At the end of January I received an email inviting me to be part of a joint venture launch.
I gotta tell ya….I was pretty excited. There were 21 other women participating in the promotion who are super smart, and whose work I really admire.
Plus there was one more thing. I’d never done a “launch” before. It was unchartered territory.
Sure I’ve released products. But that’s just it. I’d released products. They just sort of make an appearance without fanfare….never had I formally been through the whole hoopla of a launch and subsequent promotion.
This was going to be awesome. New experiences, chances to learn, a little moolah and all that jazz. Happy days!
The Launch Process
The product of mine selected for inclusion was the Disobedient Directory (link removed, currently off the market), which was cool with me. But at the time I was also in the early stages of putting together a new product, Site Snapshot. The cogs start turning.
What better catalyst to light a fire under this new product than to include Site Snapshot as an additional contribution to the swag of products for the launch.
Brilliant! Up there for thinkin’ 
As we roll into February, I begin to realize just how much work I have ahead of me.
Murphy’s law being as it is an’ all…everything that could possibly raise its ugly head to slow me down, distract me, or throw me off course made its stage debut during this time.
So I spent all of February feeling like I couldn’t surface for air. Now don’t get me wrong, I luvs me some pressure. I’m one of those lunatics that work stupid hours to meet self imposed deadlines…but this was just a little too freakin crazy for my liking.
Needless to say I was working right down to launch hour. But hey, I’m still here to tell the tale, so it’s all cool…I’ll be fine when the medication gets rid of the twitching.
The First of Many Lessons
Don’t be offering products that aren’t ready to go right now. Shit happens, just when you don’t want it too. You haven’t got the luxury of shutting down other areas of your business to focus on one thing only.
Promotion is a glove on the hand of a joint venture launch.
When you get involved there is an expectation for you to promote. Fair enough too. After all what’s the point in being involved if you’re not going to put the word out.
Now this particular promotion was to be kept under wraps until launch day, and the length of the promo was only 42 hours. Short window indeed. So if you’re gonna promote well, you really needed to have your shit together with everything lined up ready to go.
My Map for Launch Promotion
- Blog Post: This was released on the morning of day two, which also went to RSS, and was bookmarked on a variety of sites, like stumble, delicious, reddit, diigo etc.
- Email To Lists: Scheduled through Aweber to go out the morning of launch to a few of my lists that had the appropriate audience.
- You Tube: Created a short video with Animoto as a promo to be shared on twitter, facebook, google+ and embedded in the blog post too.
- Twitter: Lined up tweets through Hootsuite for every couple of hours or so at varying times, and lots of variety of text over the two day period. Some linked directly to the sales page, some to video,& some to blog post.
- Facebook: Posted both to page and profile two to three times during both days. Also created a Facebook Ad campaign to drive some extra traffic directly to the sales page.
- Google Plus: Posted video and link to sales page a couple of times here.
I think you’d agree there’s a reasonable amount of promotion there for a two day sale.
So how did it all come out in the wash, and what did I learn?
Examining Results – Thoughts and Observations
Blog: It’s difficult to catch your audience within a short window. Not everyone reads you blog posts when they’re released. Many people catch up with their reading at the weekend.
Blogging for promotion is fine if you have a big enough window to play with. In this case perhaps not.
Email: I don’t overwork my email lists and as a result my open rates are generally north of 60%, so providing they saw it in the time frame, shouldn’t be a problem with getting some click throughs. Unless of course Aweber decides to have a major glitch, be down for several hours and your email goes out at the wrong time! ARRRGGGGHHH
You can’t always rely on automatic scheduling. If it’s time sensitive, keep control by not queuing it. Go in and manually send it when you’re ready. Impact was lost due to link not being live at the time the email went out.
You Tube: Now obviously with the sale being under wraps I couldn’t upload the video until launch time had arrived. But I had previously done some keyword research so was good to go with this one. The video to date has received 8 views. Crap eh?
A platform will only be as good to you as you have been to it. You tube is like a long lost cousin in my case…no surprise really that the video went nowhere. Cest la vie.
Twitter: I’m a regular on twitter putting in an appearance probably 5 out of the 7 days a week. Averaging half a dozen tweets a day. So no major stresses here, although I did worry about putting through tweets every couple of hours. Shit was I about to become one of those douchebag marketer types?
Promotion is acceptable to your crowd providing its not your only method of operation. I did get a reasonable amount of clicks and I don’t seem to have suffered mass unfollows as a result..phew!
Facebook: Now the two of us…Facebook and I that is, need to get a little better acquainted.
I do post there, but I’m not as active as I could or should be. So I knew there would be little traffic as a direct result of page posts. So I thought I’d throw a little advertising into the mix.
The whole process was pretty simple and thanks to some great tips from Jen Sheahan from FBAdsLab, I was able to pull a better than average click through rate. (There’ll be more on this in another post).
For untested waters I was happy with the click through rate. Though it probably was not ideal for testing against blind copy where you have no measure of conversion.
Google +: Again, Google plus sort of falls into the same camp as you tube. I’m there, but not prolific enough to make a dent. But I figured in for a penny in for a pound. You never know who’s eye you might catch.
Given that I only posted a couple of links here, it wasn’t a time investment to worry about. If I managed to pull a little traffic from here, all good…but I certainly wasn’t expecting to.
The Payoff – Reflections & Theories
As you can see there are some pretty good lessons in this exercise. So you’re probably wondering what the payoff was for this JV launch virgin?
Very little.
There were 2 sales made from my end. Yup that’s a whole 2. Surprised?
I wasn’t expecting to rake in bundles of cash my first play on the merry go round. Honestly my lists and network aren’t big enough for that kind of reach…yet
I was happy to to treat it as a learning experience. Hell if a broke a few sales in the process and if it brought some fresh eyes to my work, then it was worth the work in my book.
I can’t tell you what the other ladies did as individuals. But based on the overall outcome of the promotion I don’t think I was far off the average with my results.
Everybody has to start somewhere, and thats my reason for telling you this.
While it’s cool to hear about all those big buck launches, reality is, it takes time to get to that kind of level and they’re certainly not the everyday occurrence that you may think they are.
In the end, I can only say, I did the best I knew how with this promotion.
Yes I made some rookie mistakes; like only creating one tracking link…I wish, wish, wish, I’d created a different one for each traffic stream to better assess the data.
But over the two days I did send more than 650 people over to the sales page, which isn’t too bad for a first time effort.
Value = Sales…. Not Always the Case
Joint venture sales like this provide a great amount of value in the resources they provide. You certainly couldn’t fault the calibre of products or contributors that were included in the package.
You do your job and send the potential buyers and hope to convince and convert them when they arrive on the scene. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Maybe the fact that there was no warm up to prime buyers and get them ready to buy, like they do for example with the Only 72 sale.
Only 72 is a sale that runs for 72 hours (bet you’d have never guessed that) But it does give plenty of advance publicity, with the sales page online with a countdown timer, and no buy buttons for at least a few days before going live. People can work through the info, assess and come back time and time again to convince themselves. Then all that’s needed is to reveal that buy now button and they’re away.
At the end of the day we can hypothesise till pigs fly.
Maybe it was no warm up, maybe it was the copy on the sales page, maybe my leads weren’t the right demographic, and then again maybe being in pre Mercury retrograde threw a spanner in the works…who knows?
You can only measure, assess, learn and improve the next time around. I certainly won’t be shy to try it again.
What about you. Have you ever been through a launch. What lessons did you learn from the experience. Why not share your thoughts in the comments below, I’d love to hear them, and I’m sure they’d be valuable to other readers too.
I hope you found some value in this post and if you did, then please click a couple of those buttons on your left to send it round the interwebz. Thanks 
Oh and if you’re interested in finding out more about Site Snapshot, all the info will be live on the site next week, be sure to come back and check it out.
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Good lessons – and kudos for taking them in and learning from them. With social and promotion, we’ve got to be in it for “the long game”. I think it’s the people who do that who are able to really leverage something in a short window. On to the next venture, right?
Hi Denise
Yep definitely lessons learned, and already thinking ahead. You can’t keep this gal down
“long game” is right, I also think its impossible to be really effective on every channel, you’re audience will have different expectations on each platform, which is something that can’t be ignored.
Thanks for stopping by Denise
Hi Jackie,
It’s always nice to hear what worked for others. I’m in the same situation with social media: not active enough for serious results :/
I actually have a couple of launches coming and this helped a lot, thanks
Peter Sandeen recently posted..Potatoes – The Great Time Management Teachers
Hi Peter
Thanks for your comments. It was helpful for me to write this as it really gave me a solid overview of the launch.
I do think results may have been different given a bigger window, but that’s only theory.
Glad you found it helpful, and wishing you all the best with your upcoming launch(s)
I am sure many will learn from your experience Jackie and it refreshing to see you lay it all out. Whenever I see articles or blurb about how every launch or promo someone does is so successful I tend to think of “pants on fire”.
Over the years I have had my share of duds and every time have learnt valuable lessons although it didn’t always seem like it at the time.
One question is what was the rationale for the promotion window to be so short?
Susan Oakes recently posted..Marketing Tip To Reduce Customer Stress
Hey I say look for the learning experience in everything
Life and business aren’t success only journey’s, if someone can glean a little out of this experience more power to them. There are far too many “pants on fire” out there, someone should call the Fire brigade!
Dud’s are good. They are the precursors to success.
I’m pretty sure the premise behind the short window was for “scarcity” that would be my assessment anyway. I have my own views on using this trigger, and this occasion wouldn’t have been my first choice.
Thanks for your thoughts Susan, always appreciated.
Good on you Jackie for having a go and then reflecting on your results!
You are absolutely right in saying we often hear of ‘experts’ with ginormous lists making bucketloads when the reality is few people experience that level of monetary success.
The thing they forget to mention is the other benefits such as going through a launch process, developing stronger relationships with JV partners etc.
Looking forward to hearing about your next big launch!
Caylie
Caylie Price recently posted..7 Things You Might Want To Know About Me Before #DPCON12
Caylie, We have to stop meeting like this
Always like to share what I think will be useful to you lovely people who take the time to read my stuff.
It’s a rare person that will hit the ground running and score big on a first time launch, everyone has to start somewhere.
Lack of success on one thing doesn’t determine your level of success on everything. You have to keep it in perspective.
There is a lot of good that has come as the result of this process, and may continue to filter on for sometime to come, that is not to be negated. I’m all for sharing the highs and the lows. Because that’s how life rolls.
Stay tuned for launch 2.0 the new and improved model…coming soon to a theatre near you
Have a great one Caylie, thanks for your comments.
PS>>>you should pop over to Gravatar and set your avatar image, it would be nice to see your smiling face instead of that blue box
Hi Jackie,
Thanks for your email! Really appreciate the thoughts you shared. I am questioning the same things.
Hopefully my picture will come up this time too! I could never work out why it only worked on some blogs when I’d signed up to Gravatar. Finger crossed!
Caylie
P.S. Where in Australia are you based?
Caylie Price recently posted..7 Things You Might Want To Know About Me Before #DPCON12
Woo hoo, there you are
I’m cross country in Perth
[...] Creating the joint venture. Networking with others can be about more than just launching your business. There’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs to work together as well. Here’s one example to consider. Respectfully Disobedient [...]
Hi Jackie,
Refreshingly honest and thanks so much for laying it all out there. Gave me some great info and guidance.
As one who has been trying to break into social media with little impact (or so it seems) it was a salutary lesson that persistence pays and there’s no such thing as an overnight success – despite what some may imply!!
I have NO doubt that your next venture will be a different story with what you have learned.
Go get em girlfriend
Hey Jane
It doesn’t help anyone just to show the nice shiny good side of business. It leads to a false perception that is hard to measure up to, leaving people wondering why things aren’t working for them.
There are equally as many things that don’t work if you look under that surface publicity level.
I say observe the market, pay attention but never use it as a measure of your own success. Get on with your own mission, because yours is the only one thats important.
Gurlfriend…Watch this space…bwahahahahaha
About this…
Every human being is out in the world showing off and expressing whatever they think/feel helps the most…
Is the person writing or performing responsible for assigning meaning and understanding, is the person who chose to read/watch? Are both?
Jason “J-Ryze” Fonceca recently posted..Ryze’s Best Of Success – March 2012
Hey Jason,
I think we all intend to put our own slant on what we are trying to convey. After all we can only speak from our own perspective.
When you produce content for consumption by others, of course it’s subject to their own individual interpretation. They (the reader) assigns meaning.
But I think its important to show people both sides of the coin wherever possible. Human psyche is a strange beast and stongly subject to influence from sources it finds resonance with.
So then, assigning meaning-wise… shiny side of business only is a ‘bad thing’ ?
Food for thought
Jason “J-Ryze” Fonceca recently posted..Ryze’s Best Of Success – March 2012
Food for thought indeed. But we can’t exist in a vacuum, contrast does bring clarity don’t you think?
Oh I *love* contrast, makes the world go ’round and leads to much goodness — I more meant — is it every single business owners responsibility to Provide Contrast, or can I just provide the shiny parts, and let someone else provide the contrast?
Jason “J-Ryze” Fonceca recently posted..Ryze’s Best Of Success – March 2012
Ohhh…I getcha
Well yes you can 
This is awesome Jackie! Thanks so much for sharing your launch process with us. I’m working on a launch of my own right now… for my new Etsy shop & blog. I love the promotional video idea & the Facebook Ad idea. I’m definitely going to have to look into that. Thanks again. Here’s hoping I get a good response!!
Meagan recently posted..Creative Business Blog Carnival – March
Pleasure Meagan
If you’re interested I used animoto for the video here’s a link for you to check it out http://youtu.be/5Jloqy_qyvU it only took about 15 mins to put together. Facebook ad’s are great, but I don’t know that I would use them against untested conversion rates, ie new sales copy. Do check out FBAdsLab Jen has some great tips on FB advertising and she really knows her stuff, she runs campaigns for lots of the major players.
Wishing you all the best with your launch Meagan, I’m sure you’ll rock it!
Awesome! Thanks for the links… I’ll definitely check them out!
Meagan recently posted..Creative Business Blog Carnival – March
Working on a launch for my first product. Thanks for communicating your experience. It’s always nice to be able to pick up pointers from other peoples experience.
Thanks!
Alan Smith recently posted..Four Ways Pinterest Can Work for Your Business
Thanks Alan
Have fun with your launch and hope it all goes great for you.
I love how you see deeper value than sales, and I feel that if other bloggers feel you bring something to the table for JV and your offering is slick, you\’re on the right track.Mad props, Jackie, and it sounds like a really helpful experience.I like to study launches big and small from yours here, to Danny Iny\’s, to Jeff Walker\’s + Dan Kennedy\’
Great stuff.
My theory is watch and learn, build and grow. Look for the lessons.
I’m with you, you learn a lot from others. I’ve been paying particular interest to Danny…man that guy is a machine, and super smart in his approach and strategy.
I’ll be taking a leaf out of his book on guest posting, something you seem to be pretty prolific with too.
That’s the journey of life
Thanks Jackie!
And yeah, Danny is incredible — I feel like he’s a personal inspiration and mentor to me, and I deeply appreciate him.
And speaking of Danny + Guest Posts — I have a cool story/post about him that should be going live on Paul Wolfe’s OneSpoonAtATime.com soon
Stay tuned.
Jason “J-Ryze” Fonceca recently posted..Ryze’s Best Of Success – March 2012
Jackie,
This is a fantastic resource. I’ve launched one product so far… But it wasn’t ready for Market. I was so anxious to get it out that I didn’t follow nearly close to all the steps you outlined.
I wish you good luck on this product but it seems you’ve learned so much that there will be many more to come as well.
Thanks
Ryan H.
Ryan Hanley recently posted..Forget Social Media and Simply Create Content
Thanks Ryan
Onwards and upwards, thats the only way to go. I’m sure I’ll have a few more lessons along the journey too.
Howdy Jackie.
Thanks for sharing the intimate details. Nothing like laying it out there for all to see…. and yes, learn from.
I read an interview last night between Jeff Walker (of PLF fame) and Sonia (copyblogger). Jeff’s take was that the “launch formula” works regardless of whether you are going big or small.
It’s all in the “system”. Time proven tactics that just flat-out work.
Anyway, good stuff. And thanks again for sharing…
Eric
Eric T. Wagner recently posted..What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Peyton Manning
Hi Eric
Don’t have personal experience with Jeff’s Launch Formula, so can’t really comment on that. I have heard good things about it though.
A Launch is a launch…big or small the principal is the same, I don’t dispute that. There is a distinction between running your own product launch where you are in control of all the elements as opposed to promoting for a JV in my view.
Systems are great and I’m big on the whole system thing myself. But they do have to be built, tested and improved upon. I’m sure even PLF is a different animal now than it was 6 or so years ago when it was first released.
Thanks for stopping by
Hey Jackie, this is a really nice and honest post. Admitting only six people saw your youtube video.. ouch! But honest. It happens to all of us, indeed.
If you see the big online guru’s launching new products.. they will often have a launch that spans a few weeks.. all of a sudden you see them coming alive on twitter again and giving away things for free… Which is when you KNOW they ae going to put something new on the market pretty soon.
A lot of it is window dressing, too. They often loose a lot of the income to their affiliates. Anyway, it must have been an interesting experience!
Kitty Kilian recently posted..A sincere word of warning for those who will not read this post
Hi Kitty
Its the easiest thing in the world to share and show off your successes. But failures, well most people like to play them close to their chest.
You’ve gotta take the good with the bad, learn and move on. Sharing not only helps me, but hopefully it’s helpful to others too.
Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts, much appreciated
Interesting read. Makes a nice change to read an honest report of how sales are going, rather than a boastful one you get on many blogs.
Hope your product sells well for you.
Hi Richard
Thanks for your well wishes. I’ll be happy to boast when I have something to boast about. In the meantime, I’ll just keep plugging away
Cheers
Jackie,
I loved your post. I have actually done a couple of launches and your lessons are very similar to mine. I had decent success with certain avenues and others ended up being mostly wasted activity. Actually the surprise was the Facebook event combined with Facebook ads – that went better than expected. LinkedIn ads were a dud, my content marketing went well and YouTube was okay.
At the end of the day, the #1 source (of leads in my case) was partners emailing their lists (no surprise). One launch was a list-builder and that went well (got a decent set). My telesummit sales were okay but not as good as hoped (lots of other benefits though). In some senses the big multi-product launches may be just too much hype and confusion. One product marketed in a few targeted ways over a longer period may be more efficient and effective but still testing…
Thanks for the great post!
Tom Treanor recently posted..What Do You Wish You’d Known Before You Started Blogging?
Hi Tom
Its a good point you make about the multi product launches. I do wonder if they are losing their lustre, appealing only to the “more = better” crowd (which seems to be lessening). The Dynamics online are constantly shifting, what worked 6 months ago, may not work now. Like I say, it was interesting and I’ve learned what I would and wouldn’t do on my own product launches.
Not really surprised at email being your number one, there’s a lot to be said for cultivating your audience & partnering with others who do the same. As you say there are often other benefits that shouldn’t be overlooked even if you’re not bringing in the cash.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience Tom and stopping by to comment.
Congrats again on landing a gig with Copyblogger
Thanks for sharing Jackie…I too have had the experience of being involved in a JV and learnt quite a few lessons from my involvement.
It’s good to get a feel for how other businesses operate – we never stop learning and sometimes we become insular! It also helps to reinforce that what your doing is working (or not).
There is always a ‘why’ your invited to become part of a JV …many good reasons of course, but one not so good reason I’ve found (and I’m the eternal optimist), is that people see strength in your ability or product and quite often like to ride on the back of it for their own gain…eeek now that’s steppin out and sayin it how it is or was for me!!!!
Upwards & Onwards…
cheers
Sue.
Hey Sue
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experiences.
Love this….
“people see strength in your ability or product and quite often like to ride on the back of it for their own gain…eeek now that’s steppin out and sayin it how it is or was for me!!!!”
I feel ya girlfriend..I feel ya
Onwards and upwards is the only way to go, and do it marching to your own drum that’s what I say!