We urge our clients to launch / promote a product every 90-days but many people leave everything to the last minute. Here’s how not to!
Both of us are project managers at heart, so before we get all excited and start talking about Gantt charts etc, let’s get practical rather than technical.
What You Need To Know Before You Launch:
- Are you clear on your ideal clients’ wants & needs? This is essential to ensure that you have created a product that will sell as it is responding to them.
- Do you know where this product sits in your user journey? Is this a low-price item to give people a small result & experience you for the first time, or is it at the end of your user journey were people have built trust in you & will purchase high-tier products? This determines WHO get access to the marketing of the launch.
- Have you set sales targets & a marketing budget? Do you know when you want to hit these targets?
- Have you tested your product & got feedback / testimonials from these people? This is crucial to help support your marketing to have evidence & proof that your product or service gets the results it promises to.
- Are you allowing people to buy forever from the date you launch or are you going to have your ‘cart open’ for just a week for example?
These are all really important questions that will give you the assets required to reverse engineer your plan, so please don’t skip them!
Once you’ve got these answers, now we can focus on WHO will be supporting you on this launch, as it’s much harder to do this alone. All of the roles can be freelancers just for the period of launch, but it’s good to work out who you need, how much they’ll cost, so you can make sure your launch covers the cost & makes your desired target profit.
So here are the people we suggest you start looking for & you can find them all in our Facebook Group The Connection Hub or our Speaker INsight Directory:
- Web / Squeeze Page Designer
- Graphic / PDF / Webinar slide designer
- Affiliate Manager
- Copywriter / Proof reader
- Social Media Manager / Strategist & Implementer
- Paid Advertisement manager
- Tech support / CRM manager
- Customer Service Manager
- Project Manager
- Videographer
- Photographer
The success in hiring these people is writing excellent briefs, being clear on your outcomes & giving them a consistent brand guideline pack.
Now, you are ready for the basic blueprint that we use to launch a product. Obviously it’s adjustable, but it does include the foundational steps you need.
The most commonly asked question we get around launches is ‘when should I start to promote my launch?’ and our standard response is… a good launch takes 3 months to promote. Now of course you can promote in a shorter period but in order to not hassle your prospects, to get good joint venture partners on board & for you not to kill yourself with stress & panic, we believe this to be the ideal time period.
So what activities take place within these 3 months?
Here is a checklist for you to work through:
- Get joint ventures partners on board
- Create your marketing material:
- Create led generation campaign
- Write the email nurture campaign (both pre and post sale)
- Design social media posts and images & create a social media content plan
- Write sales page copy & film sales video
- Film testimonial videos / reviews
Now the most important part when you have all of your docs in a row (!), use at least the 8 weeks before your launch to start seeding and warming your audience up.
So here are some things that you can do to increase awareness and engagement:
- Run a survey to your group/network asking about their wants and needs around the topic of your product — then you can share the results with them and offer your product as a solution to their problems.
- Deliver a webinar at the beginning of your launch teaching about the subject area and then selling your product at the end (you might offer a discount or a special bonus if they’ve invested 30 mins of their time listening to a webinar).
- Run a competition or 5 day challenge in your groups to increase interaction and you can give the winner your product.
- Create a waiting list / early bird offer. Therefore, these people get first access with an exclusive offer.
- Do FB Lives with joint venture partners to teach around your product area to get reach outside of your own audience. It’s great if their expertise can add value and insight as you can also share the recording with your community.
- Be a guest expert on other people’s podcasts, pages, summits to expand the reach of your message and either have a CTA (call to action) to get them into your lead generation funnel or sell straight from the interview to the product.
As you can see running a launch takes A LOT of planning and organising, so don’t put unnecessary pressure on yourself, follow this plan and get your ducks all lined up!