Product Launch: Getting People to Sign Up and Keeping Them as Long-term Clients

Launch any product online, such as an online course, book, training course, information product, or any physical product successfully. A winning product deserves a launch that would get people to sign-up right away. Also, in this article, you will learn how to keep those clients in the long run.

Got an idea for a new digital product or service? But wait! You need to know how to launch a digital product successfully.

It is easy for you to envision your product getting sold out or customers getting waitlisted in availing of your services. You even see your sales skyrocketing and succeeding in a particular industry. Similar to any business enterprise, it needs a product launch that requires meticulous planning.

It’s not enough that the product is excellent as it doesn’t even guarantee a huge success these days. It needs to have the essentials: research, pivoting, and thorough planning.

Strategize Your Pre-product Launch

Carrying Out a Product and Market Research

Discover your winning product as that will get customers in the door. It will also significantly affect your SEO and marketing strategies. The key here is to find a product that could set your business in a trajectory from day one and is crucial to understand how to launch a digital product.

You will hear this repeatedly; the product should solve your target market’s problem and preferably to lots of people.

A simple start would be addressing issues in everyday life. One example could be the need to get up in the morning. That’s one of the many struggles many people face.

How could your product address that issue?

Can your modified alarm clock app effectively work? Or can a weekend retreat jumpstart your customer’s week ahead and motivate him to get up early?

Does your product reduce friction for customers?

If yes, then that is the kind of product people would want to buy.

Another winning product or service is the one that sparks passion. These are the ones that clients feel strongly about, gets them curious, engaged, and compels them to buy it. Preferably, it should also be an item that you would love to sell. You should be using it and strongly feel its value as it would be easier to put yourself behind the scenes in marketing and sales.

Now comes the market research. It is fitting to conduct one to know your competition and how you can be different. It also gives you an insight into how to launch a digital product. There are a lot of brands jumping on the same bandwagon, going with the trend wave and cashing in on others quick-growing success.

So what happens if everyone else is doing the same thing? You’d end up with so many competition and spending a significant amount on marketing and ads so that you can close a sale. Again, assess the industry and understand your game. Recalibrate and see where you can fill in the gap rather than trailing with the trend.

Choosing Your Target Audience

Find your target audience, and it could begin with creating lists. This list can come from a mailing list, social media list, and mailing list. But that doesn’t end there. From the data that you have, start establishing a relationship with your prospective customer base. It will help you create a more definitive and practical sales hook. Fostering a relationship with your target audience puts you in a position where you’re more trusted because you have constant communication and have provided relevant content.

Creating a Strategy

Notice every time Apple launches a new product, and it gets sold out on release in almost all of its stores. What is their big secret?

The strategy is to focus on the people, the target audience, and not the product itself. The key here is the value proposition. It’s how your product can provide solutions to their concerns. And how your product can fit into their lifestyle.

So instead of selling what your product or service has, the specs worth raving, go for how it can affect them. They wouldn’t be interested in the specs as they can read it from your website or product label. For example, you can talk about how tacky it is to have a phone and an alarm clock on your bedside table. The solution is you could have an app on your phone that sets the alarm. It just shows how a product can put more convenience in someone’s life.

Understanding a buyer’s journey is a factor in creating your strategies as this is where your marketing and sales activities will also focus on. Determine as to how customers will engage with you and their expectations in different stages of the buying journey. Assess as to where they get their information, who and what are the factors that persuade them to buy certain products or services. Social media influencers may have a take or perhaps special events may trigger them to make a purchase.

Put Your Product to A Test and Test It Twice

Testing your product means you’re not settling for something less. Take the time to test your product and its efficiency as often as it needs to. It should be foolproof. The worse thing that could happen is that you try to sell a sub-par product. It will cause a catastrophic downfall. You’ll lose your money, time and the authority and trust you built with your target audience. Ensure that your product is free from any errors and don’t just leave anything to chance.

Bring Your Marketing in the Best Light

Avoid the common pitfalls most business owners make:

• Failure to capture customer interest
• No unique selling point
• Overlooking the benefits and focusing more on features
• No distinct selling point

To put your marketing in the best light, it could be an advantage to have the right expert on board. Just because you’re an expert on the product or service that you’re selling, doesn’t mean you’re also an expert on digital marketing.

Besides the fact that they know what they are doing when it comes to ads, getting leads and all the other marketing strategies, they let you focus on doing what you do best, crafting the best version of your product or services.

Get Your Team on the Same Page

Before going live, your company should be unified in all departments from marketing, inventory to customer support. The team should be ready to cater to thousands of orders with an expectation of delivering the product within two days.

For business owners that conduct online courses, the IT department should be capable of handling an influx of users logging into the class. The customer support needs to be ready to troubleshoot any problems the customers will face and give swift replies.
The marketing team should be ready with a game plan on how to launch a digital product and reach the customers. It’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all strategy considering you have different demographics. Some audience spends more time on social media while others prefer to receive information in their email. Some individuals are more inclined to videos, and others prefer photos.

Creating the Hype

The most useful tip on how to launch a digital product is to create awareness and draw out the suspense. There are different ways to create hype for your customers. Play with emotions to getting them hooked until the launch date.

Build the excitement by leaving trails of small details of your product. Leave them hanging day after day by keeping it a mystery. For instance, you can share some sneak photos of the item or little excerpts of your online course. The giveaway here is to create a buzz in the right platforms to get people to talk about what you’re going to launch.

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Launching Your Product with Two Options

At the end of all these, a product launch is more than just showcasing what you have. It’s about giving value to the relationship you have with your clients. It’s the chance for your company to increase profitability and get the satisfaction of being able to help provide solutions to your client.
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Transcript

In this episode, we’ll be talking about how to maximize the business potential that you have when you’re promoting your products and services particularly in the context of a launch of an event or time period for which you have a promotional price on one of your courses, membership programs or similar offers.

So to get a bit of context, it’s quite popular online to create specific promotional calendars that will allow you to sell your products and services in cycles. Meaning that you have a course that’s starting, you have an early bird price let’s say and up till July 15 people can save 20% off and after that then if people have to purchase that and their remote pricing. Now there are other contexts where you may decide to run that promotion once a year. So Amazon Prime days would be an example of that or appear to they’re special discounts. Now there is a Black Friday in July.

All of these different holidays have promotional calendars around them with a fixed deadline. Now, other contexts for this would be if you have an evergreen model. Meaning that people can sign up for something or enter your promotional calendar at any point in time and then there’s a system that calculates for how long you can get special discounts.

Someone might enter your email list on August 1st and then you could get a promotional price on that course for the next 10 days and after that good deal is done and then there’s a tracking mechanism. So what does happen is a lot of the advice around those are based on scarcity. Meaning that there’s a fixed deadline, there’s an urgency. And it’s nice for people to take action because one of the biggest blogs for people to enrol for a course or a program that you offer does not only do people need to believe in themselves, which is probably the number one block that’s their main objection,

 “Can I actually receive the results of someone else?”

but then the second thing is, “Why now?”. And it’s overcoming inertia, our tendency furnace that is cool. So if they’re going to enroll in your program it’s gonna require resources and energy and maybe you just want to do it in three months so in six months. But right now there’s a reason why it’s not the perfect timing for them. So to help them take action, you have a fixed deadline in promotional pricing.

Now, there are those campaigns, if you look at models like Jeff Walker’s product launch formula or similar models and you have a series of emails and a lot of resources stories things that are emailed or sent to your list of prospects that will keep reminding them of those deadlines and the benefits of enrolling now. Not only about urgency but as well what we’re going to be getting in a program, showing some social proof testimonials, answering common questions, sharing stories of other successes, etc. And a lot of these models want you to push as many emails as possible, setting perhaps retargeting advertising campaign, sending text messages, sending messenger. And I mean if at all possible, do you have a robot knock at people’s door during your deadline period. And what tends to happen then, sales are most likely going to be higher for your business but it burns the relationship with your audience. And if you think about a heart-driven marketing model it’s very customer-centric.

Meaning that you’re really trying to help the other person your clients or your customers to the maximum of your ability. You’re really thinking about you know what they’re going to be experiencing. And if you keep bombarding them, that’s going to be spam. No one wants that. No one wants to have twenty of your emails in a week just because you’re having your special promo on that course.

Now some people, it may remind them to buy in and because of the exposure, they will buy. So you could see an uplift in your sales. But now people are so tired of your marketing messages and that’s what they’re expecting that you’re trying to sell to them. It feels like the relationship gets skewed and then whatever used to be in your favor, because you gave them some free content, resources, checklist, podcasts, whatever it is and then it shifts, the relationship shifts, and now they feel like you’ve over asked and you’re annoying. I mean you are. Because it’s like everyone at a party and then someone says,

 “Hey! You know the car deal you are interested in.”

 “I have some great sales and concern and then they’re asking you like twenty-five to thirty events for that you’re like work I got your card and I’m gonna call you back.”

So that creates friction in the relationship. And ultimately, it will reduce the profitability of your business. So although you might make more sales in the short term now. Your audience will be less receptive and they won’t be as open as eager to open up to what you have. And you’re gonna reduce sales of your upcoming programs and services.

So I encourage you that they think a moment and pause and think about how can you make the relationship with your prospects, with your market, with the people that your business interacts with, with your customers, with your clients. How can you make that relationship more about them and then providing as much value as possible and doing a long term relationship? What would it look like if you were banking in for the long term rather than the short term? And true that you’ll be able to grow the profitability of your business as well as find really more enjoyment and satisfaction out of what you’re creating.

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