I created a great product, now what?

nickclarson

nickclarson

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Feb 26, 2008
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www.nicklarson.com
I am fairly versed in affiliate marketing, but the past few months I have been working on developing my own product. I am new to marketing my own product and looking for some suggestions on how I can start getting sales!

I was looking in to the google content network, as well as free methods like commenting, link exchange, press release, etc.

We already have a twitter account with almost 800 followers and a blog. We have sold 3 bottles offline but nothing so far online. I feel like we are doing something wrong, because I know the product is great from the response I heard from a pro golfer we let try it and a water skier we sort of sponsored. I also use the product and love it. Maybe it just takes time. right now we are getting 700-800 uniques a month.

The site is: engage nutrition dot com (without spaces)

Any suggestions or thoughts on the product or site content itself would be awesome too, thanks.

partnerships?

if this is in the wrong forum oh wickedfire please forgive me.
 


Ha thought about it, but I kind of want to sell a product and build a long term brand rather than ruining people's days.

I was thinking about an affiliate program, but affiliates would only want to promote it if it was a rebill. Might be worth a shot though, or even a tell a friend type deal.
 
Just because it's a rebill doesn't mean it's going to screw over people, as long as you clearly display the terms of the trial, don't bill them until they receive the product, and don't do blind upsells/cross sales then you should be fine.
 
nickclarson said:
Ha thought about it, but I kind of want to sell a product and build a long term brand rather than ruining people's days.

I was thinking about an affiliate program, but affiliates would only want to promote it if it was a rebill. Might be worth a shot though, or even a tell a friend type deal.
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You realize that there are rebills out there that don't charge people hundreds of dollars a month and piss them off, right? Like ayzo said, rebills are a legitimate way to promote a product and, as long as you're clear with your terms and don't try to bill people for six months of product + upsells + ebooks + whatever, most people aren't going to get pissed off, especially if your product isn't shit.
 
nickclarson said:
Ha thought about it, but I kind of want to sell a product and build a long term brand rather than ruining people's days.

I was thinking about an affiliate program, but affiliates would only want to promote it if it was a rebill. Might be worth a shot though, or even a tell a friend type deal.
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Do you want to make money or not?

To develop a product like this requires either a lot of time (and little profit) or a lot of advertising $ to get your brand in the public eye.
 
your site looks slick. also, i dig the package design. i'm not surprised it's not converting, however. even if you don't want to go with a rebill you can steal layout ideas from the cpa world. here are some suggestions from a designers perspective.

most importantly your buying options should be REALLY obvious and above the fold, right where you have testimonials now on the main page. make it green to stand out from the rest of the black layout.

put a massive buy now button at the bottom of the page that will jump them up to the buy form if they scroll far down and read most of your sales copy.

i would also suggest putting shots of an active person or couple in the header. it will add that human element that is lacking with just product shots. also use imagery to break up the sales copy and try to cook up some more captivating headings. right now it's screaming, don't read me.
 
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I would watch some of gary vaynerchuk's stuff. He has some great insight in building communities/product brands. None of it really applies to affiliate marketing though if you go that route.
 
thanks for the awesome advice guysmy. Makes a lot of sense. Actually maybe it would be cool to take out that testimonial box and put a picture of the water skier we sponsored (with his testimonial below it) right in the content to break it up a bit. Kill two birds with one stone. as for the buy it now stuff, good idea i'll work on that.

We just started promoting it a few weeks ago so I might just stay away from rebill for now and just work on the site itself and keep doing what we are doing. I think that the site is the main problem after what guysmy said. I think once we get going the product will start to sell itself

I wonder if I should also just stick to either google checkout or paypal and not both
 
thats an excellent idea - do you have any research to back up whether it actually works? i have a feeling you could go pretty big with this, just don't fuck it up.
 
xiceni said:
thats an excellent idea - do you have any research to back up whether it actually works? i have a feeling you could go pretty big with this, just don't fuck it up.
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Thanks!

begin excitement // no research yet but believe me, it does work. I love it myself (which is why i wanted to create it in the first place). The few people who have tried it love it. We had a pro golfer try it. He was an energy drink hound so we were skeptical that it would even work for him. To our surprise he said it worked great and he didn't feel jittery and he felt more focused on the course. He's using it at a big match coming up and we're waiting on a testimonial from him so that should help a bit. // end excitement

We have to be careful legally what we say on the site until we have research to back it up. Once we get going I would like to get research done so I can say more to the point things like "guaranteed to work in 30 minutes" or "no jitters" instead of "helps prevent jitters" etc.
 
The formulation is decent, and nutritional supplements are pretty hot right now. From a design perspective, you have an awful lot of black for a background color, might want to lighten that up. Giving some more quantity-ordering options (e.g. 1, 2, 4, 6 bottles), with increasing discounts for larger order sizes, will help your average ticket value. Also, get a merchant account if you can, Google Checkout and Paypal are fine as options, but you really need to be able to accept Visa/MC if you hope to maximize sales.
As for an affiliate program, lots of affiliates promote on a flat % commission on retail sales, not everything is CPA now like WF makes it sound like. Get some off-the-shelf affiliate software, and offer 30-40% commissions. If your product is good, customers will almost always order the larger quantities, so affiliates can still make as much or more on a retail order as a CPA offer. You've got a good start, the site and product look solid, you just need to take it to the next level.
 
My business partner and I marketed online a bunch of mind/focus formulas in DR, such as Focus Factor, Brain Pep and a couple others I can't remember. The online stuff your probably covered, if you need assistance with other DR avenues and let me know your budget too. Just PM me.
 
Text: too much, too small

Missing: Pictures of people.

Colors: Black probably isn't the smartest choice for a multi vitamin. Consider a lighter and brighter.

The average person is not going to read all that crap you have written there. I don't think you've fully evaluated your target audience. If you came to your site, would you feel motivated to spend nearly $40 for something you can get at Walmart for $5? I don't know why I should spend $40 for yours.
 
I actually really like the color scheme. I think you can manage to keep it black if you use light tones under the text. Definitely needs some work for conversions though.
 
phrench said:
Which company are you using for manufacturing and private labeling?
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Probably the Umbrella Corporation.

070707 said:
I actually really like the color scheme. I think you can manage to keep it black if you use light tones under the text. Definitely needs some work for conversions though.
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It doesn't look bad; it's just not appropriate. That's the thing people don't get when they make sites or ads. It's not a matter of whether you like how it looks/sounds, it has to be effective at getting the message across to your intended demographic.

I think that if you want to keep the dark theme, you need to choose 18-35 y/o men as your target and follow in the footsteps of AXE with your marketing...but if you want to hit a general "health and beauty" audience, you should probably get your design ideas from GNC or Centrum.
 
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