The Transcript

How to Launch Your Product the Right Way

Tony Clark: The Mainframe is brought to you by Authority Rainmaker, a carefully designed live educational experience that presents a complete and effective online marketing strategy to help you immediately accelerate your business. Don t miss the opportunity to see Dan Pink, Sally Hogshead, punk legend Henry Rollins, and many other incredible speakers live not to mention the secret sauce of it: building real world relationships with other attendees. Get all the details right now at rainmaker.fm/event. And we look forward to seeing you in Denver, Colorado this May. That s rainmaker.fm/event.

Welcome everybody, this is The Mainframe. I m Tony Clark, the COO of Copyblogger Media and I m here today with my co-host Chris Garrett, the CDO of Copyblogger Media.

And today we are talking about launching your product the right way. How are you doing Chris?

Chris Garrett: I m doing great. I ve been experimenting with my coffee and I m still getting it wrong. But I m ready to go.

Tony Clark: Yeah, it s an art and a science altogether, getting it right.

Chris Garrett: Yeah, you need to come over here and show me how to do it properly.

Tony Clark: I know, I know. I have shown you all the videos. The lessons are how to fish Chris. You are going to have to fish yourself.

Chris Garrett: Oh well, that just means I m going to drown, I think.

What a Good Launch Entails

Tony Clark: In the last episode we talked about the pre-launch, getting ready for the launch, which was really warming up the list, getting everybody excited, building the hype. So now on this episode, we are going to talk about the launch.

What does a launch entail?

Chris Garrett: There are two aspects to a launch. There is the technical side, and then there is the strategy or tactical side.

The technical side involves setting up everything that you need so people can buy from you. And then there is the marketing and strategy side, where you need to set up your launch so that it appeals to people, they know what to do and so that it makes sense to them.

Tony Clark: Right. So you want to keep it simple but really those two aspects have to work hand in hand for it to really be an effective launch.

Chris Garrett: Yeah, we look at launches from people that have been doing this for 20 years and we think we have to have all this complexity, we have to have all these moving parts and all these systems. And people overload with logistics and they stress out. It can be really scary anyway and then adding all that complexity just makes it even worse.

Instead of stressing out, really what you need to do is just focus on the most important aspects, the bits that are actually going to make it work for you, and then it s going to work well and you can improve over time. It doesn t have to be everything all at once, in the first launch.

Tony Clark: Right. And focusing on doing it the right way, an ethical, non-sleazy way. Not being one of those scummy launch people, but launching a quality product to your audience and the steps to do that effectively.

Chris Garrett: Yeah, one of the things that we ve seen a lot with these sleazy high-pressure launches, is they tend to have high refund rates anyway. So it s not like this system is going to make you less money, it s probably going to long-term make you more money and the reputation that you build through doing ethical and simple launches, is going to grow that business over time. In this podcast we ve stated all along that you need that goodwill, you need that engagement. You don t want to just get some short-term cash in the bank and then find out you have burnt out your list, you have burnt out your reputation and nobody wants to work with you anymore.

Tony Clark: Yeah, it s really hard to recover from that, but it s very easy to build off an authoritative approach where you are seen as an expert who s really providing value. And you can continue to grow that and build that over time, using it to build an asset that allows you to continue to grow over time and continue to cash in off that asset as it grows and as you continue to gain momentum.

Chris Garrett: Yeah, it s all about long-term thinking and about what s best for your audience, while growing your business. All of these bad launches that we see, I think are due to short-term thinking. It s about trying to get cash. Trying to focus on the money, instead of thinking What s the best customer experience and what s going to build awareness in a positive way? Rather than Who s this sleazy guy? Who s this con artist? What s he doing this time.

And actually the US government has cracked down on a lot of the things that they used to use, but it s still out there and people still get caught. So I d rather have a positive reputation, even if it means selling less this time, because you know over time it s going to grow.

Tony Clark: Yeah, I always say that hustling is sexy when you are young, but nobody likes an old hustler. So eventually you are going to have to build something that can sustain itself, aside from constantly hustling.

Chris Garrett: Yeah, I ve always done pretty well for myself, even though I ve lacked confidence, and I don t feel like I have hustled a day in my life. You don t have to hustle.

The Technical Components of a Minimum Viable Launch

Tony Clark: All right. So let s start with what I guess is the easiest thing because you can start to assemble these pieces. So let s start with the technical side of things. The actual pieces you need to do a launch.

Chris Garrett: It probably sounds counterintuitive because you are listening to a couple of nerds, but actually you don t need a lot of technology. So, there are a lot of people out there selling products and systems that are all about building these really complicated launch funnels, and they can be useful. It can be a good thing to have that technology, but what we are going to talk about today is the Minimum Viable Launch. And the technical pieces you need for that is a sales page, to tell people what your offer is, and they need some way of checking out, or registering, so essentially an order form, right? You need some sort of payment mechanism.

You can start with PayPal and that works in many, many countries. It s easy to set up, you don t need any forms to fill out and meetings with your bank manager.

Then you need some sort of a thank you page, and either the thank you page is your download page, or you need some sort of download or information page.

So if we walk through that, think in terms of the customer experience. You are going to send people to the offer. You are going to say, Okay, it s ready to buy. Where do you send them? You have to send them to a page that explains what you are giving people, and we will go into detail what that has to contain. But for now, it s just a page, a web page and then some way of taking their money. Accepting their cash. And then after you have accepted the cash, you have to deliver the product. It s very simple.

So in terms of what we do, we might use WordPress pages, and Rafal will do a really nice design job, or we ll use Rainmaker, which has got landing pages built in. And it s also got the checkout process all built in.

Just think in terms of the experience that you would like to see as a customer. You d like to have it explained, put your money in and then get what you have purchased. You don t need lots of complicated technology at this stage. For your first launch just focus on pleasing the customer.

Tony Clark: Right, and we ll go into some more of the technical stuff in later episodes, but that s really for more advanced things that you have already done.

I think a lot of people get hung up here and they spend a lot of time, you know, it s like when you are getting started building content, even with a blog. Too many people get caught up in adding plug-ins and tweaking things, and making changes to themes and colors, and they are not actually developing content.

We are talking about the same thing here. You don t want to get caught up in spending all your time trying to learn the technology or do all this. You want something that will allow you to focus on the launch content itself, so you actually get to the launch, versus spending days and weeks trying to figure out how to get everything set up and what plug-ins are better and what s this, that and the other and it s actually delaying the launch.

Chris Garrett: That s all optimizations that you can do later, when you are already making money. Let s get you to the first few dollars first, and then you can focus on all that optimization later.

Tony Clark: Yeah. I know personally, people who have made hundred s of thousands of dollars from launches that were really a static blog page with a PayPal button, and nothing more than that. And then the download was actually delivered via PayPal.

If you really have a quality product, and you have a good offer, the technology becomes less important and one of the things that we have focused on on the Rainmaker Platform is kind of letting that technology get out of the way. Because you don t want to spend so much time assembling things that you are not actually getting to the launch.

So even though we are talking about the technical pieces, really we are talking about, like you said earlier, the minimum technical pieces you need to get your launch going. And then later on we ll talk about more advanced things, once you are actually starting to generate income from your product.

Chris Garrett: Yeah, my coaching program was launched with my Gmail account, a web page, PayPal and a Dropbox. And that was it. I didn t even have a membership site for that, at that point in time, and it paid my mortgage. So you know, we do love geeking out about this stuff but you don t have to. You definitely don t have to start that way.

How to Construct a Winning Sales Letter

Tony Clark: But one thing you definitely need, one of the most important things is a sales page. So let s talk about that a little bit. The sales page and what it needs to contain.

Chris Garrett: Copyblogger was actually founded on the idea of copywriting, so obviously it s important, and it s been developed over decades, so if you want to really geek out about this aspect, there is a lot of content out there. But really it comes down to three questions that the customer is going to need answering.

1. Here s what we have.
2. Here s what it will do for you.
3. Here s what to do next.

And that formula works even if it s an opt-in page, because that s still a sales page. An opt-in page, a subscription page, you are selling them, even though you are not asking for money, you are selling them on the concept of the idea of opting in. And actually there is friction in opting in, in that you don t want to have your inbox overflowing.

So anytime you are trying to sell something, it s a good idea to think about how you are going to get across what you have, what it will do for them, and what to do next.

I ll tell you why these pieces are really important. Here s what we have is important because you have to tell people what you are offering, but you have to get their attention very quickly. Something like 15 seconds.

The second part, What it will do for you is people don t really care that your ebook is 300 pages. What they want to know is the outcome or transformation. You know, the difference it s going to make, how things are going to be better once they have consumed what you are selling them.

And the piece that everybody misses out when they first start getting going is, what to do next.

You have to explain exactly what the process is, what they should do next, the button to press, because if you don t tell people exactly what to do we are busy, distracted, maybe not very bright, we need to be told what to do.

Tony Clark: So what you end up doing is helping people walk through the offer. It s similar to what you would do face-to-face, in person, when you are making a sale. And good copy is a narrative that walks people through every step, so there is no confusion about what it is you are trying to give them, what it is you are trying to provide to them and what they need to do to get that.

Chris Garrett: It s possible they might not know very much about who you are, so part of what your offering is why you are the person to offer that.

You might have to explain who you are, your experience, your capabilities but you need to do it in a way that makes sense to them. It s not about you. None of this is about you at all. It s about them. It s about where they are now, where they want to be and how your solution is the right one for them. And in part of that, if you have to explain yourself, that s fine, but do it in the context of what s valuable for them to know to make the decision.

Tony Clark: Right. You really have to get them to feel that they are the buyer. You are trying to project this image of this is for you. It helps weed out people and get that serious buyers only mentality.

I used to joke about Gill, the terrible salesman on The Simpsons. He talked about how he couldn t get people to really believe what he had to offer was something of value. And that s really what you are trying to do is, you are just trying to get that value message across and walk them through that entire narrative so they can feel like, This is for me. This is what this person is offering and this is what result I can get from this, so tell me what I need to do. So by the time they have completed the copy of the sales page, they are clamoring for, What do I do next to get this? To get this in my hands. To get this result that you are offering.

Chris Garrett: Yeah, Gill is a perfect example, if you can visualise Gill. First of all, he s going in expecting a no , and then, secondly he s got that stink of desperation. He s the epitome of a bad offer because he s not exuding trust and authority. So take this from somebody who lacks self esteem, you can t go in projecting anything less than full confidence.

Tony Clark: Right.

Chris Garrett: And you know, when you develop your offer, think in terms of, I know this is going to work for them. I know this is going to help certain people. And the people it won t help, you need to exclude from your offer, through your copy. You really need to filter those people out. You need to focus on the people it will most help, who you can most reach.

If you do that, if you can go in with confidence, then you ve got a good chance. And don t be Gill. Don t be asking for the money. You are trying to help them solve a problem or achieve their goals.

Tony Clark: Right. More Zapp Brannigan, less Gill. That s really what we are after.

Chris Garrett: Exactly. Or Dr Nick. He s got confidence.

Tony Clark: Yeah, exactly.

Compelling Elements of a Crushing Offer

Tony Clark: So the real crux of the entire sales page is the offer. So let s go into more detail about the offer itself, and those things that you want to include in the offer.

Chris Garrett: We already talked about the outcome, the transformation, the solution, it s all about the end benefit. And we talk about benefits a lot. You know, the sizzle versus the steak. And when you drill down into it, really what the benefits are comes down to ego, health, saving money, making money, productivity. But it s the transformation in your life that you actually want. Because if you make money, then it s power or freedom. So what do people really want? You have to drill down into the actual motivations behind that. You have to get to the why?

So when you are thinking about the outcome, and projecting that, you have to think, what do they really want? And how can I explain that to them? That is paired with the actual deliverables. So you can say, Through these videos and ebooks, through this coaching, you are going to get this transformation. And you have to say, This is the outcome you are going to get through my system, through my product, through my service, and here s the advantage of doing it that way. Otherwise you end up with a bullet list of You get some ebooks, you get some videos and it s 40 hours long. Great. Who needs that?

Tony Clark: Yeah, right. So it s really what you get. The deliverables is more about the outcome and about the benefits of the actual deliverable, versus the physical or digital thing that you are getting.

Chris...