Obviously, you have to promote your products. But how? One aspect is the media and partners you use. The other aspect has to do with timing. From that point of view, you can promote your products in 2 ways:
- Ongoing: You can continually market your products in autoresponders, on your website, in emails and with ads
- Launch: You can create a big fuss about a product over a short period of time (the launch period), sell it, and then close sales
How do you decide how to promote your products–ongoing vs a launch?
Why choose ongoing promotion?
If you have products and services that you want to promote all the time, for a continual income flow, then use this option. For ongoing services, such as 1-on-1 coaching, you’ll almost always use this option. The same applies for low-cost products, because the effort of the launch isn’t worthwhile.
Here are ways to promote your products and services all the time:
- Put a call to action for one of them at the bottom of every regular newsletter
- Regularly promote one of them in a one-off email that’s only about that product/service
- Put ads for your products and services on your website
- Regularly remind affiliates that they can promote your products and services at any time
- Have a sales page for each product and service that visitors can easily find. If you have a number of products, have an e-store page that lists them all, with links to each individual product’s sales page. You should also have a Services or Coaching menu item that describes your services.
Why choose a launch?
In a launch, you open availability of a product, promote it heavily, and close availability. For example, I have 2 friends who run a Social Media Manager School course.While I’m writing this, their home page says, “The doors will open again in the Fall. In the meantime, we have some great free resources for you. Just enter your info below to claim them and be on the list for first notice when our next class opens.”
They launch the course 2-3 times a year with multiple free webinars, free downloads and lots of fanfare.
That’s how a launch works. During the launch period, you provide lots of free content over a period of several days — or even 3-4 weeks — to attract people. Then you offer one more piece of free content that makes the offer for your course or product. There’s a deadline, so people have to buy before then or they have to wait until the next launch.
A launch requires lots of energy, but can result in high levels of profit. You also grow your list during that time because people come for the free content. You can involve JV partners or do an internal launch to just your list.
Launches work well with higher-priced products and with courses that have a beginning and an end. (The course beginning creates a natural deadline.)
For a launch, you’ll need to plan the following:
- The timing
- The free content — usually videos but they could be emails, webinars, or smaller products
- The offer — what it will include, price, bonuses, etc.
Have you done a launch? How did you organize it and what were the results? Are you considering one? Leave a comment! And if you like this post, please share it using the share buttons below.