Product creation. The post How to Launch Your Product appeared first on ProBlogger.
Darren says: It's been a big month here at ProBlogger as we've been working on a series of posts on the topic of monetizing your blog through product creation.
I hope you find it useful and ready to create your next product.
Today, in the latest episode of Shane and I, we're going to discuss what to do after you've finished your product and are moving forward with launching it.
Without that last piece of the puzzle, we have a great product, but no one buys it. I hope this is helpful.
At a recent Problogger event, I presented a session on how to launch a countdown-style product.
Now that it's Product Week and you've already prepared, chosen and built your product, it's time to launch it. That's why I'm sharing the countdown with you today.
10. Practice makes perfect
I always recommend starting a small product as a partner with someone else's product before building your own.
Find a good affiliate product and build your practice around that introduction.
You'll learn a lot along the way, including:
- which strategies are more effective than others
- How long will it take?
- feedback from your audience
If you want to be a little strategic, choose the product from someone who has experience and success in their work. Talk to them and tell them what you do and ask if they have any advice. They will likely give you tips that you can then incorporate into your startup.
Darren says : Shane is involved in this ruse. When I published my first ebooks in 2009, I had never launched my own products, but luckily I had already done so as an affiliate promoting other people's products.
For example, at dPS, two months before we released our first portrait ebook, I promoted a photography ebook from another site. I decided to promote an ebook on a different topic to avoid cannibalizing my sales. I arranged a discount for my readers with the owner of the other site and then ran a simple two-week promotion that went like this:
- I emailed my list detailing what discount I had agreed to
- I blogged about an e-book sale (and shared the post on social media)
- A few days later, I followed up with a blog post reviewing the ebook and reminding people of the discount (and sharing the review on social media).
- 48 hours before the sale ended, I emailed my list again to let them know and share the review I had written.
This presentation earned me money from my affiliate commissions, but the real "benefit" of the internship was that I learned more about how to start promoting my products.
I learned what marketing is and isn't, working with my audience, I learned how to write sales copy, I learned a little bit about what my readers will buy, and more.
9. Select the date
You should set a date and do your best to stick to it.
Choose a date that works for you, but also for your readers (think about holidays, seasonal activities, and events that might distract from your presentation). Also, consider the time of day and choose one when most readers are online (we usually start when the US audience starts work).
If you're someone who needs a boost, tell your readers the date ahead of time. So if you don't score, you'll be letting them down and yourself.
8. Lock your product
If you enable launch mode, you must disable product build mode.
Your product is ready and cannot be changed unless something drastic happens.
You have to stick with it, because if you're constantly tempted to go back and change your product, your presentation will suffer, or worse, never happen.
It's time to stop thinking about your product and sell what you have.
7. Know your "corner".
In all my presentations, I like to start by choosing the "point of view" from which I'm taking my marketing.
By "corner" I mean the key point that I will emphasize when marketing the product at each stage of the campaign.
Your pitch should be an asset (not a feature) and ideally embody your unique selling point that we identified when you decided to create the product.
Darren says : It's something worth spending time on.
Whenever we launch a product, this is one of the most important things that Shane and I discuss and test before we release it.
Sometimes the angle comes to us very quickly and easily, but often it doesn't click until we start writing our sales copy, and then only after we've written several versions of it.
One tip I've found useful when trying to come up with an angle is to think ahead about how you can test it with your readers.
I've been known to post questions on our Facebook page or Twitter to try to get into the minds of our readers. I've also occasionally done polls on the blog, testing two alternative ideas to see what resonates most with readers.
Sometimes the "corner" also comes from brainstorming with friends. For example, when I launched our travel photo book, I emailed a few friends to get feedback on the retail copy I had written. Jonathan Fields came back to suggest that I think about the regret people feel when they return from a trip and that his photos don't match what they experienced.
This idea gave me the "angle" I was looking for and ultimately the phrase I used in my marketing.
After sorting out the corner, the rest of the retail model went. At that time, this e-book became our biggest seller of all time.
6. Make a plan
I'm not much of a detailed planning type, I like when things basically go as they come. However, I make exceptions for new product launches.
Set up everything you need to do with your startup.
Your emails, your blog posts, ads you can serve, guest posts you can post on other people's blogs, affiliate communications and more.
A startup going as planned is a busy time. A pitch that knocks it out of the park or a pitch that doesn't go well can be a crazy time.
A plan will put you at ease.
Darren says : To me, a "plan" consists of two parts. First there are all the concrete things to do. These logistics can include setting up a shopping cart, writing sales copy, sending emails to colleagues, and more.
The next part is to think about the "flow" or "order" of the marketing communications you want to deliver.
It's worth thinking about ordering because it means you're creating an introduction that takes your readers on a journey, rather than sending random sales pitches.
It can create a real buzz once you get going, and it's easy to get caught up in the moment and start interacting with your readers A LOT, actually a lot.
Here's the launch sequence I put together for the travel photography ebook mentioned above:
This was only my fourth ebook, so getting started was pretty easy. We've advanced the process quite a bit now, but you can see here that before I wanted to take my readers on a journey.
I started by asking/asking my readers about their experiences with travel photography (I did this in an article hinting at an upcoming e-book on the subject). It warmed up my readers and also helped me understand the topic in their heads (which helped shape the sales copy) .
Then I submitted two guest posts on an ebook author blog. This again allowed my readers to relate to the topic and identify the author.
Introductory posts and sales letters (posted at the same time) blog about the product and mention a quick action special (discount).
They then received a regular weekly newsletter that gently mentioned the e-book.
There were a lot of social media updates during this time (a few on launch day, but more than one per day on other days).
Then I did an interview with the author as a blog post to show who she is again and show some of her photos.
Then there was another mention in our newsletter (not a hard sales email).
We then published a blog post and a final email.
It was a three week presentation. Readers received sales letters and blog posts, but also a variety of other less commercial content.
Currently, our sales offers typically run for four weeks, and we typically send 3-4 emails in that time.
5. Prepare your army and public
Before you jump in, you need to start preparing your audience and network.
Hopefully it was built before launch in preparation for what's to come.
Then preview, play, get curious.
As a general rule, you provide enough information to learn about the product, but not enough to make a decision to buy it.
4. Make sure it's marketable
I encourage you to make sure your fundraising and product ownership are strong.
There is nothing more frustrating to me than having a reader who wants to give me money but can't because of a technical error. Worse, they gave me money and I didn't keep my promise and didn't deliver the product.
So buy your product. test it on mobile, with different browsers and with all the payment options available to you. Involve others in this process as they may have different problems than you.
3. Enable tracking
Make sure you can keep track of what's happening on your product pages.
Create conversion events in Google Analytics, and if you use a shopping cart (as ProBlogger Thrivecart recommends), use Google and Facebook analytics integration (if available).
At first you'll feel like you're working for no reason, but once you start going and trying to figure out what's going on, you'll be glad you did.
You also want to make sure you can quickly a/b test and update your sales page when changes need to be made.
Their execution is real-time and latency costs $$.
2. Put the writing on the wall
Now is the time to focus on sales copy.
You've pitched your pitch above, and now you need to start writing your sales page, blog posts, emails. for emails, affiliate communications, social posts and advertising.
It is the only thing that allows you to be a perfectionist. Make sure you spend a lot of time writing, editing and proofreading everything.
Darren says : While we don't have enough space in this article to go into great detail about sales copy, Shane has written some great articles on the subject that I recommend you check out:
- 11 Ways to Convince Readers to Buy Your eBook
- Behind the scenes. How to Create a ProBlogger Product Sales Page
Also note that Shayne's Blogger's Guide to Online Marketing has more information on this topic, including some sales page templates and sales copy emails.
My final note on sales copy is that the more you practice, the better you will be at writing. My first attempts at sales pages were quite simple and not very successful. As a result, I involved other people in the editing and formatting process, but you'll get better over time and start to see what readers do and don't do.
1. Get the green light from someone else
When I practice, I usually tell someone else what I'm going to do with my pitch. I ask them to view the sales page, do a quick test transaction, and collect feedback along the way. When they say, "I think you're ready to go," I push the button.
Join in!
It's kick off time and everything is happening. They bring your sales page to life and everything is real. I tend to do a little social sharing first (before I send an email or write a blog) in hopes of getting that first valuable sale, but once I have that, it kicks off everything else.
Expect the full range of emotions during sleepless nights and late nights. But get ready for fun and of course lots of sales.
T+1: Launched into orbit
They have started and this is a great achievement, but it is only the beginning.
Think about a 'launch month', not just a launch day, and plan a series of events to support your longer launch.
Darren took a look behind the scenes at the opening of the School of Digital Photography to give you an idea of what we're up to.
D+2. Direct training if needed
If you let go, one of three things will happen.
- It will be good and you will be surprised
- It goes as planned, you stick to the plan and you are happy with the result
- This is going to go horribly wrong, and at that point you have to decide whether to give up on the lease or focus on a new "point of view" to help your readers understand it better.
In #3, I was in two situations where we aborted the launch in the first week because we missed the target (and that would never change) and we fixed the messages and started with a fresh launch.
Personally, I hope it's #1 for everyone, but if you run into a problem, be prepared to do something about it.
So this is my countdown to release. I hope you enjoyed it, as well as all my other articles for release week
Still installing.
Darren says : There is no product like a product launch that offers you different thrills and a wide range of challenges and experiences.
I'm trying to get close to a safe start, but I'm defying expectations. The reality is that some work well, some exceed your expectations, and some fail.
If you get your hopes up too high, you could be setting yourself up for a fall, and you're not in a good position to "structure" as Shane suggests.
If things don't seem to be going as planned, I recommend giving them at least a few hours (if not 24 hours) to work them out (unless you made a huge mistake that you can fix).
Testing things means figuring out why things might not work, testing different elements of the sales process (checking that sales pages are loaded, shopping carts working, etc.) and hopefully you're good. . also the opinion of some readers.
If you don't get reviews, ask for some. Email readers, get recommendations from friends or other trusted bloggers.
Another factor to keep in mind is that once you've created your product, you've created an income that will hopefully grow over time. Even though you didn't have a huge sales rush when you started, we hope to see sales for many months and years to come.
Finally, when your product is performing well, it's a good time to think about next steps (and maybe future products).
Pay attention to how your readers react to the product. What do you like about what you want to build next? What is required or missing that you can do as a follow-up product or add to improve it?
We've often seen something at a product launch that sparks an idea for our next product. So don't get so caught up in your presentation that you lose sight of the big picture.
Update . Read the next article in this series. Product Implementation. bring your ideas to life
This article was last updated on October 20, 2022.
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Product creation. How to Launch Your Product appeared first on ProBlogger: