As you may already know, we’ve recently been sharing all the juicy, behind-the-scenes details of our latest launches.
First, we shared what it really takes to launch two, brand new products in three months.
Then we shared what worked, what didn’t and what we would do differently for our most recent Landing Page Templates launch.
We started prioritizing peeling back the curtain on our business in hopes that it would help any of you out there that are trying to build an online business.
We know we appreciate business owners that share what works and doesn’t work for them, so we wanted to do the same.
With all of this talk on launching, we realized that the success of a launch primarily relies on all of the work you do prior to launch day.
In today’s post, we share everything we did before launching our new products. Download our launch checklist below for your next big product launch!
What To Do Before Launching A Brand New Product
1 | Validate your product with your audience
Stop! Before you create ANY new product, you must do this before launching. Validating your product idea is crucial to launching successfully.
Many people create products based on what they think their audience wants. Most times this leads to a miserable launch day that results in minimal purchases, leaving you thinking your product is worthless.
The fact of the matter is, you don’t truly know what your audience needs unless you ask them. Throwing ideas on the wall and hoping they’ll stick is not the road to product launch success.
Validating your ideas before you launch can nearly guarantee that your audience will purchase your product because they’re telling you exactly what they want from you.
We validate our product ideas by surveying our audience at least twice a year, asking them several questions on what they struggle with the most and how Bluchic can help them solve these problems.
We also had beta testers for our products and received great feedback from them on tweaks we could make to the product before launching. Our beta testers were actual people from our audience, so we highly valued their opinions.
Related Post: 5 Steps to Creating and Launching Digital Products That People Actually Want to Buy
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2 | Create a launch plan
Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote “Failing to plan is planning to fail” never rang truer.
Winging your new product launch and crossing your fingers for the best is not a good launch strategy.
In fact, it’s the worst thing you can do when you’re launching a new product.
We planned months in advance for both of our recent launches and we’re confident that creating a launch plan is a huge reason why we saw so much success.
While creating a launch plan, we:
- Mapped out our editorial calendar & launch emails
- Crafted social media posts
- Emailed our best business buddies
- Created an affiliate plan
- Shared sneak peeks to our audience on social media and our newsletter
- Settled on a launch revenue goal
Once we outlined each of these steps, we plugged them into our calendar so we weren’t trying to do everything in a short amount of time.
Planning ahead of time created fewer headaches and late nights working. It made launching two new products in three months a lot less stressful, that’s for sure!
Related post: The 6 Things Every Online Course Sales Page Needs
3 | Identify your goals
Before your big launch day, you need to identify your launch goals and the metrics you will be measuring to reach these goals.
We have found the more specific you can be with your launch goals, the better. Hoping for a “great launch” isn’t going to cut it because how do you measure what a “great launch” is?
Using real numbers and dollars to identify your goals will help you stay focused during your launch week as well as give you concrete numbers that convey how close you are to reaching your goals.
This information helps post-launch when you’re evaluating what worked and didn’t work for your launch, so you can use that information for future launches.
Launching a new product? Find out what you need to do BEFORE you launch from @bluchic!Click To Tweet4 | Plan for the unknown to happen
It’s hard to plan for the unknown to happen because, well, it’s unknown, but you need to plan for something to go wrong during your launch.
Your computer will break, your kid will get sick, you’ll be without the internet, your website crashes….something will happen during your launch period and there won’t be anything you can do about it.
Knowing ahead of time that something will go wrong if anything eases the pain when something does actually go wrong.
No launch is perfect, so go with the flow and know that all will work out how it’s supposed to.
Related Post: How to Make an Opt-in Your Audience Actually Wants
5 | Test, test, test
Do you want to know how many times we tested our sales page purchase buttons for our Canva Social Media Templates? Probably close to 50 times!
Test everything before launching your new product.
Test your entire process for purchasing. Make sure it’s very clear to the customer what steps they need to take to purchase. Also, try to make it as few steps as possible for them to purchase your product. The easier it is for them to purchase, the less they’ll hesitate!
Once you’ve tested everything…test it again.
And then get someone else to test it for you.
Sometimes when you’re “in” your work too deep, you don’t see obvious problems, so grab a friend or family member and have them test it too.
Practice makes perfect and in this instance, testing makes perfect!
Related post: What It Takes To Launch Two New Products in 3 Months
Final Thoughts
As we said earlier, we believe a large part of our success with these last two launches was due to all of the work we did prior to launch day.
We say this with confidence because during prior launches we have totally winged it and hoped for the best and while those launches were okay, they weren’t anything like these last two.
If this is the year that you will be launching your digital product or online course, one thing you have to have is a sales page to sell your course (obviously!). Check out our new Online Course Launch Templates now available in our shop!
