When you're trying to cram months and months of work into a few days in time for your big product launch, well, what could possibly go wrong?
Trust me, a LOT.
I can tell you that from experience.
Over the last 5 years, I've done quite a few product launches, and some people would say they were quite big ones.
As awesome as product launches could be, plenty of things could go wrong during the set-up.
In this post, I'm going to tell you all about the mistakes you can make while preparing for a product launch. These mistakes are likely to happen, and you might have already run into a few of them yourself!
Let’s dive right in.
1. Not Planning Enough In advance
When you're planning to put a new product out in the open, there's a lot of work that needs to happen beforehand.
You need to create your copy, design your sales page, create your sales page, get affiliates... there's just so much to do!
Oftentimes, people don't plan enough.
They might think, "Oh, creating a sales page is just two days of work."
Then all of a sudden it takes them a week, things go wrong left and right, and they're just unable to meet their deadline.
Don't make this mistake. Have everything planned out in a realistic timeframe so that nothing falls behind. You're doing a big thing-- do it carefully.
2. Announcing Your Launch Date Before You're Ready
I've made this mistake myself, where I announced my launch date too soon and wasn't able to meet the deadline.
Not only will you be met with a lot of embarrassment after not being able to meet a deadline, but if you also made a big show of your product and reveal what it does and can do... there's a chance that people will copy you before you even have the chance to release your product on the market.
Keep your results close to your chest so you don't accidentally make competitors even before you launch your product.
Be practical in choosing your timeframe, make sure you can meet your deadline, and don't reveal too much at once.
3. Ignoring Your Key Partners & Affiliates
Let's say you are doing a product launch, and you are inviting people to promote your product-- in other words, affiliates. Or maybe you're working with certain influencers, or people who deliver your product, or provide customer service.
If you're not keeping everyone in the loop, you're going to make mistakes!
I was planning a big product launch and I failed to inform my big affiliates (the ones who result to 30 or 40% of the launch) right away. When I did inform them, it was too late, and they couldn't make it because of a big event going on. This was all because I didn't include them in the conversation early on!
4. Not Taking Overseas Holidays into Account
This one is kind of embarrassing as it's happened to me a few times over...
I live in the Netherlands, and plenty of our customers are from the United States. I didn't properly check what holidays there were, so when I set a date for my product launch, I didn't realize until it was too late that it fell on a US holiday. That really hurt sales a lot! 🙁
So do your research and don't plan a big special offer or a product launch on days where a bulk of your target audience overseas will be celebrating a holiday.
5. Not Doing a Proper Beta Test
Let's say you have a brand-new product that no one has ever seen before. You're going to do a massive launch and, hopefully, get a lot of customers in the process.
But who's to say there wouldn't be any issues or questions that people will ask about your product?
Without a proper beta test, you'll put yourself at risk for releasing a product that isn't up-to-par, and this could upset a lot of your customers.
Always do a beta period. Invite a small group of customers to test your product and ask questions about it. You can train your support staff to answer questions that pop up frequently. You can improve features and update your sales page.
The key is to do all of this before your product launch.
6. Not Preparing for the Worst-Case Scenario
When you do a product launch, you are putting a lot of work in so that you can release a product to the market with great success. You're banking on the amount of effort you're putting into the launch as well as all the time spent developing your product. One of the worst things you can do is not to prepare for the worst-case scenarios.
What if it's the day of the product launch and your server goes down, or your email service goes down, or Amazon goes down, or your affiliate platform goes down? What's going to happen then?
There's so much stuff that can go wrong, so you should prepare yourself for the worst.
Make sure to have a duplicate of everything: your sales page would be on two different servers; you have two different email providers.
Doing this makes sure that everything will still continue as it should despite any obstacles thrown at you. :)
7. Not Having a Good Traffic Strategy in Place
Let's say you've done everything to make your product launch perfect, but you don't know how to get new people into your product launch. That wouldn't really be a product launch because people wouldn't get to see it! If people don't see it, it'll just be a sales page that sits there and does nothing.
Whether it's with affiliates, viral marketing, or Facebook ads, you need to know in advance how you will drive your traffic. The key phrase here is: "in advance".
Make sure that you have all your Facebook ads, emails, and everything else ready and planned out for the launch long before it actually happens. Be prepared with a good strategy and you will have customers falling onto your lap when sales day comes!
All in all, it's really about planning! Make sure you know everything well in advance, that you've planned enough, set the date properly, kept all your partners in the loop, remembered overseas holidays, did a proper beta test, prepared for all the worst-case scenarios, and have a great traffic strategy in place.
Getting all of this right will help you have a rocking product launch!
Have you run into any mistakes I didn't cover here in your own product launch? Let me know in the comments below. 🙂
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