5 days to clarity on your digital product idea – Part 5

The launch is generally 60 to 90 days and it's something you can do more than once. It's not something that just happens that very first time that you put it out there into the world, but instead it's a limited-time campaign where you are really doing a push for this product, whether it's the first time that you're launching it or the 10th time that you are launching it.

5 days to clarity on your digital product idea – Part 5

This is day five of five days to clarity on your digital product idea. So far this week we've looked at the problem that your product is going to solve, who your product is going to solve that problem for and how are you going to solve that problem and what format you are going to create that digital product in.

Today, we're looking at how will you create and launch it. So if you haven't yet gone through Parts 1, 2, 3, or 4, go back to those blogs because that will help to address any of the major questions that tend to come up around creating a digital product and coming up with that idea for a digital product.

 

How to create and launch your digital product

So what I think is a big misconception around launching a digital product is that launching it is the process of creating it, a lot of people get confused about it. Creating it to me is the process of outlining it, putting the slides together and recording it. If you're doing a course or writing an ebook, if you're writing an ebook, launching it, however, is the process of marketing it.

It's that marketing campaign that gets people onto your email list who are ready to buy. It's the content that moves them closer to the point of being ready to buy when you open doors. The launch is generally 60 to 90 days and it's something you can do more than once. It's not something that just happens that very first time that you put it out there into the world, but instead it's a limited-time campaign where you are really doing a push for this product, whether it's the first time that you're launching it or the 10th time that you are launching it.

Now you don't need to create your product and then launch it. We're going to talk about that in today's mini-training session because what I find is typically when you are creating a product before you launch it, it takes a lot longer to get it out into the world than if you were to do one of the other approaches that I'm going to talk about in today's lesson.

 

Creating and launching at the same time

This is something we're going to talk about today because I'm a big fan of either creating it and launching it at the same time or launching it and then creating it. These allow you to test your idea so that you're not investing time and money into something people don't want and they give you that real-time market research so that you can tailor your product according to what people want. So that you're not running that risk of creating something that people don't want.

 

How to create your product

I know that the biggest issue that comes up when you're creating a digital product is that you just don't have time to do it and unfortunately, there is no way around this other than prioritizing it, it won't happen until you prioritize it. So you need to set that time in your calendar consistently and guard that time fiercely.

Take priority and that's okay if they need to take priority, but understand that your product won't happen until you prioritize it. You're never going to suddenly magically have more time to create this thing. You're never going to magically have a week that just pops up. You're not going to magically be less busy next month or next year. So the only way to do it is to prioritize it.

Now the other thing with creating your digital product is there is no right way to do it. The only way to get it done is to get it out there and then make it perfect over time. Get it out there, get it to the point where it is helping people and then use their feedback and their questions and their struggles that they have, their frustrations that they have to help make it better to refine it, improve it and over time it will get better and better.

 

Brain dump everything

The process that I typically follow when I am creating whether it's a course or an ebook or any kind of digital product, is typically I would stop by brain dumping everything I could teach about that particular topic so I would know if this is the problem that I'm solving and all the transformation that I'm helping them to achieve.

So what we looked at in day one of this five-part series and I would think, okay, this is where they are right now. Points A and point B is the point where they have solved this problem or have achieved this transformation and then I would brain dump everything I could teach about that transformation or solving that problem and I would remove everything that doesn't help get them from point A where they are right now to point B, the point where they've solved that problem or achieve that transformation.

Any foster removing anything that doesn't move them there faster because if it doesn't get them there faster or easier, it's actually slowing them down. So we think that including as much content as possible into a product is what makes it really valuable. But what makes it valuable is getting them to the finish line as easily and as quickly as possible.

 

Turn it into an outline

So once you've got that brain dump and you've removed all of that surplus content, turn this into an outline. You might want to take some of that surplus content and turn it into a bonus, that's fine. But right now we just want to look at the outline of that core content for your course or your membership or your program.

Whatever it is that you are launching, once you've got that outline and how detailed you want your outline to be is totally up to you. I don't really like mine to be too detailed anymore. Now I find that off the cuff, I actually come up with better stories and better explanations than I do if I have everything perfectly scripted.

But the first course that I created five years ago, I needed it outlined really well because I didn't have that confidence in talking off the cuff. So turn that brain dump into an outline and outline each module and each lesson. So have that kind of vague structure of this is how I want to structure it and this is the outline of what I'm going to teach inside each lesson.

Once you've got those outlines for each lesson or each module, or if it's your ebook, each chapter, if it's a membership, each month, then you need to create any slides or any visual aids. If you are creating a membership, then we need to create worksheets. If it's a cost, maybe worksheets, cheat sheets, or PDFs.

If you have any prerecorded lessons, you can record and edit any video or audio. If you are doing a course, a membership, or a group program, my favorite approach is to teach it to live via zoom rather than prerecording anything. It saves you so much time. It's so much less soul-destroying than just talking into a microphone with nobody listening to you. Because you get that feedback, you get that interaction and the energy when you're talking to a group of people is always so much better than the energy if you're just talking to your computer screen.

 

Create bonuses

If you have any of that nice-to-have content or there is actually a bit of a strategy behind which bonuses to create but we create those bonuses last because they are bonuses.

 

3 ways in creating and launching your digital product

So there are three ways that you can go about creating and launching your digital product.

 

1. Create it and then launch it

If you're creating and then launching it, option one is a lot slower for getting your product done and getting it out there. But if you are somebody who literally only has an hour a week to put into creating this product and an hour a week to put into launching it after you've created it, then this is going to be probably the most suitable approach for you but understand that it is going to take you a long time to get it out there.

What I would do is once you've created your digital product, allow for 60 to 90 days of Launch after you've created your product. Because if you've been in the cave, the creation cave, where you've spent this time creating your product but you haven't been growing your audience, you haven't been sharing strategic content. You haven't been nurturing people to the point where they need to be, to be ready to buy from you. You're going to escape from your product creation cave, put your product out there into the world and it's going to be crickets.

That is super important that you still have that 60 to 90 days of Launch after you've created the product. Otherwise, you risk a lot of time creating the product only to have crickets and honestly the “creating it and then launching it” approach isn't my favourite approach because there is that risk that you will invest this time and energy into creating something that nobody wants. Because the only true form of validation is when people spend money.

 

2. Launch it, then create it

This leads me to option two, which is launching it and then creating it. So what I would suggest doing if you're going to do this approach is start launching right away, start sharing that strategic launch content to grow your audience and get them to the point where they need to be, to be ready to buy from you and then run some kind of launch trigger, like a webinar and sell your digital product on that webinar. Then if people buy it, create it and if they don't buy it, that's fine too.

Because now we have people we can go back and talk to them. We can ask them why didn't you buy and that'll give you insight that you can use to tweak or to pivot one of my best-selling digital products. The 8 weeks podcast launch plan, the very first time I launched that, I launched it as a group program that I hadn't yet created.

And when only two people out of 10 signed up. I knew, okay, I need to do some research. So two people out of the 10 slots in the program. I knew I needed to go back and ask people, why didn't you buy? And when I did ask them, what I found out was that people didn't want to learn how to launch a podcast in a group program setting. They wanted a self-paced process to do it.

I learnt that people were afraid they couldn't show up to the live calls because we're about to go into the summer holidays here in Australia. So that showed me exactly what I needed to pivot into. I needed to pivot into something that was a self-paced program, which is exactly what I did and then 12 months later that self-paced program had sold $750,000 worth.

So that is one of the biggest advantages of launching it and then creating it because you can use that as almost a test to see what people want. What do they need? And tweak your product, refine your product.

 

3. Launch it and create it at the same time

Stop that 90 days of launching. Now set a date in your calendar when doors will open and people will be able to buy the product and while you are in that 90 days of launching. Creating the product at the same time, it does put a bit of time pressure on and that is awesome because time pressure means that you will get it done.

Where I see people going wrong is they've got this deadline, that's just this loose deadline and it just keeps getting pushed forward and the digital product never actually eventuates. So when you are launching and creating at the same time, you get audience feedback and learnings from the content that you are sharing and you start to see what questions people have. Which helps you to shape your product even better and then by the end of that 90 days, you've got a product. You've got an audience and your audience is ready to buy it.

 

Summary

Let's recap a little bit. You have three options, you can create it and then launch it. You can launch it and then create it or you can create and launch it at the same time. Now, creating and launching at the same time allows you to test that idea so that you're not investing time and money into something people don't want and it gives you that real-time market research so you can tailor your product according to what people want.

That also is available to you if you launch it and then created it, you still get that feedback and ensure that you're not investing time into something people don't want. Launching isn't the same thing as creating your digital product. Remember that launching is what happens in the 60 to 90 days before you open doors before people even have the opportunity to buy your digital product.

Lastly, I wanted to just leave you with one final message. You don't need to have an audience to start your launch because you have that 90 days, you can use that 90 days to strategically grow your audience with the right people and nurture them to where they need to be, to be ready to buy from you.

That is it for this five-day series.

 

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