How to Create Digital Products to Boost Brand Loyalty

A huge number of customers in the 21st century are so-called ‘digital natives’ — people who increasingly live their lives in online spaces.

Because of this, brands around the world are shifting from purely brick-and-mortar sales models towards ecommerce instead. Others are taking this shift one step further, and are now creating wholly digital products to sell to customers, in order to generate higher profits and increase brand loyalty.

So, what do these digital products look like? How exactly do they help make consumers more loyal to a brand? And how can a brand start creating digital products of their own? This article will cover all of the above in detail. Read on to learn more.

What is a digital product?

In layman’s terms, a digital product refers to any kind of product or service that is conveyed to buyers/users through primarily digital means. Unlike analog products, which rely on having a physical item that is operated upon in the real world, digital products are things that can be bought, sold, used, and traded primarily on computers, such as laptops, smartphones, tablets, or other devices

A few examples of digital products include:

• Apps: Applications include digital software like word processors and design software, calculators, entertainment and social media-based platforms, as well as apps for services and dating, such as Uber or Tinder.
• Content: Digital entertainment and news content consumed on platforms, such as e-books, music, videos, podcasts, and more.
• Digital services: This category includes online services such as education, telemedicine, and digital marketing, among others.
• Software as a service: SaaS products consist of software solutions provider to buyers/subscribers over the internet. Common examples include customer relationship management (CRM) systems and cloud-based collaboration tools.

Thus, we can clearly see that there is a great variation in the types of digital products that are currently available to consumers, and that any one of these products can be matched to the industry or enterprise that can benefit the most from them.

For example, a healthcare provider or insurance company looking to engage with patients or customers might want to consider building a digital service to help them access online care. On the other hand, a publisher might be more invested in providing digital content; either through pre-existing digital platforms or by crafting their own.

So, bearing all of the above in mind, how can enterprises of all kinds leverage the power of digital products to boost brand loyalty among their target consumers?

Digital Products and Brand Loyalty

Digital products are a unique way of pushing your brand into the spotlight and gaining the trust of consumers, no matter where they are or what they’re doing. Indeed, the ubiquity of smartphones and the interconnected nature of our digital world mean that there’s far less restrictions when it comes to brands delivering these products to customers and users.

For example, when using other platforms as a place to host, giving your target audience a steady stream of useful and/or entertaining content can be a major boon when it comes to increasing their estimation of the utility of your brand. Digital content can also be a way of sharing your brand values and invoking an emotional response from consumers.

Apps and digital services can serve a practical value to your customers as long as they fulfil their unmet needs — something they’re sure to appreciate all the more if these services are easy and convenient to reach. Furthermore, another advantage of digital products is that they allow your brand to gather valuable data on your consumers, which can later be analysed to give you a better picture of the needs, wants, habits, and behaviours which motivate them into making a purchase or not. By leveraging this valuable data to meet the demands of consumers, you’ll be able to further increase their loyalty to your brand in the long-term.

Finally, we’ve already discussed the value of loyalty programmes in boosting brand loyalty, but it bears repeating that this is, in itself, another form of digital product. These often-digital programmes aim to incentivise customers to repeatedly engage with your brand’s products and services — gamifying their app experience to motivate them to spend more by offering them perks, freebies, discounts, and other exclusive rewards.

Challenges of Building Digital Products

Taking everything we’ve just spoken about into account, we can clearly see that digital products can be a powerful asset to any brand looking to enhance the brand loyalty of their customers.

Unfortunately, although more and more businesses are now taking advantage of digital products, not every company has the technical knowledge or experience to craft these products single-handedly.

This is why it can often be more helpful for brands who might struggle to go it alone to seek out the advice and help of experts who already boast the know-how to deliver quality digital products like the ones we’ve already described. This is where Future Platforms comes in.

How Future Platforms Delivers Loyalty-Building Digital Products

Does your business want to create digital products that can guarantee customer loyalty, but you don’t know where to start? We can help. Future Platforms has a long and storied history of creating immersive digital assets for a number of businesses across many different industries.

We’ll work with you to understand your business objectives, the challenges facing you and the pain points you’re dealing with, and will then collaborate closely with you to build the digital products that best fulfil your aims from the ground up.

So, if you’d like to learn more about how Future Platforms can help to level up your design and increase interactivity, then please contact our team today.