Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com.
In order to successfully launch a product to your audience, you need to make a really big deal about your launch and give your audience incentives to buy during your launch period. The best way to make sure that your audience knows about your product launch is by emailing your mailing list. You will also want to your other platforms, such as your website and social media profiles, but your email list will probably be the source of the vast majority of the sales for your product. You’ll want to send email messages to your audience about your product as its being developed, when it’s close to being ready and when it’s available to launch.
As you begin working on the product, send an update once or twice a month about what’s going on with your product and how close it is to being launched. When you are about a month away from your launch, send emails that will start getting people excited for your coming product. Tell them about the features and benefits of your product, how much the product will cost, when the launch will be, how the product will benefit them, what they get when they buy, etc. You should also include screenshots, a sample video or an excerpt from your product so that they can get a better feel about what the product will be like. Try to send out one pre-launch email a week for the four weeks leading up to your product launch, with the last email being a few days before your product comes out. Each new email should contain some information that hasn’t been previously revealed, like pricing, the launch date or the bonuses they will get if they buy during the launch period.
When it becomes time to launch your product, establish a specific time period with a defined end-date where users will receive a special incentive for buying your product. This is known as your launch period. Your launch period can be anywhere from two weeks to a month. For your special incentive, you can offer some kind of add-on bonus that will only be available during your launch period. For a bonus, you can offer a short e-book, training videos or anything else that your audience may perceive as valuable. Don’t assume that you have to spend a lot of time on your bonus either. You might already have an older product you can use as your bonus or you might be able to compile some information you have already created as a bonus. For a previous book, I offered a collection of audio interviews that I had done previously as a bonus. These interviews had already been recorded and produced, I just packaged them together into a single file that readers could listen to at their leisure.
The other way to incentivize your users is to offer a time-limited discount during your launch period. For example, you could give your audience a 20% discount if they purchase your product within the first 30 days of its availability. If you are weary about cutting the price of your product, just raise the base price by 20% and then offer a 20% discount. You will receive the exact same pricing you had previously planned, but your customers will feel like they are getting a discount. This is what major department stores do by listing high sticker prices then discounting them heavily. You do have to be careful about offering too many discounts, because you might inadvertently be training your customers to only buy stuff from you when it’s on sale.
During your launch period, send out a series of emails to your audience about your product. In 40 Rules for Internet Business Success, I created a sample schedule for emails that people can use to base a product launch email series off of. While I wrote that series more than two and a half years ago, it works as well today as it did then. I still use it as the basis for my new product launches. Instead of writing a new launch email series for this book, I’ve decided to include the same 21-day sample launch schedule in this book:
- 28 Days Before Launch: Announce your launch date and tell your audience about the features and benefits of your product.
- 21 Days Before Launch: Answer a list of frequently asked questions about your product.
- 14 Days Before Launch: Provide a video tour or screencast of your product or offer sample videos if it’s a video course or an excerpt of your product if it’s an e-book.
- 7 Days Before Launch: Announce the bonuses that users will receive if they register during the launch period.
- 1 Day Before Launch: Reminder of launch date/time, bonuses and pricing.
- Launch Day: Announce that the product is available and provide a link to sign-up for the product.
- 4 Days After Launch Day: Send another email that contains the answers to the frequently asked questions about your product.
- 8 Days After Launch Day: Send your subscribers some social proof (often in the form of testimonials) about the rave reviews your product has received.
- 12 Days After Launch Day: Remind your users of what pain your problem solves and the features and benefits of your product.
- 16 Days After Launch Day: Remind your users about the bonuses and discount that they’ll receive if they sign-up during the launch period.
- 20 Days After Launch Day: Announce that tomorrow is the last day to receive the discount and bonus.
- 21 Days After Launch Day: Announce that the launch period is ending today and that it’s the last day to get the discount and bonus.
It is important to have a defined end date to your launch period. Many of your readers will purchase your product right away, buy some of your audience members will procrastinate and wait until the last possible moment to purchase your product. By having a clearly defined end-date, you create a sense of urgency to encourage your readers to buy your product before the discount and any bonuses that you offer are no longer available. As many as 25% of your customers will buy your product during the last couple days of your launch period if you have a clearly-defined end date to your launch and send emails to your audience warning them that the launch is ending soon.
In addition to using your email list, you will want to leverage any other channels that you have to communicate with your audience. This will include any social networks that you publish content to, as well as your website. When your product launches, you should publish a new blog post that talks about the product, what it includes, why users should buy it, as well as a link to purchase the product. Also include a prominent ad for your product in the sidebar of your website that directs users over to your product’s landing page where they can learn about your product. For your social media channels, you will probably want to publish something about your product launch every day or every other day during your launch period. Using your social media channels will help remind your readers to take action and allow you to reach members of your audience that aren’t on your email list.
You can also promote your product by doing a podcast tour. By getting yourself booked to be interviewed on other people’s podcasts, you have an opportunity to talk about your product to someone else’s audience. If the podcast host is willing to overtly promote your product, you can give them an affiliate commission for any sales that they generate. Not all podcast hosts will be willing to do this, so you may need to send out several inquiries to find a host that will be willing to let you talk about your product. When sending out interview inquiries, be mindful of each podcast’s audience size because it may not be worth the effort to be interviewed by podcasters that have a very small audience.