Product Launch 101

As you read this I'll be in a 2-hour intensive session with one of the few 1-on-1 consulting clients I still do, and we'll be preparing a precise strategy to bring his nutrition product to the world using a product launch.

Now you probably know that "Product Launches" are the "car show girls" of the internet marketing world. Super sexy, and everyone wants one in their business.

After all, if you pay any attention to the world of internet marketing, you know that the big guys are doing product launches all the time - and for good reason too, because they work better than almost everything else for making sales.

Of course, a successful product launch is easier said than done, but the steps are pretty simple. If you've done one yourself, you know that it's just a matter of following a proven system.

At a seminar I recently attended in Cleveland, Jeff Walker, the "father of the product launch" laid it all out for those of us in the audience.

Now I can't tell you everything that Jeff told us, but I can walk you through the basic 5 steps of Product Launch 101.

Step #1: Demonstrate Authority

Essentially, this is what I'm doing every day that I write my internet marketing newsletter.

By giving you great information and action steps, I'm proving to you that I know what I'm doing. (Although some folks might disagree, ha!).

In addition, there are other subtle ways of proving authority, such as associating myself with Jeff Walker and by attending exclusive seminars where folks like Dan Kennedy and Walker are speaking. Plus, I demonstrate authority by doing my own speaking gigs as I did down in Panama.

So identify how you can demonstrate authority to your market.

To be honest, as soon as you start putting your ideas down in a newsletter or on a blog, or when you start creating your own videos, you're already taking big steps to creating a level of authority. So take action today.

Step #2: Create Reciprocity

The best way to do this is by giving away a free piece of content that most of your readers would be happy to pay for.

During Jeff Walker's product launches for his Product Launch Formula product, he gives away free videos.

In the fitness world, my business partners tend to give away free reports that are packed with great content.

By doing this, and asking for nothing more than an email address in return, you are generating what is known as a feeling of reciprocity...that your readers feel they owe you something in return - and so they'll give you their attention.

Step #3 - Demonstrate Community & Social Proof

Your product launch should be built on a website with a comments section. That's why most launches use a site built on wordpress to host their free videos, and allow comments underneath the videos.

In the comments, their readers create community and social proof with hundreds and even thousands of positive comments and thank you's for the valuable free content.

You can even have a contest on your blog that offers a few free copies of your product in exchange for readers telling you their "reason why" they want the product so bad. That's a great lesson for another time.

Step #4 - Build Anticipation

In a product launch, you'll see authors release more great free content or video that helps the reader, and that also talks about the system that will be released in the future. This builds anticipation in advance of the product release.

Step #5 - Identify Scarcity & More Social Proof

Many authors also mention "fast action" bonuses or a limited number of products that will be available. This also builds anticipation for the launch day. Plus, the authors will showcase past success stories of people who have used the product and achieved great results.

Again, that's a brief walk-through covering only a portion of the Product Launch system, but I've watched it work dozens of times. It's a proven system.

Fortunately, it's also fairly simple.

Most product launches last 10-14 days, but in theory, the entire process can be extended a lot longer than that.

In fact, Walker admitted he stumbled across the system because he didn't know how to sell anything when he started giving out free info online many years ago.

He realized that by giving out great content, he built up anticipation among his readers who started asking him when he was going to finally release a product. He eventually created an entire system from that experience.

Now, having said all that, there's one BIG catch...you need people on your list in order to make sales during a launch.

In most cases, successful product launches depend heavily on affiliates. So you'll need to have a lot of affiliates or you'll need to have built up a big list yourself.

Follow the simple steps to success,

Craig Ballantyne

Kekich Credo #75. "Persistence is a sure path to success with quality activities. Never, ever, ever, give up."...So track your efforts and focus on what works. Create a system of success. Consistency is key. Harness passion and social support to get you through the dips. Never, ever, EVER give up.

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Kick Your Competition to the Curb With These Three Product Launch Tips

Product launching can be an exciting time that you can, and rightfully should, enjoy. Product launching can also be a very stressful time filled with anxiety and disappointment if not properly planned and managed. Many think all that is needed is simply a mention on a seo blog and maybe an article marketing campaign. Granted you are right for thinking that as it is what everyone else seems to be doing. If you are in a competitive niche though, and many who are also involved in product launches in the same time frame and are not having success, why would you follow the same route? Below you will find three strategies I use during my product launch phase! I will also show you a way to tie the three ideas together as one massive product launch marketing strategy!

Aside from my grandparents, I have not met anyone who does not have a Facebook account. It is slowly becoming expected that businesses offline and online have a Facebook page. I rarely see a new product launch Fan Page on Facebook however. Regardless of the demographic, the market is more likely than not to be using Facebook. A Fan Page directed around your new product launch would potentially have a direct effect on initial sales! As soon as your family and friends like your page, your Facebook Fan Page is displayed under their activity to the people who follow them which could generate even more interest for you. That would be a pretty amazing snowball effect for your new Fan Page don't you agree?

Have you ever heard of guerrilla marketing? It is an aggressive approach and any form of advertising that is not considered unethical is out there. The premise of the advertising is that anything goes and you want to be as noticeable to as many people as possible. Actually, I remember an effective guerrilla marketing campaign by a local printing company. They designed various pocket-sized tissue packs and offered a free sample. They are still in business and normally have a waiting list now! That shows how guerrilla marketing could help you in your business with a product launch.

Your first few customers are critical to you really making it out of the gate. With so much hype surrounding a product launch online it is easy to be forgotten if you are not off to a very solid start. When you make your first sales online regardless of the affiliate marketing strategies you are using, you should find a way to turn those customers into affiliates as well! In all actuality, they make the perfect affiliate, especially if they send you an email or contact you to praise your product and your product launch! One of a dozen affiliate marketing strategies you could use would be to offer them their product free after referring three new customers for example. Encourage them to keep going by asking them outright to join your affiliate program and possibly offer an additional incentive just by being a customer! In my opinion, that is as close to a grassroots campaign as you can get.

To better your chances in giving yourself a stellar product launch, I mentioned earlier you can combine the three product launch or affiliate marketing strategies together. An idea I have used recently is based on those three steps above and I saw very good results! I set up a "Facebook Fan Page" for a niche-based storefront, which took very little time. The Fan Page was set up in a very basic, but not over done; I covered pertinent information and added some graphics. I then undertook a short period of forum advertising, something very low scale and ethical. I find that forum marketing is by far one of the easiest methods when involved with acting as an affiliate in niche markets. We now have two of the three steps together, creating a "Fan Page" and getting a couple of customers from niche forums. Our acquisition of customers from forums covered the Guerilla marketing idea satisfying step two. Now we entice those customers to tell a friend. We can have them recommend our offering with an incentive. If they can refer maybe three new customers for example we would give them commissions with a small payout threshold, thus converting our current grassroots customers. Maybe the amount paid to them, which would be preset, could total slightly higher than the price they already paid. The result in this example would be a total of four new customers!

A product launch should not be a daunting task! Make your next product launch an enjoyable experience for you as well as the customer! I truly believe those three steps will take a lot of the difficulty away from any product launch you have the proper way!

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5 Ways to Launch the Heck Out of a Product

Have you launched a product and had nothing but regret and remorse after it went live? If you've experienced product launch disappointment, it's time to stop all of that. With a little planning and preparation, you can be sure that your next product launch is a complete success.

You should create at least a six week promotion cycle for your product and be sure that you hit all of the right notes along that path. You need to grab attention, build interest, grow desire and then ask for the action. If you're just focusing on the asking, you're dropping the ball. Look at the Attention, Interest, Desire and Action model and decide how you'll address each of those points in your launch.

Here are five ways to do just that:

Make sure you know exactly who you're marketing to

Like any other marketing project, you'll want to target your product launch to a specific group of people. Don't cast the net too wide. Develop a targeted profile of your ideal client so you know where to find them, how to display the benefits of your product and build desire.

Get attention through guest blog posts

During your product launch phase, you should work to expose yourself to different audiences outside of your normal sphere of influence. A great way to do this is to do guest posts on other websites. Reach out to other marketers and bloggers who have an audience made of your target market. Ask if you can contribute content and then see your audience grow.

Build interest through content teasers

Your audience wants to know what is in it for them when they sign up for your new product. You can build interest with content teasers - these are blog posts on your site, social media updates and other content that shares tips and insights that tie into your product's theme. For example, if you're going to teach people how to use video to market their businesses, you can create content that talks about why video marketing is so important, the biggest problems people have with video and other frequently asked questions.

Grow desire by emphasizing the benefits

In your marketing up to your content launch, you need to build desire for the product. A perfect way to do this is by emphasizing the benefits. As you're doing the pre-launch marketing, be sure to show your audience why this specific type of training or offer can be beneficial to them. What can they expect by making a purchase?

Ask for the action in several forms

The call to action for your new product should appear in several different places to maximize your impact. The first place is in your email marketing message that announces your product. Highlight the benefits of the product and then give them a link to the sales page. Next you'll want to have the call to action appear a few times on the product sales page itself. Finally, you can send a follow up message after the launch to give your audience another opportunity to take action and make a purchase.

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360 Degree Interactive Product Photography

360 degree product photography is replacing the historical flat one shot image in websites of the more prestigious designer based companies but it is becoming more and more widespread thanks to increased broadband speeds. In the past there was a reluctance to embrace this technology as the additional load times would deter online shoppers. This is now not the case as, without getting too technical, the average file size is below 1mb so will take less than two seconds to load (I've just checked it with a 5.5megabit broadband speed).

Now not every product lends itself to the 360 interactive treatment. Customers don't need to examine every angle of a packet of Corn Flakes for instance. There is nothing to be gained from a 360 presentation of a light bulb, however, a digital camera, the inside of a car, clothing and designer goods, perfume, handbags, shoes etc. all benefit fit from this interactive 'video' facility. Like everything in business you need to decide whether the additional cost of taking what is effectively 36 photographs instead of one is worth it. The good thing is that the cost is not 36 times more expensive. The primary reason is that the principal cost of photography is more in the setting up of the product and not the time it takes to click the button. Once set up on an automated carousel it takes an extra 5 minutes to do the 36 all round shots and in the region of an additional half an hour in post production.

In conclusion, the 360 revolution is here to stay and with considerate integration of these Flash based presentations into your website, customers will have a far more enhanced visual experience.

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Auto Profit Machines Review

Auction Profit Machines is designed by Jeff Johnson and Rob Pietras who are very successful internet marketing entrepreneurs in their own right. In a nutshell it is a program that has been put together to show anybody how they can have a successful work from home business by selling information products on eBay. Basically they are saying that eBay is a virtually untapped market for selling info products and if used correctly the potential is there to make some serious money.

Jeff tells us that he got his inspiration when he was looking for a gift for a family member. He mentions that he stumbled across this guy selling copies of his Grandma's chocolate chip cookie recipe for $20. He suddenly realized that he had nine copies on auction at that one time. A bit of quick maths later and Jeff realized that it came out to $180 for one single auction, if he sold them all. If this same guy ran this very same auction every single day he stood to make something like just over $65,000 per year. Not bad money for sending out a simple email with a recipe attached. 

After doing some further research he realized that it wouldn't be as easy as that, because eBay only lets you sell downloadable products in their "classifieds" section. This incurs higher fees and more importantly doesn't count towards your power seller status.

This is where Auction Profit Machines comes in. Jeff and Rob have come up with a system whereby they give you all the info that you will need in order to have your info products put onto CD's and DVD's. They say that all your product costs can be met by the buyer because you can sell them for more and you can also put them up for sale in the auction marketplace where the listing fees are lower and you will in turn receive feedback.

The cost of the course is $67.00 and for this you get the Auction Profit System which is a step by step guide into how to run your business from day one. You also get 3 bonus guides and these are: How to create your own E-book quickly, How to write killer sales copies and finally a series of step by step video tutorials. 

Auction Profit Machines makes a refreshing change from all the other programs out there and indeed sounds quite promising. The reviews are refreshingly good and you have the added bonus of a 60 day money back policy, where if you buy the course and you aren't happy, you get to keep it and also get every penny of your money refunded. However like any investment it will pay you to do you research before parting with any cash.

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Using Facebook For Product Launches - The Element of Disguise

Social media sites like Facebook are a great way to promote a product, but only if you do it correctly. It's too easy to over step your bounds and risk losing friends and being labeled as a spammer. You probably know that most people don't want to buy things from a social networking site: they are there to have fun, learn new things and find like-minded friends to interact with. When most people try and advertise a product, they are met with resistance. It's usually because of these three things:

* It's in your face * It's unsolicited * It has nothing to do with any topic being discussed

That doesn't mean however, that your friends don't recommend great products and services to their friends. That happens all the time. Sometimes you don't know it's even happening. That's the sign of an expert marketer. Discussions and resource sharing are two of the biggest assets of a social network; how much can I learn from others and can I put in my two-cents worth? What most marketers don't realize is that they can disguise the launch of a major product using these two elements of social media without making anyone angry. And angry is not a good thing for promotions or anything else for that matter.

You can be the 'go-to' guy for information and resources. You can be the expert that people trust. You can promote a product or service on Facebook successfully because of it. And you don't want to just jump in there the minute your product comes out. A successful launch is planned out carefully, sometimes weeks ahead of time. Using other social sites such as Twitter and YouTube, all these elements can work in tandem with each other to create the highest visibility and buzz possible. These techniques will work for your affiliates as well, as long as you provide the videos, banners, graphics and training for them.

Social networking sites provide the elements that can make excitement possible: leaving comments, video uploading capability, news feeds, tagging and discussion forums. Even though the social media etiquette is that you shouldn't blatantly advertise products, these sites are tailor-made for making it as easy as possible to do so. Facebook is where all your friends are already at. There are millions of people logging-in everyday that can be turned into potential customers if you know the subtle ways of marketing to this largely untapped resource.

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