Can April 15th Make You A Better Internet Marketer?

“You win battles by knowing the customer’s timing, and using a time which the customer does not expect.”

…What the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi would have said if he was an internet marketer instead of a ninja.

Jeff Walker would probably say something like this too. He gives away a ton of free info in the video introducing his new Product Launch Formula version 2.x. (The ‘x’ stands for whatever bonus package you get.) The link might disappear, but right now, Brian Clark over at Copyblogger has Jeff’s link for the video you can see for free.

(No, I’m not Jeff’s or Brian’s affiliate.) I was simply impressed with the ideas. And the timing.

You see, Americans don’t spend their tax refunds when they come in the mail, do they? You know most refund checks get spent as soon as people know they’ve got one. Do you think it’s coincidence Jeff wants to get you excited about his product before April 15th?

He’ll want you to plop your tax refund on his product as soon as the green hits your hands. Not a bad strategy. In fact, if Affiliate Confession and their commenters are right, April 15th might be the one time this year when you have money. Hope they’re wrong.

Jeff’s video is somewhat lengthy. True, his earnings story made a good point: New technology and methods can make your next launch give you ten times the profit. I thought this how-much-money-I-made section went on a bit, though. (Seems like it’s tough for any internet marketer not to go on about this topic.)

What really caught my attention was about two-thirds into the video. Jeff asked the audience: Do you actually read every word of those sales letters that scroll on forever? Of course not. You read a little at the top. Then you skim to the bottom and find out how much it costs. He pointed out how this kind of sales letter just doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Instead, why not turn the sales letter on its side? Turn it into a timeline. Skip all the lengthy sales verbiage. The formula goes something like this:

• * Make your headline an announcement: you’re giving away something, maybe a video for free
• * Give the public free information they want - how to play guitar, for example
• * Give your friends/business partners the “full” program (there’s even a process for selecting the right friends here)
• * Work for the success of your friends
• * Collect rave reviews
• * Publish your glowing testimonials for the world to see
• * Watch people start buzzing about your free product - your full program isn’t for sale yet
• * Start asking your excited prospects exactly what they want in a product (clear away future objections too)
• * Finish creating your full product
• * Plan a launch date - a date when you give all your raving fans a limited time to buy your product
• * Keep momentum going with memberships and more product launches

Jeff links powerful human persuasion triggers within these steps. Can you spot them?

• * Social proof
• * Liking
• * Commitment
• * Consistency
• * Authority
• * Scarcity
• * Reciprocity

A Google search connected these to Robert Cialdini’s studies on persuasion. Wikipedia summarizes these nicely.

Googling “product launch formula” revealed more juicy tidbits. Testing made Jeff’s landing pages super simple: a video and a big red arrow drawing your eye to some short prompt text and a box/button for your email. Aside from those tiny links at the bottom, this is everything that’s on the page. Instead of just the typical few, more than half of the people who saw this page responded.

I can certainly vouch for this idea. It flat out worked for me back in the good ol’ days of pay-per-click and mortgage leads. Sites didn’t have video back then, so I had a smidge more text. Yet month after month, 60% (out of 150,000 people) filled out my form.

At least you can’t blame me for the dancing mortgage guy. Irritainment isn’t my style.

My summary here is super, super simplified. Yet these are extremely powerful ideas. The video introduces a guy who’s made a killing simply applying tips from Jeff’s free stuff.

Anyway, I was really impressed with Jeff’s ideas…and his timing. Speaking of timing, ditto to John P’s comments about the new Star Trek movie. So glad it’s coming in May instead of December. I wonder if Hollywood knows something about the economy we don’t…

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