Low-content products offer an effective and efficient way to attract potential customers, increase revenue, and quickly build client relationships.
A low-content product is something you offer your audience with minimal or no content included. It’s usually something like a workbook, planner, or template. They can be digital or print, but businesses often create digital versions due to the low-cost margin. Software programs like Canva make low-content product creation easy.
The advantage is that they take little time and resources to create. You can use these items to offer more for your audience by mixing low-content products into your other merchandise. These items also allow you to diversify your offerings and create new revenue streams.
Here are some common low-content products businesses offer.
Journals and Notebooks
Journals and notebooks are excellent ideas for low-content items. What kind of journal or notebook could members of your target market use? You can create a customized journal designed just for their needs.
Journal ideas include:
- Gratitude Journal. Gratitude journals are used to write down things you’re grateful for to bring positivity into your life.
- Goals Journal. This could be a notebook where you write down your goals and chart your progress toward reaching them.
- Positivity Journal. A notebook designed for self-reflection where you write about your thoughts and feelings to shift to a more positive mindset.
- Free Writing Notebook. A place for you to write freely and let ideas come and flow onto the page. You could use this for brainstorming.
- Dream Journal. Keep this journal by your bedside, and write down your dreams when you wake up.
- Success Journal. You can create a journal for recording each success as you build a business.
- New Things Learned Journal. One common success habit is to learn something new each day. Use this journal to reflect on each new thing you learn.
A good way to make your journal unique is to see what competitors offer. You can then provide more value. For example, make it higher-quality, more targeted to your audience, or full of extra elements like writing prompts or inspirational quotes.
Planners
A planner is a document that helps people keep track of tasks. It’s like a journal but more specifically geared to a particular area. The target audience is busy and needs to accomplish specific tasks with limited planning time.
While planners are usually printed documents, you can make a digital one that people can interact with on their tablet or phone. Digital planners are usually editable PDFs. However, you can also offer printable ones so users can use a paper version.
Ideas for planners include:
- Daily Planner. A planner that helps people keep track of their daily to-do list. You can also offer weekly or monthly planners.
- Fitness Planner. This content helps you keep track of workouts, diet, and fitness goal-setting.
- Budget Planner. Help your customers keep track of their income and expenses and set financial goals.
- Meal Planner. Meal planners are helpful for people trying to stick to a diet. It can include calorie counters, recipe suggestions, and meal-planning templates.
- Travel Planner. You can use a travel planner to keep track of your itinerary, flight and hotel information, and expenses.
- Event Planners. A great deal goes into planning events like weddings, concerts, or webinars. Keep all information in one place.
- Academic Planner. Create a planner to help students stay organized. A similar idea is a parenting planner that helps keep track of kids’ activities.
- Self-Care Planner. This planner can help to keep your mental health and self-care routine in order.
Workbooks
Workbooks offer exercises, quizzes, and activities for students. These can be standalone or go with a course you’re offering. A workbook allows students to work out problems independently, so they learn the material by doing.
If you want to offer a workbook and an online course, design them together. If you want a standalone coursebook, choose something your target audience wants to learn. Then, break this into bite-sized pieces, and make each piece a chapter with learning activities.
In the course chapters, focus on giving the user everything they need to complete each activity so they can learn the material.
Checklists
A checklist is a simple low-content product like a planner but more focused on an individual task. It can be nothing more than a PDF with the process steps and a box next to each step.
The best checklists take something complex and make it simple—things like building a website, creating a content management plan, or house cleaning.
Learning Logs
A learning log is a record of a student’s learning process. It is different than a workbook designed to help students master material. Instead, a learning log is a personal record of your growth as you learn new things.
Students use learning logs to reflect on what they’ve learned, write down questions for further study, or record feedback from others.
Toolkits
A toolkit is a set of resources or tools related to a specific task or topic. For example, you could offer a digital marketing toolkit, a business finance toolkit, or a writing toolkit.
It might provide a mix of the types of low-content products in this blog post, including worksheets and activities, writing prompts, organizational tools, and templates.
Low Content Doesn’t Mean Low Value
The number one mistake businesses make with low-content products is thinking that it means low value.
Even though there isn’t much material for you to create, it needs to offer as much value as any regular content.
Start with your customers’ needs and develop an idea for something they can use to solve their problems. Then, create a low-content item that offers a solution.
