39 steps you need to take before launching a new product or service

The following is an edited excerpt from The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau. The excerpt is provided by Currency, an imprint under The Crown Publishing Group. You can buy a copy of the book here.

Note: Every product launch is different. Use these steps as a guideline to your own. Often by adding one or two steps you would otherwise leave out, you’ll get a significant increase in sales.

THE BIG PICTURE

1. Ensure that your product or service has a clear value proposition. What do customers receive when exchanging money for your offer?

2. Decide on bonuses, incentives, or rewards for early buyers. How will they be rewarded for taking action?

3. Have you made the launch fun somehow? (Remember to think about non-buyers as well as buyers. If people don’t want to buy, will they still enjoy hearing or reading about the launch?)

4. If your launch is online, have you recorded a video or audio message to complement the written copy?

5. Have you built anticipation into the launch? Are prospects excited?

6. Have you built urgency – not the false kind but a real reason for timeliness – into the launch?

7. Publish the time and date of the launch in advance (if it’s online, some people will be camped out on the site an hour before, hitting the refresh button every few minutes).

8. Proofread all sales materials multiple times… and get someone else to review them as well.

9. Check all web links in your shopping cart or payment processor, and then double-check them from a different computer with a different browser. This is super important! USP means “unique selling proposition” and refers to the one thing that distinguishes your offering from all others. Why should people pay attention to what you are selling? You must answer this question well.

NEXT STEPS

1. If this is an online product, is it properly set up in your shopping cart or with PayPal?

2. Test every step of the order process repeatedly. Whenever you change any variable (price, order components, text, etc.), test it again.