6 Tips to Build Your Digital Product Audience

As you begin to develop your new and innovative digital product, there are many things you will want to do right off the bat. While launching and selling your product may seem like it won’t happen until far in the future, building a strong audience from the beginning is important.  building a strong audience from the beginning. When launch day arrives, already having a committed audience could make the difference between success and failure. 

What do you need to do to build your audience and how can you avoid mistakes? Continue reading to learn our tips and tricks for building an audience and help your product launch to the market with a dedicated following. 

Start Early and Continue Until Launch 

It is important to start building your audience as soon as you have identified the problem you are going to solve. One major benefit of audience building is gaining feedback and conducting crucial research early on. Even if your product isn’t clearly defined, you can still work on audience building. Your audience will help you take the problem you have identified and craft a solution that will benefit them and others like them.

If you care about your product, you will want to talk about it! Take audience building as an opportunity to build relationships and make it your goal for your future customers to know, like, and trust you. Throughout the process, the community you build will begin to see your product as their product and will naturally evangelize to others like them. 

Find Your Audience Based On Your Product Type

Not every way to build an audience will work for your product. You must research where your future customers are and the best way to reach them. Don’t run the risk of building your audience in a  community that your future customers aren’t present in. Do research before so that you can save time and make your marketing efforts count. 

Ask the questions: Are your customers older or younger? Does your product apply to working professionals, families, students, or another group of people? Where do your customers congregate (a physical location or online environment)? These questions will help you identify your audience-building strategy and your customers will be much easier to find. 

For example: If your product is an app that helps you organize school notes and increase study productivity, your target market would be students. Where do students congregate? You could build your audience at physical locations like high schools and universities or digital communities like Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. If you are intentional in your practices, you will find future customers who are excited about your product and want to see it succeed! 

Use Social Media to Target Your Audience

When building your audience, take advantage of the magnitude of online tools and platforms available to target customers. One great online tool is Facebook groups. It is an easy way to create a community around the problem your product solves and quickly grow your audience. 

Other social media platforms are an easy way to communicate with future customers, but they don’t allow you to create a community the same way that Facebook does. During the audience building phase is the best time to create profiles on each platform to increase your online presence and connect with users. Even if you don’t think your audience is on a specific platform, it won’t hurt to go ahead and create the profile – you may be surprised by where your customers find you! 

Online advertising can help you identify your audience and gain their email address for future marketing tactics. A simple opt-in ad that links to your website allows the customer to voluntarily provide their email address for a newsletter or content upgrade. You are building trust with the customer over time because of the value you provide to them through the content you send out. 

If developing the product is taking all of your time, you could hire an external company to conduct market research and build your audience. While this is a more expensive option, it can be a huge benefit to your product. Research and read reviews on local companies or online companies that could do remote work to find the best fit for you and your product. 

Identify a Group of Insiders

Once you have developed an initial audience group, you will want to identify a group of insiders who will most likely be your future customers. These are essentially people who are willing to put in the time and effort to see you succeed. An easy way to do this is by creating a private Facebook group and selecting moderators whom you can trust to help you manage it. 

Your insiders will help you reach new customers by sharing your posts, telling friends and family about the product, and letting you know the best ways to reach others like them. While the insider group will start out as yours, it will gradually grow into a place that the members will claim as their own. They will feel a sense of ownership and take pride in the decisions and friendships they have made as a part of the group. 

Use Your Audience to Gain User Feeback

Your insiders are the main group of people you will go to for feedback, especially early on. When it comes time to design the product and test out key features, your insiders will validate the assumptions you have made or help you move in a different direction based on what they actually need. 

Tools like productboard are great ways to let your insiders rank features as nice-to-have, must-haves, and critical. You can also test initial versions for usability. You as the product owner can look at the feedback and see what your customers actually want. You cannot get user feedback without building an audience which is why it is important to start audience building early on! 

You have assumed many things about the people your product will serve and the solution and products they want or need, but asking questions and creating a safe area for them to discuss will prompt your first sale! You want your insiders to be open and honest with you from the start so that your product is truly designed for the customers it aims to serve. 

Offer Your Audience Special Deals and Content

Your audience is an important part of the success of your product. Because you have spent time earning the trust of your future customers, you want to make sure they stick around through the release of your product. One way to do this is by offering them special deals and exclusive content. 

This could be as simple as printable worksheets or exclusive videos. For your insiders, you could give them physical products such as a magnet or t-shirt. When your product is released, give your audience members early access or a promo code for a percentage off. All of these tactics will keep your audience around and make them more likely to purchase from you in the future. 

First Step: Get Started! 

6 Tips to Build You Digital Product Audience 
If you get started early on, you will not fail at audience building! Your product’s community is out there, you just have to find them. Put in the work and your product will see success because you already have a group of people who are invested in you and your company. These tips and tricks will help you on the journey of crafting your audience, but make sure you choose the steps that are right for you and your product. 

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