The sole purpose of launching your product, on-line and off-line, is to grow your business. A product launch draws attention to the value you are capable of delivering to the marketplace. The way to communicate this value is through the communication vehicles of mass media and one-to-one media. The offline media vehicles such as, TV, press, and outdoor, are efficient in creating awareness, but not enough to make sales. The online one-to-one media makes it more convenient to connect with value seekers.
Being exposed to variety of product launches, these value seekers are drawn to the product which has a compelling story that differentiates that product from its competitors. A product that makes the homework of listening to customers attentively and eliciting from their responses what they really want. A product that takes the extra mile and makes the abstract idea recognizable. Customers know only what they don’t want. It’s your job to know what they don’t want in order to pinpoint what they really want. That’s what Apple has found out when they first introduced Apple Macintosh. They researched first what customers dislike about computer. Most of them don’t like the complexities. Only then did Apple worked out an easy-to-use computer and asked them, “Is this what you want? They responded, “Yes.”
Falling in love with your product creates a split within you. The split is manifested in delaying the time of launching more than once. You give it all your best to get your product or service ready to launch, but you seek perfection. You keep on working and tweaking incessantly to get everything just right. You failed to meet launching time as you work on adding more features to your product. You delay launch to a week later, then to a month which turns into a year. Procrastinating over getting your product to the market has its underlying reasons.
The compelling reasons behind missing the timely launch into the market can be summed up in 3 main reasons. First, hearing to your voice rather than listening to what the customer wants and doesn’t want. Second, your fear of rejection as prospects won’t buy. Third, having a fixed mindset that the first launch must be the best version of the product.
Abiding by the laws that govern successful launches helps us jump into the market. The first law is to understand what the market wants and render these wants to needs. Remember, hearing creates interest while listening uncovers needs. Second, your belief that the value you are delivering exceeds the price paid, makes marketing easy. Third, being tolerant with yourself and embrace a growing mindset. Great brands are never built in a day. They are built by time. They have the guts to get going and the persistence to keep going in the face of obstacles and setbacks.
Thousands of entrepreneurs in hundreds of different niches and markets have successfully managed to create product launches. Many of them attributed their success to Jeff Walker – the creator of a system called The Product Launch Formula. The system has done over $500 million in product launches. Jeff’s coaching all kinds of entrepreneurs in a variety of fields and helped them immensely in positioning themselves in the online business.
Jeff keeps on sharing his learnings to his students. One of these learnings, and the most important, was in the first few months of starting his online business. He kept on looking at which pages on his website were getting the most traffic. He realized that was an easy way to tell what people were interested in. He also realized that it wasn’t what he would have expected them to be interested in. This taught him to look at the data instead of trusting his instincts. That’s why Jeff advices everyone to sell what market wants, not what one wants to sell them or what one thinks they should want.
Launching your product into the marketplace helps you grow your business. Instead of wasting too much time tweaking your product, jump in with both feet and launch. The learnings you come up with throughout the launch will give you insights to where to fine-tune your product and relaunch it more confidently and profitably.
