Reddit, Reels, and Email: Advertising My Digital Product

With my digital product complete, it is time to focus on generating asset images for the sales page, advertising the product, and developing a plan to reach the target audience.

A sales funnel refers to a typical visual representation of the step-by-step framework that a customer follows from initial product discovery to purchase and beyond. A funnel is usually made up of three different steps:

Top: Awareness; finding out about the product.
Middle: Consideration; evaluating if the product is worth purchasing for the customer.
Bottom: Decision; when the customer decides whether to purchase the product or not.

The first step, awareness, is when the assets for advertising the product come into play. It is through this advertising that customers become aware of the product. From here, the next step is consideration. This typically occurs when the customer reviews all the information on the sales page. If the sales page assets do their job, they will inform the customer about the product, helping them make an informed decision about whether to purchase it.

To raise awareness of my Fantasy Character Creator Toolkit, I plan to post on two different social media platforms that I currently use and send an email to my list. The social media that I plan to post on are Reddit and Instagram. I have chosen these platforms because I already have accounts. Although my Reddit account admittedly has no posts, Instagram is the leading platform where I share my art. Since I already have a small following there, I think it makes sense to post on Instagram. Reddit is a platform suggested by a classmate (thanks, Isabella!) where I can reach my target audience: digital artists, D&D fans, and other creatives interested in creating fantasy characters.

To inform the best way to generate interest and convince customers to buy the product through the sales page, I revisited my research on similar products to see how they created their own sales pages.

An example of a character creator product that has caught my eye in the past is these two different female character creators, both of which are by the same artist and are set up in the same way. Both have a single image to promote the product, along with a description that provides all the details about it. Although I think it is a successful sales page, I believe it could be improved in terms of effectively advertising the product. The image shows everything you get with the product, but additional information could be provided to convince the viewer further to buy it.

Alternatively, there are the Procreate Male and Female Fantasy Character Creators, which were the biggest inspiration for my product. Despite the lack of reviews, I believe that having more promotional images is more effective in convincing the user to buy the product. It gives them more reasons to buy it.

Since the same artist also created the Procreate Toolkits, I decided to check her Instagram to see how she promotes her products on other platforms. However, I quickly found that she does not advertise on different platforms. Since this research endeavor had not gone as I had hoped, I decided to search for both “Character Creator Toolkit” and “Character Creator” to see what type of posts came up. None of what I saw was advertisements for products, but they did show a good way to get attention. Rather than image posts, most of them are videos. Due to this, I decided to create short video advertisements for Instagram.

Already Posted Instagram Ad

Add that is scheduled

Unused Instagram Ad

Using Canva, I made four different video advertisements for my product to post on Instagram. Creating them was relatively easy, but I encountered issues exporting them. The animated text in the videos would appear on the screen, overlapping, making the words illegible. I figured out that this was caused by the words all being in different text boxes. Having them spaced out in the same text box allowed for the words to animate legibly. Once this was sorted out, I was able to post one video and schedule the other for Monday, October 6^th. I was going to post the other videos, but to be honest, I do not like them as much. I wanted the advertising between platforms to be equal, and I ended up only doing two Reddit posts as well.

For Reddit, I created three different image advertisements to post as well. Like with Instagram, I searched the terms “Character Creator Toolkit” and “Character Creator” to see what came up. I had been hoping for the miraculous appearance of a discussion forum about available character creators. Yet I did not have such luck. I saw some discussions where I could post my ads, but none of them seemed quite right. Instead, I plan to create my own discussion on Reddit to advertise my toolkit, which will feature the images I’ve made.

Initially, I tried to use the “ad” feature on Instagram to post my advertisements, but quickly found out I would have to pay to have an ad. This made sense to me when I saw it, but I am still not willing to pay for advertising, at least not yet. Instead, I made regular posts on Instagram to advertise my toolkit. I created a total of four different videos to post on Instagram, but I plan to only post my two favorite videos out of the four. This is because I had planned to make four posts on both platforms, but I had to adjust my plan for Reddit.

On Reddit, a discussion forum website, I found a D&D discussion forum that allows users to self-promote their own D&D-related products. However, they require the user to get Mod permission first, and they only allow one self-promotion post a week from each user. I was able to obtain permission to post about my toolkit, but I must follow the forum’s rules. Only one post was made in the D&D forum, and I also created a second post on my own page to advertise my product.

To get my toolkit approved by the forum mods, I have already posted it on BuyMeCoffee, so it is currently available for free. I plan to post the link to the sales page on both Instagram and Reddit, along with the posts. I will try to generate interest by offering the product for free to the first 10 buyers. After that, the toolkit will cost $1.

The goal of the posts on both Instagram and Reddit is not only to make a potential customer aware of the product, which is the first step in a sales funnel, but also to help move them towards the next steps in the sales funnel, including evaluation and decision-making on the product. If the ads are successful, they will convince potential customers to buy the Fantasy Character Toolkit.

The last method of advertising used was sending a newsletter to my mailing list. Granted, my mailing list is very short, but it is still a good way to get the message out. It was shared with friends and family, not all of whom can use it, but they can still tell others about it, even if they don’t use it themselves.

To create the newsletter, I originally designed it in Canva so that its typeface matched the other documents. However, I was having trouble finding a good way to send it in this format. I ended up finding a free mailing list service called HubSpot, but the catch was that I was unable to use the PDF I created in Canva. After I had a small moment aside to stomp my feet, I ended up just recreating the newsletter in HubSpot. The new version ended up looking much more professional, and I am much prouder of this version than I was of the one from Canva.

Despite the bumps in the road along the way, I successfully set up the storefront for my digital product and put it up for sale. While I am still waiting for the first 10 free downloads, I have already received one before finishing this blog post. Overall, I believe this has been a successful experiment so far, even if it may take some time to generate significant sales.

The Fantasy Character Creator Toolkit Page can be found here.

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