Welcome back,

Yesterday, I talked to you about how "product" launches don't work - and how what Jeff Walker actually teaches in his "Product Launch Formula" course isn't "product" launch stuff at all. It's "Event" marketing.

To get the most out of this email, you should have already watched Jeff's "Blueprint" videos, Parts 1 AND 2. Specifically, Part 2. If you haven't seen them already, skip Part 1, but go to this page and opt-in - then watch Part 2.

Part 2 is where Jeff gets into the "nitty gritty" of the blueprint.

So, as promised last time, I'm going to give you a case study today. As a lot of you know, I have a history in the film industry as an editor, and I still have a great love for film. When I was given the opportunity to invest and work on a movie, I jumped at it.

So, I was "Associate Producer" on a little independent sci-fi horror film that came out last year called "Altered". (I was also the Post Production Supervisor, but that doesn't sound as sexy.)

It was a pretty sweet production - it was made by some of the same guys that made a little film called "The Blair Witch Project" - you may have heard of it.

The film was picked up by Universal, but we wanted to be part of the marketing of the DVD. We wanted to really blast the DVD sales through the roof on this one, and we knew that it wasn't going to happen on the video store shelves.

If we were going to get big numbers on this, we would need to use some good old "Event" marketing - right out of the "Product Launch Formula" mold.

Now, there's a couple of reasons I think this is a great case study example to show you. First and foremost, it's because we were (to put it mildly) VERY successful with this promotion.

But the more important reason is that I really want to hammer home the point I made in the last email. "Launches" - successful launches anyway - don't focus on the product itself, but rather shift the prospect's focus towards an event.

A DVD release is a good way to help you digest that because most people don't think of a film in terms of a "product" - even the major studios focus on the "Release Date" - which is an EVENT, not a PRODUCT. Hollywood gets this idea - and they get it big time.

So though this DVD is technically a physical product - no different than pet rocks, or swords, or blue widgets - it's a lot easier to think of it as a "release" that is tied to a specific date.

Follow me so far? Super.

So - back to the story. We have the impending release date of this DVD and we really want to sell a - and I'm going to use an industry term here - a honking butt-load of these DVDs.

How long did we have to roll out an event-marketing launch strategy?

Get this — Two weeks.

ha-HA! I laugh in the face of such challenges!

… Well, maybe I can laugh now, but at the time, before we knew how well it was going to work, we were EXTREMELY apprehensive, to say the least.

Now, here's where we're going to talk about Jeff's video again , so make sure you've watched it already. In that video, Jeff shows an interactive mind map. One of the sections in that mind map - the one he says is the MOST important - is labeled…

"STRATEGY"

Under "Strategy" we have 4 subsections, and I'm going to lay out for you EXACTLY how we assembled our marketing plan to address those 4 subsections.

1. List Building - This is the grand-daddy of marketing. How many times have you heard "The money is in the list"? I'm sure more than you can stomach.

But stomach it you must!

Because it's true. We needed a list of interested prospects and we needed it fast. One of the most important aspects of list-building is one that's glossed over by a lot of the people who tout it the most.

They neglect to tell you WHY you really need a list. The primary reason is that a list is TRAFFIC ON TAP. That's right - once someone expresses an interest and joins the list, it's instant traffic you can aim at whatever offer you choose, WHENEVER you choose.

You spend almost all your pre-launch activities in building your list, when on launch day, you just market to your list. You've extracted all the interested individuals (well, hopefully at least a lot of them) from the marketplace.

On launch day, you fire them at your offer like a fire hose. That's how you get that BIG MONEY in like 27 SECONDS!!! kind of response.

So, in short - we needed to build a list.

2. Relationship Building - Now, in order to build a RESPONSIVE list, we were going to have to develop a relationship with the people who were interested in our film. However, 2 weeks is an EXTREMELY short amount of time to do that in, so we were going to have to trigger some reciprocation with a well-known marketing shortcut.

We were going to make a F'ree Report!

I know what you're thinking. Giving away a PDF seems like something that would only really work in the IM field right? Or at the very least, it would only work in the info-product field…

Let me stop you right there.

What do you think a movie is, if not an info product? Unlike "traditional" info products, its purpose isn't to educate - rather its aim is to entertain. Still, at the end of the day, it's information on a transferable medium. So why not?

What kind of "piggy back" info could we put into a PDF that would appeal to our sci-fi/horror indie-film aficionado?

It turns out this was pretty easy.

You see these kinds of things out for Star Wars and Star Trek - there are these "technical guides" to those universes. Books with things like imaginary spaceship schematics, history stories, background information, etc. Just "extra" stuff that isn't necessary to tell the story of the film, but stuff that helps flesh out the imaginary world the characters inhabit.

It's not hard to produce that kind of stuff - a lot of it already gets created to serve the production and just doesn't make it into the completed film. It's what ends up in the DVD extras section, or if the movie is a huge phenomenon, in those kind of "expanded universe" books I talked about.

Well, it just so happened we had a lot of those kinds of goodies, so we slapped it all together and made a PDF download to dangle in front of interested prospects like a tasty carrot.

"Join our list for this movie, get this snazzy PDF full of extras and goodies from the film."

Pretty cool, huh?

3. Responding to the Market - I'm going to make a little departure here from Jeff's video in that we really didn't have the luxury of a one to two month roll-out for this promotion. We really didn't have the opportunity to "play" with the prospects and get feedback, make adjustments, etc. Essentially, the product was done, and we were already essentially out of time.

However, at this phase, we did take a very strong look at the public response to test screenings of the film and made some pretty solid decisions based on that.

I mentioned before that the filmmakers had previously been involved in the Blair Witch Project, which is arguably the most successful independent film of all time. Those guys are kind of the sweethearts and superstars of the whole indie film industry. Lots of wanna-be's and soon-to-be's look up to these fellas as being the guys to watch.

A TON of the press and blogging and buzz online before this film's release had more to do with the story OF the film rather than the story IN the film.

So with that in mind, we decided to promote our list not only to potential fans of the genre, but ALSO to people involved in the actual film business.

In addition to the fan contingent, we decided also to rope in the hobbyists and professionals as well.

That was one takeaway we got from studying the market.

Another is that we made a note of all the "mainstream" and "general interest" outlets that had covered any aspect of the film's production and decided to target those as well. Even if those outlets serviced very broad audiences, we had a shot at taking advantage of "repeated messaging" if we circled back with that same group of people. At least, that's what we hoped.

It was worth a shot at least, right?

4. Positioning - Now, typically "positioning" - in the marketing sense of the word - refers to how you set yourself up relative to other competing products in the marketplace. For film, this is a bit strange, because even though 100 DVDs might be released on the same day, not all of them are competing with each other.

In fact, hardly any of them really compete with each other. When people buy DVDs, they don't head out to the store intending to buy SOME DVD without having any idea what it is. The desire for something like a film is generally created BEFORE the point of purchase.

So, even though we didn't have a lot of time or relative "competition" to position against, we did have the "underdog" factor in our favor. Small budget, no superstars, no huge theatrical release. This wasn't a big Hollywood blockbuster - this was a small "love-letter" kind of movie. It's more of a direct communication from the filmmakers to the fans than other studio pictures could ever be.

So we reflected that in our auto-responder messaging to the list. "Thanks for your interest in Haxan films," - a very humble one-to-one style of communication.

As for of the actual PHYSICAL positioning of the campaign, I mentioned some of that earlier. We identified websites that serviced one or more of our targeted audience segments:

• Sci-Fi/Horror fans
• Independent Film buffs
• Film industry professionals
• General Interest outlets that had previously mentioned the film

We approached all of those sites DIRECTLY (not through an advertising service) and bought space ads that linked directly to our "squeeze" page. You could join the list, get updates about the release, as well as the snazzy PDF full of insider secret extras - all "cool stuff" as a bonus.

That's it. That was the whole strategy. We had 2 weeks to execute.

The goal was to build up the list as large as we could, create some reciprocity with the F'ree report, and hopefully work up a mini-frenzy around the DVD release of "Altered".

On "launch" day - the day the DVD was released for sale, we sent all the prospects in the list over to Amazon to buy the DVD. Remember the "fire hose" metaphor I used earlier? That's what we did. We aimed the "fire hose" and shot all the "water" we'd stored up right at the "fire". Hmm - maybe that metaphor needs a little more work…

Anyway!

How did we DO?
…

Amazon sold out of their stock in 36 minutes.

Now, this wasn't an illusion-like scarcity play that some marketers do. They actually RAN OUT. As in — you had to back-order it if you wanted to get it.

Another thing to point out is that when an IM product sells out, you're typically talking about an audience that works online - sitting in their inbox all day long.

They can respond fast.

This list was comprised of anyone and everyone. So, getting and keeping their attention was a pretty neat trick, if I do say so myself…

People with day jobs, people who aren't in front of a computer but once or twice a day - potentially maybe only a couple of times a week (which is actually the American average).

And we still sold out the largest online retailer in the world.

In 36 minutes.

See? This stuff DOESN'T WORK, I tell you!

Not one bit.

(Obviously, I'm kidding… It works like a champ)

So, the big takeaways for you - and "homework" if you will:

1. If you were going to create an "Event" around your product or service, what would it be?
2. What kinds of things could you give away in order to entice your audience to join your list?
3. What kinds of people would be interested in your event? Think outside the box here - don't just speculate about your audience, but think about other aspects that people might be interested in. Would your colleagues be interested? Your competitors? How about your vendors or suppliers?
4. Once you answer #3, think about where you might find those people. What sites do they visit? What communities are they a part of? How can you get their attention?

Answer all of these questions, and you have your very first "launch" all mapped out. What are you waiting for? Go do it! …

That's it for Part 2. If you didn't follow my instructions and watch Jeff's videos (Parts 1 AND 2) - shame on you!

I hope it was because you couldn't tear yourselves away from my riveting email - I'll accept that excuse. (I'm SO humble…) But now I'm done, so seriously - go check out those videos (opt-in to get Part 2, the actual "Blueprint" part).

It's important that you check it out. If you watched it once, watch it again, and take notes this time. Like I explained above, that blueprint really IS the formula.

Next time, in Part 3, I'm going to switch gears and talk about another aspect of Jeff's "Blueprint" - and this one is for the marketers who may be a little farther along (and will be a big help to the beginners who are trying to get farther along).

We'll be talking about JVs - Joint Venture Partners and Affiliates. Even if you're just struggling to get your product out there and you think that getting JVs is the farthest thing from your mind - you should NEVER leave them out of your launch planning.

We're going to talk about how to get them, how to engage them, and how to get them to promote your launch for you (and be HAPPY to do all the work)!

Don't miss it. It's here on the blog very soon.

Keep Stomping,
~Andy "Post Production Supervisor" Jenkins