Lessons Learned from a Half Billion Dollars of Product Launches with Jeff Walker - I Love marketing Episode #284

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish. And this is the I love marketing podcast. In this episode, you'll discover the lessons learned from a billion dollars in product launches. Getting more people to want your products, how to generate more sales by providing value and more with Genius Network alumni, Jeff Walker. Jeff is a New York Times best selling author, creator of the product launch formula, and CEO and founder of Internet Alchemy, Inc. A committee that helps entrepreneurs and small business owners create successful product launches recorded live from the Genius Network and annual event. If you would like access to the special resources and show notes for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 284 that's ilovemarketing.com.

284 okay, I am really excited about our next presenter. Who is he? His name is Mr. Jeff Walker. Yeah, the, the Jeff Walker, the creator of the product launch formula. His vast knowledge has led to amazing results. One of Jeff's recent personal launches generated 1.1 million in sales, which is pretty good for a launch, right? Okay, well it's amazing when you hear that was just in the first hour. Okay, that's $18,334aminute. So today you're going to hear Jeff talk about lessons learned from a half billion dollars of product launches. And his recent book launch from a virtual unknown author, at least to the business world, spent two weeks number one on New York Times. So give it up for my good friend Jeff Walker.

Awesome. Thank you. Awesome. Okay, so I will just admit right up front, 10 minutes has got me nervous. I don't do nervous on stage, but here I am. Okay, so let's see what are we at? Let's try this one. Okay. Yeah, the next half billion dollars in launches. So you ever notice when Apple launches a product and people just, you're anticipating that you're excited about that. The market's just talking about it and everyone's just, they're counting down. It's all about anticipation. It's when is that product going to get released? People line up outside the stores, right? This guy, first in line for iPhone 5. Woo hoo. You know, put that on his gravestone, you know. But you these lines outside of the Apple stores. You ever notice how I am an Internet marketer, I sell stuff online. Sometimes servers crash. Well, the iPhone, I think it was the 4. The Apple site crashed. I'm like, okay, if Apple's site can crash, my site can crash. I'm good with that. But what do they do? They do tens, hundreds of millions of dollars immediately, right? Off the bat, from 0 to 100 miles an hour right away. So I've wondered, how can we do that? How can we do that in this room? You know, we don't have those resources. We don't have their branding, we don't have their advertising, we don't have their teams. How can we do that? So for 18 years I've been working on how we can do it, but actually that's bullshit. Because 18 years ago I was a stay at home dad and I was like, I was just desperate to make some kind of money to try to impact my family in some way. So I started publishing. I started publishing online. This is 1996. So back then, my first email went out to everyone I knew with an email address that was like 17 people. But it gradually grew from there and it grew. This platform, okay, I grew this platform. Anyone out here have a platform? You've got an email list, you've got a social media following. Are you guys just not willing to raise your arms or what? Thank you. Okay. So I gradually built up this platform. I did what they now call content marketing. So I published. And then I got to this point, well, maybe I can actually sell something to these people. But I was actually. We have born closers. We got closers in the room. Raise your hand proudly if you're a closer. So we've got some closers, right? You guys know what I'm talking about. You know how to sell. Unfortunately, I'm not one of you. I don't have that sales gene. So I had this little platform that was growing up and I was like, how can I sell something to them? And I was terrified. I was actually terrified to ask for the order. I was terrified to ask for the order. And that actually, that little thing allowed me to invent this process that has made all the difference. Because what I did was I romanced my people, I romanced my followers, and then I asked for the sale. I built relationship first. And even for the closers out there, you all do that, right? You all build relationship. But now in this day and age, we're able to do that in a way we never could before. We have the speed of communication, interactivity that we've never had before. So I tweaked this, and I tweaked this. I did my first launch. Some of you heard the story. That did $1,650. That was enough to make me do backflips. $1,650 changed everything with that first launch. But then I. I got Better. I instantly knew I could get better at it. And I did get better. And I got better. Here's a photo. I put this in a book, but I've never really made this one public. That's actually me. I am at my kitchen table and I'm in a bathrobe. And this was not staged. This is actually when I did a launch. This is the first six figure launch I did. It was $106,000 in a single week. I did, I think like I was sitting there for an hour, you know, we did 28,000 in sales and that was like unbelievable, life changing money for me. So I gradually got better and better and better. And then in 2005 I started teaching it. And my students and clients have now done $500 million in sales. In fact, it's way beyond that. But that's the number I feel safe saying publicly. I've got clients that have done tens and even one that's done 100 million in sales. So what I wanted to share with you is basically what I've learned. And it's funny because I was thinking about, I did just roll out this book. Okay, there it is. In fact, there's a book, it's in all your bags. I bought one for each of you. And we rolled that thing out. And I was talking to Pollock Holligan and he's like, yeah, dude, I think the title of your talk, you should just go up there and say this shit works. Because I came in, I was completely unknown author and boom, it was like up to number one. In fact, what happened was the first week the New York Times decided not to put me on the list even though I had the sales. And so then we doubled down and I had several conversations with my good friend Brendon Bouchard and came up with a strategy how we were going to come back and sell even more the next week. And then we were able to put it up to number one. There's the proofs in the pudding. That was a screenshot. I got to print that one out and put it on the wall. So how do you do this? It all comes down to three things. Sequences, stories and triggers. And so sequences. You can't ever. There's so much noise in the market now that to gather someone's attention, you have to put your material into a sequence that tells your story, then your story. It's almost like what I call the sideways sales letter. We used to have these long form sales letters and they worked really, really well. Now they don't work as well, so I took that 10 page sales letter, I turn it sideways into a 10 day process and now you do very much the same thing you do in a sales letter, but now you do it over a series of pre launch content of value videos. We typically do this now with videos that build over time. And then the triggers are simply things like we all use all the time, authority, reciprocity, scarcity. And in those three videos they allow you to, to deploy those triggers and you build up this anticipation just the way Apple does. And you get this situation where people are like, they cannot wait to buy. They absolutely cannot wait to buy. So you want to know how you want to, you know, this is obviously very, very compressed. What I just gave you. That, that's normally the first two and a half days of my three day event. So do you, anyone want, in three minutes, anyone want to see that sequence for the book? Because the book is a little bit different. So what we did was we had an offer for the book and basically we were selling it for $7. It was actually free with shipping and handling. Okay, so we give the book away for seven bucks. So we're going to put a B here for the book. Someone comes in to buy and they get an instant upsell. Okay, so this is a one time offer, OTO. And this is for $197. I would have liked to say I got 8 or 10% conversion, but we got about a 7% conversion on that. Okay, but at a $200 product, that means that everyone coming in and getting a free book is worth 14 bucks right off the bat. Now the key here, the really important thing is that in doing this, it allows you to incentivize partners to mail for you. Because all of a sudden I can pay commissions and I got to give a shout out. Brendon Burchard is the one. Brendan in 2011, I think bought my product and he's taken it and did really well, but then he morphed it and he came up with this process. So Basically, book for $7 to upsell for $197. And then either way, whether they take the upsell or not, then they go into my PLF product And that's at 1997. And the conversion for there is around 1.7%. You can do the math on that, but it comes out pretty well. But what we do is basically now I've got partners, lots and lots of partners driving into the book, driving traffic into the book, saying, hey, go check out Jeff's book and get it free with shipping and handling for 7 bucks 10 bucks. They'll ship it anywhere in the world. If you're outside the us I'm able to pay partners at commission on this one click upsell and I'm also paying them commission down here. But in any case, that's how I sold 41,000 books in just a couple weeks time frame. That's how we put it on number one in the New York Times bestseller list. So remember, your marketing has to tell a story. Nothing captures people's attention like a story does. Stories win when you deploy that story over a 10 day timeframe and you give three great value videos that define the opportunity, define the journey, define how your prospects lives are going to transform. Then when you land them on your sales video, they don't even need to watch that entire sales video. They are ready to buy.

Thanks for listening to this episode of ilovemarketing.com if you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network Annual event, go to geniusnetworkevents.com that's geniusnetworkevents dot com if you would like access to the special resources and show notes for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 284 that's ilovemarketing.com 284.