10 steps to your product sell-out at launch
Looking for a launch strategy framework?
One that will help you explain what your product is, who it’s for and gives you clarity on your messaging so you sell out?
This is it.
It has taken me years of painful on the job lessons and over 500 hours of analysis and research to figure this out.
You already know you’ve got a great product you just need to *fix* a few things.
Like your messaging and content strategy.
You’ve already followed ‘best practices”.
You’ve bought a 7-day pre-recorded course that had 2.5 actionable steps inside.
You’ve taken inspiration from your competitors and copied some of what they did (eek).
You’ve watched every YouTube video and tried piecing a strategy together on your own.
Despite all of this you are no closer to getting clarity on your strategy and it’s frustrating as hell.
People buy solutions.
They buy makes them feel good, or gets them closer to the person they want to become.
When you figure out what problems your ideal customers will pay to solve and your messaging speaks to them as that solution your business will thrive.
Use strategy as fuel, and your ticket to sell out.
Here are the 10 steps I’m going to breakdown:
1. Audience and market research
2. Create your audience, brand and content strategy
3. Goal setting and KPI’s
4. Plan your critical path and marketing plan
5. Content planning and curation
6. Website setup
7. Email marketing strategy
8. Building hype: Using a waitlist
9. Launch Execution
10. Post-launch plan
1. Audience and market research
Get to know your audience: make sure you know who to target and who will fall in love with your product and brand.
Make sure you deep dive into:
Demographics (Age, Gender. Location. Occupation. Income level. Dependents. Education level.)
Unique Psychographics (Values & beliefs. Hobbies & Interests. Attitudes & Opinions. Personality Traits. Lifestyle. etc)
Their unique pain points and desires
Their objections and questions they might ask of your brand if you were standing in front of them
Shared characteristics and values
Interview potential customers 1-2-1.
Get in front of at least 5 customers to find out exactly what they need and what alternative solutions they have been using instead of your product or service.
These could be customers of your competitors or of another solution they are using in place of what you will be offering.
Make sure to do Review Mining aka online creeping!
Dig deep into the reviews customers have written online about your competitor's products and solutions.
Find out what they are saying so you can identify any gaps or opportunities for your product or service.
Look at comments and discussions around the topics relevant to your solution on Reddit and Quora.
This gives you insight into what potential customers are saying they need, their desires, their pain points.
It can also highlight where your competitors or alternative solutions are not fulfilling their needs.
2. Create your audience, brand and content strategy
Audience strategy
Your audience research will have revealed a whole list of insights and themes.
This helps identify how you can best serve potential customers.
You also get a better understanding of who your best and most profitable (loyal) customers will be.
The interviews should have identified the triggers behind why people buy or look for a solution like the one you offer.
This helps determine what kind of messages would resonate with them, and your future customers.
It may also have revealed new channels that you could possibly sell into.
You can create a clear target audience strategy to include all these details, and create a persona.
What does this mean?
Craft a description of the person who represents your ideal best customer as if they are your best friend.
You know everything about them, where they hang out, where they spend their time and what they love doing.
They are a fictional person who represents your key target audience.
Some brands have been known to hang a picture of this person on the wall so they *exist* and come to life.
Brand strategy
Make sure you are clear on your brand personality, how it shows up with human characteristics.
The tone of voice and words you use will reflect ‘who’ it is and its character so get that in place now so you can show up with a strong brand personality that people can connect to.
Otherwise it’s difficult to maintain consistency across your messaging, and it’s much harder to build a long-term connection with customers.
A Messaging House makes sure nothing is lost in translation and you always know what your messaging and hierarchy so you never lose sight of what to say across your content.
This contains your key statement about your brand – your proposition as the Roof.
It then contains 3 core messages under this which explains, verifies and convinces customers of your proposition statement.
Finally you have your foundation which is a summary statement pulling all the details together.
Once you have these you will never lose sight of what benefits, transformation and solution you are selling.
It also means you don’t end up describing your product in different ways every day. The words and phrases become embedded and in turn your customers start to recognise and embed your words in their mind.
Content strategy
Once you’re clear on your audience, and you know *who* your brand is - and I mean everything about your brand – tone of voice, word bank, phrases, personality, values, your content strategy will almost write itself.
The themes, topics and where you will show up become obvious – because you know where and how to show up for your audience.
Using a customer journey funnel to map out what content you create makes reaching your goals so much easier.
The goal here is to communicate to your audience that
1. You understand their needs, you are the solution they need
2. *Pre-saude* them by answering any questions, objections ,positioning your brand as the best solution for their needs
You can create a customer journey funnel, by mapping out:
50% as Attract content – storytelling, behind the scenes, why you set up, the journey
30% as Build trust content – pre answer any objections and questions you know your audience will ask. Share testimonials, reviews even from those who tested your product
20% as Make the Sale content – special offers, sign-ups for exclusives, show and tell
The customer journey funnel framework makes sure you can track the kind of content you are creating and prevent too much ‘selling’ content.
The framework also makes sure that 80% of content is about attracting and building trust.
Very little is dedicated to ‘selling’.
By answering people’s questions and making it easy for them to see that you overcome their objections they will be likely to hand over their hard-earned cash.
No one likes to be sold to, that’s why direct selling should only apply to 20% of your content.
3. Goal setting and KPI’s
So you know your target person, and you’re clear on your brand strategy.
If you don’t set any goals, or KPI’s you’ve got nothing to measure your success, learnings and failures against.
You won’t know if you’re doing well or under-performing.
Here are a few things to consider:
If you launched before, what were the results?
Could they have been better? What did you learn?
Could you have had more engagement, started planning sooner etc?
If this is your first time launching - What do you want to accomplish (in sales, in waitlist numbers, in followers, engagement and any relevant social metrics)?
How will you measure this?
Is this realistic based on what you are selling?
Do you have a time limit set for your launch activities?
4. Plan your critical path and marketing plan
You’ve spent all this time so far getting set up.
And you know what your goals are.
You’re ready to focus your efforts and put the knowledge into a plan of action.
Here’s where you set out your critical path, your timeline of actions and activations.
Map out what points and dates over the next 3 – 6 - 12 months are significant.
If you do a photoshoot leave enough time to do postproduction and any edits.
If you want to showcase in person at events, ensure to book these in, budget for them and confirm with the organisers.
If you are working with a 3rd party supplier or contractor build in capacity and time for things to go wrong.
Nobody wants to admit this could happen, but delivery dates change and things can be out of our control when relying on others.
Samples can be below standard or first production runs sometimes don’t go smoothly.
Don’t confirm your launch date until you have product in your hand or your warehouse.
You can set your approximate date, so you build your waitlist and keep your customers informed.
This can be a great way to build momentum and hype. (More on this further down)
5. Content planning and curation
Here’s where you use your content strategy to create specific launch-focused content.
Everything you do during a minimum of 6 weeks in the lead-up to launch is about showcasing, building momentum, hype and ensuring you get a waitlist populated.
So now you create your 6 week launch calendar.
Make sure you have a landing page (or a landing page on your not-yet-launched website) set up to capture emails for your waitlist – this is the most important aspect of your 6-week pre-launch.
You will share your journey, use storytelling across your platforms, on Instagram Stories if using this platform.
Announce your launch, and then/ or confirm the exact launch date.
Tease your product first if that works for what you’re launching.
Behind the scenes. How to use your product and why it’s relevant.
Give all the answers, tackle any objections you know they will have, and make it easy for your audience to have zero questions that they will sign up to your waitlist.
Don’t sell, show and tell.
Remember that 80% of content you create during your pre-launch is to make it so easy for people to choose you, make them fall in love with your brand, position your solution as the answer they have been waiting for.
6. Website setup
Waitlists are a golden ticket to a successful launch.
So even if you don’t have a website yet, make sure to sign up to an ESP (email service provider) and create a landing page that way.
The landing page acts as a signup portal for your waiting list – it’s where people land to give you their valuable information – their email address.
Your website and landing page will most likely be the second touchpoint for your brand.
The first is the platform they came from – maybe someone saw your video on Instagram and then went to sign up.
Make sure everything is branded, has clear messaging and is written in your brand tone of voice.
Don’t forget to use the ‘thank you for signing up page’ to say something smart and in your brand voice.
Most people forget to tailor this page!
And don’t forget to test your website thoroughly for any glitches.
Your messaging and headlines should all have come from the work you did on your audience and brand strategy, and be included in your Messaging House.
Once you know your target audience, and what you stand for your messaging will flow.
So now you’re saying the same clear message across your social platforms and website.
7. Email marketing strategy
Email is under-rated. It’s often dismissed.
You’ll grow faster if you take email seriously.
Why put so much time and effort into your waitlist and launch and not plan for how you will nurture and retain your waitlist customers?!
Your waitlist will be your first customers and they are IMPORTANT.
In time you will also gather insights and feedback from them to inform your post launch decisions.
Plan out and prepare emails to send at intervals until launch so you build on interest and excitement.
It’s a great way to do a digital countdown and share exclusive behind the scenes content.
Bring your customers, who may be funding your launch with pre-orders, on an intimate journey to launch.
Make sure to prepare 3 emails for launch day, and use email to communicate how it went, and a thank you for their support.
Once launched you can then replace your waitlist pop-up with a welcome pop on your website.
You then kick off a welcome series to begin a relationship with new potential customers joining after launch day.
It’s now easy to automate a welcome series that sends emails while you sleep!
8. Building hype: Using a waitlist
When you’re building hype, you’re teasing and priming.
You’re also bringing in more pre-orders and building your pipeline.
This is when you go for it, execute your pre-launch content and share your story.
Storytelling, the challenges, the journey and sharing a glimpse into the ‘secret’ details behind your launch.
Founder-led content is powerful – consider sharing ‘how it feels’ or ‘I didn’t expect that’ or ‘lessons learned’ along the journey.
This humanises both the brand and creates a more lasting connection with your audience.
Building a waitlist requires content that communicates your uniqueness and value.
Building hype = pre-launch content that compels potential consumers to sign-up and follow your journey.
If you’re launching something new and different, here’s when you educate or inform.
You may be able to name your product type without revealing all details, depending on your brand and category.
This can be a great way to engage and create a ‘reveal’.
Make sure to share insights, existing customer experience when you sampled or tested.
Communicate the value you are offering vs other products or solutions.
Bring to life the aspirational element and transformation your product or service offers.
Engage in the run up, do a Q&A in the last hours prior to launch.
Have people spend a day with you pre-launch day.
For video use different formats such as :
Face-to-camera video with clips in the background
Voice-over storytelling
Showing your new product/service in action
Behind the scenes etc
Offering a lead magnet that people want makes it easier to encourage sign ups.
Offer exclusivity, special access, something of value that encourages sign ups to your waitlist.
FOMO i.e. scarcity is powerful. If you use this ensure that you are in fact offering a limited amount though.
Consumers are wise to tactics and will catch on quick if you constantly move the dial and new stock appears!
9. Launch Execution : It’s Showtime!
You’ve spent a minimum of 6 weeks building up to launch day, make sure it counts!
Shout from the rooftops, go live, document the day, share the numbers that build even more FOMO.
Share the experience with your most invested people, those who want to get your product and who want to see you succeed.
If you have a team of people that count, give them a shout-out.
Make sure customer service support is available for any queries.
Real-time engagement - go live with a thank you, and progress update, share screenshots of orders.
Keep an eye out for any technical glitches, website performance etc.
Film the process for your post-launch content!
10. Post-launch plan
Now is when you can ramp up and turn new customers into raving fans.
The key thing is to keep the energy and momentum. Keep the magic alive past launch day.
Send your immediate past launch day thank you email.
Within two days send your missed out email.
Then follow with your engagement email – tips and insider info. How to use etc.
Finally make sure to have a social proof email that shares what others have said and experienced.
Post a carousel or summary video of your launch day.
Reflect on your launch. Post-evaluate it.
Look at the numbers, where you had success and where there may have been failings.
Document your learnings, challenges, insights, and ideas for growth.
Thanks for reading.
Claire.
Are you a founder or small business owner curious about doing better marketing?
Here’s how I can help.
Hi! I’m Claire,
If you're a founder or business owner with big dreams of success and growth—and a big, scary to-do list standing in your way every time you sit down to *do* your marketing—nice to meet you, I'm your new solution.
I'll help you find your target audience, and your brand's voice, perfectly position you, and craft messaging for your content strategy that will resonate with your ideal audience.
And I'll do it all while keeping your goals to ensure that your brand aligns with what you want to achieve.
I’ve been in marketing for over 20 years and I’m busting through the bull**** and industry nonsense to give you straight-talking and proven strategic marketing that will grow your business.