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Digital Products

Author

Phil Oakley

Philip Oakley, Managing Director of Outserve Ltd, trained as accountant and spent 10 years working as a consultant in Accountancy Practice including BDO Stoy Hayward. In the last 12 years Philip has specialised in web consultancy now working with organisations to get the most out of the web, social media and ecommerce.

With the explosion of Social Media and ecommerce in the last few years Philip has advised a wide range of clients from professional firms to large organisations like the NHS but focuses on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises and showing them how the web can be used as a competitive weapon with the focus on making money, saving money and serving their customers better.

Philip speaks regularly on Social Media and ecommerce for The UK IT Association (UKITA), Business Link and University of Wolverhampton to name just three

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What are digital products?

Digital products (or goods) is a general term used to describe any product that can be stored, delivered and used in electronic format. Usually these products are delivered to the customer via email or secure download links.

Examples of digital goods include: e-books, music files, mobile apps, games, software, digital images, Web site templates, manuals in electronic format and any item which can be electronically stored in a file or multiple files.

What types of businesses should have electronic products?

Any business can have digital products, even traditional businesses.

For example: Restaurants - Pizza Express has a great iPhone app; Accountants - ‘Tax Data Card’s’ in PDF.

Why should my business look at digital products?

The benefits can be many. At their most basic level they can be used to make money and promote your business.

What are the advantages of Digital products over physical products?

We should not be looking to replace all physical products with digital ones. We are looking to enhance them. Where existing items are being produced in paper, these can be expensive to produce and have an effect on the environment. We may be happy to replace these.

What the majority of goods have in common is that they are finite. In practical terms, you are normally restricted by how many you can produce, how many you can store, and how many you can transport in any given amount of time.

Planning your supply chain to meet demand is an age old problem and producing huge quantities, even when you can, is often not the solution. Over producing products can be very expensive when the demand dries up, especially for items with a shelf life e.g. food, pharmaceutical and of course fashion items.

In delivering digital products there may be different issues, but a lack of stock or time is not normally one of them. Once you have a digital product you can sell or provide it free again and again and again. Despite selling over 15 billion songs on iTunes Apple only retain one copy of each song on its servers.

Do you already have Digital products but you were not aware?

The standard answer from most companies when asked what digital products they have is “none”. Many companies do have them, or at least they have material that could be converted into digital materials. Businesses do have documents, whether technical documents, training materials, or even brochures that could be turned in into PDF’s without too much effort. We are always surprised how many businesses have audio and video recordings, but are doing very little with them.

To summarise:

Ask yourself the following question.

What digital products could I produce that would add real value to customers and prospects and would differentiate me from my competition?

Do you have materials that could be converted? Is it worth investing in a specialist creating a digital product for you? A mobile app?

Whatever you do, doing nothing with digital products is not an option. Sooner or later your competition will be offering them!

Written by Philip Oakley from Outserve Ltd (http://philipoakley.org) this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.