Launching a product or an entire business is one of the most nerve-wracking things you ever do as an entrepreneur. Yet it happens to a lot of founders that they prepare for a launch for months or even years, all processes are perfectly thought out and prepared and on the day of the launch the following happens:
NOTHING! Crickets. Nobody buys.
This is the absolute nightmare of every founder. I've experienced it myself and I have to tell you, it’s just on of the worst things that can happen to a founder. Especially when you have products that have a limited shelf-life or get outdated rather quickly and invested a lot into it, expectations are high.
To make sure this doesn't happen to you, and that you have a launch that exceeds all your expectations, I've put together the following three tips:
1. Test the demand
If you have found a niche and are developing a product, you are quite sure that there is a demand in the market. You can probably find evidence of this throughout the market and you can certainly find statistics on this, but here’s an unpopular opinion of mine: it is still an assumption until you test it yourself.
There are even market research companies that specialize in doing this work for you, but I would advise against it.
You yourself should talk to potential customers and confront them with the exact product you want to produce. Depending on what product you have, there are different questions you should ask them. The final absolute test, however, is the purchase or pre-sale, but more on that in a moment.
2. Build a list of potential buyers
To successfully launch a product you need an audience to launch to. Where you find this group depends entirely on your product. I once managed to get 400 people on our list in 2 days for a product of our software startup because we were in the right place at the right time and had a funnel that gave them the opportunity to opt-in.
For this I recommend you an email list, which you can even host for free at the beginning with some providers and thus avoid any risk.
A social media following, on the other hand, is not a list, because you simply don't own it entirely. If TikTok gets banned tomorrow or your Insta account gets suspended, you have no chance of reaching your prospect. With an email list, it's different because you can decide who exactly gets your message and when.
Only if you have a list of prospects that you own, tip 3 will work.
3. Strategically build curiosity
Once you have a list of potential customers, you can use the time before the launch to strategically build curiosity. You'll take them along on your journey, to the new opportunity you'll provide them, and to the transformation the product has enabled you to make. You can build trust and eliminate any objections they might have even before you’ve launched the product. By doing this, you strategically get customers ready to buy, so that the day you open the cart, they're just waiting to finally buy your product, because you don't sell just like that: during the launch, there's a bonus, a special price, or it's the only way to get the product at all. This creates urgency, which makes your customers buy even more.
You can also give your customers the opportunity to buy your product at a special price before the launch in a pre-sales event, which would be the ultimate test of demand.
Great preparation gets great results
A launch can be such a great event if you prepare it right. It happens to far too many founders who develop great products but launch unprepared that no one even notices they are even launching.
This is not only a pity, but also a waste of productivity, which is a waste for the founder and his environment. However, by preparing your launch at least 1-3 months in advance, you can multiply your sales and get the best possible out of it.
