Putting a product or service out into the world is scary, but having a product launch process can alleviate some of the stress.
IE 138: Product Launch Process with Mai-Kee Tsang
Today I am so excited to be talking to Mai-kee Tsang about the product launch process. Mai-kee is a launch strategist and a conversion copyrighter. She is at the forefront of online course launches and group membership launches.
Mai-kee understands what it takes to launch an idea and make it a successful reality. She has learned a lot of lessons from being in the trenches and she wants to be able to relay those lessons to all of you today.
The Mythical Beast of Product Launching
I know that a lot of you have started to brainstorm on what sorts of products or services you can offer to your audience.
Once you figure out what that product or service is, it can become totally overwhelming.
There’s a “mythical beast” of launching that can create tons of unnecessary fear when it comes to launching your product.
Talk to Your Audience
The first thing you need to do once you’ve decided on a product/service is to validate your offer.
As soon as you have an idea for a product or service, you need to find out if it is something your audience would be interested in.
In order to do that, you have to have an audience. Your launch journey is going to be an uphill battle without an audience to validate your idea.
The Black Belt Ethos
Mai-kee talks about this in her signature process called The Black Belt Ethos. The first thing she talks about is human to human connection.
It’s all about actively seeking out your audience and there are several ways to do this –
- You can send our surveys to your email list.
- You can do an Instagram poll.
- You can even get on one-on-one calls with members of your ideal audience to find out exactly what they need from you.
If you are a nutritionist who wants to write a book about detoxing, go to Amazon and read the reviews on other books about detoxing. Not the 5-star reviews… read the 3-star reviews. In those reviews, you will find the areas that need improvement, and that is the gap that you can fill.
Be Yourself
The second thing you should focus on is your brand DNA.
You have to embrace who you are and what your business stands for. If you start to lose your own voice, then anyone could take over your product ideas.
You are in business for a reason, and you need to continue giving people a reason to come to you for answers.
Once you have all these things pulled together, the final step is to turn your signature creation into a reality.
Best Time To Launch
Everyone always wants to know what the best time of year to launch a product is. Mai-kee wants to know that answer as well. There really isn’t a best or worst time.
You might want to avoid launching right around Christmas and New Years for two reasons:
- Most people have spent a lot of money on gifts and travel.
- A lot of businesses do sales around this time and you don’t want to have to compete with their lowered prices.
February and March are great months to launch products because people are getting back into the groove of working after the holidays.
September or October is a good time because it gives your audience time to complete your program before the holidays arrive again.
During the summer most people are too busy to dive into a product or service. They are traveling, and have their hands full with their kids. Waiting until the kids are back in school and the parents are back to a normal schedule is best.
What’s The Launch Strategy?
There isn’t a one size fits all plan for product launching. The strategy depends on what you are launching.
Someone who is launching an online course would have a different strategy than someone launching an eCommerce store.
Infinite Pursuit
Mai-kee does Japanese Jiujitsu, and she loves it, not just because of the physical aspect, but because of what it symbolizes.
The Black Belt symbolizes infinite pursuit. In certain martial arts, it can take up to 60 years to get the highest ranking of Black Belt.
Every Black Belt is a White Belt that refused to give up.
And that is the kind of people Mai-kee loves to work with – clients who work hard, refuse to quit, and have a desire to serve their audience.
A lot of people don’t have their Ethos dialed in.
They understand Pathos and how to appeal to people’s emotions, and Logos, which is all about using logic to persuade people. But Ethos is all about your credibility. It is your character on display.
This goes back to that brand DNA we talked about earlier. A lot of people could take your course and teach it, but it won’t be like your teaching if you are staying true to your unique voice. That is your Ethos.
Putting a New Spin On An Old Idea
These are the fundamentals for any launch:
- Being willing to listen to and understand your customer
- Understanding yourself
- Finding the solution that you bring to the marketplace
So many of you get hung up on finding an original idea when it comes to launching a product.
You don’t have to come up with something that no one has ever heard of. You just have to find an original spin to put on the idea.
The way that you position your message and your product is what is going to be unique. For so many people, things go in one ear and right out the other. You don’t have to bring them something completely original. You just have to re-word what they’ve already heard in a way that feels unique.
Less Worry, More Focus
Sometimes, we can get too caught up in what’s “mine.” We don’t want anyone copying our ideas, even if we put them out there in the form of DIY or recipes.
We have to spend less time worrying about if someone takes something that we view as ours, and more time focusing on our audience and keeping that unique spin and voice.
Focusing on that free us up to solve more problems for our audience, provide more service, and in the end, make more money.
If you want to share your ideas with the world, it is better for you to have someone else also sharing that idea, and having more and more people spreading the word about the idea, than to just get credit for it.
Focus on Helping
I know so many of you have a fear of being too “sales-y” when it comes to creating a product.
Mai-kee had a mentor tell her once that hell on earth was meeting the person you could have been, but Mai-kee says that the deeper layer to that is that hell on earth is actually meeting all the people you could have helped but didn’t.
Just imagine yourself in a field full of people that you could have helped.
You have the ability to impact people.
There are always going to be those members of your audience that are unknown. You might never know that someone is listening to your podcast or reading your blog or reading every Instagram post, but they are there, and you have the ability to help them.
If you don’t sell, you’re going to go out of business, and if you go out of business, you will stop impacting people.
You don’t know where your audience is in their day-to-day lives, and you don’t fully understand how much you are influencing and impacting them.
Focusing on service instead of self-importance helps the fear of being too much go away.
Mai-kee has an amazing guide to make launching easier for you. The Successful Launch Walk-through Guide is a step-by-step guide on launching.
It covers pre-launch planning and validation, creating materials, keeping your team in the loop and scheduling your materials for launch, launching, and your post-launch wrap up. Make sure you download this guide and let Mai-kee lead you to a profitable and purpose-driven launch.
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