It's one thing to create information products and quite another to know whether you've ticked all the boxes.
When creating information, the client doesn't just seek information. Instead, she looks for other elements as well. Elements such as examples, entertainment etc, all of which need to be part of the product itself.
In this article, we go back to front. Let's say you've already finished creating your information product. Can you go back and make tweaks to make it more complete, even more interesting?
Sure you can and let's find out how in this article.
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Re-release: How To Create Your Information Product In Four Layers (And Why It Appeals To Clients)
Original: How To Create Your Information Product In Four Layers (And Why It Appeals To Clients)
Note: (This is an unedited transcript)
Sweet, sour, salty, spicy, bitter and astringent.
That's my favorite kind of meal, and that's what you get when you order a Thali. In Indian cuisine, there's a kind of bento box, but a round one, and that's a Thali. When you order a Thali, you get a rather round platter, and it consists of smaller round bowls called katoris.
So if you were to order a thali, you'd be served rice, roti, lentils, chutney, pickle, raita, vegetables, and the goal of this meal is based on an age-old tradition of combining various food types and tastes. The meal not only makes up a complete diet, but when served in the right manner, it helps in the process of digestion.
And when we're creating information products, we're also doing something similar.
We're trying to bring the sweet, sour, salty, astringent. We're trying to bring all of that stuff and getting the customer to digest it, to get to the end of the book, the end of the video, the end of the audio. That's our goal the whole time. And there's a very simple reason. When they get through the end, they're going, oh, I can't wait for the next time, which is what I do with a Thali.
So how do we do that with an info product?
How do we audit an info product so that a client gets to the end? And I've got four elements here. And you can take them as you like. You can build something this way. You can build an info product this way. It's time to look at the four concepts. So, here we go.
- The first is the idea.
- The second are the instructions or the how-to.
- The third are the examples.
- And the fourth is the entertainment.
Let's start out with the first one, which is the idea.
All books, all products have an idea.
So, for instance, if you look at The Brain Audit, which is a book that you probably read, it has an idea. It has an idea that there are problems when you're selling something and that people back away the last minute.
And what The Brain Audit introduces in a big way is the concept of the problem instead of the solution, how we tend to bring out the solution first, whereas we need to bring out the problem. Now, that is an idea.
And every single book, every single video, every single audio that you're listening to, they all have ideas. So when I look at books on my bookshelf here, whether it's Talent is Overrated or Testing Advertising Methods, or all the books out here, Good to Great, whatever they are, they have an idea.
And most books will not stand on any ground unless they have an idea.
This idea can be new, it can be old, it doesn't really matter whether you're coming up with a brand new idea or you're tweaking on an idea, or you're just rehashing an idea. The book has to have an idea. And that we're clear about.
And sometimes the book, the entire book is just an idea. It is just something that is written to change the way that we work, to change the way that we think. And an info product that does just that is already very powerful.
You don't have to have a book that gives you how to or anything that is to follow.
If I'm not mistaken, all of Malcolm Gladwell's books are just concepts. There is no how to in them, and there probably never will be, and they're all best sellers. So you can have a book, an audio, a video, that's just an idea.
You don't have to do anything more than that. It's up to your public, your readers, your listeners, to take that idea and do what they will with that idea. You're just bringing the idea forth and you're putting it across.
But what if you could go one more step? And this takes us to the second one, which is the instructions or the how to. Often when you have an idea, you've sat with it for a long time and you know exactly how to untangle that idea.
If you just throw it out there to the world, yes, it's great.
And yes, you've done your homework, you've done all your research, you've presented the idea. It's a great idea, but I don't know what to do with it as a reader. I don't know what to do with it as a listener.
And so if I say to you, hey, this copywriting course has been written so that you start to write from the bottom up, not from the headline but from down in the features and benefits. Now that's a good idea and you might think, wow, that's interesting, but how do I do it?
And so the info product that needs to be created at that point in time, is something that untangles that idea. Something that makes it easier for the client to go, oh wait, here I can actually apply this idea. I can take parts of it.
And yes, there's still going to be a struggle because an idea needs to be fleshed out in a lot of detail and you can't put that in an audio or a video or a book. There's just not enough space. It just becomes humongous, too big.
And yet, you're helping that person go to the next stage, which is the how-to, the instructions.
And you'll see this, for instance, in the Brain Audit, once again, where it's broken up into seven chapters or seven main chapters, and there's a problem, the solution, the target profile. And all of those show you, within those chapters, how to go about doing whatever it is that has to be done.
So we have two concepts here. When you're auditing a book and you go, okay, what's the idea? The second is, what are the instructions or the how-to?
Which then takes us to the third one, which is the examples.
Now, why examples? Examples are important because we need to rock around with these ideas.We need to roll it around in our heads. And an analogy can help. So, for instance, in The Brain Audit, we talk about how there are flowers around, there are men, women, food, everything else, and what we're looking at is dog poo.
And what happens is that we can relate to that. We can relate to dog poo being the problem and how we're not looking at the solutions. We're not looking at all that stuff around us, all that beauty around us.
Instead, we're looking at dog poo. And that brings home that idea, that example, which is an analogy or a description of something. It brings home that idea. And then we also have case studies.
So if you have case studies in your industry, in other industries, all of those examples help me to remember whatever you're saying. And this is interesting, because when you read the book for the first time, the idea is very interesting, and the examples are very interesting.
But if you're reading it for the third time or the fourth time, you almost want to skip over the examples, because you know what they're saying. It's already quite solid in your brain, those examples, those stories. And so they are very useful, because they have helped you understand the concept.
And when we are auditing a book or a video or any info product, we need to go back and go, do we have enough examples? Do we have analogies? Do we have case studies?
Because while they're useless on the third read or the third lesson, they are extremely useful in understanding the concept. And then we can take it and go to the how-to and see, how can we implement the same concept? How can we do this?
So all of these are pretty much like you're eating a thali. You're having some of the vegetables, and you're having some of the roti, and the rice, and the dal, and you're kind of mixing, and it's making for that great meal.
And this takes us to the fourth one, which is entertainment, which is, do you have some cartoons in it?
Do you have some, something in it? This depends on the medium. If you're on video, obviously you can put some gifts, or you can put some video, or you can put something else.
In a book, what we tend to do is we tend to put cartoons, we tend to put recipes, we tend to put something that kind of slows down the pace and makes it interesting to the reader, to the listener, to the person watching. On this podcast, you have some music. And for some people, it's absolutely annoying.
If you go and read the reviews, some people go, oh, I love the music. And some people say, oh, that annoying music. I wish they'd removed that annoying music. So, you can't please everybody.
And you have to recognize that even as you're entertaining, some of them are going to go, I wish this book were thinner and didn't have all these cartoons. But well, you can't please everybody.
So, here are the four things that we have to look at when we create a product.
And you can do this once you're done. You go, okay, I'm going to have an idea. Otherwise, I don't have a book, I don't have a video, I don't have an audio. So, you're going to have an idea, you're going to have that concept. You might have how to. It helps to have how to if you know how to get that how to across to your audience.
Examples are really useful. Examples, stories, case studies, analogies. It helps me understand what you're saying, and it helps me probably create my own how to if you haven't given me an how to. But even if you have given me how to examples, you need to have an example.
Again, go back to the Brain Audit, just open any chapter, and you'll see how many examples exist. Sometimes there are three or four examples back to back. And wait a second, that's what I said. Don't put six or seven, three or four, that's enough for every concept. And then there's entertainment.
So concept or idea, instructions, examples, and entertainment.
That's your audit system, and go back and look at the stuff you're creating, and maybe you'll find that you can put them all in, and they become more powerful. They become more interesting, and that's kind of what audiences like. Pretty much like a Thali, all of that food, all of that stuff mixing.
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