“Anyone who never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”—Albert Einstein
Recently I was reading about some of the top mistakes made in 2012.
From political campaign miscues to Apple’s Public Relations nightmare with their new mapping service to Facebook’s mobile strategy which relied too heavily on one type of technology…companies talked about what they did wrong.
Mistakes are inevitable when you are out there giving it your all to create the business and life you want. I know I’ve made my fair share of them and my guess is you have too.
There are two things about not getting it right: Don’t be afraid to mess up. Failures, mistakes happen more often to those who are most successful. So it goes to follow that the more mistakes you make, the more successful you will be.
Secondly, whenever possible learn from others’ mistakes so you don’t have to repeat them.
So here are three of the most common mistakes made when creating Info-products (and how to avoid them).
1) You create a product your clients, customers or patients don’t want. Sometimes, especially when starting out in info-marketing, businesses create a product that their target audience doesn’t want. In fact, this happens more often than you think. You have a great idea for a product, but it turns out that your clients have no interest in it. Or maybe they don’t like the format it’s delivered in. For example, you create a set of videos or an audio program when your customers would prefer something they can read and write notes on instead.
How to avoid: Find out if your new product or service will be successful BEFORE you create it.
With the help of computer-generated imagery, you can design a virtual product and showcase it on a web page. You can test colors, the price of your product, the benefits of using it and more before you ever actually create the product. Then, take orders and with sales already in hand, create the product.
Using Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the quickest and cheapest ways to gather information about key points such as pricing, features that are most important to your potential consumers, who your target audience is, offers, guarantees and more.
Focus on things that will make the biggest difference, such as your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), the benefits of your product or service, pricing and things that make your product different.
You can also write a sales letter for your product and see if your target audience will buy it. If they do, then create the product, and try mailing to a larger segment of your target audience. Remember to start small when testing, using a small geographic area to test first.
What to do if you’ve already created the product and it didn’t sell? This doesn’t mean it’s a bad product. It might just mean you need to market to a different audience. Test different audience segments to see if the product will sell in a different market.
2) A weak guarantee. Two facts you have to get used to with the info-marketing business are that there will be returns and there will be people that try to cheat you. However, most people won’t cheat you and as Dan Kennedy says, if you aren’t getting at least 10% asking for a refund, you aren’t selling hard enough.
How to avoid: Because people are afraid of refunds and being cheated, often times the guarantee is weak, if there even is one. You will sell far more with a strong guarantee, even with refunds, when you have a guarantee that removes all the risk from your customer making a purchase.
The instinct here is to have a short money-back guarantee. A week, two weeks, maybe a month. However testing has shown that a longer guarantee, 90 days or a year, out pulls the shorter guarantee.
3) You take too long to create your info-product. Of course, if you follow my advice to not create your product until after you know there is a demand for it, you’ll have no choice but to create your product quickly, because you’ll have orders waiting. However, if you don’t follow my advice, you may fall into this category. Keep in mind that the longer you take, the less money you will make. Plus, if you have a great idea and take too long to bring it to market, there is a chance someone else will start marketing an info-product based on your idea before you do. Get it done and out there.
How to avoid: Instead of waiting for the perfect version, plan to create new versions with updated or improved material. Or, if you’re having trouble, invest in whatever you need to get it done, whether that is a ghost writer or resources that hand you shortcuts to creating an info-product. For instance, Dan Kennedy’s Info-Product Recipe includes the ingredients and how to’s for developing an enduring, successful million dollar info-product that cannot fail.
Adding info-products to your business is one of the smartest (and most lucrative) business decisions you can make. Don’t let the fear of making mistakes stop you. But avoid them whenever possible. And remember every day you wait is another day you aren’t making money on your idea.
NOTE: Make this the year you reach an incredible new level of success with new info-products. And if you really want to avoid making mistakes and create the most profitable info-marketing business possible, plan to sign up for Dan Kennedy’s A- Z Info-Biz Blueprints Re-boot in April. No one has guided more people to millions through info-marketing than Dan. Spending three days with him you will quickly get the most complete and detailed and valuable training on this subject that he has ever created. [Link]
