Creating a sense of urgency in an information product launch: Day 18

by Phyllis Zimbler Miller on June 18, 2009

Reprinted from a blog post of Phyllis Zimbler Miller as a National Internet Business Examiner.

How do you create a sense of urgency in an information product launch? And why is a sense of urgency a good thing?

Let’s take the second question first: A sense of urgency is a good thing because most of us are procrastinators – we put off doing the things that are not immediate.

And often times, in our hectic lives, we never get back to those non-urgent things we meant to do.

For example, take July 1st, the launch day of the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program. Yael and I want people to sign up right then for the $19.95 a month program.

But as there’s no sense of urgency people can decide to sign up later, and then forget about their decision to sign up.

Thus we do want to create a sense of urgency for signing up on July 1st for the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program.

Answer for the first question: There are various ways to create a sense of urgency in an information product launch.

One way would be with price: The first 100 people to sign up get the first month at half price. You don’t know if you’ll be one of the first 100 people unless you sign up right when the info product launches.

And there’s this variation of price – this introductory offer is only good for one week. After this week the price will go up to its regular price.

While either price variation creates a sense of urgency, I’ve already talked about my belief that devaluing your product is not a good idea.

There is the variation that calls for lots of JV (joint venture) partners who promote your product launch by offering one of their products free if you sign up immediately. But when I thought about the logistics required for this variation, I decided to pass on it.

(Besides, sometimes I don’t even want the free products. I’m already on information overload and I don’t want to feel guilty about even more free reports/audios/videos I’m never going to get to. I only want the actual product.)

Or what if the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program could only accommodate 50 people because it was designed as a one-on-one coaching program? Obviously if you are interested in the program you’ll be motivated to try to be one of the select 50.

And while this option could also be a good way to create urgency, there isn’t a limit of people in our program. I precisely wanted the program to be open to as many people as possible in order to share our information with a wide audience.

What then?

How about the first 10 people who sign up each get a 30-minute phone coaching/consultation with me? This has value for the people, my shopping cart will have the sales recorded so I can tell who are the first 10, and I can handle this much one-on-one coaching in my schedule during the product launch month.

Thus this is what I am going to do – probably with a twist. I plan to put this “first 10 people” offer only out on Twitter because that is an excellent target market of people who “get” moving quickly online.

FYI – There’s also a practical reason I want people to sign up on July 1st if at all possible:

Yael and I are designing our program to be as “comfortable” as possible for members – we are trying to ensure that the information will be valuable but not burdensome to learn.

As the first month’s topic will be applicable to everyone regardless of whether that person yet has an online “business,” I’d like people to sign up July 1st so that they can immediately listen to the first month’s teleseminar.

Then the members will have two weeks to think about the material as it applies to themselves. And when the live Q and A teleseminar is broadcast, members will be ready with thought-out questions whose answers can truly help.

And what’s new for the launch:

• Test and test again. Yael and I re-tested the membership software and the shopping cart software – and this time the connection didn’t work even though it had worked before. Now we’re waiting for a callback on the problem.

• Meanwhile we discovered that, after someone pays the $19.95 membership, the link to sign into the membership area is so tiny that most new members will miss it. (The link is almost hidden beneath the large link to the free ebook download.) Now we have to figure out what can be done about this usability problem.

• I wrote two upcoming guest posts for Joanna Penn’s blog thecreativepenn.com. And I’ll write more guests posts for other blogs because guest posts are a great way to get in front of new target audiences.

Tagged as: Joanna Penn, Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program, product launch, sense of urgency