How to Add a Digital Planner to Your Online Business
The digital age is here and it’s shaping how modern businesses operate, encouraging shop owners to modify their strategies and stay with, or even ahead, of the technological trends. Paper planners and calendars are now considered “out”. With the rise of online products, we’re now enjoying the benefits of easy-to-use online products that help with efficiency and organization.
As an established online business owner, it’s time to level up by adding a digital planner to your business. These planners are quickly gaining popularity with the increase in people working on computers and looking for online methods of keeping organized. People want stylish, yet functional tools to stay productive, and by creating a digital planner, you can tap into this demand and provide value to your current customers while reaching new potential clients.
A digital planner allows you to expand your product line beyond services and courses into the realm of digital goods. You already have the knowledge and expertise in your niche to design a useful planner for your audience, so with the right tools and training, making the transition from physical to digital is within your reach!
Develop Your Digital Planner with The Pink Ink®
In this article, we’ll be covering the key steps in developing your own digital planner. We'll start by determining why adding a digital planner is so beneficial to your business, and then we’ll go over steps to adding and maintaining it. By the end, you'll have a roadmap to launch your first digital product and boost your online business success!
If you’re ready to take the first step of action, our Digital Planner Design Mastery Course goes even deeper than the article!
The possibilities of the digital world are endless. As an online entrepreneur, take advantage of new opportunities to better serve your clients and grow your business. A digital planner is a perfect way to start! With hard work, persistence, and a bit of guidance from the professionals at The Pink Ink, you can take your business to the next level. The future is digital– are you ready to embrace it?
Understanding Digital Planners
So what exactly is a digital planner? Many people are familiar with the paper planner, which is a physical booklet that helps people organize their lives, tasks, and schedule. Digital planners are simply the electronic version. Unlike paper planners though, digital planners are interactive, customizable, and often come with useful features like reminders, calendars, to-do lists, and more.
A digital planner offers some great benefits, such as:
Improved organization: Digital planners keep all your important business tasks, deadlines, events, and schedules in one place. No more sorting through papers or syncing multiple apps!
Increased productivity: Digital planners make it easy to prioritize important work and break big tasks into manageable steps. Features like reminders and to-do lists keep you on track.
Easy to use and access: Unlike paper planners, which need to be physically carried from place to place, a digital planner is accessible from multiple devices. They’re often straightforward and have a clean interface (or at least the good-quality ones do!)
Better user experience: If you’re running an online business that can benefit from integrated digital planners for scheduling or signing up for events, an interactive planner engages your audience and adds value.
One business that has taken this strategy and run with it is Passion Planner, an online company that sells digital planners and sticker books of various designs. They’ve done a great job at building their online presence by selling high-quality digital products that are easy-to-use and improve the user experience. With some hard work, you can be like them!
By integrating an interactive digital planner into your online business, you can boost organization, improve productivity, and enhance the overall customer experience. The end result? A business that runs more efficiently and an audience that keeps coming back. So why not give your business a digital upgrade?
Why Your Online Business Needs a Digital Planner
Adding a digital planner to your online business is a smart strategy for enhancing the customer experience, driving more sales, creating a new income stream, and establishing your authority. Not sure where to start, though? We offer our Digital Planner Design Mastery Course to walk you through each step with The Pink Ink® professionals leading the way.
Your clients and customers will appreciate the extra support in streamlining their work to reach their goals. And on your side of things, your business will reap the rewards of a loyal customer base, increased revenue, and growth!
Studies show that 58% of companies with high digital maturity offer digitally connected products, so if you’re looking to increase your digital maturity as a company, even beyond your competition, investing in digitally connected products such as digital planners is extremely beneficial (Deloitte, 2020).
Let’s take a look at the main benefits that adding a digital planner could add to your online business:
Boosts Customer Loyalty
A digital planner is a great way to build a loyal customer base. By providing useful tools and resources to help your clients achieve their goals, you’re giving them added value for their business. This kind of support and guidance fosters a lasting relationship built on trust, which is huge if you want to become successful in the long-run.
Increases Sales
When you have a to-go resource that helps your clients streamline their work and reach their targets, they’ll keep coming back for more. A digital planner packed with time-saving templates, worksheets, checklists, and more makes you a vital and indispensable part of their productivity and success.
New Income Stream
Planners and other digital products are popular products that generate income for online businesses. A digital planner can generate money on its own through direct sales, monthly subscriptions, or upsells. You’ve already done the work in creating content and resources for your clients. Now you just need to repackage that information and sell it to benefit your clients and business.
Shares Your Skills & Builds Credibility
A digital planner allows you to share your knowledge and skills with a wider audience. When you establish yourself as an expert, it builds credibility and trust in your brand. As your reputation grows, so will your customer base and revenue. It just takes hard work and dedication!
Steps to Add a Digital Planner to Your Online Business
A digital planner allows you to scale your business by leveraging your knowledge and skills. With the right topics, design, content, and pricing, you can create a valuable product that helps your customers achieve their goals and grows your business. We’ll be covering how to add value within the Digital Planner Design Mastery Course if you’re ready to dive deeper.
As for selling the product, you can add it as a standalone product, bundle it with your services, or use it as a lead magnet to build your email list. The opportunities are endless! Here are the key steps to create and sell your own digital planner:
Identify Your Business Areas
Think about the topics and areas of your business that customers frequently ask about or that are in demand in your industry. For example, if you run a productivity coaching business, sections on time management, goal setting, and project planning would be ideal. To find what’s most valuable for your customers, listen to inquiries and suggestions.
Design Your Planner
Use design software like Affinity Publisher to create a planner that aligns with your brand. Include your business colors, fonts, and logo, organize content into tabs or sections, and provide space for customers to fill in their own notes and plans. A simple, clean layout will be appealing and easy to use.
Package Your Knowledge
Share your expertise by including guidelines, tips, and recommendations in each section. You can provide checklists, worksheets, calendars, and other useful resources while explaining the reasoning and benefits behind your advice. Remember to keep wording friendly and encouraging! Your planner should solve problems and motivate customers.
Determine a Pricing Strategy
While determining your selling price, it’s important to consider your costs to produce the planner, whether that’s online supplies you’ve bought or the time spent to create and sell the product. Look at your customer base, market rates, and competitors’ rates. A niche related planner can be priced from around $29 to $75. We recommend offering bundle deals and provide payment plans to make purchasing accessible for more customers.
Maintaining and Updating Your Digital Planner
Once you’ve created your digital planner, the work isn’t over yet! To keep your customers engaged and happy, you’ll need to maintain and regularly update your planner. Luckily for us digital product designers, online planners take faster to produce and update than a physical planner. If you’re efficient, you can finish the updates within just 3 days!
Maintaining an engaging digital planner requires ongoing work, but following these tips will help you build a loyal customer base and a thriving product. Keep making improvements, stay on trend, listen to your customers, and leverage the power of automation. Your planner will continue to level up and so will your business!
Let’s look at the different methods you can use to keep your planner updated:
Provide Seasonal Updates
A great idea to keep your customers engaged is to release seasonal versions of your planner, like spring, summer, fall and winter editions. Swap out the cover image, color palette, and any seasonal clipart or stickers. Your customers will look forward to the latest seasonal planner and it gives them a reason to continue purchasing.
Stay on Trend
Pay attention to trends in the planner community and incorporate them into your updates. Things like new cover designs, color palettes, fonts, stickers and clipart are always evolving. Keep your planner fresh by adding some of the latest must-have elements. Your customers will appreciate a planner that’s up-to-date and modern. Check out Google Calendar Mastery, that will guide with the latest trend of adding reminders in your Digital planner
Get Customer Feedback
You’ll want to listen to your customers and meet their needs, which you can accomplish by sending out surveys to get feedback on your planner. Ask your customers what they like, don’t like, and what they’d like to see in future updates. Then, implement their suggestions so they feel heard and valued. Their input can help shape the direction of your planner and build brand loyalty.
Automate When Possible
Take advantage of automations to save time updating your planner. Use a date-adding tool to automatically populate the calendar pages so you don’t have to manually add hundreds of dates each update. You can also automate other repetitive tasks like resizing images or updating fonts to streamline your workflow. In our Digital Planner Design Mastery Course, we teach how to automate adding and updating dates in just a few clicks. The less time spent on mundane tasks, the more time you have for creative work.
Stay Consistent
Aim for updating your planner at least quarterly to keep it relevant, but be consistent with your schedule. Your customers will come to expect the updates at regular intervals, which keeps them returning and looking forward to the next improvement. While faster production timelines are a benefit of digital planners, you still need to commit to a consistent update schedule to keep your planner and customers happy.
Real-Life Case Studies
As a business owner looking to expand, it’s often motivational to know that you’re not alone! In fact, there are many other online business owners that have followed a similar strategy that led to success.
Let’s take a look at present, real-life examples of businesses that have successfully integrated a digital planner into their business model with the help of The Pink Ink. You may be able to learn from their models and follow the strategies they’ve used!
View-Halloo
With help of Shay the founder of The Pink Ink®, Rebecca has turned her paper planner into a digital planner. Her planner is designed specifically for equestrians to help plan their lives inside and outside the ring. We created the planner to be accessible to a wider audience, and Rebecca has seen immense growth in her business since going digital!
Holly Hillyer
As a mom and business owner, Holly combined the two things she loved into an online business. At first, she wanted to create her own digital planner for productivity, but now she’s created two digital planners for other mothers and mothers with businesses. She’s now able to organize her own life while helping other women do the same!
Grundschulteacher
This German brand is focused on helping teachers manage their lives and classes. This digital product took a different angle, which was targeting a certain audience of German speakers. The niche idea of creating a digital planner in German took off, and she was able to make the investment back within one week!
Take the First Step in Upleveling Your Business
Now that you’ve built an online business and worked hard to establish your brand, adding a digital planner is the perfect way to level up your business. It will help both you and your customers stay on track, increase productivity, and reach short-term and long-term goals.
You have so much to gain by adding a digital planner to your online business. Start researching different planner options to find one that suits your needs. Think about the key areas of your business you want to organize and streamline, then dive in and begin setting up your planner and adding schedules, tasks, goals, and more.
For more information and guidance in creating your own digital planner and adding it to your business, try out our Digital Planner Design Mastery Course! We offer the best tools and strategies in boosting your revenue with a high-quality planner. It’s a great way to add structure to your digital journey while learning tips and insights.
And with that, don’t procrastinate– take action today to level up your business for tomorrow! With consistent use, you'll reap the benefits of better productivity, improved revenue, and achieving more of your business goals. You've got this!
