MBA2324 How To Plan a Successful MVP Launch + Free Ride Friday

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $1 business lessons delivered on a silver platter to help you build a better business. 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 back in 2014 and today is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away the $100 MBA. If you want to win a free ride, go ahead and leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw we call Freeride Friday. Listen in on Friday, just like today to see if you won. We announce week's winner a little bit later in the episode. In today's episode you will learn how to plan a successful MVP launch. An MVP launch is the first version of a product or service, the minimal viable product. An MVP launch is a little bit different than launching something that is a little bit more established, a new feature, a well established course or training program, something that had many versions before and you're launching anew. So planning an MVP launch is more than slightly different. It's actually quite different. You want to take certain steps to make sure it's successful, but also to get feedback to improve it quickly. As the launch is in progress, listen I get it. You are excited about your new product, your new offering, and you are actually really looking forward to making some money with it. And we'll get to that. We'll make sure you have a plan for that. But you also don't want to fall flat on your face. You want to make sure that your reputation is intact so that you can lean on that reputation to get more sales. I'm going to walk you through each step of the process so you know when to do it and how to do it so that when you release that MVP product or service, it's a success. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. The main difference between a MVP launch, a launch for an MVP product or service, and a regular launch of an established product is that you are not totally sure without a shadow of a doubt that your product is being perfect for your audience, that you have exact product market fit. Or maybe you're not sure that the product is going to perform as expected. This could be because of a technical reason, like it's a piece of software and you not sure that it's perfect because you really haven't had a lot of people using it yet. Maybe you beta tested it and you know, maybe 5, 10, 20 people tried it before, but not hundreds where they can discover bugs and issues. Same thing goes with a physical product or maybe even a course or training. You don't have enough critical mass feedback to have the confidence that, yep, my product is ready for the primetime, meaning it's ready for you to invest lots of money in advertising to build partnerships and affiliate launch partners. You don't want to use these resources on a product. You're not sure 100% that these resources won't be wasted on a product that maybe doesn't convert at the highest level. We want to spend our money on marketing and ads and partnerships and all that kind of stuff for a huge blowout launch when we know the product is solid and as soon as people discover it, they're going to buy it. So let's assume that you have a product that is ready for people to buy. It's an MVP version of the product. It's not perfect, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but it's good enough to sell. Before you start building a website or a landing page and start making a whole lot of hoopla, you're gonna just write an email. You're gonna write what you would write on a sales page on an email and sell it to your existing list, to your existing customers to see what their feedback is. You could see this as sort of like a beta launch where you can give them a special offer just to get bodies in the door, metaphorically speaking, and feedback so that you can improve the product before you go to the next stage. Now the whole point of an MVP launch is that you want to give it to people. You want people to part ways with their money so they can value the product, but they also need to give you feedback so that you can then improve the product quickly. So one of the stipulations of this special offer should be a 5 minute call or a 10 minute call or filling out a survey or a feedback form. And most people will do good on that promise. So even if you only get a handful of customers, this is a start. You're getting some feedback, you're getting some language, you're understanding what they like, what they don't like about the product, what would they love to have where they're getting stuck, all kinds of stuff like that. So you're just going to launch to your email list at the beginning, no website, no nothing, just via email. And then you can send them a payment link or an invoice or whatever so they can have access to the product. Don't overcomplicate it. Think of the simplest way to deliver this product or service to them in exchange for money. Next. Once you're past this phase, you got feedback, you're gonna go and iterate your product, improve that product with the feedback you got. And by the way, in the first step, when you're emailing your list, you don't have to email the whole list. It could be a segment of your list, your most active customers, your most valuable customers. Your job here is just to get some feedback. You don't need a hundred people buying it, you need five to ten. Maybe. The next step is then you're gonna build a page on your website that explains your offer, explains your product or service. Now remember, it's improved. Now you've got feedback, you've improved upon that feedback or using that feedback to make your product better in your service, even more stellar. And now you got this page on your website. This page doesn't need to be a major page or on your navigation, it can even be a hidden page. Now we're gonna email our entire list, maybe our non buyers list. And if you're feeling adventurous, you can start running some retargeting ads so that anybody who's been on your website can see this page or an advertisement about this product. On social media, this is very low hanging fruit, very cheap to run retargeting ads and you can put a budget of $5 a day. And this is a chance for you to see if this sells based on the pain that your product is solving that is being described on that page on your website. Remember, when you're doing these steps, you're learning not only about how to improve the product, but how to improve the process of selling this product. The sales copy, the video, the offering, the price point, all kinds of stu this as an experiment. You're seeing this as you're like a scientist in a lab and you're trying all these different things to improve the actual whole offering. By the way, I just went through this the last year. I went through all these steps and more with our sister product course Ninja over at coursesinja Co. Allowing our creators and coaches to run live courses and coaching with our product. And this might sound like a slow process, but it's actually worth it because you're learning a lot and you're earning a lot. You're actually earning every step of the way and seeing what works and what doesn't. Now you're not making, you know, maybe boatloads of money with every launch, every little launch, but you're making some money and learning what people are willing to pay for your offer every step of the way. I'm, I was experimenting with price, I was experimenting with what's included in each package so that I can learn what people are happy to pay for for the value I offer. So we're on step two now. They've gone to a page on my website, whether through retargeting or through my email list and they have bought my mvp. My second version of my MVP product, the third version is now going to be to the public, right where we're going to put it on the main page of our website, our homepage. We're going to advertise, it's going to be in the navigation, but we're not going to go out gangbusters. We're not going to go and just like say hey world, everybody buy this. We're going to not going to drop tons of money on advertising. We're not going to do a product hunt launch right now. Remember, this is still an MVP product. It's not maybe highly competitive with every product that has been out there for years, but it solves a problem, solves an issue and it does it in a unique way. Let's do this properly. And that leads us to step three, Gas Snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

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Step three is all about again putting it publicly on your website. Now you're gonna attract people that have never heard about you and they're gonna see this on your homepage. Now, we're not gonna make a big deal about it. We're not gonna spend a lot of money, we're not gonna do product hunt like I mentioned or announcements or JV partners or anything like that. We're actually gonna just quietly put it on our website. No announcements. Just make it simple for people who visit our website to find this new product or service, whether it's our navigation or our homepage or some sort of hello banner or whatever it might. Why? Because now that the product's out in the world on our main website, on our main checkout process, we want to test the whole process. We want to quietly do this so that we get some three or four or five or 10 customers organically and get their feedback in this process. In this step, I like to install a software called Hotjar. Hotjar is something that you can put on and off your website, but basically it tracks how your customer navigates through your website. Where they get stuck, where they click, where they don't click, how long they stay on each page. This basically gives you an idea of the customer's journey through the purchase so that you can make some improvements along the way. Maybe your checkout process needs to be shorter, maybe it needs to be a little bit easier. Maybe there needs to be some help text because people understand what this field means that they need to fill out, to check out. These are all kinds of things you're going to learn with Hotjar. And you don't need to use it all the time. You can just, like, sign up for a month and then shut it off after that. So only use it when you need it. So in this quiet little launch you're doing here, you're just learning about how strangers who never heard about you before, who've never been on your website, navigate through buying this product. So now it's more about the buying process rather than the product itself. You've already got a lot of feedback about the product. You improved it a couple times, and you've kind of done this on the low key so that you can learn about how they purchase the product. Because how they buy the product is just as important as the product itself. You want to make sure the experience is. Is brilliant. I like to do about two weeks of this, and then after that, I'm confident that everything's working properly. The delivery of the product is good. People are enjoying the product. They're able to buy the product with ease. And there's no friction, there's no issues. I'm receiving the money in the payment processor and everything is working properly. Now I can start to plan how do I want to launch big? Do I want to do a product hunt feature? Do I want to get some JV partners and get people excited and get people promoting me? Do I want to go down the affiliate route? Do I want to do some PR and some social media and some podcasts? One of the things I like to do when I launch a new product is I like to guest on other podcasts. I have one stipulation, though. This is my little signature move, is that they publish the podcast on a particular day, which is usually the launch date, the large launch date that I'm doing. That way, all the podcasts are publishing my episodes. So let's say like 15 podcasts are featuring me on the same day. Makes you feel like that I'm everywhere that day. And all of a sudden, this launch becomes quite large. I'm using all my momentum on that day so that the launch gets a lot of momentum. And you could do the same thing with guest posting. You do the same thing with YouTube videos that are mentioning you or featuring you or reviews of your product. Now you have time to plan to do this properly and launch big and invest, knowing that you have perfected not only the product, but also the process of purchasing the purchasing the product, as well as marketing the product, getting people to understand what the product's values are on your pages, all kinds of things like that You've done your due diligence. You're ready now to invest the big bucks and the time and the relationships to make the launch huge. Well, there you have it. That's what I recommend when it comes to launching an MVP product. Those steps, being meticulous, learning each step of the way, reiterating, improving, and having the confidence at the end to say, yep, now I know when I put down my money, it's going to convert because I've tested every step of the way. That wraps up today's lesson. But today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is. Philip Klayman. Philip Klayman says quick quality content 5 stars. This podcast is quick quality content. Other podcasts I listen to our thoughts or theories on business. Omar cuts through the fluff and gets to the meat. Thanks, Philip, for the great review. Your mission is to email me over at Omar at 100 MBA net so I can hook you up with a lifetime membership to the $100 MBA program, our program that teaches you the six essentials to becoming a better entrepreneur. 100% guaranteed. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating interview and you enter our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you love what you hear, hit, subscribe, hit follow on your favorite podcast app so you never miss a beat. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Sometimes you got to be patient in business. Sometimes you want to rush and you want to put it out there and you want to make some money and make it huge. But you're going to have a better result when you sharpen twice and cut once. Use the fact that you can take this in steps and make a little bit of money here, a little bit of money there as you improve and perfect the product so that when you do launch and you go out to the masses and to the public, you have the best version possible in this moment in time of your mvp. So that way people are like, hey, you gotta check this out. This is actually a product that's well thought out. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With usaa, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply.