Approximate read time: 9 minutes
I’ve directly helped 400+ startups (of those which have raised capital, their current combined company valuations are $5.5M) get their products, services or solutions out to market through various award winning training programs.
Not only that, over the last four years I have successfully released over a dozen new products, services or solutions for myself and on behalf of others; including franchises of international brands (which have become dominant players in their industry).
Many of these have been done with $0 marketing spend, no prospect or customer list AND in some cases, no product, service or solution at the time of launch.
I can see how this sounds preposterous.
But it can be done with the right process…
This guide is here to help you master the marketing launch sales process.
Here are the elements:
- STEP 1: Groundwork;
- STEP 2: Preparation;
- STEP 3: Partnerships;
- STEP 4: Excitement;
- STEP 5: Launch;
- STEP 6: Product, Service or Solution Creation; and
- STEP 7: Product, Service or Solution Delivery.
Let’s begin with…
1) Groundwork
In Step 1 we come across our decision tree…
Do you have a contact list?
Specifically, do you have a list of contact details gained by permission of prospects or customers?
Now, in the odd chance that you do have a prospect and customer list, you can skip this step and move on to Step 2.
It’s most likely that you don’t as it’s a new marketing launch.
If you do not have a prospect and customer list, then it’s time to get your hands dirty!
Don’t skip this step.
Let me repeat.
DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.
Your goal here is to create a seed list of prospects and customers by collating email addresses from where you can:
- Your email address book; and
- Your contacts on LinkedIn, Facebook and other social network where you have a presence.
LinkedIn is handy in that it allows you to export your contacts including emails.
And if you setup a new Yahoo! Mail account you can download all your Facebook friends’ email addresses.
You should easily be able to get 200+ contacts who may be interested in your new product, service or solution.
From here, you need to plan some free opt-in content – a process map works really well in my experience.
See what is happening here?!
More free opt-in content is generally better than less, and when you start saying to yourself “I feel like I am giving away too much” then you are on the right track to creating suitable free content.
Then, go out and create this free opt-in content!
Don’t skimp. Make it good.
After it is created, deliver the free opt-in content to the list you created asking them to opt-in to receive it, thus qualifying and re-segmenting that list to people who are stuck and interested in becoming un-stuck.
Sending content to ALL your contacts is spam.
Don’t SPAM people.
Spam is not good, okay?
You need people to request it. AKA opt-in, raise-their-hand, qualify themselves, etc., etc., ad nausea.
This of course, is a big topic that will take too much ink to write.
Alright, onward to Step 2…
2) Preparation
Step 2 is about planning…
In this step, you will ask your re-segmented contact list about what niche they are stuck in.
At the same time, you want to give them a hint that you are creating a product, service or solution that will help them get un-stuck.
This does a couple things:
- It allows you to plan or refine and create your product, service or solution offer – in other words it gives you valuable insight into what product, service or solution people ACTUALLY want; and
- It gives you an opportunity to ask for testimonials and case studies for the launch.
Based on that feedback, plan and create multiple free Excitement contents that you will deliver in the Excitement Step – case studies are particularly useful here.
You also need to plan and create purchase bonuses that can also help your prospects get un-stuck to help increase sales conversion when you launch.
The next step is to plan and create your Excitement and Launch sales communication sequence and related promotion swipe copy.
As we are still in a preparation step, you should be setting up you payment processor and cart ready for launch.
A smart thing to do here is to plan, create and sell an easy-to-create, low priced product, service or solution to further re-segment your contacts into customers as well as prospects.
This helps you dry test real sales demand for the core product, service or solution before launch.
Most of this process takes precise wording and sequencing.
Let’s now look at Step 3…
3) Partnerships
In Step 3, we come across our second decision tree.
Do you want to accelerate your sales?
Most people say “yes.”
It’s human nature.
But, saying “yes” also creates a ton more work for you…and it’s complicated, fiddly work.
If you are willing to do that, then start creating partnerships.
If you want to keep things really simple (and if this is your first launch) then I suggest you resist the temptation, say “no” and skip this and move onto Step 4 … you have far too much other important things to concentrate on in your launch.
So back to accelerating your sales…
The first step is to identify potential partners.
In simple terms you want to be approaching partners with a contact list who are:
- Familiar with you; and
- Who you have built good will with.
Without this, recruiting partners is going to be hard.
And you should drop everything right now and start establishing these two things.
Next, it’s time to plan and create incentives for these partners. This is a huge topic, so for now determine what they may be interested in.
Cash is king, but so are money-can’t-buy things and experiences.
You also want to plan and create your Partner Hub – the place where you partners can get all the vital information and updates about your launch.
With this done, it’s time to contact your partners with your offer, incentives and EPC (Earnings Per Click).
EPC is important and if you have never done a launch, you won’t know you EPC and partners are less likely to help you accelerate sales without it.
So add EPC to the two above.
Particulars and word-for-word scripts of course are outside the scope of this guide.
Like I said before, if this is your first launch then I suggest you resist the temptation and say “no” and move onto Step 4, skipping this step.
Once partners start to agree, it’s time to sign them up with contracts and start distributing vital partner information, sales communication sequence and promotion swipe copy.
Done? So, what’s next?
Excitement…
4) Excitement
Step 4 is getting prospects eager for your product, service or solution…
Basically you and your partners (if you are using them) send to your contact list a series of Excitement content and ask for feedback on it.
If partners are sending people this content, you want to leverage this activity to build you contact list by capturing their email addresses in the process.
There are two different launch pipelines I use depending on how you are using your partners to do this and to explain them in-depth would be too much for this guide.
On the later days of sending content, you will announce your product, service or solution, the product, service or solution details and date of sale.
Every communication point will allow you to again test interest in the product, service or solution before it goes on sale, including how many people click on your offer even before it is open for sale.
For the really keen, you want to give your prospects the opportunity to join an Early Access List so they get can purchase in advance of everyone else.
Throughout this time you want to reiterate the free content based on feedback and check-in with and update partners.
This process primes the pump for the Launch Step…
5) Launch
This is the exciting part of the process!
The part where you make sales.
But first let me give you an example…
I was talking to someone who had “launched” a product several weeks earlier.
But the thing was, no one had purchased.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s a good product, but an advertisement alone just won’t do it!
Trust me when I say this: sending an “ad” for an offer is only a small part of the process and this is where it comes in, not at the beginning.
Without going into all the specifics, each day of your launch you should be communicating with your prospects and customers: price, updates, bonuses, case studies, refunds, warnings, frequently asked questions and so on.
Again, throughout this time you want to reiterate the communication based on feedback and check-in with and update partners.
At the end of your launch you want to calculate your EPC (remember that?) to use for your next launch and for contacting partners you can give them the EPC to convince them to promote for you.
EPC is an important metric because once a partner’s database subscriber makes a click, the partner loses all their influence.
That click is now in your sales pipeline and you have control over the sales message, not the partner.
Therefore, EPC gives partners predictability over how much they could earn by partnering with you without influence on the sales cycle.
Forward…
6) Product, Service Or Solution Creation
Step 6 starts with the final decision tree…
It is about your product, service or solution.
Do you have a product, service or solution or bonuses?
You most likely do and if that is the case, then plan and create your advertised and unadvertised purchase bonuses.
But if you don’t have a product, service or solution or a product, service or solution idea, it’s time to create your product, service or solution and your advertised and unadvertised purchase bonuses.
Product creation is a massive topic and hard to cover here because there are so many types:
- Physical;
- Digital;
- Products;
- Services;
- Solutions and
- So on…
Yep, it’s a big topic and I’ll assume you as the entrepreneur know how to solve your prospects problems…
7) Product, Service Or Solution Delivery
Finally, we distribute product, service or solution and purchase bonuses…
And get you prospects un-stuck from the problem they were facing when you started interacting with them.
From here you repeat the process back at the first decision tree.
If you were using partners and were capturing their contact detail lists, you will have already started to build your contact list.
If you were not were using partners, you should now be building your contact list using even more lead generation tools.
Take Action
You made it…
You now have a solid plan for selling your product, service or solution or product, service or solution idea.
That’s the full Marketing & Sales Launch Process and will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.
You can get the printed illustrated Process Map of this and 20 others for free, here
And if you’re serious about marketing and selling more, the logical next step is to contact me to help you do it yourself, have me do it with you, or have it all done for you.
This maybe the momentum you need to get great marketing and sales results.
Now let’s learn about The Promotional Partner Launch Process.
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