Product Launch Archives - Domino Connection

By Karl Staib

Creating Your Domino Marketing Effect in Your Next Marketing Campaign

Every project you work on has a sequence tied to it. Whether you are creating a new product or simply writing a blog post, you have to have a system that works with some creative ways of letting people know about your endeavor. If you don’t, the results will fall short of your expectations.

In terms of marketing your product or project, there are soft marketing campaigns and big marketing campaigns.

Soft campaigns are usually for people who want to test out their idea before they go full tilt on it. They can dip their toe in the water, gauge the reaction, and tweak it if it doesn’t get the response that they’ve hoped for.

A big campaign is going all out on your marketing efforts to see how much buzz you can generate. When people think of a big launch, many people think on the scale of movie ads with the actors appearing on talk shows to promote the movie and trailers constantly airing on TV. This is true but only one kind of a big campaign. Any company can utilize a big campaign and generate buzz if they apply the right strategy within the right community.

You have to find a community that appreciates the values that you bring to the table, your conversation and where you can build their trust. This could be LinkedIn, Twitter or maybe a smaller community like a forum where you can engage and impress.

Now not all buzz is created equal.

It’s great to have 100,000 likes on Facebook, but if it doesn’t create what we call a Domino Marketing Effect where people are buying from you and telling others about your business, you won’t see a jump in sales. And if your sales don’t increase, then all your hard work was for naught.

That’s why it’s important to have all the right pieces in place so when you are ready to launch your next marketing campaign to the world, each piece tips into the next piece and continue until you create your desired effect. To do this, you’ve got to start somewhere. The best place to start is to create an event that generates excitement, engages and earns their trust. Actually, both soft and big launches need to use these three elements.

Before we dive into the elements of creating a domino marketing effect, every business must first ask themselves the question “is our product and service worth sharing?”. Look at your USP (Unique Selling Position). Why do people like your product or service? Why is it special?

Once you know what makes you special it’s time to create a marketing campaign that makes it easy for people to share the company with their friends.

We are going to cover the 3 main elements of a Domino Marketing Effect and give you an example of how to leverage each part.

Generate Excitement

Whether you are launching a new website or you have an ebook that you want everyone to read, you’ve got to get people excited about it. If you can’t generate excitement, then you won’t have people sharing your cool new thing with their friends and family.

The key to generating excitement is to get a core group of people talking about what you do. True Blood, an HBO series, did an amazing job of generating excitement about their new show coming out. They mailed vials of red liquid to horror bloggers who would have an audience that would be interested in a new vampire show. The mailing led them to a fictional site BloodCopy.com which showed a video of vampires debating whether they should reveal themselves to the public.

HBO had outdoor posters made up and plastered all over encouraging people to support the “Vampire Rights Amendment”. The posters encouraged people to go to the website American Vampire league which explained how vampires are trying to protect their rights. They also created a Facebook page that helped deepen the story by bringing vampires’ lives to the surface and showing people that vampires are as flawed as people.

It was a brilliant campaign that made sharing it with others very easy.

Takeaway:

What can you do to get people excited about your product or service? How can you encourage them to share your product or service with their friends and family?

Engage Your Customers

As a customer of all kinds of products, I appreciate when a company listens to me and helps me as effectively and efficiently as possible. When I have to call 3 times in a week to get what I want from a company, then I know they don’t like going the extra mile for me. If they aren’t willing to try hard to make me happy, then I won’t stay with them and I sure won’t share their story with my friends and family.

When a company listens to their customers they find out what is broken and can try to fix it. If they are too busy trying to make their lives easier, they are missing out on an opportunity to provide better customer service and become even more profitable.

One of the best campaigns ever created was by Red Bull. The created a live event called the Red Bull Stratos Space Jump. You were able to watch Felix Baumgartner jump off a platform in the middle of earth’s stratosphere live on YouTube. 2.5 million people tuned into to watch and 34,659,709 views have amassed on YouTube since August 2013.

Red Bull created this campaign to start a conversation with its core audience. They created a Red Bull Stratos website with a blog, social media share buttons, and a store to sell merchandise. Everything was layered to support their brand.

My father-in-law is the one that told me about this amazing world record-breaking stunt. I looked the video up on my phone as soon as he explained the stunt and now I’ve shared it with my audience.

Takeaway:

You most likely can’t fund a million dollar campaign, but you can use the same principles within your next campaign. Look at how people view your brand and create an event that will get people talking. If you make sandwiches, maybe you can build the tallest sandwich in the world and get local new coverage. The ideas are limitless, but not every one will work. The key is to try to engage your customers in a fun way, keep the campaign congruent with your brand and increase your word-of-mouth marketing.

Earn Their Trust

The last part to making sure your campaign is successful is earning your customers’ trust at each step of the process. When one domino falls short and doesn’t tip into the next, the effect is broken. You’ve lost the sale.

Every profitable business knows that each launch needs to build on the last. When someone buys from you, it’s evidence that you’ve earned their trust and if you delivered a lot of value, they are likely to buy from you again.

It’s a simple equation:

If the value the customer receives > cost they spent/endured then they will be a happy and loyal customer.

When this equation is well executed, it works forever. Many companies can’t execute this formula because they don’t listen to their customers and encourage them to share so the company continues to improve. If customers are unhappy, they will tell you if you are willing to ask, listen and make changes.

Once you have your connection established with your clients, you have to encourage them that your product is worth their time and money.

I have a friend who almost exclusively buys Sony products because he trusts them. From his TV to his speaker system, he trusts that they won’t disappoint him.

Not everyone will be as loyal as my friend, but when people need your type of product or service, do they think of you first?

Takeaway:

Look at how you currently earn people’s trust, then think about additional ways to take this up a few notches. Can you offer a guarantee to your buyers? Could you give them a free trial for 30 days to get them engaged with the product and see how valuable it can be?

Breaking Marketing Down to the Essential

Marketing is about creating enough reason for people to tell their friends about your valuable products or services. The more they do this, the easier it becomes to close sales.

Your Turn

What campaign could you create in your community that will engage your core customers and encourage them to share you with their friends and family?

* If you would like help creating a dynamic and shareable marketing campaign to improve your conversion rate you can contact me today and we can set-up a 20 minute discovery session to see if we are a good fit for each other.

By Karl Staib

Five Tools You Need to Create a Great Sales Page

Every sales page and landing page has one main goal.

To Sell.

If it doesn’t, then it flounders.

There are a lot of businesses out there that subscribe to the theory that if you build it, they will come.

If you are willing to invest time and money into driving traffic to your site,They will come, but what happens next is where most companies fall short.

They come, but they leave without buying.

Special Tools

Every great sales page that you’ve ever seen has been constructed with tools that can help your sales effort from behind the scenes.

For the first few years I didn’t have these tools, and the one I did have (Google Analytics), I didn’t know how to use.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I started really exploring and leveraging these tools to help my business flourish, and I want to share with you the 5 tools that I now use.

1. Landing Page Software

Premise is my software of choice for Landing Page software. It’s easy to use, and there are a lot of tutorials on YouTube that explain how to take full advantage of this software.

Your sales pages need to be focused on the product and nothing else. Premise software strips away everything and gives you a clean slate to create compelling copy that earns people’s trust and money.

2. Website Tracking Software

The only way you are going to know if your sales page is working or not is to have software that keeps track of your conversion rate. I use Google Analytics to help me with this. It’s free and it does a great job.

If you want to take your tracking software up a notch, you can use CrazyEgg or Visual Website Optimizer. They allow you to track where your page is successful and where it falls flat. I like the “heatmap” that comes along with both software packages. You can see where people are giving up on your page and where you can improve your conversion rate.

3. Fonts that Fit Your Design

Many designers have talked about the importance of a good font to make a sales page easy to read. Too often people create sales pages with wonky fonts that make you want to click away.

You can create fonts specifically for each sales page. The key is to match the rest of your site so you develop branding congruency.

If you aren’t sure what font to use, I suggest Ariel because it’s the best performing font that most people have an easy time reading.

4. SEO optimization

If your product is an evergreen product (product without a time sensitive element like a physical product, book or e-course), you want as much free traffic as possible. That means your sales page should be optimized for SEO. Some people only have a sales page up for a few days or weeks. They drive traffic through email, social media and links. Optimizing a page that is only up for a few days isn’t necessary.

Most of you either have a services page or an e-product that is on sale all year long. If this is the case you need to understand what words attracts search traffic to your site.

If you don’t know a lot about SEO, I would suggest subscribing to Scribe for 6 months.

Learn what works for you, then cancel the subscription. You should be savvy enough after 6 months to optimize your future pages without Scribe.

5. Great Editor

Maybe the most important tool of all is having an editor that can help you engage your readers. I make a lot of mistakes in my copy because I know what I want to say, but I don’t always create a clear explanation. Every great writer will tell you that an editor that understands your needs is a must if you plan on being serious about making money from your sales page.

It helps to have someone who understands your industry and target market and how to create a compelling narrative.

This may be a web-savvy friend or a professional copywriter. Whoever you choose, make sure you have someone walk through your sales page with you and help point out any potential flaws that might reduce your chance of converting a visitor to your web site into a buyer.

Your Turn

What tools do you rely on when writing and designing your sales and landing pages?

By Karl Staib

How to Uncover Your Optimal Sales Page Offer

Getting to the heart of what you offer and why someone needs to buy from you isn’t as easy as a lot of people like for you to believe. There are a lot of ways to frame an offer. It can be subtle, direct or wrapped in a story.

How you deliver your offer can mean all the difference between a low performing sales page and a high converting sales page.

You can’t be afraid to dig down and uncover that emotional gold.

It’s why I recommend using the 5 Whys Technique before you start creating your sales page.

Toyota popularized this technique. They wanted a way to get to the root of the problem quickly.

How to Use the 5 Whys Technique

Before you start creating a sales page you should ask yourself:

1. Why am I creating this product/service?

Your first answer is usually not deep enough.

Write down your answer. If you are creating a weight loss ebook. You may say I’m creating this ebook to help people lose weight.

2. Why do you want to help people lose weight?

I want to help people lose weight so they can be healthier.

3. Why do you want to help people be healthier?

Because everyone deserves to feel healthy and happy.

4. Why does everyone deserve to feel healthy and happy?

So they can have more energy.

5. Why do you want to help them have more energy?

So they can accomplish their goals and be around for a long time, which means they can spend more time with their friends and families.

You want to help lose weight so they can live longer and spend more quality time with their families. Now that’s much more powerful than just helping them feel healthy.

The reason it’s more powerful because it shows you why you are working so hard to accomplish this goal.

People are more willing to buy from you when they appreciate the “why” behind what you do.

Your Turn

How do you uncover your true offer when creating a sales page?

By Karl Staib

How to Avoid the 3 Biggest Sales Page Mistakes

I had a client come to me for a sales page review. We sat down on the phone together. I didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I try to always start with something positive, but I was struggling to find something positive to start with.

I explained the basics of a great sales page. How everything must fit together to create the right feeling within the buyer. She understood what I was saying, but she just wanted me to fix the sales page for her.

I explained that I could write the copy over and probably increase her conversion rate, but the best sales pages come from the seller’s heart. They convey what the seller believes to be true about his or her product.

After talking for a few more minutes I knew she needed a little more guidance. I told her that if she applied my advice, followed my sales page checklist and tried to rewrite the sales page then I would get on the phone with her again and help her optimize it. I’m not in the habit of giving away my time for free, but every now and again I can’t resist. She paid for a sales page review, so she was already a paying client. I just gave her a little bonus time.

So after reworking her sales page she emailed me. We set up a call two days later. While I read over her revised sales page I began to see some clarity in her offer. She had really improved it a lot.

We went back through and worked on the 3 main areas of a sales page:

Gripping Offer
Fascinating Narrative
Convincing Detail

After going through these three areas and making sure everything was flowing together she was relieved and actually excited to share with her people.

You’ll know when your sales page is close to being done when you are excited to show people what you are offering.

Escape the Sales Page Trap

A lot of creative people who finally get around to creating their sales page throw it up and just hope for the best. They are burnt out on creating the product.

In the case of a service sales page they might have a decent word of mouth system going and they don’t see why taking the time to optimize their sales page really matters.

Don’t let this happen to you. Your sales page is the most important part of your online sales process. When people come to check out your product or service they make the yes or no decision because of how trust worthy and convincing you are to them.

Top 3 Sales Page Mistakes

After working with a lot of small business owners on their sales page I’ve found the same three mistakes that occur again and again. If you aren’t sure where to start this article will help simplify your sales page process.

1. Lack of a Gripping Offer

Simply put, your offer is the most important part of any sales page. It’s why people keep reading. If you are selling a weight loss product to overweight women you better create an amazing, honest and compelling offer that gets them excited to use your product or service.

The biggest mistake people make when creating an offer is writing about all the great features of a product or service. They talk about what it is and how it works, but not the benefits of using the product or service. Creating a clear offer that explains how your product or service has helped other people and how it will help them is crucial to your sales page’s success.

The key to figuring out how to create a clear offer is having someone help you dig down. I have a few friends who are sales savvy who help me bring clarity to my offer. I use the Toyota’s “5 Why Method”. I have a colleague keep asking me why I created or want to create this product. After I answer, they listen let it sink in and ask why again. They really force me to figure out why someone should spend their hard earned money on something I created.

2. Lack of a Fascinating Narrative

Every sales page needs a narrative that helps people see how valuable your product or service can be for them. They need to see themselves in this story. That’s why using the word “you” is so important. People want to know you are speaking to them and how you can help them.

Look at the story you are creating and ask yourself who does it speak to? Does it speak to your “ideal” client or is it just slightly missing the target?

Your copy and the design you choose make all the difference between keeping them on the sales page and clicking the “purchase” button or clicking away.

After you create your next sales page ask a friend to read it and tell you what they think is the main story what problem you are solving. Hopefully they see a clear narrative that grips them. If it does grip them and they want to know more then you know you are on to something special.

3. Lack of Convincing Detail

Anyone can throw up a sales page and this is exactly what happens. People get so caught up in creating a great product, but don’t take the time to put in the detail into their sales page that builds trust with their audience.

I’ve had a client tell me, “If they don’t trust me, it’s their fault.” This may be true, but he was losing out on a lot of sales because he didn’t take the time to create detail that walked people step by step through the benefits of using their product.

Sometimes it’s a lazy sentence that doesn’t sound quite right. Other times it’s the look and feel of the sales page. Whatever is holding people back from buying it’s holding your product or service back from success.

It helps to have an expert read your sales page and give you notes. I suggest that they read through the sales page with you in person or over the phone. It helps if they actually read it out loud. You can see where they get tripped up.

If you can’t hire an expert then bring in a smart friend that you trust to help you fix those little details.

Start Now

Your sales page is one of the first things you should start working on before you do anything else. It will help bring clarity to your offer.

By not waiting until the last moment to work on your sales page you’ll lower your stress level and have more time to make a great sales page.

Your Turn

What are the biggest sales page mistakes you see businesses make?

* If you need a sales page review to increase your conversion rate you can fill out my sales page review form. I’ll get back to you within 48 hours. If you need a rush review please let me know.

Generate Excitement

Engage Your Customers

Earn Their Trust

Breaking Marketing Down to the Essential

Special Tools

1. Landing Page Software

2. Website Tracking Software

3. Fonts that Fit Your Design

4. SEO optimization

5. Great Editor

How to Use the 5 Whys Technique

Escape the Sales Page Trap

Top 3 Sales Page Mistakes

1. Lack of a Gripping Offer

2. Lack of a Fascinating Narrative

3. Lack of Convincing Detail

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