Why Product Launches Fail to Achieve Sales Velocity

Product launches often fail to produce the results expected, especially in revenue. The reasons aren't complicated and are easy to pinpoint. Here are some common ones...

1. The product doesn't solve a market problem. This is common in technology companies in which a handful of brilliant engineers create something in a vacuum and then blame everyone else when the product doesn't sell.

2. The product misses the window of opportunity. Even a product that brilliantly solves a market problem doesn't stand a chance if it misses the window of opportunity.

3. Operational readiness. A great product is useless if the organization can't sell and support it. If you're expecting your sales team or your channel to figure it out on their own, you're mistaken, and you're product will wind up in the deep end of the deadpool. And operational readiness goes beyond the sales channel. What about finance, support, legal, delivery, professional services, alliances, etc.?

4. The product is so good it will sell itself. Or in other words, we spent all our cash on developing the product and we don't have any money left for marketing it. The market needs to know about your great product. You will likely need to spend more money here than you think, but if you have a great product it will be worth it.

5. Lack of clear launch goals. An initiative as important as a product launch needs goals that are clearly understood by everyone on your team. The absence of launch goals sets the stage for mismatched expectations. They do more than define success criteria. They help align the entire team.

6. Misidentified constraints. Every organization has constraints. Some are overlooked. Others aren't even acknowledged. Constraints define your organization's ability to execute and deliver. Identify them early and fix them quickly.

7. Wrong launch strategy. A one-size-fits-all launch strategy doesn't work. Different launch strategies are needed for different targets within a market segment. It's likely you will need multiple launch strategies by product and by target to achieve your launch goals, especially when you are going after multiple market segments.

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Effective Product Launches Made Simple

So you've created a terrific product and now you want to get the word out. If you've put a lot of work into creating your product, then you'll want at least enough sales to make it all worthwhile, right? It simply won't do to submit the ebook, if your product is indeed an ebook, to directories and hope for the best. If you have a small list that isn't too responsive, you're not going to make enough sales to make the whole project worthwhile. The answer is to make an event out of your product launch.

I'd like to clarify that point a little first. Mailing your list about your own product is just that: a mailing. However, if you get your list psyched about something and drill a date into their heads, then they'll be excited as that date approaches and when it does, bam, you've suddenly got a ton of sales notifications.

Don't get me wrong though: rolling launches, which don't count as an event, are effective as well. This is where you officially make your product available to the public, but instead of having a one-time launch involving tons of JV partners mass promoting within a short timeframe, you actually slowly recruit JV partners so their mailings are staggered. Normal product launches die out after a couple weeks while rolling launches are ongoing.

Normal product launches however, are the ones where you hear of marketers making a million bucks in a 24-hour period with another million going to affiliates or JV partners. These results are definitely not typical, but they do give you an idea of what's possible for you.

The point of having a traditional product launch is to build buzz for your product and then have a whole bunch of partners promoting for you to make big sales. The process of recruiting partners is simple: you create a killer product, you create the mini-site for it (sales letter, graphics, download page, etc.) you sell it to a test crowd like your list to see how well it converts, and then you create an awesome JV program to entice partners to join. Joint venture partners are attracted to products which have massive earning potential for them, JV programs with awesome prizes for the top earners, and a quality product that they'd be proud to promote.

The topic of "buzz building" is a complicated one. It takes a lot of skill to create an effective buzz campaign and it would take hours and hours to explain it, so I won't do it here. Let's pretend that you've taken care of that part for now. The final step, after the testing, JV recruitment, and buzz building parts of your product launch, is to keep your JV partners pumped about promoting your product.

There's nothing more disappointing than to recruit a hundred partners only to have one or two of them actually promote hard for you. Keep a list of your JV partners and mail them regularly to keep them apprised of updates. Marketers are busy people, so if you don't remind them about your launch, they'll get caught up in other projects and will forget about yours. Once you've assembled all the parts of a successful product launch and you've gotten all your partners stoked about your launch, the only thing left to do is to count down to zero and let the incoming flood of sales hit you.

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Affiliate Marketing Tips - What to Do With Lousy Product Launches You Want to Promote

You know what burns me up more than anything else? A great product with a lousy product launch. What do I mean by a lousy product launch? Well, read this article and you'll find out. And no, I'm not going to mention any names because I don't want to embarrass anybody. The point of the article is to allow you to still promote the product honestly, even though the launch is less than ideal.

A recent product I promoted, a great product in the IM niche, had a launch strategy that a lot of people would find very annoying. The launch had an upsell, downsell, OTO, forced continuity and whatever else you could think of. It was a real purchaser's nightmare. I know from first hand experience and feedback from people that they don't like being made to jump through a million hoops to buy a product. And forced continuity is a real hot topic today. Don't even get me started on that one.

Okay, so what do you do? You have a great product but a sales process that will most likely annoy the majority of people who go to the site. Well, here is the way I handle it.

For starters, any product I promote, I don't just send people directly to a sales page. With every other affiliate doing that, where would be my advantage? Instead, what I do is send them to a review page of the product where I offer a comprehensive review of the product. This puts me ahead of the game over most affiliates. I suggest you try it sometime.

Now, in the case of a product with a lousy sales process, what I do in my review is simply mention the process itself. I tell people EXACTLY what they can expect to find at the sales page. This way there are no surprises when they get there. I even go as far as to say that I personally don't like the process either and only promote the product because it is so good. This kind of honesty goes a long way.

You might want to try it sometime. It sure beats having one of your prospects come back to you complaining that they were taken through a million OTOs before they could actually get to the page to download the product that they just paid for. They will appreciate the heads up and will know that they can depend on you to be straight with them.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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