Magic Offers: How to Run Strategic Product Launches and Increase Sales (Using This Method That’s Better than Copywriting)
Product launches have been on my mind the last couple of weeks, not just because Lance and I run a 1-hour webinar launch just about every week, but we have recently come off of a "tear" of lots of NEW product launches (as opposed to us running webinars to promote existing ones)...
- Our Product University live event
- Updating our Webinar Crusher course to version 5
- Updating Setup a Fan Page to version 2
- Updating Newbie Crusher to Income Machine
Plus of course re-launching those old classes that we created initially as live webinar courses, then repackaged into home study courses – including a member's dashboard, transcripts, affiliate program, evergreen webinar replay, post-sale autoresponder sequence, all the usual "product" stuff.
And when I see other internet marketers try to do the same for their business, they fail to think and act in strategic terms. They incorrectly focus on the MECHANICS they think they need, like creating a blog post with 2000 Facebook comments. Making 4 pre-launch videos. Creating a report (or whitepaper) about the product they're about to create.
These are things that DON'T make the difference
between a successful and unsuccessful product launch!
Things No One Cares About
- How much time you spent creating your product
- How many pages, megabytes, or minutes of video you have
- A too-big 3 to 5 hour webinar
- A too-long launch sequence of videos that takes 4 weeks
- How great, smart, or rich you are
- Wordplay, hypnotic language, the confusion close
"Tricks" That Get People to Buy (Sometimes)
- Time running out
- Offer closing
- Price increasing
- Limited seats
- Disappearing bonus
- Price (high or low)
What Actually Works
- What they'll know
- What they'll GET and HAVE
- Cost of NOT doing it
- Repeat success or exponential success
- Speed
- Ease of use
- Power and effectiveness
- Hungry crowd
- Compelling magic super-offer that combines logic (and proof) plus emotion
The Answer You've Needed All Along
Here's how to think "strategically" about your product sales and launches.
I keep scouring books, courses, and the internet for something better than WWHW, Eugene Schwartz, and Robert Cialdini but I haven't found it yet.
Basic sales copy tells us to structure a sales argument in this way:
- Attention (promise)
- Interest (problem)
- Desire (solution)
- Action (buy it now)
High school English class told us to structure our writing like this:
- Why (why is this important)
- What (what am I going to discover)
- How-To (how do I do this thing)
- What-If (what are the possibilities once I take this action).
Eugene Schwartz tells us there are five levels of marketplace sophistication: novelty, enlargement, uniqueness, sophistication, and abandonment. But if you think about it, you can combine #3 and #4 so it's just...
- Novelty (something is new to the marketplace)
- Enlargement (bigger claims)
- Sophistication (faster and better)
- Abandonment (too complex and back to the original)
Robert Cialdini tells us there are six social weapons of influence to get what we want. Let's organize this as well...
- You use Authority (why people should listen to you) in the Attention phase of sales copy
- Liking (why you are similar) and Reciprocity (I'll give you something, like free information, now you owe me in return) introducing a Problem
- Desire, which is where we explain our solution, uses Consistency (get people to agree with you every step of the way), and Social Proof (how have others used it)
- In the final phase, Action, where we want people to buy, we use Scarcity the most (buy this now or else something bad will happen).
AIDA, WWHW, Eugene Schwartz, Robert Cialdini,
all just different ways of saying the same thing.
What's a "Strategic" Product Launch?
It's where your email sequence, videos, sales letter, pitch webinar, everything all matches up to a consistent message and MOST people think they have to flood the marketplace with information, list 53 different components potential buyers need to have. Nope, you just need to walk them through the FOUR STEPS.
The only way I've found to do it, that works every time, is to list out the ALTERNATIVES people might take (but you make fun of them) so that the only logical and emotional course of action is to buy from you.
Let's take our Webinar Crusher product for example...
Alternative #1: Don't run webinars. Alternative #2: Run webinars from free services. Alternative #3: Run evergreen webinars.
Alternative #4: Run webinars using our Webinar Crusher system.
At each point along the way we make fun of each alternative and point out its disadvantages to the extreme. There actually is a method to this madness:
- Alternative #1: Not Doing It ("Novelty" or "Attention” or "Why Is It Important")
- Alternative #2: The "Too-Big" Solution ("Enlargement" or "Interest" or "What Do I Do")
- Alternative #3: The "Too-Complex" Solution ("Sophistication" or "Desire" or "How Do I Do It")
- Alternative #4: Your Solution ("Abandonment" or "Action" or "What-If I Use Your Solution")
Just by listing these four things, we've structured most of our sales letter, the webinar pitch, the email launch sequence, everything. We didn't brain-dump a laundry list of alternatives that sent people elsewhere. We didn't jump in with our solution right off the bat. We've LOGICALLY listed out the possible avenues while EMOTIONALLY exhausting people with the pain and frustration of those other guys without specifically calling them out.
Too many times, I see people in an uninteresting niche, with a boring product and offer, or the wrong positioning, just trying to make it work. For some reason they think that more traffic, more subscribers, more affiliates will help... a slick sales pitch, fancy videos, or amazing sales letter graphics will help. They won't.
What will help? Having the right offer, in front of the right crowd, and presenting it in this (4-step) process.
Please comment below: Do you think that 4-step sequence will make it easier for you to come up with sales copy, webinar presentations, email sequences, and more?
Filed in: Archive 1: 2012-2016 • Copywriting • Product Creation • Product Launches
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Your no-nonsense, only 4 steps makes infinitely more sense, Robert. I think that’s what had been holding me back from rewriting my sales letters and redoing sales pages — the overwhelming thought of having to find a gazillion ways (rather than an easy FOUR steps) to convince someone to buy from me vs. the competition. Your simple solution takes the agony and the stress out of the job at hand. That reduces the need for procrastination. Thank you!!
Hey Robert,
Your explanation above, with the 4 step sequence, has taken me back to a previous life…a time when I was a new car salesman (and occasionally a used one). Thank You for reminding of the simplicity of the sales pitch I used then, and the complication of the sales pitch I’ve tried to use in the recent past.
It’s back to a simple 4 step approach and an immediate stop to over-complicating things, both on the screen and in my mind! Simplicity helped me earn a good living then, I’m sure it can do the same now, and as they say, “nothing happens until a sale is made.”
Roger
Robert, I can testify that this approach works!
Using your guidance, as laid out in my Webinar Crusher training, I was able to launch not 1, but 2 new products successfully. The key point for me was the realization that “pretty good” beats “perfect” every time, because “perfect” never gets done.
Even better, using the sales page template that you provide in Paper Template made all my copywriting worries disappear. I just followed your layout and changed the language for my product and market. In minutes I had a functional and complete sales page.
Bam! I was done in no time. I even created a new sales page and launched another new product in less than a week right after attending Product University Live in SLC.
That’s the beauty of this approach…it’s quick, it’s consistent, and it works. Paint-by-numbers simple. Thanks.
Howard
Wow, I am thoroughly impressed with the information provided in this blog post. It makes total sense when you break down the 4 steps. As a new person or a person who has been online for awhile but hasn’t made any money, I see the value of what you just shared. There are so many people online telling you so many things. It’s hard for a new person to know who is telling you useful information or selling you a bag of useless goods. With the 4 step process, you have shown that people can leave the frustration of not knowing what to do next and have a plan in place.This 4 step strategy makes it easier to follow when you know the “whys” of how things go together. Like a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces are coming together. Thank you!!
Robert, what you just presented makes this seemingly difficult thing that blocks most of us into something simple, because you used this process to explain it, This makes it So Clear. What else can anybody say, Your a Great Teacher because You Care about what You Do and that makes the Real Success.
Thank You for sharing
Tom Allen
The best approach that I have found to always work is to step back put yourself into someone else’s shoes and think… Think as if you were them and what you need today, right now to make money, but not just for today the day after and the day after that as well. And just when you THINK you may have figured it all out you must continue on that path to re invent and rediscover what is the logical next step in the same process…
Spot on Robert,
Thanks for sharing your valuable thoughts and techniques as always! Why get lectured on product launch strategy and not on on tips, techniques, and tactics like everybody else? From someone who has won product launch battles and never ran away from them should be a good enough reason for this reading audience. All too often, we get stuck in trees or runway versus the 10,000 foot level, i.e. Current Projects. We get confused with “busyness” and not the right business activity.
Beneath “What Works” and “The 4 Steps” you’ve so accurately described is the underlying principle that the target audience really doesn’t care what you know or done but they want to know how much you care.
Yes the 4 step sequence works out to be a beautiful strategy and road map. If you don’t have time for strategy, you don’t time to build a big business with “raise your hand” rabid buyers. Simple as that.
Seize the Day,
Myles
Robert..
…one thing is for sure – your description of “What Works” hardly can be placed in a separate area than good copywriting.
As a matter of fact, all the things described above (your post and your ‘come to blog’ email included, even) are nothing else that the measure of your copywriting worth, so to speak.
You ARE good, man… indeed 🙂
I have a secret technique that I always use in my copy, that resembles, in a way, your chosen ‘4 alternatives’ version.
I call mine “The limping duck technique”.
Now, I must go back to my blog and write a post about it – you made my writer juices boil, lol
Cheers,
~Steve
I like the way the courses unfold with purpose right from the get go to the finish. Module by module we build up to the results in a way I would never have thought so easy!
Key to this is the insight you share from real experience not theory. What works and works well is why your courses are so effective.
It’s said success breeds success. You’re the proof.
Robert,
Your 4 step process breaks down in simple terms things that maybe seems so complex is actually very simple and easy to use. I am sure many including myself make things more complex because we think in terms what we believe will bring in customers when in fact your 4 step process actually simplifies and help target what the customers actually want to know!
Thank you for sharing an informative post, and a reminder for many including myself what to do for our next launch.
I just fired all the brothers because of you. Now Andy, Jeff and Frank will all go hungry 🙁
SIR ,
I REQUIRE MORE INFORMATION
THANKS ,
REGARDS ,
R S CHOPRA
JUNE 22,2013
Simply amazing…you’ve done it again, Robert – made a subject / task / project that was causing me to rip out my hair and made it VERY simple and easy to do.
I’m working on the launch of a coaching program for weight loss surgery patients – something I haven’t seen a LOT of in the marketplace, but there IS a need for it. Most people have depended on their surgeon and medical team, but there’s a big gap in dealing with the physical and dealing with the mental and emotional sides of this subject.
Your four-step approach makes it a LOT easier for me to plan the language and method I’ll use for my launch!
Alternative #1: Not Doing It (“Novelty” or “Attention” or “Why Is It Important”)
Alternative #2: The “Too-Big” Solution (“Enlargement” or “Interest” or “What Do I Do”)
Alternative #3: The “Too-Complex” Solution (“Sophistication” or “Desire” or “How Do I Do It”)
Alternative #4: Your Solution (“Abandonment” or “Action” or “What-If I Use Your Solution”)
These four steps will get me off the dime, so to speak. I was struggling with how to frame my offering to make it simple and easy to understand…a way that would make it easier for me to stand out with potential clients. This is IT!
Thanks a ton – off to work on my launch materials!
Hi Robert,
Let’s face it. People buy on emotion and justify it with facts. What you’ve provided is a great template for any sales. Drive home the benefits and answer the objections before they are voiced by the client. Back it all up with a FEW facts to justify their decision and tell them how to take action.
Your statement, “We’ve LOGICALLY listed out the possible avenues while EMOTIONALLY exhausting people with the pain and frustration of those other guys without specifically calling them out.” is what I have a problem with.
I don’t like to feel exhausted. That’s how I feel after most webinars. Most pitch webinars could be done in 30 minutes or less. it shouldn’t be necessary to take more than that to do all 4 points adequately.
It’s kind of the same with the 10 minute wrapup of “here’s the value of all the stuff but you won’t pay $997, or $497 or $97 or …” By that point I’m turned off and exhausted. Just tell me how much it is. Everyone realizes the “value” numbers are only what the person pitching claims it to be. The real value is what the buyer says it is.
All this to say, you’ve got a great summary of how to sell. I’d just add, keep it short and sweet.
Robert,
Thank you so much for the enlightening post. Your 4 step method is clear, concise and easy to implement. A true blessing when one is attempting to write sales copy.
As you know, whether you get 5 or 50,000 people to take a look at your product you won’t make a dime until someone buys it.
Your approach provides the missing link that drives sales instead of looky-loo traffic, enuff said. Time to go implement your fantastic approach now.
Thanks again.
That is a pretty succinct 4-step process to convert leads and generate sales. Most people over think things and try to make things too complicated. Very well presented and thought provoking! Thank you for sharing.
The beginning of the blog post title “Magic Offers” is a little misleading as the post is more about selling your offer than the offer itself.
But I can see how the offer selling should affect the offer terms. As you tear down competing alternatives you must make sure your offer sufficiently contrasts when its time to present yourself. If you can’t do that you need to go back and revise the product itself.
As usual another good amount of useful information. I used your ideas when I launched Six Figure Cash Practice and it helped greatly. When I launch it as a stand alone self study I will focus on why they should do it, what they will get, how to do it FAST, and why it is different and easier than any other practice builder. I may even buy them you Set up a Fan Page as no one else is doing this!
Thanks again for your help!
Dr Will horton
So Awesome Robert!
OMG how i wish you had wrote this 6 months ago and I had read it!!
It would you saved myself and my clients tons of worrying, crying, staying up SO late, trial and error-ing, changing copy and video over and over, and SO many other things we did.
It’s such a simple straight forward approach. Why didn’t I think of that! Whoops…I could have had a V8! LOL
Touching the emotions of prospects is really where it is at, right? People buy from whom they like and trust, BUT they have to hear the right words 1st to make them think..YES i do NEED that. I can’t live without it one more day!
Thank you again Robert for giving me some juicy emotionally charged words that I will finally make money!
Enjoy your day and make it great!
~Annette
Hi Robert, great post. You cover every aspect regarding a launch which was very helpful for the reader. I agree with you, you must keep your marketing approach as simple as possible. I like the way in you four step approach you exhaust the reader with negatives and finally the only alternative is your solution. Making the negative funny is an excellent approach too.
Keep up the fine work you do,
Gerry
Very well put. I think a fresh approach is exactly what is needed since we’ve all been told the first scenarios and we also know they don’t work very well. Explaining the benefit to readers in pain is a soothing balm that makes their clicker finger tremble over the yes button.
I’ve been rewriting my copy from this perspective and it’s definitely helping.
Robert, I find templates and blueprints effective and efficient, if effectively implemented. You have touched on a concept supported by Sam Carpenter in his book “Work the System”. Four steps is perfect, and your approach of comparing and contrasting, as well as taking no action as an option is excellent!
Hi Robert,
The four step sequence does make it easier in a number of ways.
Here’s the 4 benefits that it satisfies:
– consistent
– convenient
– helpful
– simple
Keeping it to four things make it a simple process that can ge repeated over and over again for different product launches.
It allows you to have different reason why’s for your email that grabs attention and make it convenient for the end user by keeping it short.
The webinars allows you to target the four alternatives which provides helpful value to the audience before closing the sale.
Thank you for this blog post. It was very helpful and actionable.
Sylvie
Hey Robert,
I agree that the 4 steps are a great way to get started. The important thing that you teach and I agree with is to get it online, then go back and perfect it. There are more in depth strategies to sell big ticket items of course but KISS is great advice.
I also suggest to create a pdf printable version of your sales page (requires tweaking with word to get it to look right) as some people like to download for later viewing/printing. I use the sales page to create my follow up emails.
Once I have the sales page printed, I cross out each sentence after I have transferred it to the autoresponder. (TIP: Cut-n-paste from the original sales page that you leave open in the browser to save retyping!!).
Sometimes it is easier to create your sales page first before you create your product – because you are describing exactly what you want.
This is much like FreeMind that you suggest to use in your membership cube training, except a sales page first will help you if you haven’t got a clue what you want to teach people right now.
You can always go back and perfect it later, which is great advice that you give.
put simply… it works…
I would have to start my comment off by first saying wow. This post was actually right on time because I am in the middle of putting together a squeeze page with a video. I am still going over what I want to say and it has been seeming like it was missing a sales strategy. I have been comparing mine with others and I could not tell what I was missing. But this post made it clear to me that the four steps, actually adding the emotion to it most importantly, kind of in my opinion makes the buyer feel singled out and as if it was fate that they found your product. I am definitely going to revise my shit. Thanks a lot. This post boosted my confidence .
So Robert, you basically make it like a review page making you product or service the best, or am I missing something?
Thanks, Robert! I’m creating a marketing plan based on your 4-Step process. Thank you for sharing this with us!
I’m sure a blueprint is helpful, but finding a niche and knowing whether or not its a good one is more important to me at first. Once I have that part down, then a launch formula would be helpful.
Creating a sales page and launch formula is one of the biggest challenges for many business owners, especially people who are so great at what they do but not so great at marketing and writing copy and sales pages and all that jazz!
Having a simple 4 step blue-print is absolutely the way to go – takes away overwhelm and confusion and can help stop the paralysis in analysis for people that think they have to follow a myriad of confusing psychological, written and jargonisticalised features and stories of why someone should buy their product or service.
K.I.S.S. with a simple 4 step formula is going to help so many people jump over those stumbling blocks, clear the clutter and confusion and take action to get real results!
Remembering the emotion that your potential purchaser/client is feeling and wants to feel is absolutely a TOP tip for everyone – we don’t buy on logic we buy on feelings and logic kicks in after our feelings so thanks for a great post with these tips for everyone Robert
I have learned to get on a webinar early and then just mute. I come back at 15 minute intervals to make sure I do not have to listen to the “who I am and what i have done”. The presence is all we got – so tell me or better yet show me what works today. Google has taught me that we can not count on the future to be working the same way as today. Shame on you if you have not done your homework on the rep giving the presentation. If you are afraid you may miss something – get a program like camtasia and record so you can watch anything you missed as you cannot always rely on replays coming out.
I also tune out for all that hype of not $997 nor $597 …but just ……. Please cut to the chase. Also please leave all that only 8 copies left at home. Anyway that is just me and my thoughts on the long webinars…put all wordiness into the training videos.
Time is money so use webinars but don’t waist my time. just cut to the chase….
Robert, I feel another book coming on! This is a brilliant synopsis of classic sales and persuasion literature – put into simple actionable terms. Once someone has experienced several of your webinars with this blueprint in hand, they will find it easier to turn around and apply it to their products.
As others have said – it works! Thank you for sharing in such detail, in writing, exactly what you do – and what you are thinking behind the process.
Robert,
I must say that all the things that you run are very informative and the products you produce are of greater value more than 20 times then you sell them for. They have been of great value to me. As they are written very well and very well organized.
The Way you produce and create are super clear and make it easy for everyone to understand. This makes it so much easier for people they do not have to read into things. I Your webinars really are very interesting and in line with the projects. Thank You for all the ways you show us how to be so successful
Robert this is, IMHO, your BEST blog post ever. Seriously. And the comments are outstanding, too.
Now. . . what I’d love next is a tutorial on how you make all this happen! Would you please?
Thanks.
It all comes back to one thing.
That is the math of today’s smart marketing
I have 4 choices.
You know more about this than I do .
I like you.
I trust you.
Please handle it.
You have demonstrated this without having to say it.
Bravo.
Kyle
I found this article well written and an easy read. The guidance was useful and I was able to put it into the actionable results. That is what it is all about isn’t it? Information to make things better, smoother, more results? You delivered on this and more. Thank you for your approach and guidance, I look forward to future endeavors and how we can possibly work together.
Robert, I have been a fan of your for a while. In fact, my website is probably one of the best examples of your PHP teachings because I implemented many of your coding suggestions. The technique you present seems to correlate well with to proven strategies to prove things. The first is writing the positive and negatives of a thing on two sides of a piece of paper and showing that there are more positives than negatives. The second is the mathematical method of proof by contradiction, where on would in proving something, assuming that the opposite of what you are proving is true, then showing that assuming that the opposite is true leads to a contradiction, so that what you are proving MUST be true.
Thanks Robert for this useful post!
I love simplicity of sales letters, honest and truthful facts and I enjoy quality products – and that’s something I’m used to get from you 🙂
Marian
Thanks Robert, for an excellent blog post.
The fact that you share this information on a free blog post may take away from people realizing just how significant this information is.
In classic fashion, you are giving more value than many people do in paid courses.
I’m printing this blog post to use as a checklist for future promotions.
Thank you!
Kenny
Comment # 2 has my vote. And the blog post was just Super as always. You guys have a way of making the seemingly complicated issues bloom into a brilliant array of stone simply easy to follow facts.
I was in a class for about a year it was supposed to teach online marketing. I learned more in the first 3 months of association with you guys.
Stay true.
Benson
Robert you’ve taken a complex subject and made it stupid-simple! I love you’re teaching style and your methods to approaching online marketing. I’ve been following you since the early days when you were selling php scripts from your blog till today and have witnessed firsthand the methods you are now teaching and that they do indeed work! God Bless!
Over complication has always been of many would be marketers. Why? Because everyone believes that they must make their copy more impressive than the majority that is out there. At one time this was a true factor, but over the years analysis has discovered that a simple sales copy can have a much better chance of a purchase by the viewer. The four structures that you portray, is simple and effective. The viewing public is no longer bombarded and confused to the point of feeling that he/she is incapable of making a decision and the product becomes an element that they feel can be used by them without the complications of needing a degree in geek speak.
It’s very interesting & it’s time I got started on my site.
Thank you for the info & the support