I sent an email to my list today on this subject and thought that I should post here and go a little more in depth on it.
There are so many factors to consider when launching your product to improve the odds of having a successful launch. Everybody wants their launch to be successful and make a lot of sales. While there isn’t a way to guarantee a successful launch, there are steps you can take to improve your chances.
You need affiliates to drive traffic for you to maximize the return on your launch.
So, how do you get affiliates to promote for you? Do you just post on social media asking for affiliates to promote your product tomorrow or next week?
Definitely not.
Your affiliates will be where you get most of your sales from unless you have a huge buyers list of people that will just automatically buy just because you tell them to. Even then, most of your sales will come from your affiliates. You will use social media for recruiting but, you need to understand that affiliates need time to decide if they will promote or not. Let’s look at how to increase the chances of getting more affiliates on board.
Have your product created and completed. I mean the product is done, sales page is done, the entire funnel is completed including, this is the important part, the JV page. Get everything approved by the affiliate platform you choose to use and set the launch date. Don’t rush this part. It’s understandable that you want to get launched as soon as possible. After all, you got into this industry to make money. Set the launch date for about a month from the time everything is ready. Why? Because the real work is about to start.
As I said, your affiliates will be where you get most of your sales. Spend the month before the launch reaching out to affiliates and marketing your launch to them. I have seen so many marketers post about their launch on social media anywhere from a day to a week before the launch with a link to their JV page. After the launch is over, they post about their disappointment that it did not go as well as they anticipated. They say they didn’t get many affiliates promoting and don’t understand why.
To help you to understand why, let’s look at it from an affiliates point of view.
Most affiliates schedule their emails well in advance. Before deciding if they will promote they want to go through the product to see if it is any good. They want to see the sales page so they know if you make outlandish claims, and they already have promotions scheduled for their business. They need to review the product to see if it does what the sales page says it does. Affiliates have built a level of trust with their list so they don’t want to ruin that by promoting something that doesn’t do what they are told. Especially, the super affiliates, you know who I am talking about, the ones that are always crushing it on the leader boards. If you don’t have a relationship with these marketers already and want them to promote for you, you need to reach out to them well in advance and introduce yourself and your product to them. Don’t fill them with hype about why they should promote but do tell them what you will do to make it worth their time to promote for you.
Think about offering review access to your product. Give affiliates time to make sure that what they are sending their people to is in fact, a quality product. While I can understand being hesitant about giving your product away for free, you have to remember that every time an affiliate promotes something, they put their reputation on the line. If it is an affiliate that you approached and asked specifically to promote for you, definitely give them the product for free.
Next, think about the sales funnel.
Design your sales funnel to make money for your affiliates not for you. If you want to make more sales, design your sales funnel to make your affiliates rich. Don’t be afraid to offer more than 50% commission on the front end product. Even 100% commission would be a good idea. I know that many will balk at this idea and the argument is that they will lose money on the launch.
You need to look at the big picture.
Ask yourself are you building a business or do you just want to make some quick money? Most information products are selling at $10.00 for the front end product. So for every customer an affiliate sends at 50% commission he only makes $5.00. You want to make it worth their time to promote. Remember that if you set everything up correctly on the affiliate platform, everyone that buys will automatically be added to a buyer’s list in your autoresponder. These are people you can than email over and over again to sell to.
The most important page you will create for your launch is the JV page. This is the page that will get people signing up to promote your launch. Make sure it explains to them why they should promote for you. A short introduction video of you on camera would be a good idea but, it isn’t mandatory. However, it can increase the number of JV’s you get if you are not well known as a vendor.
What else should be on the JV page?
It should include a link to your product to apply for affiliate status, a complete rundown of the sales funnel and the commission for every offer, links to every page in the funnel, FE, upsells and downsells, include promotional graphics, banners, images, etc. also write some promotional emails to give JVs email swipes to rewrite and load in their autoresponder. Nobody knows your product better than you so make is as easy as possible for them to promote. The more money they can make and the less work they have to do to make it will increase the number of affiliates you get.
I have seen many JV pages and not all marketers do this, but, before you create a JV page, create a new list in your autoresponder. One that is only for JVs. Add a form on your JV page to let affiliates sign up to stay informed about the launch. Just remember, these are not leads, they are business partners. Do NOT promote products to them. Use this list to inform them of the approaching launch and the updates bout it. Use this list to inform affiliates that have promoted for you for advance knowledge of your next launch and build a network of affiliates that you can count on in the future.
Are you running a contest for affiliates for your launch?
Include that information on the JV page as well. How many prizes and what are they? Now, this is very important. If you are running a contest, HAVE THE PRIZES ON HAND BEFORE YOU LAUNCH. If it will be cash prizes, have the money up front. If physical prizes have the items up front. Don’t plan on paying for the prizes out of your profits from the launch. What if you don’t make any profits? If your launch is a “loss leader” giving all the money to the affiliates so you can build an email list of buyers or the launch doesn’t do well, then you have to come up with the prizes anyway and if you can’t deliver in a timely manner you have killed your chances of them promoting for you again. You would be better off not having a contest at all.
In a nutshell, your take away from this to have a successful launch should be,
1) Create your product to solve a problem or help your customer.
2) Design your sales funnel to make your affiliates rich.
3) Give your affiliates what they need to promote.
4) Spend time recruiting affiliates to increase the odds of getting more affiliates on board.
Have I left anything out?
Comments are always welcome.
If you found this post helpful, or know someone that can benefit from reading it feel free to share it on social media.
