Dumb Strategy #1: Faking Social Proof

So you come to a launch blog and there’s 200, 300, even 400 comments on each post. You get thinking, “hmmm something’s up.”

Yea. It’s called faking social proof. Maybe you’ve seen it before. And it’s the #1 Dumbest Strategy you can make when launching your product.

Here’s a little story…

A buddy of mine was promoting for a “ultra-successful” launch and every blog post had over 200 blog comments. As an affiliate, you know you’re about to make a boatload of money when you see that many comments for each post, especially if you’re in 2nd place for the affiliate prizes.

As the buzz built up and the doors opened, day 1… 1 sale. day 2… 1 sale. day 3,4,5,6, and 7… no sales.

What the heck went wrong?

It’s faking the buzz. Something Robert Cialdini calls, “A bungler of influence” and egregious (Jay Abraham word) mistake.

You could probably guess what happened to this guys business.

Instantly done.

Creditability shot.

True story.

Don’t make this DUMB mistake and fake your social proof with fake blog comments. Karma will bite you hard.

I will personally smack you. I’m sure Jeff Walker will agree… to smack you too.

Dumb Strategy #2: Having Your Son/Daughter Write Your Sales Copy

Yes, I understand you want to save money and not pay a copywriter to write your emails or sales letter. I was there and most everyone is…

BUT…

This is a DUMB mistake.

Here’s why…

Copy is King in direct marketing. It doesn’t matter if it’s actual written sales copy or copy that you are reading in a video sales letter, the words you say, the inflection you have all comes down to the “salesmanship in print.”

Small changes mean huge profits. It’s all about conversions. Here’s a simple chart to show you the difference between a low conversion of 0.005% (half a percent) vs. a great converting sales letter at 3%. The difference is between a $50,000 business vs. a $1,000,000 business. Ask Rich Schefren.

Conversion % Traffic Sales Price Revenue
0.5% 1,000 5 $500 $2,500
1.0% 1,000 10 $500 $5,000
2.0% 1,000 20 $500 $10,000
3.0% 1,000 30 $500 $15,000

NOTE: Typically on product launches your conversion rates can skyrocket on the first day because of all the anticipation, curiosity, and other persuasion and influence factors working in your favor. I’ve seen conversion rates as high as 22.4% on launch day!

Talk to my friends Chris Haddad, Rachel Rofe, and Francis Ablola they’ll tell you the horror stories of bad copy on launch day.

Your affiliates will hate you. If your sales letter doesn’t convert and they don’t make any money… it’s a tough sell to go back to them for another promotion.Treat your affiliates like kings and make them a ton of money because in the end they are the lifeblood of any info product business.

Dumb Strategy #3: “Oh #%$… I Need Affiliates!?”

I’ve seen it happen time and time again. You plan the pre-launch, you mastermind like crazy planning each elemental step, “Scarcity is here, and ahhh the social proof works there. This is going to rock!”

Then it hits you.

“#%$… I don’t have any affiliates!”

It’s a week before your launch, you struggle to make deals happen all while creating the content, writing the emails, creating the product (because you’re not done yet), and the other 100 million thing you have to do, and you soon realize that no one knows about you or your product.

That million dollar launch will not happen UNLESS you plan.

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail.” – Proverbs

About 2 or 3 years ago at Bradley’s in West Palm Beach, FL, Todd Brown from Strategic Profits and I talked about the importance of actually “launching” your affiliates, not just launching your list.

So think about creating a pre-launch plan and campaign JUST for your affiliates. Involve them in the story from the beginning.

Dumb Strategy #4: No Backend

Great. So you built your product got it polished and cleaned and ready for launch, but what about your backend? Did you build that out yet?

Don’t make this DUMB mistake and NOT have a backend.

Yes, in “some” rare cases you won’t need one, but honestly it’s really dumb not to have something in place.

Ok, so you have 1-3 days before you launch and your struggling to find a upsell. You can’t create a product in time and time is definitely not on your side.

Here’s some quick and easy upsells you can offer…

4 Week Coaching Program

A friend of mine, Maria Andros’, had a couple of days left before he highly esteemed launch of her coaching program “Social Media Blueprint” and needed some quick guidance on her upsells. With the help of Harlan Kilstein and some semi help from me she formulated her upsell as a hands on personal coaching program.

They’re simple to do and if time is not on your side, a “hands on” personal coaching program is the thing for you.

In-Depth LIVE Webinar Series

The keyword here is LIVE.

You’ve got too much on your plate already and creating more videos for launch time is NOT happening. So host a live webinar or teleseminar series. It’s simple, there’s virtually no cost and people can gain instant access to you.

In this series you discover and go deeper into your product’s overall benefits.

Don’t make the mistake and not have a backend. Honestly, you’ll be doing a major disservice to the people that want more, want personal attention, and want to learn from you.

Dumb Strategy #5: “I Can Do It Myself”

Can you do it yourself?

Of course you can. Will you pull your hair out. Without a doubt.

Is it smart to go at it alone?

Ask any successful business person. Actually, you already know the answer.

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.”
- Ryunosuke Satoro

So true. Without the team, you will never be as powerful as you are together.

From my experience with doing many six figure launches, the elements and team are pretty much always the same.

• Graphic Designer
• HTML coder or programmer (or multiple)
• JV relationship manager
• Copywriter

Those are the core elements. Now, try and do it all by yourself. Your results will probably suck, especially if you have no experience programming, designing, creating web pages, writing good converting copy, or managing relationships and jvs.

Don’t think you can do it all.

This is the single biggest dumbest mistake I see many new and veteran entrepreneurs fall into… trying to do it all themselves. Heck, I’ve been there.

Here’s what I recommend…

Programmers

In my experience I found the best programmers are on odesk, rentacoder, and scriptlance. I use scriptlance for small projects, rentacoder and odesk for larger projects with developers with more experience.

Copywriters

I could definitely recommend a few. The best place to find aspiring copywriters is through Michael Masterson’s company AWAI, WarriorForum, and Copywriting.com.

You can find some great copywriters that are just beginning. Most are quite inexpenesive and provide some good work.

Graphic Designers

I recommend checking out 99Designs.com and a secret site that I think is better is use called DesignOutpost.com. You can simply post your project and have 5, 10, 15 designers created a rendition of what you are looking for.

From webpages, logos, banners, flash elements, you name it – they have it. And the best part, it’s super cheap.

If you’re this far, I hope you enjoyed the post.

I’d love to here your feedback. Drop me a comment below.

Muchas Gracias,

Chris

But not this time.

I just got back from a 35 day trip to Brazil with my “new” (yes new) fiance. We visited 8 different cities and took literally 7 “mini-vacations.”

We vacationed and took a…

• 5 day trip to Natal, where I learned the secret to flushing the toilets in Brazil (hint: don’t flush the paper down) and ate lobster like it was our job for $3 a piece.
• 5 days in Rio de Janiero where I proposed to Alessandra at Corcovado “the Christ Statue”
• 14 days in Goiania, Alessandra’s hometown and where I gained most of my 16 extra pounds
• 3 days in Caldas Novas, the land of a natural hot springs and the monster 1.5 ton cow beast (Dan Kennedy would be proud)
• 4 days camping in the middle of nowhere on a sandbar in the Aruaguia river, where the piranha’s are an Aphrodisac and poker goes til’ 7am.
• 3 days in Pirenopolis, where I learned that Alessandra’a uncle is the world’s biggest 80’s fan… he loves Heart.

The best part…

I made more money being on vacation than “actually” doing work back home.

Honestly, I “maybe” worked 5-8 hours throughout the entire 35 day trip and I still made a nice chunk of change *completely* on autopilot.

So what do I attribute it to?

A couple of things.

Creating Passive Websites

Ah… the beauty of affiliates and consistent, residual traffic. You can’t beat that.

This was a nice portion of the income I earned while I was away. When I create new products I first map out a plan for generating affiliates and creating that evergreen, residual traffic stream to consisntely drive new leads, prospects and sales to the new site.

When your creating your product, first off, it’s gotta be good. You can’t polish a piece of crap with pretty graphics.

Proof, proof, proof, case studies, case studies, case studies are everything.

One thing Yanik Silver mentioned before was, “do it, document it, and profit from it.”

I always kept that at the top of mind when creating new products. Because without the proof and some case studies of whether YOU have proved it first, it’s a tough sell… it’s then theory and theory doesn’t sell too well without some serious poop polishing.

Ok I’m getting off topic here, but ah yes. Passive income.

This comes from affiliates, ppc, and other jv partners. Creating this base of affiliates to drive traffic to your site is critical to creating a 5-figure passive income starting today.

Are you building a list of “just” affiliates?

Another thing and I learned this from Rich Schefren a ways ago, “Build a business, not an income.” So true. So start thinking long term, bigger larger themed businesses not one off websites that “make money.”

Keeping the Pipeline Full

I learned this when I worked for my friend Joseph Visconti’s company, Valuerich, when I was a executive salesman in which I had to sell magazine ad space to CFO, CEO’s, and Marketing Managers of small-cap public companies.

It was all about keeping the “pipeline” full.

What is that?

Simple. You stop getting prospects, marketing for potential clients, or driving traffic your pipeline becomes empty and you produce no sales. You then have to ramp back up build up your pipeline of potential clients or customers and like any numbers game, there is a conversion.

In my Product Launch Consulting company, Powerlaunch, from where I learned most all of my strategies from my indirect mentors Jeff Walker and Frank Kern, it’s always about creating a consistent flow of prospects coming into your pipeline.

Some clients can afford you but about 90% cannot. So keeping that new influx of potential prospects especially in a high ticket “hands-on” transaction like product launches is essential.

Ideally, knowing that 90% can’t take on me or you, you then create a range of products that they can purchase from you to get some of the knowledge that you provide with the consulting (duh I should do this)

Residual Results Based Marketing Campaigns

This is something I learned from Jay Abraham and one of my mentor’s Bob Serling…

“Create a marketing campaign inject it into a business. Take the same campaign and inject it into another, then another, then another. In the end you have case studies, proof, and something that is, and most importantly it’s PROVEN to work.”

It’s that simple.

You have a “proven” campaign that has worked with this Company A and produced $3,583 in 3 days, produced $14,738 in 5 days for Company B, and produced $7,873 in 7 days for Company C.

Companies today are looking for proven ways to make more money. Not a fancy ad they got from a ad agency which is new and unique and most likely will fail.

Give them stuff that works, that will make them money immediately, and you have a client and passive income for life.

Now that you have a proven campaign, results, proof, AND case studies you simply SCALE IT UP. But before you scale it up, you create your systems, your processes, find competent people to put into your system, and then promote the heck out of yourself and your company.

You can do this through direct mail, endorsed mailings (via email), space ads in newspapers, or through your warm network of friends, collegues, and joint venture partners.

The beauty about this is every time your clients run one of your proven campaign in their business… you get paid… and paid handsomely.

Just imagine having 3, 5, 15, or like a friend of mine, 250 businesses using your marketing.

Can you imagine the checks and money flowing into your bank account?

An ungodly amount.

Anyhow, I hope this helps some people to start thinking more RESIDUAL, more HAND’S OFF, more AUTOMATED, and more LONG TERM.

Cheers,

Chris Brisson

P.S. When I left Delray for Brazil I mentioned to Michael Masterson, “I bet being away for 35 days, I’ll make more money.” At around day 22 I sent him an email saying “it’s true.”

He said…

“Vacations are very good… but you won’t make any money on them unless you spend the time at the office sloggin away.”

So take his word for it. Vacations are great. Bust some arse, build your systems so you can then truly create a residual ever growing business to enjoy your vacations.

P.P.S. I must thank Brandon Fredrickson for inspiring me to write this. He gave me a case of “vacation’s over, get to work.” Thank Brandon.

P.P.P.S. Alessandra if you’re reading this… I love you baby. (Had to throw that in there guys)

Not because of the craziness that’s happening across America as people from all walks of life flood the local Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, and the glutinous Wal-Mart, to take advantage of the Black Friday deals. (Whatever they are… Apple doesn’t really care, they give you a whopping $51 off a Macbook. WOW! No discount on the Macbook Pro though. errrrrrrgghhhh.)

I’m laughing because at 11:32 last night my girlfriend and I decided to make a trip to our local Best Buy in Boynton Beach, FL to see this so-called Black Friday madness in action.

Here’s how it went down…

So we take a left on Old Boynton Beach BLVD to turn into the parking lot. To our amazement we saw at least 600 kids, momma’s, momma’s babies momma’s, daddy’s, either playing cards, playing basketball, drinking booze, and sleeping. Most of the kids were trying to find chicks.

At that moment, Alex and I said in unison, “What a hell of a product launch!” (She knows this stuff because I talk about it non-stop.) Thanks to Jeff Walker for introducing us to the Product Launch Formula.

The laws of persuasion appeared in front of us…

Social Proof

What’s this? “Well, if everyone else is doing it, then it must be good.” It’s just like when you go to a club and see no-one at the front door. You say, “It’s dead, let’s check out somewhere else.” You then find a club that has a huge line because, “it must be good.”

I used to work at the front door of a club here in West Palm. My job was to help “control the door.” Controlling the door meant that I had to keep the line slammed with people and have it wrap around the building.

Why?

Social Proof. How can you do this on the internet? Blogs. Forums. A place where people can leave comments and add a social aspect (dynamic) to your webpage.

You see it in every big product launch.

The next law we saw in action double B was…

Scarcity

There were only a limited quantity of their “door busters” items so you have to get there early. This is another social influencer to get people to take action. For example, “We have 15,000 people on our list and selling only 300 copies. You better get in fast before they are all gone.”

This works wonders when you do it right when launching your product on the internet. You can base your scarcity on quantity and time. I use both when launching a new product or service.

Those were some of the most apparent laws of Influence. If I ever do it… I’ll get there at 5am when they open and run through the door.

Here’s a vid of the madness…
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=HZJVZ2p223o[/youtube]

Here’s to your Black Friday,

Chris