Instead of positioning that digital asset with the title or the header Free Content Planning Guide, Free Two-Month Content Planning Guide, a much better message to put at the top of her content would be, "Stop wondering what to post every morning and batch two months of content in one hour Right? So this speaks to a right now problem that her client has. It points towards a bigger goal that they have, which is two months of content, and it can be done quickly. One hour is not a long time to spend to get two months of content strategically planned. So it's much stronger than download your free content planning guide, right? And that's the messaging that's gonna position this thing as a must-have. All right, let's do one more example. Let's revisit the therapist, and she has a PDF journal guide that's got prompts to help her clients get a grip on their emotional reactions. So her messaging is not gonna be download your free emotional regulation toolkit. Even though that says what it is and what they can do, a much stronger, much better message would be feel less overwhelmed before the end of today. Right? If you're somebody who's walking around feeling overwhelmed all the time, I'm probably gonna pay much more attention to feel less overwhelmed by the end of today than I am to download this thing that I've never heard of and I'm not searching for. I'm searching for relief from my overwhelm. I'm not searching for your toolkit. And specifically when we're talking about marketing messaging in the online space, because you have very little time to impress people, it's really important that your positioning and your messaging leads with a right now doorway that they can walk through, not necessarily the big end destination that feels further out of reach for them. We wanna offer them a baby step, a quick win, something they can do right now that's attainable and that feels easy So three questions that every single digital product should answer. Before anyone downloads your product, they need to know, is this for someone like me? Will this solve something I'm dealing with right now? And what's gonna be different after I experience this product or consume this content? And so if your landing page, your podcast description, your reel, your social post doesn't answer those questions, people just keep scrolling because they need to know. They're not gonna waste their time. They're not gonna give you their very valuable proprietary information, right, their email address or maybe sometimes their phone number, without knowing, is it for me? Will it solve the problem I'm struggling with right now? And what's gonna be different after I experience your product, your digital asset? So we wanna look for some examples of crafting messaging that's gonna position you as the one that they wanna trust on this topic. Here's just a few quick examples instead of calling your asset your free launch planning workbook, I want you to say, "This is the 20-minute planning system I use before every single launch to ensure I hit my goals." Right? One is a workbook that you've never heard of and you're not searching for. The other one solves a problem. It's a 20-minute quick planning system, and here you, you're showing proof that I use every single time I launch to ensure I hit my goals. Okay, here's another one. Instead of saying or talking about your product as my $7 mini course, I want you to talk about it from the point of view of what it solves and say, "My framework that helped me stop creating random offers." So instead of, you know, here's the product by the name that the product is called, you're gonna talk about it as the thing that solved a problem. My framework that helped me stop creating random offers. , Another example. Instead of a financial planner referring to her retirement planning workbook as a workbook, she's gonna refer to that as her proven system to help you get clear on exactly how much money you need to retire. Specificity creates the next step. It creates curiosity, and it helps people see themselves in your offer. If you say, "My proven system to help you get clear on exactly how much money you need to retire," it's so clear what this thing is, and it's not random workbook that I'm not looking for So let's talk about what to watch out for when you're working on the messaging and the position of your offers. And this applies to any and all things that you sell, not just this one digital asset that you've been working on throughout this series. The biggest messaging mistake that I see is when you try to tell people everything that you know about this product. You try to cram all the info and all the benefits and all the details into your marketing messaging when people can't handle that much information. And so being clear does not mean saying more things. And so if you ask my clients, they are gonna tell you that I go through their messaging with a scalpel, and I cut out so many words that just aren't doing anything to deliver the meaning that they're trying to, to sell, right? So this goes all the way back to my first job when I had to help write NYFTA grant proposals to get funding for major arts organizations. And if you've ever worked on a grant, you know that every single word has to carry water or it gets cut. There's not room for excess, when you're talking about these major organizational grants. So I just have a laser focus on this. If the word that you choose does not very much impact the feeling that I get and the understanding and the clarity about what it is that you're trying to convey, then it gets cut. And so your messaging should make someone immediately think, "This is exactly what I've been struggling with, and this is exactly what I need." And so we have to be really specific. We have to be really clear, but that does not mean use more words, and it does not mean explain every little detail of your product. In fact, often the details like the deliverable aspects of the product, like how many pages and all the little bells and whistles, nobody cares about that. They really don't. They wanna know how is it gonna make me feel? Is it gonna make me feel a bit of relief around this problem I'm struggling with? And so we, we have to position our offers as the solution to a problem and not as some big giant boatload full of information that they can't handle right now. And I've been trying to kind of hammer this home throughout the series, so I hope that's making sense. , Let's take a look at your homework for this step. So if you look at the checklist, the workbook, and again, you can go grab that link right in the show notes if you don't already have it. Here's what you're gonna find The first thing on the checklist is to write your launch announcement. This is basically a one-paragraph summary that includes the promise of your digital product. So very simply, what problem does it solve? Who is it for? Why do they need it right now? And how do they get it? It's the content that's gonna go on a landing page. Put into any messaging that supports this digital asset and connects with your ideal audience members to help them get it. So way back in step one of this process, I had you write a brief description of your digital asset, and that's a really good starting point. I'm sure it's evolved since then, since you've built it and you've been refining this and listening to these episodes. And so now we want to rewrite that and make sure that it checks out against those three essential questions, right? Is this for someone like me? Does this solve a problem I'm dealing with right now? And what's gonna be different after I experience this product? And again, that framework from the beginning of this episode is right now, quick win, bigger possibility. So when you draft your launch announcement, which is again, just a brief paragraph that includes what the promise is of this digital product, we wanna make sure it includes that. So that's your first step is just write a brief paragraph. Then you're gonna create three to five promotional posts, and again, focus on what it solves, who it's for, why now, and how to get it. I also suggest recording one or two short form videos or reels if you use social media in that way. If you don't, then you don't have to do that. But of course, that's a very popular way to connect with a large new audience that may have the problem that you solved. And then I want you to draft an email to send out to your list. Again, if you do not have an email service provider, now is a great time to get one. If you're building an online business, you're gonna need one. And I have a link in my show notes to my preferred, , partner, which is Kit. That being said, you could draft an email and you could just send it to 10 of your closest friends. And the next step is actually we're not gonna launch this to the public yet, but I want you to personally invite 10 warm contacts, people in your immediate audience and in your immediate world to just check it out. So this could be just an email that you send to your friends. It could be your mom, your sister, your brother, whoever. Uh, you can send it to me. I've mentioned this multiple times. People who will experience it before you launch it to the public, and it will do a couple of things when you send this out to friendly audience members. Number one, it's gonna build momentum for you because it gets really real when you share it with real people, and they'll help you uncover any little things that you need to fix up before a big- bigger public launch, like typos or links, you know, not firing correctly. Hopefully, you catch all those things when you test it, but there's always something, and it's great to send this to a, a short list of warm contacts first. So I want you to personally send this out to 10 people that you trust will be honest with you and get their feedback. And then you're just gonna collect questions from them and feedback, and you may wind up going back to the digital asset or the messaging to clear it up based on their responses. So congratulations if you've made it this far in the process. You're probably sitting on a highly strategic digital asset that you are almost ready to share. And I truly believe that messaging is one of the hardest parts of our marketing because we tend to write words that describe the components of our offers and the products as opposed to answering those really burning questions that our audience has. So just remember the formula, and we're helping them solve a right now problem, and we wanna give them a first baby step they can take in their process. So we're showing them a door to walk through, not the complete destination. And we're positioning ourselves as the one and only guide to walk them through that door. And if you're looking over your copy and you're thinking, "I know that my product works. I know it's gonna help people. I know this is an amazing thing. I think this could be really powerful to lead people to my paid products, but I can't figure out how to explain this in a way that really helps them see themselves in it," then I invite you to email it to me and let's have a chat. This is exactly the thing that I love doing. I've been at this for many, many years, editing words for a a variety of different types of writing and specifically to sell products and there's a few ways that I can support you in this part of your work. I offer a digital product blueprint VIP session, and that is where I'll help you dial in all the steps for this particular digital product that you're building right now. Separately, one of my most popular coaching offers that's been a part of my, offer suite for some time now is the messaging and revenue reset This is a much larger audit where we clarify the messaging and the positioning across your entire business ecosystem to make sure that everything is cohesive and jiving. And so this is really ideal if you've been feeling scattered or if you're struggling to sell. Like if you've already got an established offer and you've been selling for a while, it's also great if you're preparing for a launch and you need an extra set of eyes to help align all the pieces so that you have a cohesive and aligned system in place for the launch. So I'll go ahead and put that link in the show notes. But , whether or not you're ready for one of those steps, I invite you to reach out to me either way, share what you're working on, let me know where you're getting stuck, because sometimes just a quick chat with somebody who's done this a lot can help you clear away the blocks, get you back in motion, get that momentum flowing. And so feel free to email me at hello@deborahcsmith, and I'll drop that link in the show notes as well. All right, we did it. Next week, my friend, we take the final step in this six-episode series and we launch. And this is not gonna be a giant launch. It's not gonna be an exhausting launch. This is gonna be a warm, soft launch to get you in motion. And it's gonna feel like fun because you've done all this work. So our goal is not perfection. It's just putting it out there in front of real human beings. Because remember, we're shipping version one of this so that we can earn version two. And I know you can do this, so I'm really excited to see what people launch. And I'm gonna leave you with one final thought about today's step in the process. Remember, people don't buy the product that you made. They buy the future that they believe it can create for them, they're not searching for your digital product. They're searching for the relief that your digital product can provide them. So let that guide you as you write these marketing pieces and go through this checklist. And with that, my friend, I will see you next week in the next step. And until then, may you be vibrant