5 Essential Ingredients for a Successful Info Product Launch
Have you ever been so tired that you can barely keep your eyes open?
You have to keep working though because you have a deadline.
When we did our initial 6-Figure Sales Funnel launch here at Growbo, I was totally burnt out by the time it was all over.
I hadn’t slept in 36 hours, and somewhere around 3 a.m. I jokingly told all my staff that I would never do another product launch again. Of course, I know that I will. I also know that to do an info product launch, it takes a lot of work.
If you’re willing to put in that work, though, you can achieve extraordinary things. For instance, this product launch was 5x more successful than any other we’ve done in the past.
That said, I had higher hopes. While hindsight is 20/20, we learned some key lessons.
One of those lessons is that we didn’t really give ourselves enough space in our schedules. We were working on the Growbo business and preparing for the launch at the same time.
That left the team and I stretched pretty thin.
We also thought we knew what our customers wanted right off the bat. What we should have done was review the data more carefully. Once we did that, we were able to pivot our pricing structure for more sales (more on this coming up…).
Of course, setting dates and times are only a couple of ingredients that go into a successful info product launch.
“What are the others, Matt?”
Glad you asked.
In today’s article, I’m going to share what I think are five must-have ingredients for your info product launch to excel. I’m also going to include case studies that prove the relevance of each ingredient.
Let’s begin.
Successful Info Product Launch Ingredient #1: Writing Your Copy for a Specific Audience Segment
Description of the Ingredient: Who’s in your audience? Through market research, you can discover your various audience segments.
Learn their pain points. Why do they need your product? What will it do for them? It may be a matter of saving them time or simplifying processes.
Then, write copy that speaks to each audience segment. Yes, this means tweaking your copy from segment to segment.
It also means avoiding generalized copy that could apply to anyone. You want to address specific and unique pain points that each audience segment has.
Why It Works: As soon as we offered different packages for each of our audience segments (Freelancer and Marketing Consultant packages), and retooled our pricing, sales went up.
In addition, we also changed the language to be more focused on clients and lead generation for service businesses, agencies and marketing professionals. Conversions increased from one week to the next by 23%, just by revising the copy.
Sales further increased by 59% that next week.
Everyone always talks about niching down and “the riches in the niches,” but it’s another thing to see it and experience it.
We had initially kept our copy purposely broad, including phrases like “sales funnel,” “funnel” and “profits and bottom line.”
When we went back to our copy later, we peppered in more specific terms, such as “freelancer” and “marketing consultant.” This put the focus more on the need of those target audience segments.
Each segment has different goals. Freelancers might want more clients, while marketing consultants want to do better for the clients they already have. Our copy was now directed more specifically at the needs for both these audience segments.
That also helped to grow sales.
When Growbo first started the process of creating the 6-Figure Sales Funnel, we didn’t have exact customer personas, either.
After the first week of the launch, we did a course correction where we created a customer persona or avatar. We envisioned that the person sitting in front of us was nodding their head to the copy as we wrote it.
That got a much stronger reaction. The words may have targeted a smaller audience, but the overall response was better and conversions were higher.
Case Study: Venture Harbor founder and entrepreneur Marcus Taylor had a different kind of gig back in 2012. That year, he started a Groupon-like program that was a goldmine for musicians. They could receive cheap endorsements, iTunes distribution, studio time and gear.
Of course, like all good things, there were finite deals offered, just 5,000.
To see if his audience would bite, Taylor decided to focus on the limited-edition quality of the packages. He followed the LIFT Model from WiderFunnel.
Part of that model involves providing clear, concise, relevant offers. To make sure his offers were relevant, Taylor browsed music forums, Reddit Ads and more to predict his future sources of traffic.
This allowed him to target specific musicians, like guitarists over drummers (Taylor says their rate of purchase was 3x higher) from specific traffic sources. Taylor notes that in Australia and the UK, he had exceptional conversions.
He also had a 332% sales spike, in part because of the above-mentioned scarcity he fostered.
Through A/B testing, Taylor was able to determine which of his two landing pages promoted the limited-time offer better.
According to Taylor, conversions were 3x more for the second variation, which really pushes the scarcity of the offer.
Successful Info Product Launch Ingredient #2: A Launch Calendar with a Definitive Deadline
Description of the Ingredient: As you plan your info product launch, you need to set measurable goals. It’s crucial these are spaced out over time so you avoid cramming everything in last minute.
This is one of the most important lessons we learned here at Growbo. As I said, my team and I were going about our normal jobs and devoting any extra time to the product launch.
To avoid the same fate, create a definitive start and end date with a launch calendar. Make sure there’s enough time for you to reach all your goals.
Be realistic. It’s better to have more time than less, especially since you want to avoid rushing.
Why It Works: Honestly, I kept pushing off Growbo’s product launch. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it. I was simply too busy running the main business.
Eventually, I bit the bullet. I set a deadline.
Once you do that, it becomes a line in the sand. The deadline forces you to meet it and take your product launch seriously.
Having a launch calendar helps you achieve your deadlines, from the smaller ones leading up to the launch to the actual launch itself.
You might be scared about having a deadline, but it’s a necessity for a few reasons.
First, a deadline allows you to visualize what’s happening when. Second, you know how much work you have to complete and by which date. Third, it keeps your project organized so you don’t forget anything.
Case Study: David Newman’s The Speaker Marketing Workshop is a public speaking course that helps coaches, consultants and authors. Those who enroll get speaking tips from Newman himself, who had instructed smaller classes for almost a decade.
He used social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to make an email list and drum up interest in his workshop.
When the time came to introduce his product to the world, Newman tells course-making resource The Rise To The Top that he created a launch calendar.
Newman had done product launches in the past, but he had never used a calendar before. That often meant a discrepancy of a few months between when he wanted to launch and when he actually did.
That wasn’t so for The Speaker Marketing Workshop. He says, “the hard date on the calendar makes you wonderfully efficient and effective.”
Newman notes how such a calendar inspired him to get major work done in an eight-week period. He worked on promoting the launch, wrote funnel emails and sales pages, made course guides and downloadable PDFs and filmed seven course videos and four funnel videos.
In all, he made $26,418 from the course. The price per student was $777, and he had 34 students.
Successful Info Product Launch Ingredient #3: Making Sure the Product Is Crafted for a Specific Audience (Based on Research)
Description of the Ingredient: Not only do you have to make sure your copy speaks to your audience segment, but the info product itself should be crafted for a specific audience, and it should solve specific problems for them, too.
If you do your research as mentioned in the first ingredient, you should have a clear understanding of your specific audience segments.
Unlike with copy, where you have one product and you’re writing specifically to your segmented audience, you want to create a product that your audience specifically wants.
If you’re still unsure of what your audience is struggling with, create a framework for your avatar during this phase and see what you uncover.
Check out Digital Marketer’s template, which is what we used for creating our own avatars.
Why It Works: Part of how we have done research here at Growbo is by using our survey funnel and reviewing data from the survey form.
We look at who’s opting in to our email list, how they self-segment (freelancers, service businesses, consultants, business owners, etc.), and what they report are their biggest problems.
For example, with our product, which is all about sales funnels, we positioned the copy to focus on the “marketing consultant” avatar.
That didn’t mean freelancers or small business owners weren’t buying from us, but we saw an increase in sales from marketing consultants.
And although freelancers and business owners weren’t necessarily a fit for the product, they bought from us too because their needs are similar.
After the launch, when reviewing survey funnel data, we were able to see that there were needs and problems that our audience was hungry for us to address for them.
We started thinking that maybe our sales funnel product wasn’t necessarily fulfilling those needs, nor was our copy.
Instead of further repositioning the copy for our product, I decided to develop new products and product-splinter off our main product to address the separate, specific problems our audience has.
So if you have data on your audience, try and create the product that solves the problem they’re specifically looking for.
If you have an info product no one’s biting at, it might be because it doesn’t solve the specific problem they’re struggling with.
Case Study: Matthew Woodward shared a case study on his website in which a product launch netted him major bank in under a week.
He sold the Private Blog Network Specialist Certification, which included six exams, six cheatsheets, nearly 40 videos, over 50 lessons and 10 modules.
Woodward did a pre-launch survey where he surveyed people to know the reasons people would not buy, and what they expected from his product.
From the results of his survey, he created videos that addressed the answers people gave to his questions.
He made sure that the first part of his pre-launch content focused on the “why” of the product, while the second piece of his pre-launch content focused on the “what”, and the third focused on the “how”.
Woodward relied on shopping resource SamCart and payment plugin LearnDash as he made and priced out his product.
He also used Jeff Walker's sideways sales letter technique, which breaks down a long sales letter into a multi-day process.
His videos included the same formula for each:
- Title
- Mental triggers
- Launch story theme
- Problem
- Solution
- Next problem
In less than a week, Woodward earned nearly $135,000 from his product launch.
Successful Info Product Launch Ingredient #4: Finding Your Warm Audience and Offering Them Free Content
Description of the Ingredient: Having a warm audience of at least 300 subscribers to launch to is helpful.
What if you don't, though? You can create your own warm audience.
How?
Build an email list, sending your audience valuable, free content they’ll keep coming back to. As you do this, you’re building goodwill and priming them for your offer.
You can almost think of it as making deposits into a bank. Eventually, you’ll withdraw from that bank in the form of your offers, which your audience should buy.
Why It Works: One benefit of a warm audience is they’ll be more receptive to your message. They know you already, and if they opted into your list, they kind of like you as well.
Here at Growbo, we keep our audience warm by putting out a blog post every Tuesday. To pre-frame our offer for our 6-Figure Sales Funnel course, we put out a blog post titled, “Do Sales Funnels Work? (A No-BS Guide for All the Haters).”
That post also served as a preview of our video series, which would lead them into our info product offer.
Since we already had a warm audience who expected a blog post from us every week, it was easier to generate opens and clicks to our post, which invited them down the path to our course.
Case Study: Steve Brodsky of The World Is My Office documented his entrance into the solo ad business. He eventually introduced The List Builders Academy, a course for making more money via list-building, but he did some other things first.
He had already cemented his reputation in his industry. In fact, Brodsky was one of the top sellers.
The more he posted on Facebook, the more attention he got. This boosted his list and reputation even more.
To generate attention for his course, Brodsky offered a freebie about how he had progressed in the solo ad industry. This generated social proof and further promoted his authority.
From there, Brodsky moved into launching his coaching course. He did this by emailing 1,000 subscribers. This is more than necessary for a warm audience, but that’s okay.
Besides, not everyone who saw the email wrote back. Of those 1,000 people who received the email, 64 sent a reply. Then, 50 of those people paid the $99 for the course. In all, Brodsky netted $5,000.
Next, he focused on a proper launch for The List Builders Academy. He offered a three-day trial at one dollar for each day. Brodsky even tossed in a money-back guarantee to sweeten the deal.
His sales funnel consisted of one-time offers, and he included two of these. One was coaching in addition to a membership (priced at a monthly fee of $149). The second was a downsell and cost only $27 per month.
After making his sales page, Brodsky also used an affiliate program for extra income. Finally, as the product was almost ready to launch, he found new affiliates and promoted the course.
Brodsky pulled in $57,000 from the course.
Successful Info Product Launch Ingredient #5: Ensuring There’s a Strong Desire for What You’re Selling (Follow the Market)
Description of the Ingredient: There’s this book by Jim Collins called Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Other’s Don’t. It's one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time.
Why? It’s a great qualitative analysis of companies that were decent and became great and how they did it.
One of the principles in the book is to “fire bullets, then cannonballs.”
What does that mean?
Part of how these companies survived is by dipping their figurative toes into the water before jumping in with a new idea. This saved them from dumping all their money into a fruitless project or venture.
The line of thought is that bullets are smaller. If they can hit a target, great! Then they can take out the whole target with a cannonball.
There’s usually a point when you come up with a new product, where you almost feel the market pulling it out of you, and that’s what this ingredient is all about—making sure there’s a strong desire for what you’re selling.
Other marketers have talked about this, too, such as Jeff Goins.
Goins had a basic evergreen funnel he set up: an introductory product for writers. He kept relaunching the same product again and again. He found something that worked and doubled down and continued doubling down on it.
There’s this feeling that, if you have a warm audience, you can sense if they want your product. They’re almost pulling it from you.
Why It Works: The day when I put up the pricing page for Growbo’s done-for-you funnel service almost two years ago, I remember we received an order the first day for about $99 a month.
I was pretty shocked. I was like, “wow, someone bought this? I don’t even know what we’re selling!”
Then we got more orders, and we kind of followed the market from there to continue growing our funnel service.
Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is a successful venture capitalist. He liked to say that when he’d invest in a company, he wouldn’t bet on the people or the product. He would bet on the market instead.
Case Study: Bryan Harris, the founder of Videofruit, introduced a wildly successful product. Even better, he explained exactly how he did it.
He began with a pretty hefty email list of 13,528 subscribers. He didn’t use affiliates or ads, just his email list. Harris had a segment of his audience, albeit not a large one, who were intrigued by this product.
So what was the product? Harris created an online course.
His process can be replicated in four steps:
Step 1: Creating the Product Idea
Step 2: Pre-Selling the Product Idea
Step 3: Coming up with a Popular Product That Will Resonate with Your Audience
Step 4: The Product Launch Itself
For the first step, Harris relied on a separate four-step process to create his product idea. Those steps were:
- Reviewing his YouTube videos, podcasts and blog posts and determining which performed best.
- Compiling a list of lead magnets and content upgrades that also performed well.
- Cross-referencing popular posts and lead magnets to determine which topics his customers cared about most.
- Creating a product from there.
Next, Harris pre-sold his product idea. I mentioned this above as something we did here at Growbo.
For Harris, he only pre-sold to a section of his audience, the ones who seemed most engaged in the product. He got some feedback from them and used it to refine his product.
At this point, he had a 17% conversion rate. This includes the 225 interested users who completed all three testing (feedback) rounds. Of those, only 39 ultimately bought Harris’ product.
Harris now knew he had people who cared about the product. He then moved on to the last step, creating the product itself. Through storyboarding and milestones, he kept his product development on track.
Now, it was time to launch the product. His pre-launch email series introduced a problem and then showed how his product would solve it. Here was his launch calendar:
Harris earned $220,750 with 262 customers.
Conclusion
Need help getting more leads for your next info product launch? Click here to watch my free 4-part video series on generating more leads without spending money on ads.
As I can personally tell you, your first info product launch is going to be a learning experience.
It doesn’t matter if you were as successful as you had hoped or not. You’re going to learn what to do better next time and what to avoid doing as well.
Hopefully, these five ingredients can save you a few headaches as you plan an info product to eventually launch. By keeping these ingredients in mind, your next launch may be your best.
To review:
- You must always target a specific audience segment. Do plenty of research into your audience to discover who comprises these various segments.
- Write copy and create a product that appeals to your audience. Again, rely on your research here.
- Make a launch calendar so you and your team will stay on track with all the many jobs and responsibilities associated with launching an info product.
- Rely on your warm audience and pepper them with free content. This may incline them to pay for your info product once it launches.
- Most importantly, follow the market. There must be a need for your product.
Have you ever done an info product launch before? If so, how did it go? Do you think these five ingredients will help you for next time? Let me know in the comments.
Keep Hustlin’, Stay Focused,
—Matt
