Launch Tomorrow

Landing Pages for your Lean Startup

How to launch a new product in the market successfully

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This week my main update is that I had an appearance on the Startup Playground Podcast, as part of season 2 which he is calling the #CasualUndistancingTalks. The host Elvis (great name) and I had an in-depth chat. We mostly covered mindset about launching new products, and how to think about it, especially now during the pandemic. As well as the importance of teams and teamwork.

I had a lot of fun, and for some reason a lot of the examples were around mp3 players (remember those) and the launch of the original iPod. Makes sense, since we’re both podcasters. 🙂

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How to budget for innovation

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This week I just wanted to draw your attention to an old article on Harvard Business Review about budgeting in established companies for innovation.

Here, on average, is what they estimated they were currently spending: 85% of their resources on day-to-day operations 5% on incremental improvements that produced faster, cheaper, better sameness 5% on small sustaining innovations 5% on big, disruptive innovations When we asked the managers what a better proportion might be, their answers were: 75% on day-to-day operations 5% on incremental improvements 10% on sustaining innovations 10% on big, disruptive innovations.

Personally, I find this intuitive, because of asset allocation is part of my background in finance. In situations of partial randomness, like in the financial markets, the amount you allocate defines your expose to particular risks and profit drivers.

relative and absolute allocation matters when deciding a budget

You can’t control in advance whether an investment will go up, down, or sideways in value. But you can choose how much you allocate, both in relative and in absolute terms:

  • Relative: Relative to the budget as a whole, what % is allocated to each innovation initiative? Also, what is the relative pool of money allocated to each type of innovation?
  • Absolute: How much money are you putting in? In other words, are you ok if you lose 100% of it?

The big challenge really, with budgeting for innovation in established companies, is that it’s typically done on an annual basis. Whereas new product development occurs on a much shorter cycle time. That way you are making big decisions about funding without the benefit of market feedback and other considerations which are critical tactically.

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Don’t Make ‘Em Think, Make ‘Em Feel

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Banging your head against a wall?

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

How does that feel?

Your riskiest assumptions are probably related to your prospects and customers. Establish empathy quickly with your target prospect, figure out what's valuable, and get your innovation into the market.

Just keep calm, and bang your head against the wall.

Getting a migraine yet?

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Well, that's your prospects' experience, when they hop onto a landing page that doesn't direct their next step.

Don't make them think.

It really needs to be obvious, even from 10 feet away.

Answer the questions they have, even before they know they need ask them.

  • What button do I press?
  • What am I buying exactly?
  • Why is this a good idea for me right now?

Relief.

A solution.

Relax, it's easy.

See, friction doesn't occur on the landing page. It occurs in the mind of the prospect.

How do they feel when they see your landing page? Because decisions are made in the emotional brain. If you make 'em think, you've pretty much lost the sale.

To get more, there's only one resource worth reaching for.

That's Launch Tomorrow. Inside, you'll get the low down on what actually matters, when putting up a landing page MVP.

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21 Different Ways To Prove Your Case, Even Though You Don’t Have A Product or Customer Yet

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As late heavy hitter Gary Bencivenga says:

Almost everyone in the world, in every field of human endeavor, is desperately searching for someone to believe in. Be that person and you can write your own ticket. Belief is today’s most overlooked yet most powerful key to boosting response to any ad, in any medium. Harness it and you unleash the core atomic power for exploding response.

Most prospects want to believe the claims you make in a landing page, yet the claims challenge their world-view and the status quo. You need proof, ideally proof that resonates emotionally, in order to get them to take action.

Proof that resonates emotionally like guitar string

A landing page, or a salesletter, is like a one-to-one conversation between you and the prospect. You put various things on the landing page, designed to instill a particular reaction in the reader’s mind.

A good landing page is written in a conversational tone. Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. In fact, you can read it out loud to ensure that the text “flows” well.

like a phone call with a friend … empathize

Imagine it as a phone conversation with a friend. They call you. They bring up a problem they’re struggling with. You say something surprising. You empathize with their pain. You talk about an approach you’ve used in the past or a product you can recommend to address it, as you know it will help them out. At the end, you help them buy the product or implement a solution in their lives. Empathize with your reader in the same way you’d empathize with that friend on the other end of the line.

Your riskiest assumptions are probably related to your prospects and customers. Establish empathy quickly with your target prospect, figure out what's valuable, and get your innovation into the market.

Direct response progenitor Eugene Schwartz puts it well:

It is the facts that the prospect believes in and accepts, and the way that he passes that acceptance along from one fact to another, that determines the ad’s development, the arrangement of your claims and your images and your proofs, so that there is a step-by-step strengthening, not only of your prospect’s desire but of his conviction that the satisfaction of that desire will come true through your product.

You are building up the emotional weight of your argument as much as you can. You want the solution to become increasingly real in the prospect’s mind.

When you are making claims about the benefits your product has, your prospect is likely to not believe a claim that you make. It’s that natural “yeah, right” knee-jerk response.

Proof counters that pushback. It’s your job, as a product creator or founder, to provide strong counter-arguments to this type of objection. In other words, your copy should explicitly address the prospect’s objections about how your solution can solve his problem. Or hers.

Well, the best type of proof is a poignant detail that knocks out a line of questioning or thinking. Direct response copy that sells is very clear.

If you want to know what types of proof you can use, I’ve got your back. Launch Tomorrow includes 38 different types of proof you can include on your landing page.

You can get a copy over here: http://book.launchtomorrow.com

To be crystal clear, 21 different types of proof don’t require you to even even have a customer, much less a success story.

Even on a landing page MVP, it all comes down to knowing how to present your product.

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How Many Experiments Do I Need To Run?

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A teacher said to her student, “Billy, if both of your parents were born in 1967, how old are they now?”
After a few moments, Billy answered, “It depends.”
“It depends on what?” she asked.
“It depends on whether you ask my father or my mother.”

It’s also like that with the number of experiments you need to run, in order to build a new product.

It depends.

On how much of a breakthrough you want your product to be.

Photographer: Rafael Pol | Source: Unsplash

Soviet inventor Genrich Altschuller created the “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving”, or TIPS. In the original Russian, it’s called TRIZ. TRIZ’s a massive topic in its own right, providing a systematic methodology for solving problems creatively.

Your riskiest assumptions are probably related to your prospects and customers. Establish empathy quickly with your target prospect, figure out what's valuable, and get your innovation into the market.

Apparently even creativity can be systematized.

Anyway.

While Altschuller reads quite heavily in the translated English version, he shares nuggets of wisdom–which are very relevant for product entrepreneurs.

For example, he pored over about 40,000 patent filings, mining for insight and inspiration. It turned out, that there were clear patterns in how inventors approached problem solving. Depending on the type of challenge being addressed, the number of experiments the inventors did made the technological breakthrough even greater.

Number of experiments

This shows exactly what’s required if you want to create a breakthrough product. Most commercialized products which are “revolutionary” will require at least 10,000 well-thought out experiments.

You don’t know which of your experiments will reveal insight. If you aren’t doing thousands of them, then you ain’t gettin’ none.

The takeaway here is clear. Everyone wants quick results. Sometimes they do happen. (I’m all for being optimistic.)

More often than not, though, you’ve got a lot of experiments to run. Systematically. In order to really get beyond conventional wisdom. If you want to discover a counter-intuitive truth. So get started already!

Taking this into the Lean Startup realm, before you even start your technical experiments like Altschuller, you can run marketing experiments.

Figure out what your market wants. What problems they have. What keeps them up at night.

Then, when you put your product creator hat on, you’ll make a product which has a chance at commercial success. That’s the bit the Soviets missed.

If you want to find out more about how to run these types of marketing experiments, I’ve got your back. My upcoming book Your First Startup Experiment goes into a lot more detail.

Read it.

Apply it.

Profit from it.

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