I’ve previously written about a secret project I was working on, and in this blog post I will reveal it.
This blog post will be all about information products and a market that I believe has a great potential.
Now when you hear the word “information product” you’re probably thinking of some sleazy “make money quick” sales page, with a red “Impact” font promises you millions of good american dollars in return of a $19 investment.
Personally I find it an awesome business model if done right, and even drug lords can only look in envy at a profit margin of information products close to 100%.
The current state of Information Products
Now information products certainly doesn’t have to be about making money, however when your product has a clear business case (like spend $1 and earn $2) it is so much easier to sell.
It is much harder to sell “spend $1 and become a better person”.
One thing that I took from attending Brendon Burchard’s Expert Academy was the target audience.
Now I didn’t pay the $2000 that the ticket costs, I don’t think most people do, as Brendon is typically giving it away as bonuses for other products (and I was lucky enough be invited by someone in his mastermind group), but the price point tells you a bit about who will participate.
Brendon audience consists of (and I quote from the man himself) “authors, speakers, coaches, and online thought leaders”.
See a pattern here?
They are all small business owners!
The next in information products
And you know what? Selling a $2000 product to a small business owner is much easier than selling it to your average consumer who might now have that money to spend even if they wanted it, might require approval from a spouse (or parent ;)) or just want to spend their money on some immediate source of happiness.
So one thing I haven’t seen anyone talk about before, is whether you should target consumers (B2C) or businesses (B2B) with your information product.
It sounds so easy to create an e-book on dog training and releasing it at $19, but the competition is fierce and you have to sell a shit load of books in order to suddenly have a six-figure dog publishing business.
Now I don’t say it cannot be done, I’m just saying that I see better opportunities out there.
Consumers buy based on emotions, while businesses buy based on business cases
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Just open your television and see how many ads you can see that is all about wakening some kind of emotional response in you (and how few are really about how the feature set of the product can help you)
How else can you sell soda and cigarettes if it was not about selling a certain feeling or emotion.
But back to my point, if you are setting out to create an information product, you should consider your market carefully.
Setting the right price can be a daunting task, because it is better to have 100 sales of $20 than 1 sale of $2000?
Currently a lot of information products being targeted consumers.
I personally believe that there is a big and untapped market in the B2B information product segment.
Right now most information products are being marketed to consumers in the hope that enough people will buy the product. But then you just need to find some traffic method that can give you enough leads to your product.
So if you wanted to sell $10,000 worth of dog training e-book per month at $19 a pop, you would need more than 500 sales per month (that’s more than 15 every day)! If you could convert 10% (which is probably quite high) you would still need 5000 NEW high quality leads each and every month.
Instead I would suggest that you start looking at the B2B market instead.
Let me illustrate this by also revealing my secret project that has actually been live for some while now, but has recently been relaunched.
Enter my secret product
A friend of mine has been a project manager in the IT industry for many years. He has been specializing in a big enterprise product called SAP. If you haven’t heard about no biggie, it’s not really relevant for my point.
So we decided to create an online training program that would target people in the industry who wanted to become SAP Project Managers.
My friend has created all the content as the subject matter expert that he is, and I have put together the website and is currently also marketing the program.
You can find the site right here: SAP Project Training.
Here is an example of an information product that is targeting the B2B market.
A SAP consultant can make up towards $300 an hour! So a program costing $67/month or $497/year is a no brainer.
We actually learned an important point: almost 70% of our customers prefer the $497 price point. They simply don’t want to hassle of having a monthly subscription, so right now we’re considering raising our prices.
No this program is by no means a goldmine (yet), we have just re-launched it and I’m currently in the process of getting a stable source of traffic.
Be smart: target the B2B market with your information product
You can also see this in the coaching market where a lot of new “business coaches” are targeting the same audience that Brendon is, because small business owners have money to spend and will buy if presented with a valid business case.
Are you doing information products? And if so what are your experiences? Are you in the B2C or B2B segment?
Let me know you thoughts in the comments!
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