ESYB2 082 - 3 Ways to do a Great Product Launch
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[00:00:00] In this video, I want to go over three ways to launch your business, and I'll present them to you in order of their size and in order of when you should do it. And this would apply to technology businesses, apps, and other more traditional businesses. Now, in the beginning, When you're just building your product or app or just about to launch something you want to launch as soon as possible because there's so much build up in anticipation and my advice is actually to resist that urge to try to go big quickly and practice patience because most of the time our products are just not too ready and they're not going to grow big anyway like you'll release big but If the product has bugs, it's just not going to have the success that you're imagining.

So really what you want to do is have a soft launch or some people call this the beta launch where you [00:01:00] just launch to friends and family and they kind of poke holes in it. They criticize it. They give you feedback not to make you feel bad, but just to give you useful feedback. And you also want to expand this to maybe a few knowledgeable people in your industry and get their opinions.

Because in the beginning, you just want to get feedback, and after gathering feedback, you improve the product based on the most helpful feedback. Obviously, you don't want to take everyone's suggestions. And you go through maybe a few iterations of improvement. And again, you want to practice patience, because there's an urge to improve it once, get a little feedback, and think, oh, I'm done.

But you want to do this for a while, because It's best to get a lot of problems out of your product early. And one thing you don't want to do is launch big and have an embarrassing set of bugs in your app or product or whatever. So you launch [00:02:00] early but small and keep expanding your audience as you keep releasing.

And one thing that I did in my experience when I launched my app, for example, I quietly released my app in the app stores without really announcing it big on social media. And, you know what? The app actually started getting real users. People were finding it in the app stores. And I watched the analytics closely.

I watched how they behaved on the app. Also, I got in touch with some of them when it was possible. And I got feedback from them, which was really helpful. And so that was a very natural way for me to get feedback from actual users. And some people have asked me, Well, what happens if your app is early and you launch it, and it's not so good because it has bugs and you get bad reviews?

And so you get like one star rating, one star rating, one star rating, kills the app. Well, it doesn't kill the app because you just launched it, you can take it down and relaunch it as [00:03:00] completely fresh. No problem, because this is just a test version, although at one point, as you keep doing this, you'll notice that your reviews are getting better, and it won't be just your assumption or hope, it will be Reinforced by the data you collect, like when you watch analytics, you'll be like, Oh, people are using it much more and that's your sign.

Then you're ready for that bigger launch. Now, how do you launch big? You do it with publicity. So what you do before you actually launch big, you pick a date like two to four weeks in advance and use that two to four weeks to Reach out to bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, journalists, everybody who has an audience in your niche and tell them about your upcoming launch and ask to be featured.

Now, most people will ignore you, most people will reject you, but that's fine because there are [00:04:00] so many potential influencers and journalists out there. Few of them you can pay, but very often you can do this for free. If they see the merit in whatever you're launching. These people spend a lot of time in your niche.

They know what's interesting for your niche's greater audience. And if they start responding favorably, that's another great sign. And once you get some of them on board to feature you when you launch, then when you launch, it creates a really big launch because it will create a spike and immediately propel you.

For example, if you're launching an app, that spike in downloads on day one, or let's say even if it's not an app, if it's a website, anything where The promotion and the rankings of it is algorithmically driven. Well, that big spike of activity will positively impact the algorithm of whatever platform you're on and help you shoot to the top of that algorithm.

So in my [00:05:00] case, when I got a lot of publicity for my apps, it helped my apps jump over many competitors and immediately start getting. More downloads from app store search and kept on getting all these free downloads because of this big launch with publicity. So that's why you have this buildup so that on the day of the big launch, you can get a lot of attention and this big attention has a purpose, which is to boost the ranking of wherever you're promoting your product.

That's the underlying strategy, because this is sustainable because. Publicity usually spikes when you get all these mentions and then it usually dies off because those magazines, they feature next products and next businesses the next day, so usually the publicity dies off. But those secondary effects of publicity, like ranking higher, don't die off.

They last longer and that's what we're after [00:06:00] actually, really. And for very few businesses, there's another strategy, the third kind of a launch that's possible, and this is to launch at a conference or an event. There are many types of big startup conferences where you can launch, like the Launch Conference, TechCrunch Disrupt, or big local meetups or events.

These are generally only available for

So if you have some kind of a little tiny puzzle app, this is not an option for you because you can't really launch that at a conference, but if you were the first Uber, then all these doors are open for you. So as long as you have something innovative, you can pitch these conferences and big events. And a lot of times journalists are present at those conferences or events.

And those journalists will also give you publicity. And there may be even investors who knows. But this is that third kind of a launch, which is at a conference, which is kind of a dream launch. It's [00:07:00] not available for everyone, but in any case, these are the three types of launches you can do.

