April 28, 2025 • 25 mins
Launching an online business when you have zero followers can feel like shouting into the void. The anxiety, uncertainty, and fear of failure loom large—but these challenges are exactly what we tackle head-on in this practical, no-nonsense episode.
We begin by dismantling the common misconception that successful businesses need a massive, newsworthy launch. The truth? Everyone starts at zero. That Instagram influencer with 500,000 followers? They once had none. That e-commerce store making six figures monthly? They once celebrated their very first sale. What separates successful entrepreneurs isn't having a perfect launch—it's having the courage to start despite having no audience and the persistence to keep going.
Through a real-world example of a niche product (an eco-friendly water bottle designed specifically for elderly users), we explore actionable strategies for building momentum from scratch. Rather than fixating on a big launch event, we discuss the power of leveraging your existing network, creating shareable content that speaks to your target audience's pain points, building an email list from day one, and testing small ad campaigns that can scale as you grow.
Perhaps most valuable is the mindset shift: viewing marketing not as a performance to be perfected but as a discovery process where each small win provides data and direction. Every first customer leads to a second, every second to a tenth, and so the momentum builds—not overnight, but day by day, through consistent effort and authentic connection.
Whether you're just getting started or feeling stuck with minimal traction, this episode provides both the practical steps and the mindset tools to move forward with confidence. Because the most important thing isn't having a massive audience—it's taking that first brave step and then showing up consistently, one day at a time.
Ready to overcome your launch anxiety and start building your business? Join our free VIP community at vip.markmason.com where we can discuss your specific challenges and celebrate your wins together.
Resolutions off the rails? You’re not alone. But there’s still time to turn things around. The ALIGN Productivity Challenge is a proven system to help you achieve your goals in just 90 days—no fluff, no overwhelm. Head to AlignProductivity.com and start your comeback today.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Mark Mason (00:00):
Episode 276,.
Announcer (00:03):
Late Night Internet Marketing.
Mark Mason (00:08):
This week on the Late Night Internet Marketing
podcast, we answer a questionabout online business from
listener Sarah, who's juststarting her brand new e-com
business and needs a little helpgetting started.
I think this is going to helpyou too.
All this and more on the LateNight Internet Marketing Podcast
.
Announcer (00:32):
The Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast and
now broadcasting late at nightfrom a little studio in the big
state of Texas, your host, markMason.
Mark Mason (00:46):
Hey, hey, hey.
How is everyone doing?
You know I have been convertingmy whole business over to Go
High Level, which is a softwareplatform that you can check out
over at markmasoncom, slashG-H-L, and I have been moving my
email over there, my landingpages, my websites, lots of work
(01:06):
going on.
As part of that process, I senta message out to my email list
and I said hey, if you've gotany questions, just hit reply
and ask me your question.
I'll be happy to answer it.
And I got such a great questionfrom Sarah that I thought I
would answer it first.
She writes that she lovesgetting my emails, which is
great.
(01:26):
And if you'd love getting myemails too, you can go to
newsmarkmasoncom and sign up.
You'll get my weekly newsletter.
Sarah loves it.
I bet you will too.
And she says here's my question.
I'm setting up an onlinebusiness for the very first time
and I'm not sure I'm nervousabout the launch.
(01:47):
I've only got personalfollowers at this time.
How do you go about gettingfollowers prior to a launch?
Is it just friends and familyinitially?
And she tells me what her nicheis, and I'm not going to reveal
that here because I want torespect Sarah's privacy, but
we'll talk all about this andwe'll pick another niche that's
(02:08):
really similar to what Sarah'sworking on, and that way, the
answer will help Sarah and itwill help you as well.
So let's break it down and talka little bit about what we do
when we're trying to start withzero and I will tell you that
everybody starts with zero.
I mean, occasionally, maybeyou're a TV personality and you
(02:31):
decide to start an onlinebusiness and that's fine, but
that's not most people.
Most people are doing somethingcompletely different and they
have no visitors, no following,no social media presence, and
they need to figure out how tostart, build momentum and launch
, and I think that is a bigchallenge.
And it's not only a challengebecause it's an actual challenge
(02:52):
.
It's a challenge because it's amindset challenge.
You're talking to no one.
Your product may not even beselling at first.
You will have days where no onebuys anything and that can be
intimidating for lots of reasons.
I think you know we have peopletalk about feeling nervous.
(03:14):
Sarah mentions this in heremail.
She's uncertain even aboutwhere to begin and you can tell
or imagine even she's probablyworried about launching to
nobody and fearing the silenceof all of that.
What will people think if herventure isn't successful, she's
(03:34):
probably got some people.
I mean, most entrepreneurs havethis problem where they have
naysayers in their life that aretelling them you know, that's
probably not going to work.
So it feels hard.
These things feel hard becauseof this fear of failure or the
fear of being embarrassed or,even worse, rejected.
You know people that don't wantthe product.
(03:54):
I mean, after all, when someonesays no to your product, aren't
they saying no to you?
It turns out that's not whatthey're saying at all.
But the important thing is toremember that everybody starts
here.
This is how it starts, and thepeople that are successful like
Sarah is going to be successfulare the people that push through
(04:15):
this fear of failure andrejection and embarrassment to
get it done.
Now you know the good thingabout Sarah and we won't talk
about her specific product,which is way better than the
example that I'm about to makeup.
But Sarah's product is greatbecause it actually solves a
place that Sarah knows about shehas personal experience in,
(04:46):
she's probably passionate aboutthe topic, and it has another
advantage too it has a veryspecific application in audience
.
You've heard this phrase foreverthe riches are in the niches.
So I made up something simpler.
Let's say that Sarah is sellingan eco-friendly water bottle
that's specifically targeted atelderly people, because elderly
(05:10):
people they can't use these bigclunky what do you call those
things?
Stanleys and Yetis?
They usually can't grip them.
They're slippery.
Elderly people are concernedabout forever chemicals like
PFAS, and so we want let's saywe want something that elderly
people can easily use Maybe ithas some kind of hand strap or
(05:32):
some other kind of thing andthat it is good for their health
in their particular time oflife, has the extra benefit as a
water bottle.
It tends to increase waterconsumption for elderly people
and that's great, because one ofthe big problems is that
elderly people don't drinkenough water.
And you know we're making allthis up.
(05:54):
Sarah's product is a lot better.
I wish I could tell you aboutit.
Maybe we'll have Sarah on totalk about the product at some
later time.
But it's a purpose drivenproduct with a clear target
customer that solves a veryspecific pain point for the
target audience.
So that's a great place tostart with a product.
(06:16):
So big check mark for Sarah onthat part of it.
But the question Sarah's askingis how do I launch with no
followers?
And I think the first thing isthe assumption in the question
Launch doesn't mean that youhave to.
It's not the latest productfrom Red Bull, right?
I mean this expectation thatthere needs to be a launch and a
(06:38):
launch party and the local newsmedia is coming to your house
and talking about your launchand you have to have this big,
overwhelming success right outof the gate.
I think that's an assumptionthat you need to unpack and try
to understand.
Is that really true for you?
Is that really a necessaryconstraint?
I mean, if you sold one tomorrowand then two the next day, and
(07:04):
then three, three days afterthat, and then by next week you
were selling five a day and thena month later you were selling
20 a day and then in six monthsyou were selling 100 of these a
day, wouldn't you be happy?
I mean, isn't steady growthgood enough?
Do you have to have a launch?
I think you can launch it andsay that you're launching and do
(07:24):
marketing things that soundlike launch, but I don't think
you need to have a launch.
I think you can launch it andsay that you're launching and do
marketing things that soundlike launch, but I don't think
you need to have yourself-esteem or measure of
success tied up in the numbersaround the launch.
Now, when you do launch, how doyou launch?
The question Sarah asks is howdo you launch when you don't
have an audience?
Well, you have friends, family,peers, colleagues that you can
(07:45):
lean on.
You want to absolutely makesure that you're unabashedly
starting with what you have andbeing direct and asking for
support.
People want to help you.
They want to tell their friendsthat need your product about
your product.
They want to be involvedproduct about your product.
(08:06):
They want to be involved.
A lot of times they just don'tknow how to be involved.
They want to help you get theword out there, especially when
it's the kind of thing like aproduct where they're not asking
for someone's investment inyour business or something weird
like that.
They're just saying, hey,you've got an elderly parent and
they should be drinking morewater, and my friend's got this
cool water bottle.
You should check it out.
(08:26):
It's the same thing you knewabout a product that would help
someone.
You would tell them about it.
So ask your friends to do thatfor you and make it easy for
them to do that by creatingFacebook collateral that they
can share by sending them emailsthat they can forward to people
and directly ask for what youwant.
(08:48):
And if they don't want to do it, they won't, and that's fine.
That's not personal either.
They'll just ignore it andit'll be fine and you'll never
need to talk about it again.
But just remember, you onlyneed a few sales, a few
customers, to really startgetting momentum.
And then from those fewcustomers you'll get reviews and
(09:08):
we'll share those reviews andyou'll start building that
momentum.
So this idea of launch I don'tthink it's nearly as important
as steady and consistent growth.
The second thing I would saymake lots of stuff shareable.
So obviously, if you've got aproduct, you're going to want to
have a product website.
You're going to want to have aproduct website.
You're going to want to havegreat visuals.
(09:28):
I think that's pretty easy todo these days.
The combination of an iPhonewhich is amazing, and you can
take amazing pictures with thatand AI and other tools that you
have available to enhancephotographs, do product shots,
build quick websites Either.
For an e-commerce platform,probably the right thing to use
is Shopify, although you canlook at the cost of that and
(09:51):
decide what you think.
But you want to make sure thatyour stuff looks great, and not
just looks great on your desktopcomputer.
Make sure it looks great onyour cell phone.
The stuff is easy to share.
When you share links, thoseimages come up and start sharing
that stuff as much as youpossibly can.
Go into mom groups and other.
(10:13):
Go into groups where yourtarget audience lives, like in
the case of this water bottlethat we have for older
generation people, thecaretakers of those people.
They're likely on Facebook andInstagram.
Let's make sure that we'recreating content on this
platform so people know aboutyour product.
What are we talking about?
Well, obviously we're talkingabout the product, but that only
(10:34):
goes so far.
I mean, how many pictures of awater bottle are you going to
post, right?
So we need to talk about thepeople that are getting benefits
from the product.
We need to think about thethought that went into the
product and why it is the way itis and why that's important,
how we got the product to market.
Some behind the scenes content,unboxing content, user
(10:56):
generated content from happycustomers.
Make it shareable, get it outthere and build momentum that
way and this is not somethingyou do prior to launch.
I wouldn't worry about waitingto launch to do this, but these
are good organic marketingtactics that you need to be
doing.
That will help you buildmomentum either immediately
before, during or right afterthe launch.
(11:20):
And another big piece of adviceand we'll call this thing three
you need to make sure you'rebuilding your list and thinking
about the lifetime value ofthese customers, so you need to
be collecting emails immediately.
If you're using a platform likeShopify, it'll be easy to
collect the emails.
You need to be doing somethingwith those emails to keep those
(11:42):
people engaged, even if you'reonly emailing them once a month
with a success story or atestimonial or some new news
about why some medical studythat makes your water bottle
even more important than youthought it was.
You need to be staying incontact and keeping those leads
warm, and you can use Shopify tocollect those emails.
(12:03):
But you probably also want tobe offering some sort of content
or other thing that helpscollect emails.
The thing you see in e-commerceall the time is offering new
customers a discount for joiningyour list, but the other thing
that you can do is maybe you cancreate a simple report about
(12:24):
the three or four or five waysthat you can help your elder
person drink more water or helpthem around the house, and one
of the things that they can doto do that is buy your water
bottle in this super helpfulreport so you can get the email
with the lead magnet.
But you also can have sales onthe back end of the lead magnet
and make sure that, as you havethis list and you're thinking
(12:46):
about the lifetime value ofthese customers, that you're
sending valuable content to themthat really helps people, not
just promotions.
So you notice, I do this withthis podcast.
I hope you guys feel that way.
It's mostly valuable content,and then occasionally I tell you
hey, go buy a copy of this andit helps the show.
That's how this show works.
(13:07):
One thing that I talked about inmy episode about social media
marketing world is consider atiny offer in e-commerce.
These are known asself-liquidating offers.
It's something with great value, something that's really pretty
hard to refuse.
In the case of a launch, youmight think of something like a
founder's bundle, which couldinvolve special pricing for
(13:30):
early adopters or something likethat, and the goal of this
offer is not to make money.
The goal of this offer is tocollect leads.
Now, this works best whenyou've got a business plan where
you're not planning on sellingsomeone just one of something.
Now, in Sarah's case, sarah doeshave the opportunity for
(13:51):
customers to buy from her overand over and over again, because
the needs of our customer baseare changing as time moves on.
They're going to need differentproducts, in some cases, larger
products, maybe more productsfor more people, and so this
could work really well for Sarah.
(14:11):
But you need to understand atleast imagine or actually
understand from data what youexpect the lifetime value of
your customer to be.
And if the lifetime value ofyour customer is going to be
more than just one sale, thenyou can probably afford to sell
that first item at break even ora loss, and when you're doing
(14:33):
that, you can afford to havesome ad costs.
So I definitely recommend youfind some way for an e-commerce
product, especially the one likeSarah is talking about, but
also something like thisgeriatric water bottle that
we're talking about.
Start by running some tiny ads,and I know this feels
(14:54):
intimidating, but you'reprobably on Facebook and
Instagram all the time.
You know what these ads looklike.
There are plenty of tools likeCanva and other tools that can
create these ads for you, or youcan go on Fiverr and just start
and create maybe a $5 ad budgetand see if you can figure out
how to get it to work.
(15:14):
The thing that's interestingabout this right now is Facebook
and Meta in general are movingmore and more towards a fully
automated ad strategy, wheree-commerce people need to do
less and less to actually figureout how to make the ads work.
It's really more and more aboutFacebook and Meta reading the
(15:37):
content on your website and inyour ad creatives and figuring
out how to get your ad in frontof people that will buy.
And yeah, there's a lot oftechnical stuff like you've got
to put the pixel on the Shopifywebsite and you know the first
time you do it it's going tofeel painful.
But let's say it takes a week ofevenings to figure this out, to
(15:57):
get your first $5 or $10 adbudget running and you start to
make sales that way.
That's way better than a launch.
So launches are great, butbeing able to sell profitably or
even break even with an adbudget is amazing because that
means that you can scale that.
Launches in general are one anddone, but if you can find a way
(16:20):
to generate new trafficreliably that results in sales.
That's really the key tounlocking business.
So that's the fifth thing Iwould recommend is go ahead and
get started running a small adbudget.
Don't wait, just use a smallbudget so it doesn't break the
bank.
So you know, one way to thinkabout this thing that's
(16:41):
antithetical to this big idea ofa launch is to think of your
marketing as a discovery process.
Right, a launch is all aboutthis big, huge success that ends
up in Inc Magazine or on thelocal news about how, when you
launch this thing, you sold 100or 1,000 or 2,000 of these
things on the first day.
That'd be great, and I hopethat happens for you and I hope
(17:02):
it happens for Sarah.
But, more realistically,marketing is a discovery process
.
It's not about perfection, it'sabout learning.
It's about seeking traction.
It's about identifying signals.
It's about people askingquestions and you answering them
.
It's about clicks and signupsand making adjustments as you go
(17:23):
along the way and figure outwhat works, because you're going
to find out that, oh boy, onFather's Day, when people don't
know what to buy their elderlyparent, we can run a Father's
Day promotion and we can sell alot of these to people that just
don't know what to buy theirdad who's in a nursing home,
they can buy them this cup.
There's things like that thatyou're going to discover about
(17:44):
your marketing along the way,and what you do is you launch to
learn.
So we're going to do thislaunch to get started learning
not to be perfect right out ofthe gate, and so I think that's
a really important mindset tohave as Sarah goes forward and
as you go forward launchingproducts now and in the future.
(18:04):
Of course, there are a lot oftools you can use to make this
amazing.
Chat GPT will help you, so youcan ask Chat GP now any question
and if you don't like theanswer, hit the deep research
button and it will give you aneven better answer.
If you need ideas about yourmarketing, about how to increase
the lifetime value of yourproduct, just tell it everything
(18:26):
you know and you can do thatusing your voice, by the way and
it will give you ideas and someof them will be great and some
of them you may not like, andthat's fine.
And you tell it that and it'lladjust its thinking to focus
more on the stuff that you dothink makes sense.
For graphics, there are toolslike Canva.
For online business, there areamazing tools like Shopify.
(18:48):
I just recently stood up a newdrop shipping store.
I was working on a separateproject.
Shopify is 10 times easier touse today than it was four or
five years ago.
It's really fantastic.
Even all the way down to logogeneration, I mean it's really
great.
So there are lots of tech andtools out there.
Lots of easy tools for maillist management, like MailChimp,
(19:10):
for example, is not my personalfavorite, but it's super easy
for beginners to use, and so Irecommend that you look at stuff
like that to simplify yourjourney and just remember you
don't need a giant launch.
You don't need a big audience.
You don't need a big audience.
What you need is a real productthat solves the problems.
Sarah's product is real andpretty exciting.
(19:31):
It needs to be a real solutionthat delivers real value, and
you know we didn't talk aboutthis much, but I think the best
brands speak with a real,authentic voice and they
communicate authentically aboutthe product, about why the
product was created, about thepain points that customers
without the product feel, aboutthe transformation that happens
(19:54):
when people have the product andthey're no longer worried about
whatever that pain or problemwas that they had before they
bought it and the tremendousvalue that that creates in their
life, that they had before theybought it, and the tremendous
value that that creates in theirlife.
And you build that momentum andyou read those referrals and
you show customers using theproduct on Instagram and that
builds momentum and thataudience grows and grows over
(20:16):
time.
And so what if it takes you ayear or two to get this thing to
a point where it's what youconsider a true success,
whatever that means to you?
How happy will you be when thathappens?
You won't care that it took ayear or two.
That's way better than never,and so I'm excited for Sarah
getting started on this project.
(20:37):
I think it's going to be reallygreat.
The other thing that I canrecommend to you is I think some
of the most fun soloentrepreneur businesses are the
ones that are built in public.
So to Sarah, I recommend shareyour process.
Give a lot of behind the scenesinformation about your business
, celebrate your wins publiclyand let people know you've made
(20:59):
your first sale, you've gottenyour first review, you made your
first shipment, you made your10th shipment, your 100th
shipment.
Feature the reviews.
Like I featured Sarah's email,you can feature client reviews
and be transparent and letpeople see inside and admire
your business.
I'm not saying you need to showyour P&L on Instagram, but let
(21:20):
people in on the inside, becausethis builds trust.
It causes people to like youand people buy things from
people that they know, like andtrust.
So I'm super excited for Sarahand all of those of you that
finally now are going to get offof pause and launch that
product you've been thinkingabout.
(21:40):
Remember, it's okay to startsmall.
One customer leads to thesecond customer.
You cannot have a secondcustomer without a first
customer and you cannot have a10th customer without a second
customer.
So you've got to start at thebeginning.
Stay consistent, show up everyday, push forward every day,
learn every day and track yourprogress, and be sure to
(22:01):
celebrate your milestones alongthe way.
Hey, I want to thank Sarah fora question.
Maybe you have a question.
If you have a question, I'dencourage you to email me at
feedback at latenightimcom.
Let me know what you're workingon.
I'd love to hear from you.
Or you can hop into the VIPcommunity at vipmarkmasoncom.
(22:24):
It's free and we can talk aboutyour business there.
You know, you can be generic orspecific, depending on how
secretive you want to be, andI'll respond right in there to
any questions that you mighthave.
So until next week, I am MarkMason.
This is the Late Night InternetMarketing Podcast.
See you soon.
Announcer (22:43):
Ciao, you've been listening to the late night
(23:07):
internet marketing podcast.
Be sure to visit l-n-i-mpodcastcom today to leave
feedback for mark, downloadspecial bonus content, access
the show notes and more.
See you there.
Until then, go and make somegreat progress on your internet
business one night at a time.
Episode 276,.
Announcer (00:03):
Late Night Internet Marketing.
Mark Mason (00:08):
This week on the Late Night Internet Marketing
podcast, we answer a questionabout online business from
listener Sarah, who's juststarting her brand new e-com
business and needs a little helpgetting started.
I think this is going to helpyou too.
All this and more on the LateNight Internet Marketing Podcast
.
Announcer (00:32):
The Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast and
now broadcasting late at nightfrom a little studio in the big
state of Texas, your host, markMason.
Mark Mason (00:46):
Hey, hey, hey.
How is everyone doing?
You know I have been convertingmy whole business over to Go
High Level, which is a softwareplatform that you can check out
over at markmasoncom, slashG-H-L, and I have been moving my
email over there, my landingpages, my websites, lots of work
(01:06):
going on.
As part of that process, I senta message out to my email list
and I said hey, if you've gotany questions, just hit reply
and ask me your question.
I'll be happy to answer it.
And I got such a great questionfrom Sarah that I thought I
would answer it first.
She writes that she lovesgetting my emails, which is
great.
(01:26):
And if you'd love getting myemails too, you can go to
newsmarkmasoncom and sign up.
You'll get my weekly newsletter.
Sarah loves it.
I bet you will too.
And she says here's my question.
I'm setting up an onlinebusiness for the very first time
and I'm not sure I'm nervousabout the launch.
(01:47):
I've only got personalfollowers at this time.
How do you go about gettingfollowers prior to a launch?
Is it just friends and familyinitially?
And she tells me what her nicheis, and I'm not going to reveal
that here because I want torespect Sarah's privacy, but
we'll talk all about this andwe'll pick another niche that's
(02:08):
really similar to what Sarah'sworking on, and that way, the
answer will help Sarah and itwill help you as well.
So let's break it down and talka little bit about what we do
when we're trying to start withzero and I will tell you that
everybody starts with zero.
I mean, occasionally, maybeyou're a TV personality and you
(02:31):
decide to start an onlinebusiness and that's fine, but
that's not most people.
Most people are doing somethingcompletely different and they
have no visitors, no following,no social media presence, and
they need to figure out how tostart, build momentum and launch
, and I think that is a bigchallenge.
And it's not only a challengebecause it's an actual challenge
(02:52):
.
It's a challenge because it's amindset challenge.
You're talking to no one.
Your product may not even beselling at first.
You will have days where no onebuys anything and that can be
intimidating for lots of reasons.
I think you know we have peopletalk about feeling nervous.
(03:14):
Sarah mentions this in heremail.
She's uncertain even aboutwhere to begin and you can tell
or imagine even she's probablyworried about launching to
nobody and fearing the silenceof all of that.
What will people think if herventure isn't successful, she's
(03:34):
probably got some people.
I mean, most entrepreneurs havethis problem where they have
naysayers in their life that aretelling them you know, that's
probably not going to work.
So it feels hard.
These things feel hard becauseof this fear of failure or the
fear of being embarrassed or,even worse, rejected.
You know people that don't wantthe product.
(03:54):
I mean, after all, when someonesays no to your product, aren't
they saying no to you?
It turns out that's not whatthey're saying at all.
But the important thing is toremember that everybody starts
here.
This is how it starts, and thepeople that are successful like
Sarah is going to be successfulare the people that push through
(04:15):
this fear of failure andrejection and embarrassment to
get it done.
Now you know the good thingabout Sarah and we won't talk
about her specific product,which is way better than the
example that I'm about to makeup.
But Sarah's product is greatbecause it actually solves a
place that Sarah knows about shehas personal experience in,
(04:46):
she's probably passionate aboutthe topic, and it has another
advantage too it has a veryspecific application in audience
.
You've heard this phrase foreverthe riches are in the niches.
So I made up something simpler.
Let's say that Sarah is sellingan eco-friendly water bottle
that's specifically targeted atelderly people, because elderly
(05:10):
people they can't use these bigclunky what do you call those
things?
Stanleys and Yetis?
They usually can't grip them.
They're slippery.
Elderly people are concernedabout forever chemicals like
PFAS, and so we want let's saywe want something that elderly
people can easily use Maybe ithas some kind of hand strap or
(05:32):
some other kind of thing andthat it is good for their health
in their particular time oflife, has the extra benefit as a
water bottle.
It tends to increase waterconsumption for elderly people
and that's great, because one ofthe big problems is that
elderly people don't drinkenough water.
And you know we're making allthis up.
(05:54):
Sarah's product is a lot better.
I wish I could tell you aboutit.
Maybe we'll have Sarah on totalk about the product at some
later time.
But it's a purpose drivenproduct with a clear target
customer that solves a veryspecific pain point for the
target audience.
So that's a great place tostart with a product.
(06:16):
So big check mark for Sarah onthat part of it.
But the question Sarah's askingis how do I launch with no
followers?
And I think the first thing isthe assumption in the question
Launch doesn't mean that youhave to.
It's not the latest productfrom Red Bull, right?
I mean this expectation thatthere needs to be a launch and a
(06:38):
launch party and the local newsmedia is coming to your house
and talking about your launchand you have to have this big,
overwhelming success right outof the gate.
I think that's an assumptionthat you need to unpack and try
to understand.
Is that really true for you?
Is that really a necessaryconstraint?
I mean, if you sold one tomorrowand then two the next day, and
(07:04):
then three, three days afterthat, and then by next week you
were selling five a day and thena month later you were selling
20 a day and then in six monthsyou were selling 100 of these a
day, wouldn't you be happy?
I mean, isn't steady growthgood enough?
Do you have to have a launch?
I think you can launch it andsay that you're launching and do
(07:24):
marketing things that soundlike launch, but I don't think
you need to have a launch.
I think you can launch it andsay that you're launching and do
marketing things that soundlike launch, but I don't think
you need to have yourself-esteem or measure of
success tied up in the numbersaround the launch.
Now, when you do launch, how doyou launch?
The question Sarah asks is howdo you launch when you don't
have an audience?
Well, you have friends, family,peers, colleagues that you can
(07:45):
lean on.
You want to absolutely makesure that you're unabashedly
starting with what you have andbeing direct and asking for
support.
People want to help you.
They want to tell their friendsthat need your product about
your product.
They want to be involvedproduct about your product.
(08:06):
They want to be involved.
A lot of times they just don'tknow how to be involved.
They want to help you get theword out there, especially when
it's the kind of thing like aproduct where they're not asking
for someone's investment inyour business or something weird
like that.
They're just saying, hey,you've got an elderly parent and
they should be drinking morewater, and my friend's got this
cool water bottle.
You should check it out.
(08:26):
It's the same thing you knewabout a product that would help
someone.
You would tell them about it.
So ask your friends to do thatfor you and make it easy for
them to do that by creatingFacebook collateral that they
can share by sending them emailsthat they can forward to people
and directly ask for what youwant.
(08:48):
And if they don't want to do it, they won't, and that's fine.
That's not personal either.
They'll just ignore it andit'll be fine and you'll never
need to talk about it again.
But just remember, you onlyneed a few sales, a few
customers, to really startgetting momentum.
And then from those fewcustomers you'll get reviews and
(09:08):
we'll share those reviews andyou'll start building that
momentum.
So this idea of launch I don'tthink it's nearly as important
as steady and consistent growth.
The second thing I would saymake lots of stuff shareable.
So obviously, if you've got aproduct, you're going to want to
have a product website.
You're going to want to have aproduct website.
You're going to want to havegreat visuals.
(09:28):
I think that's pretty easy todo these days.
The combination of an iPhonewhich is amazing, and you can
take amazing pictures with thatand AI and other tools that you
have available to enhancephotographs, do product shots,
build quick websites Either.
For an e-commerce platform,probably the right thing to use
is Shopify, although you canlook at the cost of that and
(09:51):
decide what you think.
But you want to make sure thatyour stuff looks great, and not
just looks great on your desktopcomputer.
Make sure it looks great onyour cell phone.
The stuff is easy to share.
When you share links, thoseimages come up and start sharing
that stuff as much as youpossibly can.
Go into mom groups and other.
(10:13):
Go into groups where yourtarget audience lives, like in
the case of this water bottlethat we have for older
generation people, thecaretakers of those people.
They're likely on Facebook andInstagram.
Let's make sure that we'recreating content on this
platform so people know aboutyour product.
What are we talking about?
Well, obviously we're talkingabout the product, but that only
(10:34):
goes so far.
I mean, how many pictures of awater bottle are you going to
post, right?
So we need to talk about thepeople that are getting benefits
from the product.
We need to think about thethought that went into the
product and why it is the way itis and why that's important,
how we got the product to market.
Some behind the scenes content,unboxing content, user
(10:56):
generated content from happycustomers.
Make it shareable, get it outthere and build momentum that
way and this is not somethingyou do prior to launch.
I wouldn't worry about waitingto launch to do this, but these
are good organic marketingtactics that you need to be
doing.
That will help you buildmomentum either immediately
before, during or right afterthe launch.
(11:20):
And another big piece of adviceand we'll call this thing three
you need to make sure you'rebuilding your list and thinking
about the lifetime value ofthese customers, so you need to
be collecting emails immediately.
If you're using a platform likeShopify, it'll be easy to
collect the emails.
You need to be doing somethingwith those emails to keep those
(11:42):
people engaged, even if you'reonly emailing them once a month
with a success story or atestimonial or some new news
about why some medical studythat makes your water bottle
even more important than youthought it was.
You need to be staying incontact and keeping those leads
warm, and you can use Shopify tocollect those emails.
(12:03):
But you probably also want tobe offering some sort of content
or other thing that helpscollect emails.
The thing you see in e-commerceall the time is offering new
customers a discount for joiningyour list, but the other thing
that you can do is maybe you cancreate a simple report about
(12:24):
the three or four or five waysthat you can help your elder
person drink more water or helpthem around the house, and one
of the things that they can doto do that is buy your water
bottle in this super helpfulreport so you can get the email
with the lead magnet.
But you also can have sales onthe back end of the lead magnet
and make sure that, as you havethis list and you're thinking
(12:46):
about the lifetime value ofthese customers, that you're
sending valuable content to themthat really helps people, not
just promotions.
So you notice, I do this withthis podcast.
I hope you guys feel that way.
It's mostly valuable content,and then occasionally I tell you
hey, go buy a copy of this andit helps the show.
That's how this show works.
(13:07):
One thing that I talked about inmy episode about social media
marketing world is consider atiny offer in e-commerce.
These are known asself-liquidating offers.
It's something with great value, something that's really pretty
hard to refuse.
In the case of a launch, youmight think of something like a
founder's bundle, which couldinvolve special pricing for
(13:30):
early adopters or something likethat, and the goal of this
offer is not to make money.
The goal of this offer is tocollect leads.
Now, this works best whenyou've got a business plan where
you're not planning on sellingsomeone just one of something.
Now, in Sarah's case, sarah doeshave the opportunity for
(13:51):
customers to buy from her overand over and over again, because
the needs of our customer baseare changing as time moves on.
They're going to need differentproducts, in some cases, larger
products, maybe more productsfor more people, and so this
could work really well for Sarah.
(14:11):
But you need to understand atleast imagine or actually
understand from data what youexpect the lifetime value of
your customer to be.
And if the lifetime value ofyour customer is going to be
more than just one sale, thenyou can probably afford to sell
that first item at break even ora loss, and when you're doing
(14:33):
that, you can afford to havesome ad costs.
So I definitely recommend youfind some way for an e-commerce
product, especially the one likeSarah is talking about, but
also something like thisgeriatric water bottle that
we're talking about.
Start by running some tiny ads,and I know this feels
(14:54):
intimidating, but you'reprobably on Facebook and
Instagram all the time.
You know what these ads looklike.
There are plenty of tools likeCanva and other tools that can
create these ads for you, or youcan go on Fiverr and just start
and create maybe a $5 ad budgetand see if you can figure out
how to get it to work.
(15:14):
The thing that's interestingabout this right now is Facebook
and Meta in general are movingmore and more towards a fully
automated ad strategy, wheree-commerce people need to do
less and less to actually figureout how to make the ads work.
It's really more and more aboutFacebook and Meta reading the
(15:37):
content on your website and inyour ad creatives and figuring
out how to get your ad in frontof people that will buy.
And yeah, there's a lot oftechnical stuff like you've got
to put the pixel on the Shopifywebsite and you know the first
time you do it it's going tofeel painful.
But let's say it takes a week ofevenings to figure this out, to
(15:57):
get your first $5 or $10 adbudget running and you start to
make sales that way.
That's way better than a launch.
So launches are great, butbeing able to sell profitably or
even break even with an adbudget is amazing because that
means that you can scale that.
Launches in general are one anddone, but if you can find a way
(16:20):
to generate new trafficreliably that results in sales.
That's really the key tounlocking business.
So that's the fifth thing Iwould recommend is go ahead and
get started running a small adbudget.
Don't wait, just use a smallbudget so it doesn't break the
bank.
So you know, one way to thinkabout this thing that's
(16:41):
antithetical to this big idea ofa launch is to think of your
marketing as a discovery process.
Right, a launch is all aboutthis big, huge success that ends
up in Inc Magazine or on thelocal news about how, when you
launch this thing, you sold 100or 1,000 or 2,000 of these
things on the first day.
That'd be great, and I hopethat happens for you and I hope
(17:02):
it happens for Sarah.
But, more realistically,marketing is a discovery process
.
It's not about perfection, it'sabout learning.
It's about seeking traction.
It's about identifying signals.
It's about people askingquestions and you answering them
.
It's about clicks and signupsand making adjustments as you go
(17:23):
along the way and figure outwhat works, because you're going
to find out that, oh boy, onFather's Day, when people don't
know what to buy their elderlyparent, we can run a Father's
Day promotion and we can sell alot of these to people that just
don't know what to buy theirdad who's in a nursing home,
they can buy them this cup.
There's things like that thatyou're going to discover about
(17:44):
your marketing along the way,and what you do is you launch to
learn.
So we're going to do thislaunch to get started learning
not to be perfect right out ofthe gate, and so I think that's
a really important mindset tohave as Sarah goes forward and
as you go forward launchingproducts now and in the future.
(18:04):
Of course, there are a lot oftools you can use to make this
amazing.
Chat GPT will help you, so youcan ask Chat GP now any question
and if you don't like theanswer, hit the deep research
button and it will give you aneven better answer.
If you need ideas about yourmarketing, about how to increase
the lifetime value of yourproduct, just tell it everything
(18:26):
you know and you can do thatusing your voice, by the way and
it will give you ideas and someof them will be great and some
of them you may not like, andthat's fine.
And you tell it that and it'lladjust its thinking to focus
more on the stuff that you dothink makes sense.
For graphics, there are toolslike Canva.
For online business, there areamazing tools like Shopify.
(18:48):
I just recently stood up a newdrop shipping store.
I was working on a separateproject.
Shopify is 10 times easier touse today than it was four or
five years ago.
It's really fantastic.
Even all the way down to logogeneration, I mean it's really
great.
So there are lots of tech andtools out there.
Lots of easy tools for maillist management, like MailChimp,
(19:10):
for example, is not my personalfavorite, but it's super easy
for beginners to use, and so Irecommend that you look at stuff
like that to simplify yourjourney and just remember you
don't need a giant launch.
You don't need a big audience.
You don't need a big audience.
What you need is a real productthat solves the problems.
Sarah's product is real andpretty exciting.
(19:31):
It needs to be a real solutionthat delivers real value, and
you know we didn't talk aboutthis much, but I think the best
brands speak with a real,authentic voice and they
communicate authentically aboutthe product, about why the
product was created, about thepain points that customers
without the product feel, aboutthe transformation that happens
(19:54):
when people have the product andthey're no longer worried about
whatever that pain or problemwas that they had before they
bought it and the tremendousvalue that that creates in their
life, that they had before theybought it, and the tremendous
value that that creates in theirlife.
And you build that momentum andyou read those referrals and
you show customers using theproduct on Instagram and that
builds momentum and thataudience grows and grows over
(20:16):
time.
And so what if it takes you ayear or two to get this thing to
a point where it's what youconsider a true success,
whatever that means to you?
How happy will you be when thathappens?
You won't care that it took ayear or two.
That's way better than never,and so I'm excited for Sarah
getting started on this project.
(20:37):
I think it's going to be reallygreat.
The other thing that I canrecommend to you is I think some
of the most fun soloentrepreneur businesses are the
ones that are built in public.
So to Sarah, I recommend shareyour process.
Give a lot of behind the scenesinformation about your business
, celebrate your wins publiclyand let people know you've made
(20:59):
your first sale, you've gottenyour first review, you made your
first shipment, you made your10th shipment, your 100th
shipment.
Feature the reviews.
Like I featured Sarah's email,you can feature client reviews
and be transparent and letpeople see inside and admire
your business.
I'm not saying you need to showyour P&L on Instagram, but let
(21:20):
people in on the inside, becausethis builds trust.
It causes people to like youand people buy things from
people that they know, like andtrust.
So I'm super excited for Sarahand all of those of you that
finally now are going to get offof pause and launch that
product you've been thinkingabout.
(21:40):
Remember, it's okay to startsmall.
One customer leads to thesecond customer.
You cannot have a secondcustomer without a first
customer and you cannot have a10th customer without a second
customer.
So you've got to start at thebeginning.
Stay consistent, show up everyday, push forward every day,
learn every day and track yourprogress, and be sure to
(22:01):
celebrate your milestones alongthe way.
Hey, I want to thank Sarah fora question.
Maybe you have a question.
If you have a question, I'dencourage you to email me at
feedback at latenightimcom.
Let me know what you're workingon.
I'd love to hear from you.
Or you can hop into the VIPcommunity at vipmarkmasoncom.
(22:24):
It's free and we can talk aboutyour business there.
You know, you can be generic orspecific, depending on how
secretive you want to be, andI'll respond right in there to
any questions that you mighthave.
So until next week, I am MarkMason.
This is the Late Night InternetMarketing Podcast.
See you soon.
Announcer (22:43):
Ciao, you've been listening to the late night
(23:07):
internet marketing podcast.
Be sure to visit l-n-i-mpodcastcom today to leave
feedback for mark, downloadspecial bonus content, access
the show notes and more.
See you there.
Until then, go and make somegreat progress on your internet
business one night at a time.
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