Preparing for a product launch can be stressful… There’s just so many things you can do. You know that you should get some affiliates on board, create an email list, build a following, prepare some launch day promotions, and so on. However, without a concise plan your work can become really hard.
What follows is a list of tasks and actions you should take prior to your big launch day. This isn’t a complete success recipe, but it will surely help you not to overlook any important elements.
Building a following
This is something you should begin doing a while before you even start planning your launch. Having an online presence is only valuable if you have an audience paying attention to what you’re doing.
Here are some areas worth focusing on:
- Building an email list.
- Twitter following.
- Facebook fanbase.
- Driving traffic to your blog — through SEO, guest posts, or any other way.
So how to do it, right? This is a topic big enough to create a whole separate site around it, so trying to explain it here isn’t really possible. Instead, let me just give you the most fundamental piece of advice I can.
Focus on providing value and offering relevant information, rather than promoting everything there is to promote in your niche. When people realize that you’re there to help them, they will naturally start following you.
Preparing an email and content sequence
What follows is a set of activities you should do when communicating with your audience before, during, and right after the launch. This goes for all: email messages, posts on your blog, tweets, etc.
Clarification. I’m not touching upon some of the obvious things here, like creating a sales page and writing copy, for example.
1. Let everyone know that something is coming
Simply mention the core message of your product and do it in an attractive way. Remember to connect this to the usual topics you talk about on your blog and in your email newsletter.
2. Offer part of it free
Simply take a part of your product and publish it for free on your blog and send it as a newsletter message as well.
3. Share some early reviews
Contact some of your partners or readers and ask them to write a short review of what you’ve shared as the free sample. Once you get the reviews back share them with your audience to arouse even more interest.
4. Announce the product
Make it clear that the project you’re working on will be a released as a whole product. Tell what the product is about, but don’t make the launch date public yet.
5. Build interest by sharing more
Pick another part of your product and share it for free again. This time pick a part that gives some immediate value or results. This should make your audience ultra-interested. Also, this is the point where you can share the launch date.
6. Make the shopping cart ready for the launch
This is a really important thing, yet it’s very often overlooked. You really don’t want to have your shopping cart crashing on you in the middle of the launch.
Make sure to sign up for a respected shopping cart solution, instead of just running it on your shared hosting server.
7. LAUNCH
Get your promotions in place and launch everything. Tell your blog readers to check out your product, your email subscribers, your Twitter followers, and so on. However, keep in mind that each of these places deserve a targeted message, not the same generic stuff.
8. Reminders
It’s always a good idea to remind your audience that a launch is going on. Do this one day after the launch day. You can share some of your results and even give additional bonuses for taking action.
9. Plan a re-launch
This is a never-ending game. When one launch is done it’s back to the drawing board for you. Start planning ahead and create some outlines for new products or for upgrades of the existing product — essentially, anything your customers can benefit from.
What do you think about this whole process? Can you think of any improvements that would make your launch even easier to handle?
Karol K. (@carlosinho) is a writer, a blogger, and an online business designer from Poland. Check out his advice on starting an online business at newInternetOrder.com.