The Ultimate Launch Checklist (For Your Next Sale)

It’s that time of year again.

This week I’ll be launching our fourth annual Location Rebel New Years Promotion.

It’s pretty widely known that I only do two major promotions a year for LR. I do one on New Years Day, and one on the anniversary of starting the site in July.

These are two of the best times to join because you get to come in with a big group of people, who are all eager to start a business and make major changes in their lives.

Now, I do these sales in a way that’s a little more unconventional than what most typical marketers do.

For one, I don’t discount the price at all.

Sure, I could get a lot more people in the door with even a small discount, but I don’t do this for a few reasons.

1. Everyone in LR has paid to be there. Because of this, the quality of our community is extremely high, and our members are actually motivated to take action
2. I don’t want to train people to wait for the sales.

Unlike some products, the cart for Location Rebel never closes. I don’t want the pressure of doing a handful of big launches a year, and frankly, if you’re ready to take action in early March – I don’t want you to have to wait another few months just to get access to the content.

I try and make things as fair as possible, and I never want a current member to feel like they didn’t get a good deal on their purchase when they see the next offer.

That’s why a good portion of the bonuses usually benefit all of the current members as well.

Today I’ll be starting my email series for the 2016 New Years promotion today, so I thought it would be a good time to talk about some of the components that go into a successful sale or launch of an online product.

Not every sale is going to have all of these, and my promotion won’t necessarily either. But these are all things that should be considered for each online sale you do – choosing the ones most applicable to your goals.

1) Establish a Clear Timeframe

I’ve seen online sales that are anywhere between a few hours long to a few weeks long, but you should have a clear timeline from day one so that you can properly plan your marketing around it.

I like the 48-72 hour time frame because it encourages people to take action immediately, and it remains top of mind.

The longer you go, the easier it is for people to push it off and forget about it.

The exception to this is if you have a long pre-launch sequence and you’re using affiliates.

When this is the case and you have a few dozen people each running their own marketing campaigns for your product, having a longer window helps to cater to your affiliates and gives them more flexibility in your promotions.

This should be considered for advanced marketers only, however. If you’re doing one of your first promos keep it to a shorter time frame.

2) Work in Opportunities to build Relationships with Your Audience

This is probably the biggest thing that sets my strategy apart from the bigger marketers out there.

Rather than automating everything, I like to add a personal component to my promotions.

In the first email of my series, I encourage people to hit reply and answer a question.

I then take it a step further and promise to give a personal response back with my answer to the same question (no sales people here, I give all the responses myself).

What does this do?

It allows me to actually start to build a relationship with the people thinking about joining the community. And even better, once they do join, I’ve already got an idea of what their goals are, so it makes it easier to help them and tailor my advice.

Yes, it’s a lot of work. I spend hours answering emails in the three days leading up to a sale, but it’s totally worth it.

3) Give Buyers an Incentive to Act Quickly

This is different than having a timeframe like we mentioned early on.

The vast majority of your sales come at the very beginning and the very end of the sale – so you want to start off as strong as you can.

I like to provide additional incentives for those who join earliest. If you’re hovering over the buy button 10 minutes before the sale officially starts, you should be rewarded for your loyalty and enthusiasm.

Usually I’ll tier my promotions like this:

• Everyone gets at least 3 bonuses
• First 100 people get those plus another bonus
• First 75 get everything above plus something else
• First 50 get everything above plus something else
• First 25 get everything above plus something else
• First 10 get everything above plus something else

So while it’s important to make sure that it’s still an incredible deal for the people who aren’t in the top 100, it makes it even more of a no-brainer for the people who are in that first wave of people.

4) Offer Bonuses that Target Different Needs

For this upcoming sale, I have more bonuses than I’ve ever had before.

Every single one of them works together to help achieve the same goal: start and grow a lifestyle business you can run from anywhere on Earth.

But different bonuses help with this in different ways.

Some of them cater to the people who want more advanced training.

Other bonuses help out the people who learn best through human contact.

While others are catering towards the complete beginner who has no idea where to start, they just know they’re ready to make a change.

With this strategy, even though they all work together to help you achieve a common goal, there’s a better chance of having that one thing that really resonates with different types of individuals.

5) ALWAYS Spend Considerable Time Crafting Your Email Series

This is the absolute most important part of any online sale.

In fact, this post is pretty much the only thing I’ll be saying publicly about what we have coming up. It’s generally only offered to people on my email list.

Because of this, you have to make sure the email series is really compelling.

At least for me, it’s one of the few times of the year where I send a burst of emails over a period of 5 days – so this has the potential to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Because of this, you want to do your best to make sure the emails are interesting, not overly pushy, but still help you achieve your goal of making sales.

I like to do this by offering case studies, telling different stories about our members and my own background, and by constantly reminding my subscribers that these promotions are very rare.

This let’s you know it’s a great time to buy if you’re interested, or for those who aren’t interested, it let’s you know that things will go back to normal soon.

6) Shoot a Video or Prepare a Video Sales Letter (VSL)

These are becoming increasingly common in online promotions, and in many cases, marketers use only a VSL to promote their products. I personally like having a combo.

And rather than doing a traditional VSL, I like to use video as a way to simply build rapport with the audience.

The fact is, I’m a pretty normal dude.

I’ve created a program and community that’s based off exactly what I did in my own life, and what I’ve helped hundreds of others achieve over the last few years.

I don’t consider myself a professional marketer or guru, I don’t think I’m better than anyone else, and I like to keep things casual and fun.

The primary purpose of the videos I shoot is to drive home those facts, while establishing that I really do know what I’m talking about. That’s what I’ve been doing with our weekly video blog. Trying to be entertaining and useful, but also just helping people get a feel for what I’m really like.

7) Offer Your Content in a Variety of Ways

To go along with the note about video, these days different people like to learn in different ways. So if you can offer your content via different mediums, it could help provide greater appeal to someone depending on what they like.

For instance, some people love watching tutorial videos but hate reading. Others like listening to podcasts on their commute.

By providing your content in a variety of ways you’re establishing broader appeal. One of the easiest ways to do this is to record the content as video. From there you can create an mp3 for the people who just want the audio, and transcribe it for the people who want the text.

8) Build Your Pre-Sale List Early

Not only is this fantastic for boosting sales, but it can also help you validate whether your product idea is actually worth it or not.

In our upcoming course Rebel Launches, I walk people step by step through my process for building a pre-sale interest list, validating the idea, and rolling out content before the sale to get people super excited to buy when things go live.

The easiest way to get going is to write a blog post on your topic, and include an opt in incentive that’s related to your product. If people sign up in droves you probably have a great idea on your hands. If not? Could be a sign that you need to point your attention elsewhere.

9) Testimonials

I don’t care how many times you say your offering is great, it’s always going to be more believable coming from someone else. Especially an actual customer, who had actual success, who actually emailed you to tell you about it.

The more testimonials the better. You can never have too many testimonials in my opinion.

Along with that, the more authentic and specific the testimonials are – the more effective they will be.

Nearly all of the testimonials I have on my sales page were unsolicited notes I got from people who have had success within the program. Not only does it put a huge smile on my face every time I get one, but it tells a potential customer, “oh, this really does work!”

Recently, I’ve taken this a step further and done a handful of video case studies each year. I hop on Skype for 10-15 minutes and talk with successful members about their background, experience with Location Rebel, and have them talk about how it helped them to be successful.

Here was one of the most recent ones I did with Josh Slone:

10) Multiple pricing options

Pricing is one of the most difficult parts any entrepreneur faces with their business.

You don’t want to give people too many options as that can lead to indecision and no action, but if you only give them one option, it may not be a great fit for them and could result in no sale.

I generally provide people with three options (One time fee, 4 monthly payments, entry level/stripped down option).

For my big promotions I remove the entry level option, and only offer the first two. This gives people who purchase all at once a bit of a discount, but makes the monthly payments more manageable for people who would like it.

This is something you need to test and experiment with, as every product and market is different, but generally having 2-3 pricing options will lead to more sales.

Was this helpful?

Was this post useful for you?

Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. One of the bonuses in this year’s LR promo is full, lifetime access to my course Rebel Launches.

In it, I teach you exactly how to go from nothing to doing a launch that has the potential to make 5 figures within 3 months – all while building legitimate relationships with your readers and customers.

We’ve tested it on a few different products, and it’s worked really well. I haven’t released it anywhere yet, and the only way you can get access right now is through this sale.

I’ll be releasing it next month for $297 on it’s own, so this is an incredible deal. Our 2016 New Years promotion will be live on Friday January 1st at 10am PST, and will run until Sunday, January 3rd at 10am PST.

Any sales made during that time are eligible for the bonuses, so if you aren’t on the email list, or somehow miss the sales page – you’re all good if you buy within that window. BUT, I’d suggest signing up here to make sure you don’t miss anything 🙂

Sean Ogle

Sean Ogle is the Founder of Location Rebel where he has spent the last 12+ years teaching people how to build online businesses that give them the freedom to do more of the things they like to do in life. When he's not in the coffee shops of Portland, or the beaches of Bali, he's probably sneaking into some other high-class establishment where he most certainly doesn't belong.