Brilliant Business Moms with Beth Anne Schwamberger

Goodness! I always feel like I have so much content to teach you all, that I constantly want to do solo episodes. I almost feel greedy to take over the podcast schedule...but not THAT greedy!!!

Let’s get to it!

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0:30 - The Struggle We All Face

The constant struggle we all face is getting more sales.Of course we need to make sales (we’re running businesses!) but we don't want to get the sale by being annoying or manipulative.

I often hear Mamapreneurs say, “I’m just not that great at marketing.” or “Selling just isn’t my strong suit.” And they almost use those phrases to excuse away the fact that their product sales just aren’t great.

Here’s the thing.

You don’t have to be great at marketing or selling to see great results!

What I want for you is to create an amazing, fabulous new product. I want you to structure a product launch that makes your audience crazy excited, gets them to show up, and leads them to buy your new product in crazy numbers. And you feel GREAT because you haven’t pressured them, you’ve not once been pushy or manipulative.

But you can only accomplish this goal by having an organized process in place that helps you launch your product well.

2:30 - Big Business Misconception

One of the biggest misconceptions in business is when business owners say, “I’ll create this awesome product. I know my audience wants it.” But they don't follow through to part two. Creating a product is great! But that’s only one part of the equation. You still have to build excitement for that fabulous product and give your potential customers a reason to come and buy NOW.

People will always have a reason to not buy immediately. That won’t help you or your business! And frankly, it won’t help your customers because you’ve got something fabulous for them and they need it in their hands as soon as possible!

In this episode, we’re going to talk about 3 ways you can get your audience excited about your new product.

3:36 - #1 Hint at What’s Coming

The first way you can get people excited about your new product is to hint at what’s coming.

Use the principle of curiosity and pique the interest of your customers. You want people to know you’ve got something secret you’re working on. You’re testing and experimenting behind the scenes, and something exciting is happening. People love that sense of intrigue!

Ways you can do this:

  • Share a photo of your computer screen. Maybe you cover most of the screen and show just a glimpse of the landing page you’re working on or your new course.
  • Share shots of sketches, or bits of a new material you’re working with.
  • Instagram stories are a great way to show behind-the-scenes of your shop.
  • Use the P.S. line in your emails to hint at what’s head. (P.S. I’m working on something extra special, more news next month!)
  • A fun twist to building curiosity: ask your customers what they think the new product might be!

But the big rule is this: DON’T GIVE THE WHOLE THING AWAY AT ONCE!

Most people spend so much time creating the product, but they put no time or energy into getting people ready to enjoy their product.

You can’t work, work, work, and then - Surprise! - give your audience this product they weren’t ready for. You’re almost catching them off guard.

Use the weeks, or even months, before your product comes out to prep your audience for the excitement ahead.

6:01 - #2 Get Your Audience Involved

You can actually get your audience involved in the creation of your product, and that goes a long way towards building excitement. You want customers to feel like they’ve had a part in creating the product which gives them a sense of pride and ownership in your business.

It might seem counterintuitive to the previous point, but both methods can happen at different stages in your customer journey. And if you time it correctly, your audience may not even remember exactly what you asked their input over by the time you build curiosity about the upcoming launch.

We’ve got several ways for you to get customers involved - and invested - in your product creation:

  • Use a free survey tool like Google Forms to run an audience survey. While there are other paid options, like SurveyMonkey, you’ll actually have a good bit of options without spending money.
  • A fun way to integrate social media and surveys is to use the app Polls for Pages by Facebook. Just search ‘Polls for Pages’ using the Facebook search bar. You’ll have the ability to ask practically any type of survey question you can think of, powered free of charge to you by Facebook. (Hint: Brilliant Business Moms did this back in June! What we heard from you is that you needed cost-effective tools to help you grow your business. And you needed time effective tools, since you’re busy ladies. In our Polls of Pages survey, we also asked what you wanted to learn about, and the highest voted topic was social media. That’s how we created our latest class, How To Be Brilliant On Social Media! This class was a huge hit because we delivered information our customers directly asked for.)
  • When my sister and I wrote our first book, Time Management Mama, we involved the community at every level of development. We constantly asked in our Facebook group for advice and tips from our audience, and we included that collective wisdom in our book. This type of crowdsourcing really got people invested and willing to share with friends
  • Another strategy we’ve used is to invite our customers to vote on covers of both our book and yearly planner. Inviting customers to vote on how your product looks is a simple and fun way to include them! You can ask their opinions about anything from covers, to packaging, to style.

11:30 - #3 Give Samples To Loyal Customers and Influencers Ahead of Time

Giving an early look or sample of your product to influencers or loyal customers who always rave about your business is a really smart move.

Oftentimes, you’ll see this happening with book releases. An author almost always sends out advanced release copies of her book to a group of people she knows will post great pictures and honest reviews of the upcoming release. (Which also taps into the building curiosity we talked about in #1!) People want to be in on the secret. You can use this strategy with any physical product, or online course, as well.

13:25 -  Surprise! A 4th Way To Get People Excited!

I know I said I’d give you three ways to launch your product, but I’m so excited I’ve got a fourth! This may seem like a no-brainer, but make your launch date solid, and start mentioning it several weeks ahead of time if you can.

What I often see happen is a business owner gets the first few tips right, they have their product in the hands of influencers and have been hinting at it, but they’ll say things like ‘Coming Soon!’ or ‘Coming Next Month!’ That guesstimate is way less powerful than giving people an actual date.

You want them to put a date on a calendar. Make your launch an event, and get people ready and waiting to grab your new thing! When you open the cart, you want customers who are ready to go and rushing to the page the day your product is live.

And as you can guess, there’s a lot more I can teach on the subject of launches!

15:30 - Introducing Our Newest Mini-Class

I’m happy to announce our newest mini class is here! Last month we did a live class, How To Be Brilliant On Social Media, and it got rave reviews.

This month our mini-class is:

Brilliant Product Launches: Throw your Product the Party it Deserves + Earn Passionate Customers in the Process

And, as of today, the cart is open! You can get your ticket for $15.

The class will be held LIVE on Thursday, August 24th at 6pm PT and 9pm ET.

If you can’t show up live, still snag your ticket before Thursday, August 24th because we’ll be selling replays after that for $27. When you grab your ticket now, you’ll get access to the class and bonuses forever!

bit.ly/bbmlaunchclass

In Brilliant Product Launches you'll learn:

- How Launching a New Product is just like Christmas (plus how to ensure you're not coming across like the grinch!)

- How to Build Excitement and FREE marketing around your product.

- How to use Simple Psychology to Give your Customers just what they want

- How to Launch in a Way that has your Customers Thanking You (instead of running away in horror!)

(This happens to us at BBM every time!)

- Grab Plug and Play Strategies that you can use to Build Buzz so you'll have a Launch toolbox at your fingertips

(I don’t want to give you 20 exact ways to launch a product. That’s actually a lie! There are lots of ways to do it, and you have to figure out what works for you and your audience.  We’ll teach you principles, but you won’t feel frustrated over not being able to jump through tons of hoops.)

- Get Real Life Examples of my Own Product Launches and their results

(Even the ones that didn’t do well!)

Plus, we’ve got some wonderful bonuses for you:

  • Email swipe copy for all different kinds of products from all price ranges
  • Email templates to know what to say and when to help you get the sale
  • Landing page template to know how to show off your product in the very best light
  • Product launch checklists so you can know how to prepare for your launch, including: photoshoots, the graphics you need to create, what landing pages you need to create, and so on

We hope to see you in class!

22:30 - What Our Past Students Are Saying

Our social media class received some rave reviews, and I’ll share a few with you.

“I really loved the class. I’ve done a lot of research on social media, so I thought I knew a lot, but you really broke it down and the lightbulbs started to go off for me.”

  • Jamie

“Class was fantastic and chock full of goodness and goodies as always.”

  • An Anonymous Student

It means so much to me that this last student said our class was great ‘as always’! We work really hard around here to be so confident that our products will wow you, our refund policy is rock solid. If you’re not amazed, we don’t feel right keeping your money. Period.

Thanks for turning into this episode. I hope we’ll see you in class!

Brilliant Product Launches - Throw your Product the Party it Deserves + Earn Passionate Customers in the Process

bit.ly/bbmlaunchclass

Brilliant Product Launches - Throw your Product the Party it Deserves + Earn Passionate Customers in the Process

Direct download: BBM-Podcast-BA-Solo-Product-Launch_1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:13pm EDT

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