How to launch a creative business: Episode 10: How to launch a new product

Hi and welcome again. Today I’m going to be covering how to launch a new product – this might be a physical item or a new service, course or workshop – it doesn’t matter which, the processes are still the same.

Now, if you’ve read my book (available in my website shop by the way!) then really you can apply all the same principles I teach there relating to an entire business, to this new product or offering.

Firstly, you need an audience of people that are ready to buy – I think we can all agree on that. And hopefully if your brand voice and messaging have been on point up until now with an existing business, then you know what they want and how they want it delivered. If your audience is still very small and new (eg a handful of social media followers, a hundred or so email subscribers etc) then you will almost certainly want to consider an ad launch budget to be able to reach more people that are not yet currently aware of your business.

And this brings me to a little aside – if you truly want your business to be successful, then building your audience is absolutely vital, and to do this you will almost certainly need to invest in some sort of advertising or PR strategy. It comes down to numbers at the end of the day. Now if your core messaging and brand identity (including your voice – how you relate to your potential customers) is really on point then you will no doubt get a higher conversion rate and sell more with a small audience. However, it often takes us a little while to get there, to truly understand and speak to our niche (see my blog post from last week for more info on that), so setting aside some budget for advertising (be it Facebook, Google, or placements on blogs or in magazines or podcasts) will be something you will need to invest in.

And nearly all successful businesses will have relied on advertising in some form somewhere along the way – recognised that they need to reach more people and invested appropriately. And this is where understanding your ideal client profile is so important. So you can set the parameters of your ad to maximise your spend. Correctly identifying who to sell to and what their interests are.

But let’s assume you know your audience, know what they want, you’ve tested it with a small number of people, know it works for them, what now?

Now you need to have a solid marketing plan in place that will convert your lookers into buyers.

1. A good, well-thought-out sales page