I know it’s been a while since I posted but I can only claim the rigors of a cold and being incredibly busy. Today, I want to talk about launching a product, what you may be expecting and some simple things you can do to help yourself.
This was an interesting discussion I had as part of my Mastermind Group a week or so ago. Three of the ladies on the call had launched EBooks recently and were experiencing a “slump” after the launch. This was mostly due to the fact that a lot of energy had been expended prior to the launch, getting the book ready, the website development etc. After launch, it felt like a let down and, to some extent, sales hadn’t been what they expected.
The thing that all three agreed was that launching the book, or product, wasn’t the end of the process. Now that the hard yards in getting their product up for sale was done, they had to expend more effort in promoting it to ensure sales. Sales just don’t come. This can be a daunting thing when you think about how much work you’ve just put in…
I also have been speaking with a website design client about what they need to do to drive targetted traffic to the website we are building. Interestingly, the answer is very similar.
Here are some simple things, that are mostly free, that you can do to promote your product and, hopefully drive sales:
- Write articles about the topic of your book, or product. The articles themselves must be informative and useful but they can also raise questions that your product answers. Of course, the article (or more appropriately, the article resource box) will provide a link to your product as the answer.
- Submit these articles to article directories like EZine Articles. Of course, feel free to submit your articles to my article directory as well!
- Use Article Distribution services like Article Marketer to submit your article to multiple directories. Article Marketer has a free service as well as a comprehensive paid service.
- Use Squidoo and Hubpages to develop authority pages for your product or service. These pages need to be updated regularly to ensure their relevance, but as both Squidoo and Hubpages rank well in Google searches, this is an excellent method of targetted traffic generation.
- Write a Press Release and use a service like PRWeb to announce your product. In fact, you may want to do this multiple times throughout the year.
- Rewrite your articles and submit to your own blog and blogs on social networks.
- Hang out on Forums and Groups that are likely use your product. Don’t promote your product directly in these areas, set up your signature to let people know what your product does (check the forum or group policy first!) and become an authority that people turn to for information and assistance.
That is not an exhaustive list of what you can do, but these are things that you should be doing regularly to continually promote your product to the right target audience. It really is about becoming an authority in your chosen niche.
Certainly this type of work can be time consuming and I have developed a service that will look after all of these things on an ongoing basis. For more information, see my Product Promotion Package at The Keys 2 Internet Marketing.
