If a Tree Falls in a Forest…
Making the decision to create a product, start a business, host an event or share an idea is a heroic act. Few of us use the platforms available to actually create.
Unfortunately, if you take this bold step and nothing happens, you are immediately discouraged. Too often I meet excited entrepreneurs who launched their big idea and failed. It’s usually not because the idea was bad but because the launch was bad.
In this post we’ll walk through how to launch a product, business, event or idea. We’ll also host a webinar Tuesday, July 22nd to go through these steps in more detail. Sign up for free.
The Biggest Hurdle
When you host an event, launch a new product or share a new idea, you want to reach as many potential attendees, customers or readers as possible. The challenge is that you need focused reach.
Instead of having one person a day for 100 days tell their friends about your launch, you want 100 people to all talk about it at once. In essence, you want to be a trending topic instead of a regular mention. How do you focus attention of your audience?
The key is a three step process: prepare + ask + launch.
Prepare
The path of least resistance is the path your audience will choose. This is why Amazon has one-click buying and why Apple dominates music sales. When it’s easy to get involved or purchase, more people will do it.
When you are ready for launch there are four tools you should use. I’ll walk through two of them in this article and share the other two in Tuesday’s webinar.
1. Gather emails with Launch Rock or Lead Pages
It takes a lot of work to put together a website for your launch and often by the time your marketing materials are ready, the date of launch has arrived. This is the worst time to start promoting.
Instead, immediately start gathering the names and emails of anyone interested in your launch. This is your “seed list,” the people you will ask to purchase the minute you launch. You can quickly set-up an online sign-up form so you have a way for them to take action even before you launch.
- If it’s an event, get people to sign up to show they’re interested in attending.
- If you are launching a product, get potential customers to sign up as beta testers.
- If you have a Kickstarter project, get the names of people who say they want to support you.
Two tools will help you collect these names: Launch Rock or Lead Pages.
Launch Rock takes a bit more technical skill, but it’s free. It makes it incredibly easy for the visitor to share your launch with their friends, and it builds an email list that you can easily export when you are ready to actually launch.
Lead Pages is easier to set-up and has great ways to optimize your sign-up page, but it costs $37/mo.
2. Coordinate Social Shares with Thunderclap
We want our launches to be shared widely on social media so new customers find us. The challenge is sending messages via Facebook or Twitter asking people to share your launch over and over is time-consuming and makes you look spammy.
Thunderclap is the perfect solution. It invites others to share your launch, but it schedules their social media message so everyone sends their messages at the same time.
This is powerful because it turns your social media outreach from a spattering of messages to a focused cacophony of shares.
Thunderclap works really well with Twitter because each share is shown on the timeline. On Facebook the effect is a bit minimized because the timeline will say “You and 154 others shared this post” so your message doesn’t fill the screen.
Either way, Thunderclap is the best way I’ve found to maximize social media around a specific time.
Ask
The preparation helps you attract new sign-ups, but your room (not your list) of true supporters is your main bastion of support. Ask these friends, family and colleagues if they are interested in helping you at launch. This takes a couple of different forms, again I’ll share two here and the rest on the webinar.
1. Build Your Ground Game
In the political world, we often hear about the effectiveness of a candidate’s ground game. Basically that means: do they have people who are knocking on doors, making phone calls and pressuring their friends to go vote?
For your launch you need to ask your true supporters to do the same. You are not asking them if they will purchase (you assume they will), but you ask if they will be responsible for telling 20 of their friends about your launch.
If they agree, you provide them with the resources they need to spread the word. This could be a link to your website, a PDF they can email to friends, an email they can modify and share, text they can use on Twitter, graphics, video and anything that makes their task easier.
Your ground game expands your reach in a personal way.
2. Build Your Influencers
Your ground game reaches the masses through one-to-one connections. You also want to reach people on a one-to-many scale. To do this you will borrow someone’s audience. Look through your connections and find the person that has a platform that could be used to promote your launch. It could be a large social media audience, a podcast, a newspaper column, an email list or a popular website.
Ask this person what you can do to provide value to their audience while promoting your launch. This could be a guest blog post, an interview or a free sample/ticket to give away.
If you don’t have that person in your address book, find the most relevant person online and make them an offer. If you can provide value for their audience, they’ll consider helping.
Launch
When you launch, you are pushing the buttons that set everything in motion. Your job is to then follow-up and highlight the fruits of your labor.
1. Follow-Up
Thank the people who are sharing your launch so they know there is a real person behind the launch.
To save yourself time, have the thank you email, tweets and Facebook messages drafted so you can quickly personalize them. In the message, make sure to ask if they can share your launch with others.
2. Highlight
Immediately after launch, you are aiming for the biggest splash possible. Help your efforts by sharing the messages other people post.
Even better, build a short list of people who can also re-share with you. Highlighting the people talking about your launch is a way of thanking them while making sure someone else is promoting you instead of you selling yourself.
Design Your Launch
Starting is the most important step, but your launch is a close second. If no one knows about your big idea, it will never take hold.
Methodically prepare, ask and launch your project. You’ll not only have a bigger impact, you’ll also be more excited to create the next thing.
Need help?
Our webinar this Tuesday will show you how to use these strategies and tools plus share additional tips you can use when launching your next project.
Image: CS Monitor
