A case study by Tyler Tervooren of Advanced Riskology

My first product launch was crazy, fun and exciting. I still get a buzz thinking back to that big day – waking up early, posting the sales page, getting the word out, connecting with the first customers, making sure payments went smoothly.

But I’ve realized something very important:

Launch day is the very least important part of a successful product launch.

Even though it’s the most exciting day, the actual day plays a very small role in the success of a launch.

What is important, though, are all the other much less exciting steps leading up to the launch – the steps that begin months before the big day. So I’m going to tell you about those days; about how, over the course of several months, I created and launched a successful product that now supports me as a full-time blogger at my site, Advanced Riskology.

Setting the Stage with a ‘Free Preview’

Advanced Riskology is kind of a funky place because it’s designed to be both a social movement and a business. Since I knew from the start that the site would also be a business platform, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could make that work.

• In order to have a business, I need to have customers.
• In order to have customers, I need to have people willing to pay me for something.
• In order to get people to feel comfortable paying me , I have to prove I have something worth buying.

This line of logic and led me to create my first free digital guide called Take This Job & Shove It.

My goal was to create a product quality guide that I would be proud to sell, and then give it away for free.

Now, there are all kinds of gurus, professionals and very successful people that would advise against giving away your best resources. However, I can say that it was one of the best decisions I’ve made.

I didn’t ask for money, and I didn’t even ask people to sign up to my newsletter to receive it. It was, still is, and always will be completely free. After being downloaded thousands of times and getting lots of excellent reviews, I consider it a major success, and one of the catalysts for the paid product that I went on to create.

Hitting the Bull’s Eye with Good Research

Just creating a free product that people love doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get filthy, stinking rich when you offer something for sale.

In order to turn that momentum into money, you have to follow up with something related that your readers have a deep desire for. You need to do some good research here to figure out exactly what you should create, because the wrong offer will flop, no matter how well you did with your freebie.

Ask yourself these three important questions:

• What am I really good at?
• What do I actually want to do?
• What is my audience willing to pay for?

Here’s what that looks like:

Now, those first two questions are usually easy to answer, but the third can be a bit elusive.

To find out the answer I paid close attention to the feedback that I got for Take This Job & Shove It. Many people emailed to ask for more information about how they could turn their own blogs into communities that could support them. That helped me decide what information to include in Guerrilla Influence Formula.

Just to be completely sure I conducted a survey using Google Docs for all Advanced Riskology readers (something I recommend doing even if you are not creating a product). I asked people to rate their interest in a few different projects I wanted to work on. The overwhelming majority wanted to know ‘how to build a thriving audience’.

Bingo! I knew exactly what I needed to create.

The Pre Pre-Launch

At this point all I had to do was make it, right?

I probably could have just built the product, launched it and made at least a few sales. But I wanted to do much better than that, and I assume you do too. So I started what I call a pre pre-launch. This is also known as ‘The Hollywood Strategy’.

The idea here is just to let your audience know what you’re up to. You can do this in a casual way. No need to be too specific; after all you’re just starting on the product. I published the survey results on the blog. This told my readers, “Hey, I listened to your answers, so now I’m going to create this for you.’

During the next month or so I updated Twitter and Facebook with quick tidbits on the part of the product I was working on and asked for feedback. This kept the product in the forefront of people’s minds and demonstrated that they have a say in how it is created. That goes a long way towards creating ‘buy in’ for the product.

People are far more interested in what they help create than in what’s simply handed to them.

I started recruiting other successful bloggers to help assemble the product through interviews. Not only did that add value, it also built relationships that were a natural fit for affiliate partners who could help promote the launch when the time came.

The Pre-Launch

This is where you get more serious and start building anticipation about the upcoming product. If you do a good job on your pre pre-launch, you should have a great foundation to build on. Now it’s time to announce the date that your product will go on sale and to write blog posts that directly relate to the topic.

I didn’t opt to set up a separate ‘launch list’ for interested readers, instead I focused on writing pre-launch content that not only built the product up, but also taught valuable lessons about the subject. That way, even if you weren’t interested in the product itself, you still got an interesting story and useful information..

During this phase, I worked hard to recruit affiliates that would be a good fit for the product. No one likes to be pitched on something that isn’t applicable or beneficial to them, so I focused on bloggers whose audiences would appreciate this product.

I also announced my affiliate program to my own readers so that people could have the option of paying for their purchase by selling a few copies. I offered a discount to my newsletter subscribers and held a giveaway on Facebook.

My goal was to do everything I could to promote the product and get people excited about it in a way that was actually useful and not obnoxious or spammy.

The Launch

On the big day, I set a goal for how many new customers I wanted, launched the sales page, and let all my prior work do its job. By the end of the day, I was very pleasantly surprised by the results.

I could talk about all the hectic, last-minute work that goes into the launch day itself, but like I said at the very beginning, it’s mostly irrelevant. When you take the time to get to know your audience, create something truly valuable for them, build anticipation around your offer, and stage an event around the launch that people enjoy participating in, it doesn’t really matter what you do on launch day because the dominoes are lined up and the process is in motion.

Put up a big ‘Order now’ button and let your hard work pay off.

Author: Tyler Tervooren