A kid gets an early Christmas present… an exotic, singing, furball known as a Mogwai.
This rare “pet” comes with some basic rules. 2 of the important rules are 1) never get it wet, as it will multiply and 2) never ever feed it after midnight because it will turn into an evil Gremlin.
Go figure… buddy gets his new pet wet AND feeds one of them after midnight.
Now there’s ONE evil gremlin.
The evil gremlin later gets wet and turns into 2.
No biggie. 2 gremlins running around. Only a family or 2 are being terrorized by these things. Nobody in town really knows or cares.
But the smart bastard evil gremlins later jump into fountains and turn into lots more.
Next thing you know… the whole town has a Gremlin problem.
Let me switch gears.
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Your AUDIENCE
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I talk of having an “audience” vs the archaic terminology of having a “list” because these days it can mean blog readers, facebook fans, youtube subscribers, Twitter followers, direct mail list, email list and more…
Think of any single person in any part of your audience as a Gremlin.
That’s actually kinda fun.
YOU are a Gremlin in my example. hee hee.
And I too might be one annoying little Gremlin in YOUR audience.
Here’s a beautiful thing that you need to drill into your business… the importance of pushing WITH FOCUSED URGENCY for a large audience.
When you have a great new product, a “viral” idea, a word of mouth worthy content piece, a “good deed”… and ONE gremlin talks about it… maybe you’d end up with ONE MORE gremlin in your audience.
Which is good but if you’re working with a small audience, the results of your snazzy new idea, your awesome new product, your fancy promotion or your good deed still will mean very little.
A list of 500 might help you build a list of 500 more. Maybe.
But at 1000, technically your “distribution” just doubled.. but in dollar terms, you hardly notice the change (all things being equal).
But… 10,000 in your audience… helping you build to 20,000 because of their word of mouth, because they share your content, because they buzz about you, because they join as affiliates and promote for you… THAT starts turning into a modest difference in net income.
100,000 helping you create 100,000+ more is worth even more because of the compounding of “synergy” and “social proof”. (I won’t go into that).
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Rich Getting Richer
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So it’s the story of the “rich getting richer” … once you have a lot of Gremlins in your world, dunking all of them into a pool to create a LOT more Gremlins gives you amazingly fast growth.
But if you keep piddling around with just a small group, you’ll have to work extra hard and produce extra great promotions and products to achieve any meaningful results.
You should be putting a very FOCUSED sense of URGENCY into your audience building efforts (lead generation, list building if you like).
I mean … do you want to have just a couple of Gremlins terrorizing just a couple of families… or do you want EVERYONE IN TOWN to be WELL AWARE of you and your promotions?
I’ll give you the viral instant-commission tool and the ready made lead capture websites…
and you give it away to to pull in coin while ALSO building your audience.
Use this viral money tool to build your army of Gremlins!
BTW… once you have your copy, if you need help or direction in how to get things setup or how to start turning the viral cash gears, just email me back. I’ll help you out.
A few years back, a marketer came along and took on a positioning as a product launch expert… built a well respected home-study course on product launches and established a now well-known brand in the “internet marketing” (more specifically, information marketing) world.
But somehow in the mix… the majority of the IM industry made the mistake of thinking the concept of product launches had just been discovered.
Not to discredit the marketer who did a great job with his branding … but product launches in the IM world are piddly change and still amateur compared to the very sophisticated product launches in just about every other industry.
Sports being one example.
… Especially when sports meets entertainment and pay-per-view dollars start flying around.
This May 1st, 2 great boxing champions Floyd “Money” Mayweather and “Sugar” Shane Mosley face off on a special HBO Pay-Per-View event.
The fight may be about “who’s the better boxer” to Shane Mosley and many fans watching… but it’s all about the money from “the product sales” for HBO.
Here’s a product launch challenge…
How do you take 2 fighters, create a live event (held at MGM Grand Garden Arena) and get MILLIONS to tune in to watch it?
In the IM world, getting 100,000 on any given day to pay attention to a release is a modest-achievement.
But what about getting 3 million worldwide to shell out $60+ for the pay-per-view or $300 – $1250 per ticket to attend in person? (This PPV event is anticipated to get 3 million individual PPV sales so $180 mill for this one-day-launch just from PPV, no other licensing or merchandise and not live ticket sales).
How do you coordinate THAT?
Distribution (ie: “JVs” who mail for your offer) is still important.
But HBO has the distribution muscle. That’s taken care of.
How do you create the anticipation and the buzz though?
Because anyone who understands the reasoning for a “launch” understands that the anticipation is what drives the high conversions. The other elements such as social proof and fear of loss tie in, yes but ANTICIPATION is the big gear that makes a product launch a true product launch.
HBO has a beautifully smart solution…
Not much different than the teaser videos and PDFs and webinars of the IM world, but on a larger scale.
They run a special 3-week series called 24/7 where camera crews follow the 2 fighters, in their camps, during their training, during their trash talking and they air 3 episodes to build up the excitement and get the target market buzzing.
I literally have a reminder on my Outlook calendar to MAKE SURE I watch the Mayweather & Mosley fight because HBO’s 24/7 does that good of a job of getting me ramped up for it.
Here are a quick 6 parallels for this HBO Pay Per View product launch vs an info product launch…
1) Posters … I’ve seen posters up in sports bars about the coming fight for well over a month.
Are you running teaser banners for early branding for your product launch?
2) Three episodes (3 weeks) of the special 24/7 series leading up to the fight. EACH episode soft-sells the fight and reminds the viewer when to tune in for the main event.
Do you have multiple teaser content pieces? Spaced 1-2 weeks out to let the market digest and circulate the content? Is each teaser content piece strategically setup to soft-sell your actual product? Does each teaser remind the prospect WHEN the launch is?
3) Target market. The HBO series focuses specifically on the absolute target market: the boxing enthusiast. General sporting fans will also come across it, watch it and tune in as will others who don’t necessarily care about boxing. But the teaser content and the buzz promos are laser focused for the perfect prospect.
Is your content general, trying to be something to everyone? Or did you focus in to attack your perfect prospect?
4) Press and media attention for this event, of course, gives it a lot of “free” marketing. But it also fans the fire of getting even more of that anticipation pump going in people.
A bit of a PR push isn’t a bad idea for your launch either… it gets you the credibility icons (as seen on AOL Online, Google News, blah blah) and gets you SEO scores. But it can also start a ball of buzz in the right social media channels. However, teaser articles (that promote the main product or your teaser content), teaser forums posts, social media push, blog buzz (possibly with ReviewMe.com type posts) or JVs with the blog owner or flat out advertising, teasers in ezine mailings … all of this helps start the product launch awareness.
5) Buzz generates naturally when your core target-market naturally is excited about your upcoming product launch. Any boxing fan is likely well dialed into and interested in this upcoming launch… so talks of the upcoming fight in boxing gyms, on boxing facebook fan pages, in boxing forums, among boxing friends, etc occur. So do mentions on Twitter. It just HAPPENS.
If your product doesn’t quite deliver that same response organically, you can help fuel it artificially. Create a buzz worthy contest. Toss in a publicity stunt. Tie in a controversial spin. Lace in humour or entertainment. Provide easy mechanisms for viral growth. Do SOMETHING to help fuel that fire.
6) Distribution. For HBO this is already in place. They have their sales agents getting posters and other teaser promo flyers to sports bars and the right establishments. And of course, actually televising the event… that already has a full network in place.
What about you? For your product launch … do you have gears in motion to notify your distribution partners and your network? Do you have strategic alliances or a core-network that you help distribute each others products too? This is crucial by the way… look for the merchants that have product lines you’d want to endorse, build a relationship not just for one mailing (for a launch) but for a reciprocal support network.
When Apple is launching with $150 million dollar days (their recent iPad), movies are launching with $100 million+ weekends and HBO sells PPV for $180 mill pay days (and that’s just scraping the tech and entertainment industries alone… there are MUCH bigger examples around)… then it should be a reminder that the fancy $97 product launch ebook and the $2000 product launch e-course and “official product launch certification” from an information marketer is great… but to REALLY excel, to TRULY be great at laying out dominating strategies and coordinating entire teams for a REALLY spectacular launch, you should be studying models and techniques outside of the modest IM world.
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P.S. Leave me a comment and let me know if you found it useful or what you thought of it. I’d love to hear your thoughts and input and even your criticisms.
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