How to launch your next product (and have people actually care)

Published about 1 year ago • 4 min read

Hi Reader,

Launching a new product—especially your first—can be incredibly daunting.

It’s easy to get caught up in planning the perfect launch and trying to make a big splash.

What most people get wrong is they focus too much on getting attention for launch day. But people’s attention spans are short, and it’s hard to get them to notice something like a launch.

Rather than try to make a “big splash” with your product launch, focus on gradually building anticipation.

Here’s how to build anticipation for your product launch:

Make a landing page to capture emails

First things first, don’t rely on social media to reach your customers.

A huge mistake people make is not having an email list and a landing page for their product set up well in advance of the launch. As soon as you know you want to launch something, set up a landing page. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just describe what you plan to launch, and tell people to subscribe so they can get notified of the launch. Mention you’ll share the behind-the-scenes process as you go.

ConvertKit makes it super easy to create a landing page:

Click here to create a landing page in ConvertKit. (If you don’t already have a ConvertKit account, just click “Create Account” to make a free account and quickly set up a landing page for your product.)

Whenever you create any new content related to your product (blog post, video, social media post, etc.), link to your product’s landing page so you can capture email addresses for every person interested.

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Share behind the scenes

Just saying the product is coming soon isn’t compelling enough. You need a better way to keep people interested and engaged.

Most people are way more interested in seeing how things are made than they are the finished product. You can use this to your advantage in gaining attention.

A great way to build anticipation is to share behind the scenes as you’re creating the product itself. If it’s a physical product, show prototypes, photoshoots, or designs. If it’s a digital product, share sneak peeks, samples, or teaser videos.

Make your readers feel like they have exclusive insider access to your product’s development.

Teach as you go

Whether this is your first time launching a product or your tenth time, you’re going to learn new things every time.

Rather than keep those insights to yourself, share them! Writing about what you’re learning is also a great way to solidify things for yourself. By sharing what you’re learning, people will be much more invested in what you’re making.

Teaching what you know as you go is a great way to keep people’s attention, because in addition to caring about the product, they’ll also pay attention so they can learn.

Schedule a launch sequence

Throughout the weeks leading up to your launch, you’re teaching what you know, sharing behind the scenes, showing prototypes, designs, and other interesting features.

All of this helps build anticipation for your launch.

Every time you send out an email, mention the launch date of your product. By the time your product becomes available, everyone should know the launch date because you’ve repeated it many times in the weeks leading up.

As you get closer to the launch itself (say, in the final week), transition into a more formal launch sequence. You’re switching from interesting behind-the-scenes content to more practical details about the product, its availability, features, and any packages you may be offering.

If you’re going to have a launch-day discount, mention that in the launch sequence as you near the final days of your campaign.

On the day before launch, send a pitch email with all of the details about your product. This way, people are informed and anticipate the coming launch.

On launch day itself, I like to send an extremely simple announcement email. Most people decided whether or not to buy yesterday. This email can be super short and sweet and basically just say, “It’s here! The product is now available. Click here to check it out.”

Why short and sweet? Two reasons:

  1. Because you’ve been building anticipation for so long, people know most of the details by now because you’ve already shared them.
  2. The goal is to get people to the sales page. The longer your email is, the lower your clickthrough rate will be. By making your launch day email nice and short, you’ll get more people to click through to the sales page.

Finally, if there is ever a time to send multiple emails in a day, it’s on your launch day.

Send your initial launch email in the morning, but then also send an email later in the day. Again, this email can be super simple! If you have a launch-day discount going, simply mention that it’s the last chance to get the launch discount. You will see another spike in sales. If you want to get fancy, you can exclude the people who already bought earlier in the day from receiving this second email.

And…

…that’s it! You can do plenty more for an even more successful launch, but if you cover the basics outlined above, you are most of the way there.


Did you find this helpful? Consider forwarding this email to a friend.

Have a great week!

—Nathan

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