Marketing a New Product & Growing Your Business

A single moment, a single action can change a life, whether it is a car accident, a lottery win, or the better mouse trap. Today's consumer market is brimming with success stories where one dream, one product, and one person's dedication have created an empire of success, fame and wealth. There are an equal number of horror stories where life savings have been lost. The purpose of this article is to provide you the necessary information to be a successful entrepreneur, empire builder, mover, shaker, and story teller.
The key to fulfilling your dream is simple. It's all about the story. Build a story around your product. Tell your story effectively. Tell your story often. Live the life of Riley. It really is just that simple. Let us briefly examine the other elements of creating this burgeoning empire while keeping the story telling in mind.

Step 1: Creating the Product
Health and beauty products are all the rage and a sure bet in today's market. To keep the production costs low, the product should contain 97% salt water. This works equally well for both external, skin-care products and for health-enhancing pills that may be taken internally.

This is not a point to be missed. When you are successful with the initial rollout, you need to follow up with another blockbuster offering to expand the empire and start the multi-level-marketing system that will bring others along on your ride to fame and fortune. Keeping to the basics will help reduce overhead.

It is the other 3% that is the key to building sales. Choose additional ingredients that sound exotic. A cautionary point: avoid kelp and/or seaweed; these have been done to death and the public is so over them. Some examples of the additives to include are: Krakatoan egret egg yoke, Peruvian condor liver extract, Siberian yak stem cells, Himalayan cork-berries (grown only above 10,000 feet and harvested by Buddhist monks in the dead of winter), or Smurf saliva (fresh, never frozen, squeezed daily from premium, hand-picked Smurfs).

Exotic ingredients will reward you in three ways. Legally, you are covered because your product now includes something other than water. Fiscally, you can now charge more for the new miracle cure because it sounds expensive to import Madagascar red-eyed bat guano. Anecdotally, you have great material for your story.

Step 2: Marketing
Before we get to the heart of the matter, you have to remember this is the information age. You must have a catchy website. Gone are the days of the tilde (~). You may not remember the dark ages of the internet, quaintly referred to as the "worldwide web." In those long ago forgotten days, there were so few hosting outlets that the best one could do was to hang their web site off another's URL, for example www.gigumbous.com/~bobliveswithmom/squeakycattoysfactory/home.htm. (Note the primitive lack of the "L" in the ".htm" extension. Strange days these were indeed.)

Today, a registered domain name is a must. I'm happy to report that Bob, after taking my class, made the leap and now can be found, prospering at www.squeakycattoyfactory.com, all run from his Dell laptop, sadly still located in his mom's basement. Spend the money to register a domain name that is easily identified with the product and easily found by web crawlers.

Once registered, throw out a couple of web pages containing the story, the 800 number, and if you can afford it, an on-line order form. There is no need to hire a professional web designer. This is completely a do-it-your-self process; easily done with Microsoft Front Page and a few stolen...er...downloaded graphics. Make sure all the hyperlinks on the site lead back to the story.

Now you are ready to start telling the story in earnest. The best and cheapest way to do this is with the modern infomercial. There are some up-front costs here, but once in the can, your directorial debut can be replayed thousands of times on late night TV. Cable TV advertising rates are ridiculously low if bought in 30-minute blocks between 2 and 5 AM. Craft the infomercial as a news cast, documentary, one-on-one interview or, best of all, a demonstration before a live audience. You can pay the audience in product if you want to save money.

Step 3: The Sale
There are several facets to good story telling. You must hook the audience also known as creating need. It is irrelevant if the need exists. By the time your story is told, the need must exist! Convincing perfectly healthy people that their morning malaise is a direct result of an alkaloid-skewed ketone-thyroid-renal imbalance brought on by the lack of vital sea-earth minerals in their diet is a good start.

To drive the point home, fold into the story that freckles are a direct indication of this deficiency. 95% of your audience will begin thinking, "I have freckles," and you have them hooked. Don't worry about the other 5% at this point. They have age spots and you can mention this symptom later to bring them on board.

Now you must really sell the story (with conviction if possible) of how this revolutionary product, used for centuries by a lost tribe of Amazonian rain forest dwellers, holds the cure for their newly-realized condition. Prattle on about its accidental discovery by a noted archeologist. If you can't find a noted archeologist, hire an actor to play one. Defer to them and let them tell the story again from the beginning. When it is your turn again, pick up where you left off and keep telling the story. During the telling, make sure you mention the 800 number and the web site.

Do not flash the information on the screen. Sophisticated, CNN-savvy audiences are much more impressed with "the ticker." Scroll the 800 number and web site along the bottom of the screen as if they were breaking news of an Al-Qaeda plot to smuggle nuclear warheads to Utah inside of goats. Intersperse factoids about the product such as, "Clears colon polyps" and "Improves night vision." Of course, you are legally required to include the disclaimer, "These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA."

With 5 minutes left, it is time to close the sale also known as creating excitement. The operative word here is "FREE." Include tempting offers of an extra 30-day supply absolutely FREE, but only if they order in the next 10 minutes. Since you have created your product with the directions in step 1, the FREE 30-day supply is only costing you $1.27. It is more than worth giving that away FREE to get the $99.99 up-front. Offer the first 100 callers a FREE 3-month subscription to the monthly newsletter that retells your story. Be sure to say the words, "Money-back guarantee," with all the sincerity you can muster without wetting yourself with laughter.

With excitement at a fevered pitch, make it as easy as possible for the average, freckled consumer to afford the cure. This last piece of the sale was the invention of one of the lesser daemons of marketing, but he is a real up-and-comer in the fiery ranks. This is known as the split-pay. It is most effectively presented this way:

"Would you pay $300 for this product? What if it were available for $200, $150? We have lowered the price to an incredible $99.99 and if you call now we'll bill your credit card in 3 easy installments of $33.33. If you include the coupon code on the screen (display last night's winning lotto numbers or PI to 7 decimal places), we'll spread this out over 6 easy payments of only $19.99."

Most people can not do math in their head while dialing a phone, so you have just made an extra 20 bucks on the deal. That will more than cover the stuff you are giving away FREE.

Step 4: Commanding the new Empire
Just because you have become stinking, filthy rich from your initial offering does not mean it is time to stop telling your story. You now have additional material about how you achieved your rank in life to add to the story. That new story is prime material for the book you will write to help others become famous. Take the advice of one of history's most aggressive marketers, "The masses will more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie."

Continue to tell your story often. Let the story snowball, grow, and take on a life of its own. Lenin knew something when he said, "A lie, told often enough becomes the truth." The truth here being you will eventually be able to sell autographed copies of your autobiography that will haunt garage sales for decades to come.