MBA2161 How Important Are Launches?

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 show. Because a better business begins with you, that's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and in today's episode you'll learn how important are launches? I've launched over a dozen different products and services over the last 20 years of my entrepreneurial career and today we're going to talk about how how much importance do you need to put on launch day, the day that you announce your new product or service and make it available to the world? How do you make launch day successful? What is a successful launch and what are some alternatives that you may have not thought of when it comes to launching your product or service? The timing of this episode is perfect because we're in the middle of launching a new product ourselves, something that we've been working on for a very long time and we're doing it a little bit differently this time around. I'll share with you some of the details as well as what I recommend when it comes comes to your launch. If it's your first launch or your fifth launch, depending on what kind of product or service you're offering. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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When I started out in entrepreneurship a little over 20 years ago, I put a lot of importance and a lot of pressure on myself when it came to launches. I felt if the launch didn't go well, there's a very good chance the whole business or product is not going to do well. Now I'm here to tell you that simply isn't true. But it doesn't mean launches are not important, that they're a moment in time that you need to capitalize on. It's a chance for you. It's an opportunity for you to celebrate and make a big deal about what you have to offer. A launch gives you a lot of slack, meaning that it gives you a lot of leeway to market. If you're launching something big, something new, your email list is not going to mind hearing from you more than once about it. So you want to take advantage of the fact that you have this permission, so to speak. But at the same time, you need to set clear goals when it comes to your launch so you know what winning looks like. This is important because if you don't set a goal, then you don't know if you are successful or not, and you don't know what your next steps are. Listen, anybody can launch a new product, but not everybody can have longevity with their business. This is our goal. We're trying to make sure that this product that we're about to launch, that we're introducing to the world is here for the long run. Your launch is just the beginning. But let me give you some examples of what a launch goal might Typically people say, well, I want to sell 100 memberships, or I want to sell 100 units, or I need to have 500 sales, or I need to make $20,000 or whatever those goals are. People set these monetary or sales goals. But I'm here to tell you that it could be something different. It doesn't have to be about my money. It doesn't have to be about sales. I've had those goals in the past. They're good and fine. But I'm here to tell you that you can set some pretty sophisticated goals to help you actually have a better product and a better future. Previously, when I launched a new product, I had very interesting goal of saying I'm using this launch to improve my offering and pricing. Meaning I'm using the launch to test pricing and what people are willing to pay for my product or service. That means during the launch I was seeing how many people are buying at certain price points at different packages, at different tiers. I would increase the price over time. I would ask for feedback. I would interview customers to hear about why they bought the product and why they bought it at that price or that package. And the reason why is because my goal was at the end of the launch, I want to be able to have a better refined pricing strategy for this product. Why is this an actual goal that is helpful? Well, one, when the launch is over, when launch period is over, you have a lot of great data because of this goal to actually make more money with your product, because you're maximizing your pricing, right? You're making sure that you're utilizing the data that you've gathered to have more total revenue. Number two, there's a lot in your control, right? Setting a goal like let's have 500 sales and getting 420 can be disappointing. And a lot of things that come with those sales targets are out of your control. But gathering data, learning about your pricing, testing things, you can have a lot of control over that. And you don't need a lot of customers. And to get that result, and ultimately in the long run, you probably are going to make more money from that learning. And that was my experience when I used this as a goal for my launch. Many people run offers and deals and discounts and make a big deal out of their launch, maybe even lifetime deals. And they're trying to get as many customers as possible. Now that's good and all, especially if you're starting a brand new business that has no customer base because you want more customers to get more feedback. And I'm not opposed to that. But if you have an existing business and this is a new product in the business, you might want to take things a little slowly so that you can refine the product before you make a big deal out of it. And this is what we're doing with our new product, Course Ninja. Course Ninja is a product that we've been working on for a little bit over 18 months. It's an all in one live platform to help you create and run live courses and coaching. And it's under the Webinar Ninja brand. And right now we're actually in our pre launch phase where we have given beta access to our beta users. And these are current users of Webinar Ninja. These are people that are already paying for our service. It's not for sale for people outside of our ecosystem or our user base. Why? Because our goal for this launch is to learn what we should build in the next year, what our roadmap looks like. And the reason why we did it this way is because we wanted to get coursing you out as soon as possible, put out an MVP sort of product and allow people to use it, create courses, make money and give us feedback. So our ultimate goal for this launch is not sales, it's not revenue, it's for us to map out our next 12 months on our roadmap. If by the end of this launch we get that we have succeeded and we're pretty confident we can do that given we have a good amount of customers in our wait list that are ready to use it, that are ready to give us feedback and we have a system to organize that feedback so that we have a roadmap built. So we're taking this kind of in stages. So we have this pre launch, we're giving beta access to our users, we learn, we build a roadmap, we may refine it a little bit and then we're going to quietly again launch it again online and then we're going to do maybe a little bit of a louder launch on product hunt and on social media. So this is very much a different launch than what we've done in the past, which were a lot more louder, more public and frankly a lot more sales and sales driven. And it was for good reason because it was a new product under a new brand and we wanted to get established and have brand recognition. But we have established that already and that is not as important for us as it is to have a solid product roadmap. So you need to find what kind of goal do you want to set? What is that goal? Get very clear about what the outcome looks like for your launch. Launches are important, but they don't need to be based on sales. They're important for your business. So you know that you have long, if you're launching with the hopes of seeing if this thing's going to work and if it's a viable business, you're doing it wrong. Okay? That's way too late. You should have validated the business idea like we talked about before in earlier episodes, even before you've built it, okay. To make sure that it's actually a product or service people want. I do think a large and loud and highly marketed launch for a new business is important because you do need brand awareness. You need to get that word out and you need to kind of capitalize on the moment that something's new to market. But most businesses that are launching new products or services already have existing products or services, so this is not really the case. And they don't need a really loud launch. They can focus on something else that can help them have more longevity.

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To wrap up today's lesson, don't get me wrong, I love a good launch. I love telling the world about what we've worked on. I love marketing it and creating videos and marketing materials and webinars about it. But without a goal, it's hard for you to be strategic about this launch and to work towards that goal. Even with my launch that's coming up and it has many stages, I am looking forward to doing all that marketing and having a little bit of fun. But I understand that that is not what makes the launch successful. What makes a launch successful is great product market fit that allows you to have word of mouth marketing. Luckily I know I have good product market fit from my previous products and talking to my customers. But there's going to be people that don't know about your product and they're a good fit for you. And that really is what we're trying to do with the launch is say, hey, you've been looking for this, I got it for you. This is the solution to the problem that you have. And even if that shift results into them signing up for a free plan or free trial, that's a win. You made a connection, you've captured the lead and another potential person that can share your message with others. Lastly, you've worked hard on this product or service. Make sure you celebrate with your team, not just externally with promotions, but internally. Take a moment in your next standup and cheers each other. Give them a round of applause, allow them to take a bow and to say thank you to each other for the hard work it took to make it happen. Now that it's out in the world, we gotta grow it, we gotta maintain it, we gotta serve those customers. This is where the real work begins. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. Hope today's episode helped. If you loved it, leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. You could do that right now. I'll wait. If you want to share the show with others, just send them over to 100mba.net our website. There'll be some clear buttons for them to click and subscribe to the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. When you do plan your launches, give yourself time to plan it correctly. Plan way in advance. Give yourself months to work on the marketing materials and emails, promotions and all that stuff. There's a lot involved, so don't put yourself under unnecessary pressure by giving yourself not enough time. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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