Launch Book Summary

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A book by Jeff Walker

Regardless of which product or service you are trying to sell on the

internet, Jeff Walker’s book Launch will help you to design and
execute a perfect email marketing campaign.

To successfully market a product, you need to have a step by step guide

which you can follow. Just building a great product and offering it on
the market is not enough. You need to know how you can
communicate with potential customers. You need to have a strategy to
convert website visitors into happy customers. The book Launch by
Jeff Walker gives you concrete, actionable advice on selling your
product to satisfied customers.

Course, book, or app, it does not matter; Launch can help you to sell
more of it.

These are the things I learned by reading the Blinks:

Build it and they will come is not working

Email marketing works

This post is based on the Blinks I listened to while walking to work. I

learn from Blinkist's content each and every day. So if you enjoy this
post, you will like their content even more. Check out Blinkist; I
highly recommend their service.

Key Ideas
The world has changed, and the only true security is your ability
to create value and get paid for that value. — Jeff Walker

The internet brings limitless opportunities to people who want to

start a business, as the online world allows you to offer your product or
service to billions of potential customers.

To be successful in a competitive arena like the internet, you have to

differentiate yourself from other online businesses. The author’s
Product Launch Formula can just provide you that: an edge in a
highly competitive market

To sell your offer online, you need to have an email list and
create scarcity for your product or service.

Many new businesses are unsuccessful because they bank upon hope
marketing: create an offer and cross your fingers that
somebody will find and buy it

But hope means that you do not control your success.

You have to leave hope marketing behind by engaging with your

potential customers. You can do this by using the most powerful
communication tool in the online world: email

Email is effective and does not cost anything.

Launching your product online does not mean all strategies to sell your
offer need to be high tech. The truth is, most approaches which
work in the real world, will also work in the internet world.

When you make an offer, you need to use mental triggers to

influence your customers. Our brains always look for clues to
justify the decisions we are about to make.

One such mental trigger is authority. We seek advice from

people we believe are authoritative. For example, when we need to find
our way in a foreign city, we will ask a police officer.

You can increase your authority by listing the well-known brands you
worked for on your website.

Scarcity is yet another useful trigger we can use to sell our

product or service. This works, because we all fear to be left behind.

For example, you might advertise your product during the launch at a
discounted price. After this period, you will increase the price.

If you want to know more about triggers, you can read the Triggers
book summary I have written.

Two tools you can use for your marketing are sequences and
stories. We all love enticing stories. You should not bore your
customers with technical details; tell a good story instead in the course
of a few days.

You need to have an email list to be able to communicate

with your prospects. You cannot rely on potential customers
coming back to your website. Most people come to your site through a
search engine. Once they are on your landing page, make sure to
capture their email address. An email list is a tool you can use to bring
your customers back to your website.

One possibility to get the email address of your visitors is to

give them something in return. The win is two-fold. You will get
their address, and you will know that they have a particular interest.

The way you set this up on your website is to create a page where a
visitor comes to your site. You offer the visitor a special gift. To
receive the present a sign-up to your newsletter is needed.

The page where you make your offer is called a squeeze page. Make
sure that your giveaway is relevant to your business. It is
important to connect with the people who have a natural interest in
your offer.

The Pre-Prelaunch
Do you know what a pre-prelaunch is? Well, I didn’t. It is a way to
make your prospects interested in a product you will launch in the
future. The author warns us that we need to ensure that it does not
sound like a sales pitch.

Here are the recommendations to craft a perfect pre-

prelaunch:

Keep the email concise; 80 words

Subject line: Quick announcement and a favor

Inform the reader that a new product is coming very soon

Ask them to fill out a short survey

Ask them for feedback

 No promises

The Prelaunch
The prelaunch is the phase where you already have an email list and
also spurred the interest of your readers. In this period you want to
show your prospects that there is immense value for them in your
offer.

Three steps for a effective pre-launch:

1. Show your prospect the transformation he will get

2. Show more information about the transformation

3. Tell the prospect how exactly the transformation works

It is important that there is a pause of two or three days in between

each step.

The third phase will also contain how the reader can buy from you and
when to expect the actual launch. Also, make sure to fire the scarcity
trigger in the prospect’s brain.

Examples of scarcity offers

The first 100 buyers will get X% off the regular price

The offer ends on …

Using scarcity offers can be a powerful tool to make your launch a

success. There is a great example in Chris Guillebeau’s book The $100
Dollar Startup (link to my book summary).
After the pre-prelaunch and the pre-launch your customers
are ready to buy from you. You can launch.

Remember in the actual launch you need to tell your email list that you
are about to sell your product. Make sure to offer your product for a
limited time to create that scarcity that is necessary for a successful
launch.

After the announced launch day comes the phase Jeff Walker calls the
open cart phase.

Make it as easy as possible to buy from you by having a well-

designed sales process.

All nice and dandy, but what if you neither

have a list you can market to nor a product to
sell?
The answer is what Jeff Walker calls a seed launch. This type of
launch is a tool to build your success bit by bit. The idea is simple. You
do your first small launch and then build upon it by making every
launch after that a bigger success.

For the very first launch, you can start with only the people who follow
you on Facebook or Twitter.

To build your success, it is important to learn from your

previous launches. You do this by asking for feedback from
your prospects, or by sending surveys to your list.

Joint Venture Launches

Even though you can have success with a small launch, you should
maximize the potential of your launches. To do this, you might
consider doing a Joint Venture Launch.

A JV Launch is not that hard to conduct. Simply find people who offer
a similar product to yours. Then launch your product to their list
and agree on a revenue share.

Normally such a joint venture is done through sending the subscribers

from one list to a squeeze page for your offer.

Deliver constant value

After the launch, also called the post-launch phase, you should
provide additional value to your customers. By that, you will exceed
their expectations and make them happy. Adding value, even after the
sell, builds trust, and your customers will be more likely to buy from
you in the future.

My First Learning: Build and they will

come is not working
Have you heard the saying Build it and they will come? I’m not sure
whether there were times when this approach worked. Apparently it is
not working these days. Trust me; I have tested to launch a product
without having a marketing plan. I built an app and offered it on the
App Store. Almost nobody saw my new, shiny app. I was not able to
talk to my customers. Only Apple has the email addresses of buyers.
Apple owns and controls the platform. You as an app developer deliver
the content. If you do not own a funnel into the App Store, it is hard to
get your app in front of your prospects.
Most successful people I know personally have taken a different
approach. They all worked on building their audience first, and then
they came up with a product for that audience. Look at Nathan Barry
(ConvertKit) or Laura Roeder (Edgar).

My Second Learning: Email marketing

works
Our product launches use a series of sequences: pre-pre-launch,
the pre-launch, the launch, and the post-launch.

While reading the Blinks of Jeff Walker's book, I realized that I have
been part of some launches which were planned with Jeff’s launch
formula. Many people are using the techniques outlined in the book. I
know this because I subscribed to a lot of email newsletters.
Subscribing to newsletters is a great way to learn how to conduct your
email marketing. Some campaigns were so well done that I was the
victim of those launches. Not in a bad way, because I always got
immense value from the products I bought. The formula works.

Do-This-DIRECTIVES
Keep in constant contact with your potential customers

Build an email list

Deliver value before and after the sell

Own your business, by knowing your customers

Launch: An Internet Millionaire's Secret

Formula to Sell Almost Anything
Online, Build a Business You Love, and
Live the Life of Your Dreams
Everybody who is doing business online knows about the importance
of building a list of prospects. Email is the best way to stay in touch
with your (potential) customers.

Jeff Walker’s book gives clear instructions on which steps are needed
to plan a successful email based marketing campaign. Furthermore,
you will learn what you need to do in each phase of your product
launch.

Resources
Read more about Jeff Walker on his website

Blinks about Launch on Blinkist

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Launch Book Summary PDF and all of my other book
summary PDFs

Posted on CuteMachine.com in business