That’s a wrap! Well…not so fast. This post is the final one in my 4-part #InfoProductBiz series, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was probably my favorite yet! *sheds a tear* In this four week series, I’ve taken you through the most important steps for getting your first info product (such as an e-course or e-book) created and launched. Here’s a recap of what we’ve gone over so far:
- How to Create and Prepare for Your First Info Product
- How to Prime and Grow Your Audience by Building Community and Trust
- How to Create a Sales Page and Get Your Product Up for Sale
- How to Launch and Market Your First Info Product (hey, that’s this post!)
In this post, I’m walking you through specific, actionable steps you can take to launch your product and market it. There’s a misconception in the blogging and online business world that if you create great content, the people will come. That’s not really true at all and sets creators up to fail. Rather, you need to create great content and products and then market them to your peeps. “Marketing” sounds like a dirty word to some people, but I will be explaining several effective and authentic ways to market your info product without feeling salesy or slimy. Sweet, right?
Now, if you haven’t read the first three posts in this series, then I highly suggest reading the linked posts above to make sure we’re all on the same page here. They each include some free worksheets and checklists to help you, too, so they’re well worth your time!
Done reading? Cool. Let’s get started!
7 Different ways to market your new product
Holy moly. There are TONS of different ways to market your new info product, but consider this a short list of some that I’ve found to be most effective. I recommend reading through this list and beginning to develop your launch strategy. Ask yourself:
- Which of these marketing methods sound most “me”?
- Which of these methods will produce the highest return on my investment (ROI)?
- How can I combine several of these strategies to create an entire launch strategy?
Got those questions in yo’ head? Good. Let’s explore some of your options for marketing your new product.
1. Webinars
Webinars are kind of awesome, not just for making sales, but for connecting with your audience in a very human way. As I explained in Part 2 of this series, webinars don’t have to include a sales pitch at the end. As an example, entrepreneurial whiz, Kimra Luna, built her audience quickly by doing tons of free webinars without trying to make any sales. This created a strong community around her brand and also grew her email list.
But hey, this post is about marketing, right? So, in this case, you will want to create webinars that effectively market your products. Make sure that your webinar topic naturally feeds into your info product topic and then add your pitch to the end of your high-value workshop. If you’re new to webinars, I highly recommend checking out my friend Mariah’s course, Webinar Rockstar.
2. Your email list
As we learned in Part 1 of this series, having an email list is darn near crucial to successfully launching an info product. And not just that, but it’s important to have a “warm” list. A warm list means that you have built a relationship with your subscribers and they are warmed up to you and your brand. A cold list, on the other hand, is one where people subscribe and then don’t hear from you for weeks at a time. It’s hard to feel connected to your brand when you are absent from their inbox.
Prior to launching your info product, I recommend sending weekly, highly valuable emails to your email list for 3-4 weeks. Of course, my ultimate recommendation is to send high-value emails every week, regardless of whether you’re launching something. 😉 But it’s essential to provide relevant value to your list before launching your product so that your subscribers can see how much knowledge you have to give. #likeaboss
Ultimately, your email list is where most of your sales will come from, so it should be a primary focus if you want to grow your business. If you need help growing your email list, then I’ve detailed five of my favorite strategies here.
3. Email sequences
During your launch, should you send sporadic, disconnected emails? Errr, no. Instead, I recommend creating email sequences, which you can create in advance. Email sequences are exactly what they sound like: a sequence of emails that are sent to your list automatically. The key to email sequences, in my opinion, is that you are constantly providing value to your subscribers, especially on topics that are relevant to your product.
The point is that you don’t want to craft spur of the moment emails that essentially say, “here’s my new product…buy it!” Instead, you want your emails to flow together and sound more to the tune of, “here are three tips about XYZ…with a value-driven pitch about how my product can help you take action on those tips more effectively.” Then, 2-3 days later, you can send another email that provides sincere value and naturally weaves your product into it again. Of course, if you’re doing a “standard launch” (which I’ll explain below), then you’ll want to include some emails that are strictly about the launch in order to drum up excitement and sales.
4. Social media
Social media is a fantastic resource, so long as you’ve spent time cultivating a community on social media before ever releasing your product. If you only pop in to Twitter to promote your new release, then you won’t get the same response as if you had been a community-builder prior to any sort of launch. I created this post in the #InfoProductBiz series specifically to talk about why it’s important to build a devoted community before trying to launch a product. It’s that essential! Once you’ve started cultivating a community on social media, here are a few things you can do during the launch of your product:
- Host a Twitter chat: You don’t need to host a weekly chat…just host one during your launch and make it relevant to your product topic. Also, include a handful of pitches about your product within the chat, or at least a link to your product.
- Share testimonials or behind-the-scenes shots on Instagram: If you had beta testers for your product, you can share testimonials on your Instagram so that your followers can see how kick-butt your product is. Similarly, behind-the-scenes shots work really well. For my first e-course, I created a short video showing the behind the scenes of the course website. The video got many comments and even a couple sales!
- Start posting a variety of Pinterest pins that lead people to your product or a blog post. Switch up your pin images and text to see which ones perform best. Also, link some pins to your sales page and others to blog posts that contain valuable info (and that also link to your product). From there, you can see which pins are performing the best and then pay for them to be promoted pins (pinterest ads)! In my course, Pinfinite Growth, I walk you through how to set up a promoted pin as well as how to install a conversion pixel so that you can see which ads are bringing you the most sales.
- Host Periscopes that are related to your product topic. During and after your Periscope, you want to send people to a landing page where they can either learn more about and purchase your product OR sign up for your mailing list. The reason it might be beneficial to send them to your mailing list, even if your product is up for sale is because people rarely buy products spur of the moment without additional information. If they’re on your mailing list, then they can receive your value-driven email sequence to learn more about your product and then eventually purchase it.
5. Facebook ads and promoted pins
Social media advertising can bring back a huge return on your investment. I haven’t delved super deep into advertising, but certainly know of people whose business model is centered on the traffic they receive from advertising. For example, imagine if you spent $300 a week on Facebook ads. Sounds expensive, right? But then imagine that your $300 in ads resulted in $2,000 of product sales. Then imagine if you spent $600 and made $4,000. Can you see how advertising can really scale your business?
If you learn how to use advertising or hire someone to help you, it can be very beneficial. Of course, there is a learning curve, which is why I recommend investing in a course that teaches you how to create profitable ads or hiring someone to do it for you. Otherwise, you may be paying for ads without really knowing what the end-goal is or how to get there (I’ve done that before, so I’d know 😉 ).
6. Affiliates
If you’re launching a new product, then you won’t have students or customers who can be affiliates yet, but you may have blog buddies or beta testers who will! If there are people in your circle who trust your expertise, then they might be willing to be an affiliate for you. If you’re launching a course, I highly recommend checking out Teachable, as they have an affiliate program built into it, which is very easy to set up.
7. Joint venture partnerships
Lastly, joint venture (JV) partnerships are an incredible way to grow your audience and get your product in front of new people. JV partnerships are a mutual collaboration between two people. For example, you may recruit one of your blog BFFs to do a webinar with you. If that’s the case, then you will each invite each other’s audiences to the workshop. This means that your webinar will have a much larger turnout than if you just invited your own audience. You’ll also be able to grow your email list because of it, too! During the webinar, you can pitch a “bundle” that includes products from the both of you.
Another option is for your JV partners to be affiliates. They can send emails to their lists about your launch, using affiliate links, so that they are spreading the word about your awesome product and also making a commission if they incur a sale.
Pre-Sale vs. Evergreen vs. Standard Launch: Which is right for you?
Now that we’ve chatted about various marketing methods, let’s talk about something that will also define your launch: the timeframe. Will you pre-sell it before it’s released? Will it be evergreen, meaning available to purchase year-round? Or will you do a standard launch, where your product is buyable for only 5-10 days? Here are some pros and cons of each to help you make your decision:
Option 1: Presell your product
In this set-up, you’d start selling your product before it’s even finished by telling your email list, doing webinars, and any other marketing strategies you want to try. For that reason, pre-selling is an awesome motivator. When I launched my first e-course, I made $11,000 before my course was even finished and officially released. If you’re finding it tough to finish your product without a strict deadline, pre-selling can help. You’ll obviously want to finish it before your official launch date arrives because you now have paying customers waiting for your product!
Pre-selling can also be great if you have another job that is eating up too much time while you try to create your product. For me, that “other job” was my web design business at the time. By pre-selling my course, I was able to take on less clients during that month so that I could focus on creating and launching my course.
Option 2: Keep your product evergreen
This option isn’t reliant on pre-selling your course (i.e. you can do both of them!). Keeping your product evergreen simply means that it’s available year-round. This can be a great option because it means you can make income on your product all year, rather than only during a certain launch timeline. However, making sales year-round also means that you will need to do some marketing for your product all year, otherwise people may forget about it. This is where email sequences, advertising, and social media marketing can really come into play.
Option 3: Do a standard launch
A standard launch is when you set a day for your “cart” to open and a day for it to close. Usually, the timeframe is 5-10 days. A standard launch is good because it naturally includes scarcity, meaning your audience knows they only have a few days to purchase your product and are more likely to sign up for that reason. It also means that you don’t have to worry about marketing year-round. The con of doing a standard launch is that you will make a big sum of money during the launch, but then you won’t make any income on it afterwards.
As you can see, each option has it’s own pros and cons. So far, I have only tried options 1 and 2, but plan to test out a “standard launch” for my next e-course.
Now it’s your turn! Got any questions about launching your first product? Let me know in the comments.
Also, I just wanted to give you a fist bump and say thank you for being part of the #InfoProductBiz series. This was a fun series for me to create and I genuinely hope it was helpful for you. Now, I REALLY want you to digest the tips from this series and actually launch your first product. If you do, make sure to use the #InfoProductBiz hashtag so that I can cheer you on, virtually. 🙂
In case you missed the first three posts in the series, you can check ’em out below:
