{"id":32490,"date":"2014-02-11T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mixergy.com\/?p=32490"},"modified":"2016-06-24T17:41:18","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T00:41:18","slug":"course-cheat-sheet-profitable-product-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixergy.com\/course-cheat-sheet-profitable-product-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"How to profitably launch a web app"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a time when Rob Walling struggled to successfully launch a product.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a string of failures before I had any successes,\u201d says Rob, who recently launched Drip<\/a>, an email capture app. \u201c[One example] is Flogs.com, which was a social network I tried to launch. I did a one-step email campaign, which is something I would advise people never to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, Rob has a step-by-step plan to launch products, which is what he used to successfully launch Drip. \u201cThe first month out of the gate we did just over $7,000 in revenue, so it’s definitely a good start for month number one,\u201d says Rob, who has launched 25 apps in the last 10 years.<\/p>\n

In his Mixergy course<\/a>, Rob shows you how to profitably launch a web app, or even an ebook or a conference. Here are three highlights from the course.<\/p>\n

1. Get a Frickin\u2019 Laser Beam-Focus<\/h2>\n

\"\"A successful launch starts before you ever build the product.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t have a large operation, and so in order to be able to build features and to be able to market, I need to basically pick one thing to be really good at, and be laser-focused,\u201d says Rob.<\/p>\n

For instance, with Drip, he knew the app would capture email addresses and send drip marketing sequences, but his value proposition had to be more focused than that.<\/p>\n

So how do you figure out your focus?<\/p>\n

Buy some advertising<\/em><\/h3>\n

Use Facebook ads to test value propositions.<\/p>\n

To do that, Rob writes value propositions as though they were ad headlines, such as \u201cMore leads, more customers\u201d and \u201cThe future of auto responders.”<\/p>\n

\u201cDrip…is all of those things at once, [but] I had to figure out which one to double-down on, because I don’t have the marketing budget and the team to focus on all of them,\u201d says Rob.<\/p>\n

Then he spent about $500 on Facebook ads to test those value propositions and find the winner. \u201cI tested between 10 and 15 different headlines,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

2. Don\u2019t Try to Scratch Your Own Itch<\/h2>\n

\"\"If you need your product, others will too, right?<\/p>\n

Well, maybe, but Rob isn\u2019t willing to bet on it. \u201cI wanted to go with a market-first approach where I ensure that there were at least a handful of other folks who would be willing to pay for this same thing, that they also had this itch that needed to be scratched,\u201d says Rob.<\/p>\n

And he wanted to make sure that they\u2019d really pay, and that they weren\u2019t just being nice.<\/p>\n

So how do you do that when you don\u2019t even have a product to sell?<\/p>\n

Get a commitment<\/em><\/h3>\n

Ask them to agree to try your product.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew 17 people that I thought could feasibly use Drip,\u201d says Rob, \u201cand so I sent an email saying, \u2018This is the bulleted list of what I’m looking to build. You can see an example of it here. [It] will increase conversion rates. It will capture more leads. Would you be willing to pay $99 a month for that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, when someone said yes, he went for a verbal commitment. Rob says, \u201cI wrote back and said, \u2018I’m going to build this, can I hold you to that, to at least try it out, to at least give me a test? I should have something in four months.\u2019”<\/p>\n

3. Just Give Them a Clue<\/h2>\n

\"\"When you\u2019re launching a new product, you don\u2019t have lots of case studies or great testimonials for your landing page. And you shouldn\u2019t spend money on a fancy-looking site, either.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe [initial Drip page]…was not really something that a professional spent a bunch of time on,\u201d says Rob. \u201cFrankly, I would have gone to ThemeForest and paid seven bucks for a landing page if I didn’t already have one.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how do you convert early prospects with a $7 landing page and zero social proof?<\/p>\n

Keep it short and sweet<\/em><\/h3>\n

Pique their curiosity. \u201c[Give them] just enough to get them interested,\u201d says Rob.<\/p>\n

For instance, his headline for Drip is \u201cCreate a Double-Digit Jump in Your Conversion Rate.\u201d And since you could double someone\u2019s conversion rates any number of ways, Rob likes to include a little more information about how the product works. \u201cTwo to three sentences, tops, is what I found works best,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe longer landing pages that I’ve tested against this, that have testimonials and product logos and other stuff, don\u2019t tend to do as well in this early stage,\u201d says Rob. \u201cYou really want to minimize the amount of information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Written by April Dykman.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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