Selling and Marketing Digital Products
Dates:
24-25 June, 21-22 October 2010 (a two-day course)
Price:
£719+VAT (a number of discounts are available)
Venue:
The Publishing Training Centre in Wandsworth, London (see a map and a list of local hotels)
Book course online or phone +44 (0)20 8874 2718 for availability
Rebecca Jones has answered some questions about this new course.
Rebecca Jones and Jon White delivered a seminar at the London Book Fair on this subject. You can download the slides from their presentation here (6014kb - this is a large file and takes a while to download - it opens in a new window).
Now that you have created the perfect digital product, you must ensure that your sales and marketing plans are designed to exploit every possible advantage in the market place. What are the differences between selling a traditional print product and selling new technology? How do you redefine your existing sales channels and strategies?
This two-day course is led by three recognised experts in their field, who will illustrate from experience what makes a digital product sell.
Exercises and examples used in the course will have an educational publishing focus, but the course would still be relevant to other areas of publishing
Programme:
Day 1
- Understanding the market we operate in
- Who is your customer?
- Current market trends
- How to research the market: understanding exactly where they are
- What do students and teachers want?
- What are our customers ready for?
- Defining your purchaser, decision-maker and user
- Ensuring your products & services meet the needs of your customers and users (from the style of content to the format of delivery) and that your sales channels, messages and pricing models are in line with your customer needs, expectations and with your product offering
- Competition: How to research and monitor the digital competition
- Understanding what a digital product is in order to sell it effectively
- Jargon busting
- What type of product options are there?
- Defining your offering: style of content and service
- Examples and case studies
- Investigating business and pricing model options for digital products
- Business and pricing models:one-off cost, annual access licence, monthly subscription
- Renewals, maintenance and data management fees
- Digital licensing agreements
- Licensing models and defining the license
- Distribution versus licensing models, blended learning models
- Subscription options
- Selling digital content on a time-limited or permanent basis
- Add technical support and training solutions – part of package
- Meeting the challenge of acquiring customers for digital product – both on and offline
- Acquiring customers: approaching and managing possible partners
- Affiliate marketing
- Online PR
- What are the options for exploiting new channels, new techniques and new partners? Selling on different levels (dept, school, LA, consortium)
Day 2
- Getting customers to evaluate digital products
- Evaluation, review, trials and pilots. What works best for which products? What conversions to expect and what follow-up is required?
- Gaining exposure – using search engines and digital techniques effectively
- What collateral will be required, including sample content, functionality and off and online materials? When will it be required? Moving from awareness to purchase, and from trial to use
- The role of the rep in getting customers to evaluate digital products
- The role of promotions, discounts and incentives in customers’ purchase decision
- Promotions, discounts, incentives and supply chain options: sharing profit and risk
- Face to face with the customer: selling digital products effectively
- How to pitch solutions to customers and overcome customer objections (for example overcoming fear and negativity of teachers towards ‘digital’)
- Product demonstrations (importance, pitfalls, etc)
- Dealing with the extended adoption and decision-making cycle of new product such as blended learning
- Implications for the skills and training of field sales teams: are new skills required? How and when will training take place?
- Use of third party channels - B2B sales opportunities
- The role of customer service and technical support teams
- Sustaining and maintaining sales
- Managing long term relationships and encouraging loyalty
- After sales
- Maximising and realising revenue through customer and user retention, licence and subscription renewal
- Availability and interpretation of usage statistics
- Building and maintaining relationships in the digital world: how to encourage loyalty amongst digital customers
- Supply chain management: overcoming potential conflict with existing supply channels (for example distributors and booksellers) as existing sales channels are redefined
- Product implications
- Updated or renewed content
- Additional features or functionality
- Proactive up and cross selling
- Site visits and after care contact
- Workshop Sessions
Who will benefit from this course?
Marketing managers, sales managers, publishers and those holding key account responsibility for sales of digital products.
Your tutors
Rebecca Jones has worked in Educational Publishing for 18 years, starting out as a sales rep and is now Head of Marketing at Letts and Lonsdale. During her career she has managed marketing teams at Collins Education, Granada Learning and Oxford University Press. She has experience in selling as well as devising successful online and offline marketing campaigns.
Jon White niched in the digital sector in the mid-90s. Since then, he set up and ran www.petetownshend.com for Pete Townshend of The Who. After a spell at Penguin working on the DK and Rough Guides brands, Jon joined Macmillan Education. In his role as Digital Publishing Director he oversees MacEd’s digital publishing operations and also runs new digital business development initiatives.
Adrian Cockell has worked in trade, educational and digital publishing for more than 20 years. He is an accomplished Sales & Marketing Director, having managed large teams in both the Trade and Educational sectors of HarperCollins Publishers before moving on to similar roles at New Media Press (educational software publishers) and Folens (Publishers) Ltd, where he was later appointed to the position of Managing Director.
Note that most of our open courses can also be run as in-company events.
Send details of this course to a colleague.
Dates: 24-25 June, 21-22 October 2010
Price: £719+VAT (a number of discounts are available).
Selling and Marketing Digital Products - provisional booking form
Please complete this form to make a provisional booking (* denotes required fields). Shortly afterwards, we will send you a registration form with which you can confirm your booking.
Note: Please don't include any website addresses in your booking information.