GRASPED Ensure Product Launch Success with These Tips

Introduction

Launching a product is exciting, and the feeling of excitement never really goes away, even when you’ve launched dozens of products. That feeling of anticipation and anxiousness… there’s nothing quite like it.

Of course, it’s also incredibly disappointing when you work hard on a launch, and it fizzles out quickly. You’ve spent unbelievable amounts of time and money preparing your product for launch, setting up JVs, finding affiliates, and more… and then… nothing. Or maybe just a tiny trickle of sales comes in for a while before it completely dies.

So, what happens that causes some products to explode onto the market, and others to drift away into oblivion?

It could be one (or many) factors, such as the product itself, the sales copy, the launch process, the price, the marketing… there are just so many possibilities.

In this guide, we are going to look at some of the best ways to make sure your next product launch has the best possible chance of success, and makes the most money possible.

You’ll learn about how to find JV partners and affiliates, how to generate pre-launch buzz, setting up an effective sales funnel, the most effective ways to use OTOs, and much more.

So, let’s begin!

Getting Started – Pre-Launch

A successful product launch may be comprised of many different elements, but there are a few things that all of them have in common.

1. A great sales page with killer copy that captures attention.
2. An automated payment process.
3. A pre-launch process that includes a mailing list and partners.
4. And, of course, a great product!

These are just a few of the elements that work together like the parts of a well-oiled machine to create a wildly successful product launch. Each element must work together in perfect synchrony for a product to have the best possible chance at success.

Let’s look at the different major elements that make up a successful product launch.

The Product

The first step is to create a killer product that people will really get excited about. It can’t be some generic PLR offer you slap up with a few cosmetic changes. You can use PLR as a base for your offer, but you must offer a unique spin on it or you won’t find many people willing to promote it.

See, the average marketer can buy a PLR package themselves and slap it up in no time and keep all the money for themselves, so why would they promote yours as an affiliate?

If you want a truly successful launch, you need to concentrate on making a product that offers a ton of value and is unlike anything else currently on the market. Not only are there thousands of PLR products affiliates can promote, but there are thousands of semi-unique products as well. If you want to get affiliates to promote you, you need something more.

Instead of introducing a simple eBook, add additional elements such as supplemental reports and guides, audio, video, software, or other elements that help support your product.

Concentrate first on creating a product that offers massive value and a large degree of uniqueness, and you’ll have a much better chance at success.

The Sales Page

A great sales page isn’t about flashy graphics. In fact, those over-the-top graphics can sometimes impact sales in a negative way. It’s always a good idea to create multiple versions of your sales page so that you can test them to see which one yields the best results. You can either test manually or use A/B split-testing with a software package to make things easier and automate the process.

Believe it or not, the tiniest differences on a sales page can make a huge difference in conversions. And the tiniest change in conversions can make a huge difference in income.

Look at it this way:

Let’s say you make $20 per sale, on average. If you have a conversion rate of 2%, every 1,000 visitors would make you $400. But if you have a conversion rate of 3%, you’d make $600. That’s 50% more income from an increase of just one additional percent in conversion rate!

Because of this, you obviously want to have the highest conversion rate possible, and the only way to make sure you’re getting the best conversions possible is to test variations in the sales page.

So… what exactly should you test?

You’d be surprised which elements can have a huge impact on conversions. Simply changing the color or size of the headline, the call to action, and of course, the copy itself can all have a big impact on your ability to convert visitors into customers.

Therefore, it’s important to test and track changes, and that’s not easy to do without a split-testing software package. To do this kind of testing manually would require a very large amount of traffic and a lot of careful attention to make sure you change the page when necessary.

For example, you may want to send 1,000 unique visitors to each unique version of a page and see how many sales you get during that time. You will need to watch your traffic statistics carefully so you can change the page as close to 1,000 visitors as possible to get the most accurate results.

If you’re testing 10 variations, you’ll need at least 10,000 unique visitors, and you’ll need to change the page manually each time, which is a whole lot of time spent watching your stats closely.

Automation

Processing sales and handling affiliate referrals manually is… well, it’s pretty much impossible. There’s no way you can easily track all that information on your own. Even if you hired a team, you’d find it incredibly difficult to keep up. You’d end up with angry customers, angry affiliates, and an irreparably damaged reputation.

You probably already know how to use a system like JV Zoo (http://www.JVZoo.com) to handle affiliate commissions. If not, take time to learn. Your wallet will thank you! You can find all the information you need on the JV Zoo website.

But beyond that, you need a system to deliver content securely and on an automated basis, so you don’t have to spend all that time manually delivering products or sending buyers to an unsecure page that will let anyone and everyone download your product without paying.

Pre-Launch Buzz

Your pre-launch system is every bit as important as launch day, if not more so. Building anticipation and generating buzz before your big day is one of the best ways to ensure a successful launch.

There are many ways to build buzz around your upcoming launch, including:

• Webinars
• Lead magnets
• Special offers
• Partner emails
• Promotional videos

Always make sure you are planning a full pre-launch promotional strategy and including your partners in it. Big players in the industry aren’t likely to promote your product if you don’t have a pre-launch strategy that they are included in.

You can include key players, affiliates and joint venture partners just by hosting webinars that feature them, providing them with lead magnets to distribute to their list ahead of time, doing video or audio interviews with them, etc.

This helps include your partners from the start, which will ensure that your affiliate army is ready to promote your product when it goes live, while keeping everyone focused on your launch day.

Creating An Irresistible Funnel

Once you have a solid product, along with the sales funnel and pre-launch system to go with it, it’s time to focus on creating a funnel.

Your funnel is the entire sales process that your potential customers go through from the moment they land on one of your pages until they arrive at the very last of your offers.

You want your funnel to be beneficial to you, to your affiliates and JV partners, and, most importantly, to your customers. So, it’s critical to get this formula right.

Let’s look at a typical funnel:

• The lead lands on your opt-in page via a webinar, JV email, paid traffic, search engine, or other method.
• The lead offers their email to receive your lead magnet, such as a free report or video.
• Lead receives email from you or an affiliate/JV partner at launch and makes a purchase of the initial product at a price point of around $27-$97.
• Lead is presented with an upsell offer that gives them the opportunity to get an upgraded offer at a higher price point than the initial product, usually between $97-$297.
• If the lead does purchase that upsell, they are often presented with a third and final offer that is priced even higher than the second offer.
• If the lead does NOT purchase the upsell offer, they are often given the chance to buy that offer at a discount. Sometimes, if they decline that offer, they are given an even lower price before being allowed to exit the funnel.

Many product creators do not give affiliates and JV partners a slice of the pie on those upsells, but that practice will drive some potential partners away. Thus, it’s better to give them a commission at every step of the process to attract the most affiliates.

You can find out more about setting up a sales funnel with JV Zoo here:

https://jvzoo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/221625388-Setting-up-a-Sales-Funnel

So, what exactly should you offer as an upsell?

That depends on your product. It should always be something that goes along with your main product, but it should never be something that should be included in that main product.

For example, leaving key elements out of the main product to try to upsell the additional content will end up pissing off your buyers, and they won’t be likely to buy anything else from you in the future.

Instead, it should be something that would make the system in your main product easier, or something that would support the main product without taking away from it.

Let’s say you create a product that teaches people how to use social media to market their offline businesses, and you price it at $67. You could create a special software process that helps automate the process and save them time. This could be the first upsell, and you could price it at $197.

The second upsell could then be a service to do all their social media marketing for them using your expert staff. For this, you might charge something like $497 per month, or offer discounts such as $1,997 for six months of service.

This is just an example, but it helps illustrate the type of upsells and pricing tiers you might offer.

Don’t forget to price your upsells in a way that you will still make a good profit after paying your partners their commission.

Finding Key Players

When it comes to online business, your most powerful asset will be in the relationships you build with people in your niche that can push your product out to the market.

Even if you are new to online business, have a virtually unknown name, or it’s your very first product, you can still develop an effective launch strategy just by connecting with key players in your industry.

Think about it. Not only is your product competing with other products in the marketplace, but you’re also vying for the attention of JV partners and affiliates, while other competitors are just as interested in securing these same partnerships.

So, why would an affiliate choose to promote your product over someone else’s that they know, and have already established a relationship with?

Offering higher commissions is one easy way to lure in more affiliates.

Ideally, you want to pay at least 50% and 60% to affiliates, plus even more to specific JV partners that you really want to attract. Those JV partners are using their lists, their resources, and their time to promote you, and often take things a step further than standard affiliates, such as participating in webinars and lending their expertise to your launch.

If you want to attract the key players in your market, you’ve got to offer outstanding incentives.

Even if you offer a higher commission or multiple payment levels to make your offer even more appealing to affiliates, odds are that there are other products in your market offering the same commission

structure. Therefore, you should also do other things to rise above your competition rather than solely focusing on your commission structure.

You can also offer contests to affiliates and partners, but don’t forget to include incentives for smaller affiliates. This is one area that is seriously overlooked by a lot of marketers. They focus so much on getting the big players to promote them by offering big prizes to the people who send the most traffic that they forget the smaller affiliates who can sometimes send as much traffic as the big boys when they’re all lumped together.

To make those smaller affiliates happy, you could also offer smaller prizes to random affiliates who send at least one sale, or five sales, or whatever number you want to set. Or you could set various thresholds, such as a contest tier for those who send 1-25 sales, another for those who send 26-100 sales, and a final tier for those who send 101+. This will include all affiliates who make at least one sale and will give everyone an incentive to send more sales.

So, where do you begin to establish relationships and solidify partnerships in your market?

Getting on Their Radar

The best way to get on the radar of the super affiliates you want to promote you is to become known for producing some of the highest quality content in your industry. Everyone wants to promote the best content because they want their list members to stay happy.

But there are other ways to attract their attention, as well. We’ve already talked about offering great commissions and contests, but what are some other ways to get them to notice you?

The biggest way to get their attention is to first promote their products. This may be difficult if you’re just getting started and don’t have a list yet, but it’s a great way to get them to notice you.

If you can somehow land on the top list of affiliates for one of their launches, they will have to contact you to offer you the prize you win, which is a great way to start a conversation with them.

This will also let them know that you know what you’re doing and you’re a big player in the industry yourself.

Of course, if you don’t have a big list yet, you’ll have to get your foot in the door in other ways.

Promotional Materials

I cannot emphasize how important it is to provide a wealth of promotional materials for your JV partners and affiliates. You may think that most people create their own, but nearly every affiliate out there appreciates having some material available to use as a basis for their own.

Let’s take a look at some of the types of promotional material you should provide:

1. Banners – Always provide at least 5-10 banners in the most common sizes for bloggers and website owners. You may have heard that banners don’t work anymore, but good banners can and do work to bring in traffic, and many affiliates look for quality banners when choosing a product to promote.
2. Emails – Providing several emails affiliates can use is very useful. Many will use those emails as they are, while others will simply use them as a basis to craft their own unique mailers. Either way, they are one of the most important types of promotional material you can provide.
3. Lead Magnets – A good lead magnet, along with a squeeze page that an affiliate can use to build their list, is always a good idea. Your lead magnet can serve to promote the product, and if you provide it in .doc format, affiliates can insert their link into the report to pick up those commissions. They may also choose to offer it to their existing email subscribers without the opt-in. Either way, it can promote your product.
4. Articles – Offering PLR content is another great way to get affiliates to promote you. These articles could be used as content for their list, their blog, their website, etc. Just be sure to tell them the articles can only be used to promote your product.

You could also take things a step further and offer additional materials like audio, video, pop-up ads, splash screens, etc. Most affiliates won’t use them, but those that do will appreciate having the extra materials.

Conclusion

I want you to think outside the box. Literally. Get creative with your launch strategy, and offer something new that your affiliates and customers haven’t seen before.

You can do this in many ways, such as using interesting graphics for your products, creating your own theme song, using interactive promotional materials, offering different formats for your content, etc. There are so many ways to stand out from the crowd.

The bottom line is this:

Create an amazing product, be unique, and take care of your affiliates. These are the secrets to killer launches!

I wish you the best of luck on your next launch, and I hope it’s an amazing success!