Product Launch Marketing | Turning your expertise into income one launch at a time

The Launch Systems Toolbox

6 Powerful tactics to make your product launch an intercontinental ballistic missile.

What Has an Ancient Chinese Warrior Got To Do With Your Marketing Strategy?

Are you overwhelmed by the sheer number of marketing tools and tactics at your disposal? Are you unable to decide which ones are best for you? Too easily distracted by the latest marketing concept?

Now don’t get me wrong, understanding the range of tactics available to market your new product is important. However, if you put them to work without integrating them into an overall marketing strategy, the odds on you making a success out of your product launch are minimal.

Without a defined vision of what you want to achieve, you will never know which one to chose.

Something Sun Tzu, that ancient Chinese warrior general, might have said but didn’t is “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”

A plan is linear and fixed. First you do this, then that then the other thing. A strategy is flexible, you can adapt your route to success on the fly because you have a clear objective in mind. There are many routes to get there. You just have to pick the one that is most suited to your needs. The tools and tactics evolve accordingly but you have a basis for choosing which one to use and at which time.

Clients with new websites are fixated by getting bucket loads of traffic to their sites but without first setting up a sales funnel to convert those leads into buyers, that traffic they do get is wasted.

Strategy is about the ‘Why’. The ‘How’ and the ‘What’ come later. Your goal may be to make a tonne of money but you won’t do that without first making sure that your prospects get exactly what they want, when they want it and how they want it. All at the right price.

Sun Tzu lived in northeastern China about 2500 years ago and was an expert in military strategy. As a result, he won a string of victories on the battlefield. He wrote a book on the subject called ‘The Art of War’. Many successful military leaders (like General Patton) and business executives (like Jack Welch, the former GE CEO) have attributed their success to applying the principles he lays out.

Sun Tzu identified four areas that we should apply to the testing of marketing strategy: speed, strengths and weaknesses, alliances, and successful market capture.

#1. Speed & Timing - Being on the cutting edge is critical in many markets such as technology and pharmaceuticals for instance. Striking that niche at the right time is also crucial. Your market has to be ready to change either from an existing supplier or because of a new perceived threat.

Reinventing the solution is about using new technology. Priming your market so that it has the right mindset when you start your product launch is something that you should make part of your marketing strategy.

These make the difference between gaining substantial mind-and-market share or none at all.

Like I said, time-to-market and speed of execution are crucial; They are relevant to any new product launch. Speed requires focus. Focus on your strategic goal and the ability to adapt to market conditions as they change. Having a clear strategy allows you to assess any opportunity that may arise and quickly decide whether it is a distraction or whether it will fast track your progress towards your goal.

#2. Strengths & Weaknesses - Sun Tzu’s key message in this area is to avoid your competitor’s strengths and attack their weaknesses. To do this you have to know your competitors almost better than they know themselves AND you have to have an unbiased view of your unique strengths and how to apply them to gain the biggest advantage.

Market research requires you to understand your prospects’ fundamental goal, their attitudes and beliefs. You can then focus on applying your own knowledge and expertise to reinventing the solution. But that does not help you position your offer.

To do that you have to know where your ‘enemy’ is weak and equally how you can quickly gain traction by concentrating your forces – strengths – on that point.

#3. Strategic Alliances - Co-marketing and co-branding are popular today as ways to leverage market relationships, product/service complements and others’ expertise or experience. Sun Tzu wrote that building a strong web of alliances is a way to box in your competitors and reduce the options available to them.

One of Apple’s strengths is the amount of content – books, film, music etc – that it’s customers can download to their iDevices which themselves are world beating. To create this vast well of content, it has to make strategic alliances with content providers some of whom were distinctly unwilling to co-operate to start with. The music industry finally agreed and was transformed in the process.

Alliances are easier to set up and break up than mergers and acquisitions; that decreases your investment risk and increases the speed of execution of your strategy. Without that vision Apple would never have been able to carve out such a dominant position and stay one jump ahead of its competitors

#4. Capturing Market Share - Sun Tzu’s believed that there was no point in capturing territory if its assets were completely razed in the process. Being a new start up you are more flexible and quick on your feet. You can serve markets – capture territory – that your bigger competitors cannot. The returns would simply not cover their overheads.

This is one strength that you bring to bear. You are ‘David’. They are ‘Goliath’. They have fixed ideas about how they do things. They have grown an established business. They are known for doing certain things. They have branded themselves.

You are young and free. You can position yourself to take advantage of all of those attitudes and beliefs. That positioning will help you gain market share. Help you ‘own’ new markets in such a way that your prospects will view your competitors as ‘Me Too’ marketers who are trying to jump on your bandwagon.

Early on, Southwest Airlines was dismissed as not having a robust business model or a traditional hub-and-spoke strategy. It has been wildly successful since its inception by serving the need for low-cost, reliable air travel, and it has achieved this success in such a way as to not engender a competitive response until it was too late to matter.

Conclusion - There is no perfect strategy but there is one that is best for you rather than anyone else. Only you bring your unique strengths to market. Only you have that knowledge and expertise. Only you knows how to apply it to serve your customers best.

And serving your customers is all about expressing the same vision as they have of themselves. They will then identify with you through that shared vision and are more open to what you have to say.

It is important to remember that Sun Tzu was constantly assessing the strengths of his army. He focused on boosting these strengths not building up his weaknesses. He would never engage an enemy after a long march if he could not see an overwhelming advantage in doing and see how to exploit a real weakness with little effort.

He said (and this is quite applicable to the various strategies and tactics of the marketer), “The best military strategy, then, is to use superior positioning. After that, use diplomacy. After that, use military force as a threat. Only after all else has failed, attack your enemy.”

When putting your new product launch together make sure you consider these ancient truths which are just as relevant today as they were then and remember “All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.”

How to Market Your Business: Marketing the Anti-Marketing Way

What’s the best way to market your business ? How can you promote your business and get your name in front of as many potential prospects with money to spend ? – Especially when money is tight and you’re just starting up? How can you get the word out about your business and make money at the same time?

Promoting a business is ongoing. It’s not something that you do once and then forget. Whether you’re just starting out or have been in business for years, you want to find a proven process that you can rinse and repeat as often as you like. And that process is called product launch marketing. And it will help your business find new customers without spending a fortune.

Key Concept #1: Market Your Products Not Your Business – It’s what you can do for your prospects that is important. Even if you are in the service business, you want to package those services as products and then create overwhelming offers for each one by bundling in great value.

Key Concept #2: Your Business is a System - Ultimately that system should be designed to make you wealthy. To do that, the main outcome of your system should be to give your prospects exactly what they want at the right time and at the right price

Key Concept #3: Find out What Their Final Outcome is - Your prospects may tell you they want one thing but if you dig a little deeper you will find that that is just a way point on the way to their final outcome. You want to discover that ultimate goal and make it as easy and as quick as possible for them to reach it by applying your expertise and knowledge.

So let’s assume for a minute that you have nailed these three concepts and are now ready to take your new product to market

A product launch is a simple 8 step process that starts by putting your offer in the context of the bigger picture. The one that involves the prevailing economic situation in the country, the impact that technological advances are having on society and finally takes into account people’s attitudes and beliefs right now. Don’t forget to highlight the threats that will impact your customers businesses.

Now that they understand the main drivers behind your launch, they are more likely to ‘get’ the value of your offer. The pain they feel will gain an added urgency. They will see change coming. They will see the threat that it carries. They will want to avoid that at all costs.

So when you start phase 2 of your product launch by first teasing the interest of the people in your market and then stimulating that interest by running relevant social medial marketing campaigns as well as driving traffic at your opt in page, your subscriber list should grow and the people on it will be responsive to your auto-responder series.

Growing your email list is a vital first step in your product launch strategy. Understand that your mailing list does not have to be huge but it has to be warm and responsive. Everyone is wary of sales messages. They are subjected to far too many far too often anyway. So focus on giving great value by helping them get what they want. Cage your marketing messages and throw away the key

Focus on building confidence. Focus on building Credibility. And your pre-launch sequence of events will resonate with your audience through your product launch story. We are all hard wired to listen to stories. Especially one that we can relate to because they reflect what we ourselves feel and believe. In fact, yours is all about how you discovered the solution to your prospects’ problem. The secret that they have been searching for. It’s about you. It’s about why you were so desperate to go on your quest. And, at the same time, it reflects the struggles that they are wresting with.

Your launch story will set you apart. It will allow you to differentiate yourself from your competitors. You want to appeal to the vision that your ideal customer has of himself by expressing his deep seated attitudes and beliefs. Along the way, you will pay it forward by giving away simple tips that helped you overcome the obstacles in your path and will help your people do the same.

Moving the Free-line like this, builds excitement because the people who take action will benefit straight away. Do this three times over your pre-launch sequence and that consistency will grow your authority. People will believe in you. They will have the confidence to take the ultimate decision and buy from you when you ask them for the sale.

Bound into all this is the need to layer one proof element on top of another. There are 21 different types of proof. You want to use the ones that are most relevant. All you are really doing is showing that your product works.

For instance, you may be wondering whether doing a product launch is right for you. Or even whether the process really works. Well, you don’t have to take my word for it. Take Apple. Every time they do a product launch, there are queues round the block at your local Apple store. It’s no accident. They use a very well developed product launch marketing strategy that is based on what we have been discussing.

It’s not rocket science. It doesn’t cost a lot of money. And your product launch is probably the single biggest leverage point that your business will ever experience. Just take a look at this cost benefit analysis…

The 7 Step Guide To Launching a New Product – Soup to Nuts

Is your business growth flat lining? Are you finding it difficult to attract new customers ? Do you want to grow your product line without adding overheads ?

If yes, then perhaps you should consider launching a new digital product that once created costs little to maintain. The key is to put your finger on a pain point that your competitors are not properly addressing. There has to be urgency. Your prospects must feel a real urgency in their desire to make this pain go away. When you find it, exploit that opportunity by putting your expertise to work to provide the solution.

Here is an 8-step guide to launching a new product that should work in any vertical…

#1. Strategy – Play to your strengths

To give yourself the best chance of success, play to your strengths. Use your own special skills and expertise to help your community overcome an urgent problem. By narrowing your niche and focusing on a very specific group you will boost your ROI and become known as the authority in that vertical. You only have to look at the medical or legal profession to see the truth in this. You don’t just go and see a lawyer, you go to specialist… a divorce lawyer or a family lawyer or a commercial lawyer. They all have specific areas of expertise. The more sophisticated the market, the more micro niches it has already and the more will be created in the future.

If your expertise could be applied to several niches, create a digital product specifically tailored to each one. This will prove more lucrative than creating one more general product that does not address the challenge in each niche so effectively. Then build out a product launch marketing strategy in each one in turn.

So figure out a strategy to boost business growth by either…

a) Focusing on your existing vertical and launching new products that you can cross promote to your existing customers

b) Selecting a new niche where you can apply your knowledge and expertise by reinventing the solution to an old problem

By choosing option a) you are making the best use of your most valuable existing asset… You client list. By continuing to make them new offers, your best customers are more likely to stay with you. The most effective way of putting your finger on a viable new digital product is to get out from behind your desk and speak to your customer base face to face. Ask questions. Listen to the answers. Pretty soon you will see a trend developing.

Option b) will take longer. It will require you to sift through a number of different niches before you decide on the one most likely to produce the highest ROI. Then you will want to verify this before committing yourself to doing a product launch.

Selling new content to existing customers will certainly be easier but, in either scenario, you want to be sure that you are appealing to a deep emotional need in your prospects. And you will want to show how your your new product will help them fill that need quickly and easily. Call it your value proposition if you like but in step #2, you’ll want to test that proposition to make sure that the argument for them buying your product is airtight.

#2. Market Research – Where Pain Meets Urgency

Before you waste time and energy building your new product, you want to construct a dialogue between you and your ideal client that breaks down the argument that you would use to explain why they should buy and examines the questions and objections that they may raise in response…

- What is the problem/challenge that your prospect faces?
- Is it a real problem?
- Why do they have that problem?
- What would life be like for him/her if that problem went away?
- What current behaviours are causing that problem?
- Is the product real?
- Can you provide layer upon layer of proof to support your offer?
- Name 20 objections that your ideal client may raise and provide the answers to them
- Now, is your argument still airtight?
- What competition is there in your micro-niche and how much money do they make?
- How is your offer different from theirs and is that difference really in demand?
- What collective noun or phrase does your target market use to describe themselves – Trust & Estates Attorney or Family Lawyer for instance
- What specialised language do your prospects use to describe the problems you want to help them solve?

You’ll want to do your fundamental research on the web but don’t stop there. Pick up the phone and speak to your customers and/or prospects and listen carefully to what they have to say. Take a look round the social media platforms that they hang out on and note the questions that they are asking and the concerns that they are expressing. This part of your research, will give you some valuable insights but before you take the plunge, get some hard data to work from. Before developing your publication, you’ll need to create a more comprehensive look at your prospects, which you can get from:

Landing Page: Put up a landing page armed with a powerful lead magnet and invest in some PPC ads. You’ll find out pretty quickly what’s working and what’s not and it may not be what you thought. Split test your ads and fine tune your data. This may cost you a few hundred bucks but it’s a small price to pay to find out what really gets the click

Webinars: Now you’ve started to build a list of subscribers, put them into an auto responder sequence aimed at getting them to register for a webinar. If you don’t feel confident to handle a 60 minute session alone, invite a respected expert to join you to discuss the subject that has resonate best in your PPC ads. This is a great opportunity to do some online training and build rapport with your audience. Plus you can record the event, transcribe the mp3 and use it as a bonus later

Online surveys: Invite attendees to do a quick survey – use surveymonkey.com – in return for some incentive that they would really appreciate. Multiple choice questions work great because they are quick to answer but the kicker is to ask respondents to leave a comment in a text box below. This is where you will find the gold.

#3. Create Your Product – Speed to Market

Once you have a handle on your target audience’s most pressing needs, it’s time to build out your offer. Start by writing your sales letter or the script for your sales video and work backwards from there by chunking down into sections then parts to each section before listing the content for each part.

The first version of your new digital product, the one you will launch, will be ‘lite’… meaning that until you have got it out there in the wild and you have satisfactorily proved to yourself that people are buying in commercial numbers, it’s not worth investing more time and money than absolutely necessary. You have to be sure of your ROI first.

Having a beautiful product may give you an ego boost but if it doesn’t sell in sufficient volume, you will have not done yourself any favors.

And remember that when Steve Jobs took the helm at Apple for the second time, he took 80% of the engineering budget and invested in the marketing of their products. When you have created a the minimum commercially viable product, the real work begins with the marketing…

#4. Marketing Strategy – Engage With Your Audience

If you’ve been smart you have continued to grow your subscriber lists and segment it using your webinar series to give you a list of hot responsive prospects for your new product launch. Now is the time to build out your product launch strategy but you still have to nail these 8 points…

- Asset Mining - This is an essential part of gathering all the possible things you can use for bonuses or to bundle into your offer. Remember those webinar recordings? And those transcripts? How else can you re-purpose the information contained within them? Can you add a list of sources or resources? A quick start action guide? worksheets? Do you have some digital reports gathering dust on your hard drive? Look in all the dark corners and decide how you can put all these assets to work. Remember you’ll need to have a few ‘unannounced bonuses’ bonuses on hand to boost excitement in the run up to your launch or even just to say thanks to your new customers or for no reason at all, except you felt like it. Oh yes… and what about testimonials? Big name satisfied clients? Achievements? Public recognition?

- Overwhelming Offer - Your offer is not just about your product and the bundle of assets that you decided to put with it because they support and strengthen the value you deliver. Your offer is about risk reversal. It’s about your guarantee. It’s about price. It’s about how people will pay. It’s about making sure that the necessary SSL certificates and other confidence building logos are positioned near the ‘Buy now’ button. You want to weave all these elements into a compelling offer. One that makes the prospect ask himself how he can afford NOT to buy

- Launch Story - We are hard wired to listen to stories. People will remember a well written story far longer than they will a list of dry features. This is your chance to reach your people on an emotional level. To appeal to their sense of self. To put your finger on the pain points. To show them what their lives would be like if suddenly they just went away. It’s about how you discovered the solution. How you tested and refined. How somewhat reluctantly you were pushed into making it publicly available by your friends. It’s a 3 act play with a beginning, a middle and an end. It’ll set you apart and let people engage with you.

- Launch Architecture - Now you have the three main building blocks to hand and you have a grip on how your ideal client would most prefer to consume what you have to offer, it’s time to architect your product launch. Will your pre-launch events be 3 LIVE webinars? Or carefully scripted video presentations? Or do you have the opportunity to weave a live event into the whole plan? Maybe it would be better just to do the whole thing using social media? You want to set out your launch in a way that makes life easy for your prospects. Your wishes are strictly secondary

- Context - No product launch ever happens in a vacuum. You cannot just assume that your market will understand how important your launch is to them. You want to put the whole thing in to context first. There are 3 main drivers. Financial trends, technological trends and sociological trends. Your launch has to capture the zeitgeist. It has to be put in context so your community will understand the threats they are facing and the impact that they may have on their business or life generally.

- Launch Ignition - Start with a teaser campaign that will build curiosity and encourage people to google for more information about you and what you are talking about. Then throw a stone in the pool by publishing you ‘context piece’ and pushing it out in all the places where your target market hangs out. This should stimulate even more searches and you will hear the hum of conversation beginning to build. You are now ready for pre-launch

- Pre-Launch - You don’t have to have a big list to go into pre-launch but you do need a responsive one. One that opens your emails and clicks on your links. Now is time you will find yourself writing a lot of copy. That is a skill you want to hone if you want your product launch to be a success. The first email you send out is the most important. It has to grab people’s attention and compel them to take action. To click the link to go to your first pre-launch event.

- Product Launch - Your pre-launch might only last 4 days. It might take 10. It depends on the type of product launch you are doing. But they all culminate in the day you open your shopping cart. The day your launch begins. That could last for a whole week and there’s a process that you need to follow to maximise sales and boost your ROI in the process. Now is not the time to go through it in detail suffice it to say that there is a right way and a wrong way to to make this happen

#5. Fulfilment – Over Deliver With Pure Quality

You want to be sure that you over deliver on your promises when it comes to fulfilment. The people who have bought from you have to be literally bowled over by the quality of the product that you have delivered to them. That way buyers remorse never raises its ugly head.

But you must also make it easy for your new customers to bond with their purchase so having a strategy that deals with every step between when the ‘buy now’ button is pushed to the moment that they gain access to their ‘shiny new toy’ is essential. You want to keep them informed about what happens next. You want an email sequence to tell them exactly what will happen in which order and how long it will take. You want to tell them when each step has been taken. You want to keep them fully informed and reassured that they have done the right thing.

That’s why it pays to have a super professional fulfilment house on board – disc.com – if you decide to deliver part of your product in a box through the mail or special courier. But also deliver your product digitally as well so that people can get instant access to it. If you take my advice, you will be able to allow different levels of access depending on the payment method your client chose.

#6. Stick Strategy – Make it Easy For Your New Client To Bond With Their New Purchase

This is another key step to keeping your new customers on board. The number one element to this is the quality of your product. Number two is to reassure buyers that they have made a good decision and then make it as easy as possible for them to get the results they want. Putting the modules to your course that give quick and easy results up front is one way. Offering a quick start guide is another that will help people consume your product and bond with it too.

Then you should also consider carefully match the delivery of unannounced bonuses to guarantee expiry and payment renewal periods so that they fall just after those dates. This will reduce the drop out rate especially if you are promoting a membership site paid for by monthly subscription for instance.

#7. Product Launch – Position Yourself as The Trusted Authority

Once you have put together steps #1 through #6 and have a clear road map to follow, you’re ready to launch your product. But remember, ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy’ so be prepared to be flexible and adapt to situations as they develop. You want to constantly monitor feedback during your launch so that you can pick up possible new objections and answer them in your next pre-launch event. Most importantly, you want to engage with your audience. Acknowledge their comments. Show you are listening. Act on their concerns. Thank them for their ideas. Building your launch conversation does not require you to respond to every single comment on your launch blog, but you must be seen to be ‘present’.

Keep it real. If you don’t know the answer to a question, find it. Being a know-all is unattractive. Being self-deprecating, open and honest with your people and they will sense they are dealing with the genuine article, not some snake oil salesman.

Most of all you want to layer proof elements during your pre-launch sequence to build your credibility, your authority and let your audience convince themselves that you are the real deal. Third party testimonials for you as a person from well known colleagues or authority figures in your market are a lot more powerful than singing your own praises.

Positioning yourself as the trusted authority is powerful. You become the default adviser that everyone turns to in times of trouble. You are the guide that everyone follows. People lead busy lives. There are many demands on their time. If they are sure that you will deliver or better still over deliver, that you are reliable and that you can be trusted, they will be prepared to pay more for that piece of mind.

This is one sure way of boosting your ROI. You can charge top dollar and have your customers thank you for the privilege of buying from you. That’s the power of product launch marketing…

6 Counter Intuitive Marketing and Product strategies

Have you constructed a conversation between you and your ideal client which includes all the arguments that you would both use for and against your value proposition ?

Doing this will help you identify the real problem that he faces and why he is finding it difficult to overcome it. You will then be able to put your finger on the behaviors that cause that problem and immediately be able to relate your knowledge and experience to finding a solution. In the process, you will certainly be faced with these six challenges

#1. Your product appeals to several segments in your existing market - And you can think of a few other completely unrelated markets where it could be useful too. “Yippee” you say, “I’m gonna be rich” Sorry to disillusion you but nothing could be further from the truth. You want to sift through your options and eliminate each and every one where there is not at least one potential competitor making money with a similar product. If that is old and tired, so much the better.

Counter intuitive strategy #1 – ‘Narrow Your Niche’ and exclude as many people outside your core market as you can so your product launch is focused on the people who will ‘get’ the value of your offer instantly

Follow The Money

#2. Market research is recommended by one and all as the way to find out what your community wants. But did Henry Ford ask his market what they wanted before designing and selling the Model T Ford? if he has asked people what they wanted they would have said ‘ A faster horse’ Did Alexander Graham Bell ask people whether they wanted a telephone? Did Steve Jobs ask his market whether they wanted an iPod? The answer in all cases is NO…. They simply followed the money to find a hungry market to which they could apply new technology allied to their expertise and the rest is history. They made their customers lives better by allowing them to overcome age old problems more quickly and more easily than ever before.

Counter intuitive strategy #2 – Do NOT do traditional market research. Simply follow the money to find an existing commercially viable market and then disrupt it by introducing new technology to transform people’s expectations.

#3. Many people skip step 2 above and go straight to building a product before trying to sell it – Assuming you know your market leads to nasty surprises unless you have first followed the money. This is the fastest way to find a rich hungry market with a problem that they find hard to solve using existing tools then build your product.

Counter intuitive strategy #3 – Apply your expertise to providing the solution to an existing challenge the market is frustrated by without asking them to change their lifestyle. Just make it simpler and quicker to use so that the problem goes away in record time

#4. Creating a product is only 20% of your job - If you believe that once your product is built, you can sit back safe in the knowledge that all the hard work is done, you are sorely mistaken. It is fair to say that you have hardly started. Marketing it takes 4 times as much work. When Steve Jobs took over as the CEO of Apple for the 2nd time, he took 80% of the budget being spent on engineering and put it into marketing… Apple is now the biggest company by market value on the planet so it would be wise to follow that lead

Counter intuitive strategy #4 – invest 80% of your budget in to your product launch marketing strategy

#5. Hope Marketing is Dead - If inadvertently you find yourself with a pre-built product, your next step would probably be to follow the traditional route by buying advertisements, hiring a public relations agency and generally banging the drum as loudly as possible to attract people to your door. Sadly this style of ‘Hope Marketing’ is dead and buried.

In 2012, you want to engage your market in a conversation. Your aim is to do business with people who believe in the same things as you. Your vision of the world has to match theirs. Remember that Martin Luther King made the ‘I have a dream speech’ not the ‘I have a plan’ speech. He appealed to something bigger and broader which people could identify with and which they wanted to be associated with because it said something about them they wanted the world to know. You want to do the same

Counter intuitive strategy #5 – Do a product launch. Appeal to the vision that people have of themselves. Help them get closer to their goals. Cage your marketing messages and become the niche authority figure who they can rely on for expert advice and assistance. Only when you have built the necessary trust and belief in your audience will they be prepared to buy from you.

#6. Getting traffic to your website is not your biggest problem – Many people are convinced that the big problem they have is getting enough traffic to their website. They are wrong. You can buy as much traffic as you need. But what if it does not convert? If the people who visit your site are not becoming buyers, you are guaranteed to fail however you chose to attract those visitors – even SEO costs money after all – The core necessity is that you design a sales funnel that makes you money and you find out how much each buyer costs you to acquire. Then you can turn on the Google fire hose and buy as much traffic as at the right price safe in the knowledge that you will be making money

Counter intuitive strategy #6 – Design a sales funnel that converts visitors into buyers then buy as much traffic as you like at the right price

Putting these marketing and product strategies to work in your business will certainly improve your success ratio but there is one other that you want to take to heart as well. And that is ‘Speed to market’. The faster you get your new product to market the faster you will have the certainty that eager buyers are out there. Your first product launch will be for an offer which is you will later develop and expand on once it is a proven seller.

Don’t waste time building out an elaborate offer without first validating the market.

Do you have a counter intuitive marketing or product strategy to add? If so, just leave a comment below…

6 Must Have Creative Ideas Your New Product Launch

So you’ve got a new product launch coming up and you’re looking for some creative ideas. Well, look no further because in this post I’m going to give you 6 must-have creative ideas that will get you off to a flying start.

You may have come across one or two individually before but it is the combination of all six that will power your launch ROI to new heights

Let’s dig in…

#1. Must Have Idea: Pre-Launch Scarcity – You will certainly use scarcity on your sales page or indeed your sales video but have you considered using it much earlier in your pre-launch sequence to ‘train’ your prospects to take action on command ?

You will be moving the free line by giving away valuable tips that you know will work like gangbusters. If it resonates as well as you think it should, putting a deadline on how long it is available will drive people to consume it when you want them to.

This trains them to take action when you ask them to. It builds buzz. It drives attendance at your LIVE webinar because you’ve already told your people that you will NOT be posting a recording later. They are there when you are or they miss out.

This is the power of LIVE events like the Superbowl. It only happens once a year at a very specific time. You either watch it or you missed it … Sorry

Using scarcity like this in your pre-launch sequence takes comittment and it takes confidence and it takes certainty. The certainty that you have a game changing offer that will take the market by storm. Do it right and you’ll be strapping booster power to your product launch…

#2. Must Have Idea: A Single Compelling Theme - Your pre-launch is not just a series of random events that you have thrown together. There should be a single compelling theme running through them like a golden thread.

Weave this theme into your launch story. Give it a beginning, a middle and an end. This three act play should take them on an emotional roller coaster by telling of the struggles that you faced and how in that one life changing moment you found the answer just like Jason found the golden fleece in ‘Jason and the Argonauts’.

This story mirrors the pain and the heartache that your prospects are challenged and frustrated by. It sets you apart because you are talking to them directly. You are expressing their hopes and fears. This is powerful because you have put your finger on how they feel. They know they have found a friend. They are happy to join your launch conversation and say so. They are transformed into passionate advocates for your cause. They are engaged in your product launch.

#3. Must Have Idea: Self Deprecation and Humor - As the product champion, you are the face of your launch. You want to be the master of your subject. You want to prove that you not only know your stuff but that you can teach it too. But are you believable?

Being a conceited know all will just serve to annoy people.

Using humor to poke fun at yourself and showing that you are fallible just like everyone else is essential. It make you believable. It makes you likeable. It help to convince others that you are just like them and that if you can do it, then maybe there is hope for them them too

With this mindset, they are much more likely to put your powerful pre-launch tips into action and get results. This reinforces their belief, builds excitement and fuels enthusiastic comments giving you the added bonus of social proof to use in your next pre-launch event

#4. Must Have Idea: Engage Your Audience - A conversation is a two way interaction. And that is what your pre-launch should be. You want to listen to what people are saying. Acknowledge their comments be they on your launch blog or on a pre-pre-launch webinar. Get them involved. Seek their feedback either there and then by un-muting their mic or through a quick ‘How and i doing’ type survey.

Better still, Livestream events through your Facebook business page and invite clients, friends and prospects to join you. Finding creative ways to involve your audience in your pre-launch sequence, boosts their engagement, makes them feel that they ‘belong’ in your online community.

Find any way you can to showcase other people in your own product’s launch cycle. Let your audience be creators as much as customers.

#5. Must Have Idea: Commitment & Consistency – By getting a person to take action even in a very small way at the beginning of a sequence, you induce in them the desire to complete what they have started. They have made a commitment to themselves by taking the first action so there is an emotional need to be consistent

Psychologists know that the desire for consistency is a central motivator of human behavior, and the key to invoking consistency is obtaining an earlier commitment.

Here are a few examples:

Researchers performed an experiment involving the staged theft of a radio on a crowded New York City beach. Bystanders where overwhelmingly more likely to risk harm to themselves by chasing down the thief if the owner of the radio asked them to “watch my stuff” than if they simply witnessed the theft without the request and agreement.

Canadian psychologists found that people at the racetrack are much more confident that their horse will win just after placing a bet.

Likewise, polling shows that voters are more confident that their chosen candidate will actually be elected after they cast a vote for him or her.

Use this ‘hot button’ in your pre-launch sequence by asking your audience to take one simple action in your first pre-launch event. Give them a powerful tip that will help them get a quick and disproportionately large result. Once they have taken that one action, the next time you ask they are more likely to follow through. By building a sequence of such small requests into your product launch leading up to that final time when you ask them to buy, you are leaning on that central motivator of human behavior which is the desire for consistency

#6. Must Have Idea: Build Barriers - The most popular boy in school was not necessarily the one who was best liked. He set up barriers round himself and only let the ‘cool’ kids into his circle. This sense of exclusivity made others want to be a part of his hip crowd too.

Everyone who is anyone wants to be seen in the hippest club or the smartest restaurant. Being on the inside of the red velvet rope says something about them. It builds their self esteem. They ‘belong’ in a place that is not open to one and all.

Those outside look enviously on. A queue forms. People will wait for hours to get in.

Build this sense of exclusivity by tightly focusing your emails and marketing messages on the one person who is your ideal client. Make him feel special. Make him feel part of the in-crowd. Your product or service was designed exclusively for him.

Tell him who are the ‘excluded’. The ones on the wrong side of the red velvet rope. Leverage this feeling of belonging to appeal to people’s irrational desire to join in. This will create buzz around your product launch and get people talking about it

Conclusion: The clutter and noise in your market is becoming hard to cut through. But don’t let that be an excuse for why your own product launch doesn’t live up to expectations. The responsibility lies squarely on your shoulders. Who says your launch has to be a me-too clone? Disrupt the existing pattern in your niche.

Implement these psychological ploys to make not only your offer, but your product launch sequence itself, something that your community wants to talk about…

What To Do When You Are Launching a New Product into The Market

It came to you in a flash of understanding. You are convinced that as soon as you as soon as you launch your new product, it will be a winner. Your prospects are going to love it. But for now, you have a list of questions: How do you research your market? How will you focus your concept on your market’s biggest pain point? Who will help you execute the product launch? How can you be sure that your market really will love it – after all it’s best to plan on certainties than hunches – [by 'love' I mean 'buy'] ?

First things first--how quickly can you launch your new product? Speed of execution is crucial. Getting your new baby out there and earning its keep is the surest way to test the market. If it’s a new one for you to want to quickly become a respected authority figure and the quickest way to do that is to make everyone sit up and take notice.

Publish a ground breaking report that upsets the status quo. Make sure you give it away for free to all those who subscribe to your list. Put them in an email sequence that invites them to learn more by joining you on a LIVE on line training session – webinar -

Invite established experts to join you. Rubbing shoulders with people that your prospects know and respect will ensure that some off their authority will transfer to you too.

Focus on giving great value. Cage your marketing message for the moment. Never mind how enthusiastic you are about your new product. You first want to make sure that you build up your credibility credit in the minds of your target market.

They have to feel comfortable around you and they way to make that happen is to make sure you give without any thought of receiving.

Now your list is beginning to grow, keep pumping out great value with short ‘how to’ videos that help people get over niggling little problems. The thing to remember is that your list does not have to be big but it does have to be responsive. If you keep sending them great stuff, they will be

Finding the right people to help you is key to a quick launch. You don’t have time to figure out… All the little details of a product launch – which is the best platform to use ? who are the key contacts you must talk to before starting ? Having a product launch manager on hand will short circuit all these decisions and ensure you get your product to market as quickly as possible… and in the best shape too

He’ll help you position your offer so that it strikes your competitors where they are weakest. He’ll help you prime your market so that when you start your pre-launch sequence, your prospects will be ready and waiting.

The key question he’ll ask is ‘Does your product fill an existing demand in a new and unique way? In fact, have you reinvented the solution to an old problem, made it easier and quicker for people to achieve their goals and done so in a way that does not require them to change their habits?

If the answer is Yes, you are set to disrupt the market and gain significant market share

After all that’s what Apple did with the iPod, then the iPhone and finally the iPad. People are looking for solutions to life rather than another ‘thing’ in life. They want you to make things easier, simpler, faster for them and they don’t want to have to stop and learn some new gizmo or software beforehand.

Your idea may start out in life by being counter intuitive but by the time it gets into the hands of the end-user its use has to be completely intuitive. They should be able to open the box and put it to work straight away.

That way they can instantly bond with it, get value from it and prove to themselves that they made the right decision to trust you by buying.

My final message for all you would-be entrepreneurs with a product launch in your sights is simple: Over deliver and under promise

Aside from that smooth and easy user experience. Your product has to do everything you promised it would and much much more. That way you will be making sure that you are acquiring customers for life not just for a one-off sale.

And that makes perfect sense, because attracting new customers is the most expensive thing that your business will ever do.

If you have a great idea, go for it. When I say that, I don’t mean next month or six months from now or next year. I mean NOW. You had that idea for a reason. But, remember, that if you had that idea, there’s a good chance someone else has too.

So don’t sit on it, move on it…

How to Conduct a High Powered Product Launch in 5 Simple Steps

Is it possible in this day and age to launch a new product with such finesse and focus that you nail the target market ?

The answer to that question is a resounding YES

The very phrase “product launch” brings with it powerful mental images of strong forward momentum for your business catapulting you into the position of being the leading authority in your market and boost your bottom line at the same time.

Contemporary launches are based on tried and tested systems and procedures that have proved highly rewarding for those who have put in the hard work necessary to build rapport with their market. Breaking a product launch down into its component parts and then executing one a time is not as difficult as you may think.

Here are the 5 simple steps to conducting a high powered launch that will rock your market

#1. The Launch Ignition Phase - The movie Ghostbusters wasn’t exactly a product, it was simply a movie. Do you know what the difference between Ghostbusters and other movies of its time were?– A superbly executed launch ignition phase. Do you remember all the ‘no ghost’ signs? They were everywhere, and nobody knew what they meant. But they teased people’s curiosity. They got noticed. And, months before the actual product ‘or movie’ launch, the audience knew that something big was going to happen. They were expecting it. The end result was a top grossing movie.

Plan a pre-launch for your product. Tease people’s curiosity. Stimulate their interest. Get people talking about you. Build some anticipation. Put your launch in context. You’ll be glad you did when your launch begins

#2. Stimulate Your Market - Once you’ve rolled out your launch ignition phase it’s time to stimulate your market even more. Get your product into the hands of key ‘influencers’. Encourage them to talk about it. Volunteer to do webinars with them. Help them as much as you can. This will stimulate a broader market and help others to promote your product .

#3. Obtain endorsements – Credibility is a key factor to product launch success. Getting third parties especially well known and respected people in your niche to say nice things about you builds your authority and provides important proof to your target market. Take the time to meet with influential industry leaders, bloggers, analysts and of course-the media. Let’s face it, if you can get an industry leader or a highly recognized figure to put their seal of approval on the product, you are home free.

#4 Customer Support - Support your product with training, forums and online support. When a consumer believes that you won’t leave them hanging if they have a problem, your product is poised for success. Use YouTube videos, DVD’s, e-Books and even on-location training. A strong support base with excellent customer service will give your product the high powered forward thrust it needs.

#5 Impute - If your website looks unprofessional, that is how your market will consider you. If your website looks the reverse and is easy to navigate, quick to load and is packed with killer content, it will go a long way to cementing your expert positioning. Posting consistently and regularly on your blog helps build your credibility… and is a good source of organic traffic.

Even if you have a middle of the road product or service, an exceptional website will set you apart from yoru competition. Kraft is one such example. They are a household name, but their product is nothing exceptional. Just visit their website. Need to make dinner? Type in three ingredients that you have on hand and they’ll give you a list of quick and easy, healthy meals. They also offer plenty of money saving coupons, desserts that moms can make with their children and more. Kraft has a solid, user friendly, fun and exciting website. A ‘must have’ in today’s ruthless market… By giving valuable information FREE they make visitors want to come back.

Follow these simple but vitally important steps for your own product launch you will catapult your product to the front of your community’s minds.

Give me one more killer step that you simply must take to ensure your success… Add a comment below, Thanks

3 Simple Steps To Launching a New Product

Have you got a new product ready to launch? Are you looking for 3 simple steps to getting your community in the right state of mind ?

Launching a new product into a ‘cold’ market is not smart. You may think it is the best thing since sliced bread but unless you prime your market they may not understand how valuable your offer really is.

That’s because you are the expert. As an acknowledged authority in your field, you may feel that is blindingly obvious but, and please excuse me for being direct, what you think is totally irrelevant

You want to walk a mile in your ideal client’s moccasins and see it from his point of view. He cannot see into the future like you. He doesn’t have your knowledge and expertise. He just wants his problem – the one that you can solve – to go away and fast. The faster the better… He may even be satisfied with the product or service that he is using right now but that does not mean that he is not open to a better solution because he is…

So here are 3 ways to prime the market ready for your new product launch

#1. Mindset – There are 3 overarching trends in society that impact our daily lives. The first is Financial. The second is social. And the third is technology. Write a special report that takes these drivers and shows how they are impacting your market now. Your ideal client is so busy keeping up with the day-to-day demands made by his business that it’s hard for him to look further down the road. By looking at the big picture, synthesizing the meaning and then pointing to the action that must be taken to avoid the threat and take advantage of the opportunity, you prime your niche and set up the right mindset.

#2. The Teaser Campaign – Now you have people thinking the right way, it’s time to start your teaser campaign. Your goal is to leak just enough information – through third parties and third party sites – to get people googling for more information… about your product or service and about you. The past master at this tactic was of course Steve Jobs. A new iPhone was ‘lost’. Rumours started to circulate. Twitter and Facebook joined in as people retweeted and shared the posts on their timeline. Pretty soon everyone who was anyone in that market was talking about it. Having thrown the stone in the pond, the teaser campaign goes viral

#3. The Stimulation Campaign - Now is the time to build on those rumours by putting up a squeeze page and posting a video – like a movie trailer – that apparently sets off in a predictable direction and then dramatically swerves to take a completely path. This resets the viewers expectations = changes their and grabs their attention.

Air dropping your offer into your market without executing this 3 step ignition phase will certainly leave you disappointed. You want your community to be ready and waiting eagerly for your new product launch to get under way. You want them primed for action. You want them to instantly get the value of your new product or service.

This will ensure that when you go into your pre-launch sequence, you will make an instant impact. Starting the conversation around your launch will be easy. Comments will come fast and frequent. Integrating these with Facebook will make sure that your new product launch will go viral.

Your launch ignition phase requires an effective social media marketing campaign using Facebook, Twitter, your blog and that social media site where your people like to hang out. You have to hang out where they do and build your launch from there…

How do you stimulate your market into action ? If you have used another way of priming the pump before launching your new product, just leave a comment below

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