Authors: Chris Guillebeau
The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future (19 page)
The pre-launch campaign is a success when people eagerly await the film, complaining about how long it takes to arrive, until the day—“finally”—it’s ready to be screened for the public. Then, the studio hopes, hundreds of thousands of filmgoers will pay their money and stream into the theater. Without an active pre-launch campaign, the movie may be great but the odds of commercial success are far lower.
The same principle holds true for microbusinesses. Whether a Hollywood movie or the debut of your new sock-knitting class, launches are built primarily through a series of regular communications with prospects and existing customers. Just like the movie executives who release trailers over time (first a short one, then a longer one) and the press events that Apple built up over time with Steve Jobs at the helm (building anticipation for future products to a fever pitch), small businesses can reproduce this cycle in their own way.
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Karol Gajda and Adam Baker, two friends with separate businesses in different parts of the country, decided to team up for a big project. Karol had completed an engineering degree from the University of Michigan, but never actually worked as an engineer. He first had the idea from reading a classic ninety-year-old marketing book called
Scientific Advertising
by Claude Hopkins. In the book, Hopkins discussed “fire sales”—the old-school, “everything must go” tactic used by furniture stores for decades. Karol didn’t have a furniture store, but he wondered … What if we put together a modern-day fire sale, with an emphasis on giving away a ton of value for a low price, but only for a limited time?
Karol and Adam were both in the information publishing business, and they quickly went to work, approaching other colleagues to participate. The pitch was intriguing: Contribute your products to the overall mix to be sold as a group for a low price and during a limited time. Oh, and if you help promote the offer to your own audience of customers and followers, you’ll earn an 80 percent commission on everything you sell. It was a good pitch, and Karol and Adam had spent plenty of time building relationships and developing a strong reputation for their work. Out of twenty-five requests, twenty-three people said yes.
Packaging everything together, they ended up with a monster package valued at a retail price of $1,054. They would sell the package for $97, less than 10 percent of the overall value and a price to which they expected customers would respond well. The “hook” came from the fire-sale idea: The offer would be available for only seventy-two hours—no packages would ever be sold again after the limited time period.
The big day came, and they put the offer online. For ten minutes nothing happened. Karol sat looking in anticipation at the stats in Austin while Adam was biting his nails in Indianapolis. Was something wrong? Fortunately not … It turned out they were just ten minutes early. All of a sudden, a trickle of visitors became a stream, then a flood, as more and more people heard about the offer and came by to purchase.
Wham!
The server was hit hard, and Karol’s Gmail account reported “Notification of payment received” over and over.
The flood continued for the rest of the day, slowed down a bit on the second day, and then picked back up at the end of the third and final day. When the smoke cleared, Karol and Adam added up the results. Total sales: $185,755 in three sleep-deprived days. Such was the power of a well-crafted product launch.
Because a planned launch campaign can provide far better results than simply putting something out there and saying, “Hey, here you go,” you’ll want to think carefully about how to structure it. The campaign usually unfolds in a series of messages you send to your audience, and you should keep the Hollywood analogy in mind: The worst thing you could do for a launch is to open your movie without letting anyone know. A much better thing is to tell a story. The story unfolds like this …
An early look at the future
. In the first mention of your upcoming launch, you don’t want to give all the details away; it’s usually better to start with a simple heads-up. You want to say something like this: “Hey, I’m working on something interesting. It’s going to be a big deal when it’s finished, but for now I’m just letting you know that it’s coming down the line.” The goal is to slowly build anticipation for what eventually will be available for purchase.
Why this project will matter
. The most important early message about the launch (and one that has to be reinforced continually) is why your prospects and customers should care. In the blitz of communication that we all process every day, why should anyone stop and pay attention to this project? The message you want to communicate is: “This is why this project will be a game changer, here’s how people will benefit, and here’s why you should care.”
The plan for the big debut
. The previous two messages, as well as any others, have been about the project itself, not the actual launch. Here’s where you roll out some of the details for the launch itself. When will it be? How will it work? Will there be some kind of bonus for early buyers? Most important, what do people need to know at this time?
Whoa, we’re almost ready!
This communication happens right
before the launch, sometimes as late as the day before. The message is: “This is the calm before the storm. We’re coming down to the wire and are really excited about this.” Any last-minute reminders or launch details are included here, and the goal is to convert anticipation into an actual decision. (You want prospects to decide in advance that they want what you’re putting together.)
OMG, HERE IT IS!
The message is: “It’s finally here, everyone has been waiting, and now we’re ready to go.” This communication tends to be shorter than the others because if you’ve done your job right, many buyers are already prepared to purchase. Here’s where you open the gates to the hordes … or at least that’s what you
hope
will happen. In this message you send them a link (or give them another way to purchase) and encourage them to take action.
INTERLUDE
Let’s pause here for a moment. What happens immediately after this point is just as important as what has happened already. A good marketer doesn’t rest on her laurels after a launch, because she knows she can probably increase the results significantly with little effort. A launch often results in a response cycle like this:
If the launch is a week long, you’ll tend to see a strong response on the first and second days, followed by a significant downturn and then a big uptick right before the close. This further illustrates why you need a launch cycle: If you have no closing, you won’t see the uptick! If you just launch and move on, you’ll have no opportunity for growth. Now back to the story …
Here’s how it’s going
. Something always goes wrong in every launch. Here’s a chance to address or correct it, along with updating everyone on how things are going. During this time, it’s also important to share stories of happy customers who have purchased already. The message is, “Look at all these people who are already benefiting from our product.”
The clock’s a-ticking
. Right before the offer goes off the market, or before you remove the bonuses, or before the price goes up, here’s where you make one final push. The message is, “It’s almost over. Here’s your last chance before you lose out.”
“I’d like to thank my mother for believing in me.”
Any good launch has a closing period in which you bring the roller coaster to a stop, even if the offer will still be available in a different form. The message is, “It’s all over now. Thanks, everyone. Here’s what’s coming next.”
Disaster and Recovery:
“HORDE OF NEW CUSTOMERS” EDITION
Like the problem of having too much money, having too many customers is usually a good problem to have—but it can still be a tough scramble if the customers all arrive at once and a key supplier isn’t ready. Here’s what David Wachtendonk, the founder of a party planning business in Chicago, learned when he received two thousand more customers than expected for a promotion.
In June 2010 our company participated in a Groupon. We did some research, and it appeared this could be a good avenue for our company to get some exposure for a new concept we wanted to launch in Chicago. After some discussion with the Groupon guys, we agreed it would be a match made in heaven. Our last remaining task was to find a venue that could support the deal. After some initial opportunities fell through, we found a new restaurant that agreed to work with us
.
The day the deal went live, we had no idea what was about to happen. Our Groupon rep estimated we would sell about 1,000 to 1,500 units … but 3,300 units later, the day ended. We thought we had systems in place to deal with growth, but unfortunately we became overwhelmed. The phone was off the hook and emails poured in, which we fielded to the best of our ability. Most of the customers were fairly understanding as we were a small business, but not everyone was nice about it
.
We found out after the deal had launched that the restaurant was in the middle of rebranding to a sports bar, which is not the ideal situation for a dinner theater. Their clientele changed, the atmosphere was evolving, and the owner of the business did his best to accommodate us. Unfortunately, your best isn’t always good enough, and our new customers let us know it. We worked tirelessly with their team to get them up to speed on how to handle large groups and even provided our own on-site hostess and manager for the majority of the shows with the hopes of improving the experience. Due to things out of our control, the quality didn’t meet expectations at first—service became sloppy, and the overall experience was diluted. The first few shows were challenging, but over time the experience got better. Forty-seven shows later, we finally wrapped things up
.
Our company had done its research and what we thought was adequate due diligence for the deal, but our efforts fell short. We should have been more proactive and done a better job communicating
expectations to our customers. Thankfully, our team made it through the experience and can live to tell the story. The question people ask me all the time is, “Would you do another Groupon?” The honest answer is that I would. Along with the challenges the Groupon presented, it provided exposure that traditional marketing never would have achieved
.
As with everything else in life, it’s important to keep your word with launches. If your offer ended at a set time and you had a big response, you’ll invariably be contacted with requests for exceptions after it’s over. It’s tempting to take more money, but if you said it would end at a set time, you need to stick to your decision. In the long run, this works in your favor, because people will realize that you mean what you say. Karol and Adam received numerous requests for their bundled package after the seventy-two-hour period had ended, but they politely declined each one.
One more thing: If you admit to a flaw, weakness, or limitation in your product, this will probably help instead of harm you. This is because when we are evaluating a purchasing decision, we like to consider both the strengths and the weaknesses. If a product developer personally tells us it’s not perfect—“and here’s why”—we tend to trust him or her more.
You can see this style of messaging in President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. An early ad
in favor
of reelection contained the following statement from a supporter: “I don’t agree with Obama on everything, but I respect and trust him.” Meanwhile, an ad that launched the same week
against
reelection contained the following statement from someone who was opposed: “I like Obama, but I just don’t understand his policies.”