Six reasons why your launch needs to be art too

Launch gluttons
While my goal is to position myself in the lifestyle design niche, I expect a lot of overlap in the information product and marketing niches. Anyone who is blogging should be paying attention to those markets to be successful.

So if you were paying attention to those markets last month then you may have gotten a bit overwhelmed like me. There seemed to be no shortage of big name bloggers who all launched products at about the same time. I don’t know who these launch gluttons are that can handle them all, but I was ready to become a launch bulimic and vomit by the end of them.

The problem with last month
After seeing these two posts, I knew I was not the only one who felt overwhelmed: Nathan Hangen & Dave Navarro (look at the comments on both too…interesting stuff there!)

If last month was the month of launches, this month appears to be turning in to the month of re-evaluating those launches.

Here are six reasons last month’s launches fell short for me:

1. Way too many launches all at once

All you have to do is watch who is Twittering who and you know most of these people know each other. While everyone says there is no competition in blogging, a market only has so much money to spend on your products at a time. If you and all your buddies are selling at once, you are in direct competition regardless of how friendly you are with each other. A little heads up and some strategy would have seemed smart to me.

2. Abuse of the scarcity strategy

If someone is selling an information product (or anything that doesn’t require their actual time) and they tell me that there are only a limited amount of products available, they are full of crap. I’m fine with whatever marketing term they want to use, but if the product I’m buying is a glorified pdf file or a daily email, I know those things can be reproduced endlessly with little or no cost to the seller. I don’t believe that they only have a limited number of spots. Frankly, I consider it an insult that anyone would think I’m going to believe them.

3. Short sign up times

I don’t care how big or how nice everyone says that someone is, if they spring a 24 hour sign-up on you with limited notice, they’re using car salesman tactics to convince you to buy their product now. I understand the desire to create a cash cushion and not have to rely on sales occurring over months and months, but tell me that. Be honest and tell me that’s the goal. If the goal is to enhance the product based on limited usage, tell me that too. Just don’t try and sell me with an “Act now before it’s too late!” pitch. I don’t mind buying, I just don’t want to be sold.

An alternative could be to announce that there is a special reduced price for a period of time before it increases. That would motivate people to move quickly while not trying to use some Jedi mind trick on me. It would also give people like me who didn’t know the product was coming out enough time to save up a bit for the product, even if I missed the deadline.

4. Way too many affiliates

Hats off to those people who have good affiliate programs! I love that they are treating others well. However, when all of the big guns in a market start vomiting the same things on the same day, I can’t believe that anyone is being honest or objective. I know affiliates get money out of the deal so why wouldn’t they speak well of it. This is especially bad when the person being talked about is not someone who is ever mentioned normally on that site. For me, it causes me to question someone’s credibility when they endorse multiple products in a few weeks time from people they don’t normally speak about.

5. Unremarkable launches

Last year many of these launches might have been considered amazing. This year most of them blurred together. Because of this blur I didn’t buy anything so I can’t comment directly on the quality of the products. What I’m saying though is that almost all of the launches seemed to be using the same step by step formula for release. Interviews, video, long sales copy, etc. I’m over all of that right now. It’s worse when a bunch of them happen at once though since I can’t keep straight what is what. No one did anything that I thought was that remarkable, hence the blur.

6. No defined target market

No single solution works for everyone. Therefore, if a launch doesn’t tell me who it won’t work for, I start having serious doubts that it’ll work for me. While I’m sure that it might work for some people, how do I know that I’m one of them? Telling me that I’m going to have all my hopes and dreams come true when a launcher doesn’t know them pisses me off. I want someone to know who I am and know what I need if I’m going to spend a dime on their product.

Ramit Sethi did a great job of defining his target market for his Earn1K launch. He repeatedly said who the product was NOT for and told those people to go away (yes, really!). Then he told the rest of us what the target market he was aiming at looked like. He gave details about age, interests, place in life, even blogs he believed we read. When he nailed my demographic to the wall, I turned to my wife and told her I wanted in on his course. His is the only one I’ve seen like that thus far and the only high priced thing I’ve purchased in a long time.

It’s all about the art, baby
There has been a lot of talk about creating art and not just products. I’m not sure if Seth Godin started this trend with Linchpin or if that is just the first time I noticed it. Either way, I’m on board.

You might be able to get away with creating a quick product and getting some money, but I don’t think you can build a long term business as an entrepreneur without making art. I’m not talking about paint and canvas (though that is all well and good too), but actually creating something of value and worth for someone.

You are your secret weapon! Pour yourself into your product and make it unique. Your product has to stand out from the hundreds of others trying to meet the same need, but the product is only half of the equation. The problem I saw last month was that while some of those products may have been art, none of the launches were. It’s not art when everyone is doing the same thing and following the steps we all bought and read about last year.

As far as I’m concerned, the launch is part of the package deal. If someone creates art for the product half but not the launch half, then they’ve created a half-ass art project.

The solution to this problem is that we need to start thinking about the launch as art too, not just the products.

Anyone else think the launches were a bit much last month? Agree/disagree? What are some specific things that could be changed going forward?