I was feeling wracked with nerves.

It’s always like this when I work hard on a new product or service.

All that thought and planning…

All that time and effort…

I love doing it, and I know I’m good at it… but that doesn’t stop the thoughts buzzing around in my head.

What will customers think of the offer?

How many will it sell?

Will it all be worth it?

In this case I had created a brand new training package and had really high hopes for it.

In my view the offer was incredible.

But you never know what will happen until you push that button and get it out there into the world.

So, eventually, I stopped thinking and hit “send”.

Away went the promotional email… zooming across cyberspace…

Very quickly, a few orders came in.

PING! PING! PING! went my inbox.

Hurrah!

That’s such a great sound when you’ve just launched!

Then some more came in…

PING! PING! PING!

Excellent!

At that point, I felt a rush of elation, and then…

Silence.

Nothing.

*TUMBLEWEED ROLLS BY*

“Okay,” I thought, “Don’t panic.”

That afternoon I sent the follow up email, just to check people had seen the promotion.

A few more sales trickled in.

Nice, but it was nothing remarkable.

Maybe the offer wasn’t as great as I had thought?

Maybe the training wasn’t as exciting as I believed it to be?

Maybe everyone had gone on holiday at the same time for some bizarre reason?

Maybe there had been some kind of weird virus that had eaten up all my emails?

I felt increasingly confused, worried… and downcast.

What had I done wrong?!

But then…

The all-important offer deadline loomed

I had put a deadline on the offer because I wanted to limit the places.

It meant I could properly focus on the intake and help them as best I could, without having to switch my attention to new students for months on end.

So out went the final deadline email.

“Final day,” it warned.

Well, it was like an explosion went off.

Suddenly, order after order came tumbling into my inbox.

I couldn’t believe it.

That was when I first truly understood the power of a deadline.

And it’s something I have seen played out time and time again since (in fact just this weekend a new offer ended up with 53% of the sales coming in the last day!!)

And it’s why I recommend that you give them a try when you launch any information product.

Now, I don’t mean that you invent a fake deadline.

And I’m not talking about creating false urgency or scarcity.

What I mean is that you need to give a real reason for someone to take action.

And if you say that you’re going to limit it to 100 places, or close the doors two weeks after launch, then you need to do that.

Having a deadline helps the customer to make a decision.

Rather than putting off the purchase… umming and ahh-ing… tyre-kicking and procrastinating… they feel a gentle pressure to make a decision, sooner rather than later.

Remember, you’ll offer a money back guarantee to give them reassurance that if they change their mind or your service doesn’t suit them, they won’t lose out.

In marketing terms it makes sense too.

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a well-known motivator behind decision-making.

And we know from the human obsession with things like gold and diamonds that scarcity increases the perceived value of a product.

So when there’s a limit to a product, it makes it more desirable, and the buying-decision more urgent.

It can also make you stand out…

Because when customers can get a common product anywhere, a limited or scarce alternative (ie YOUR course) becomes more appealing.

There’s one final good reason to use a deadline.

It gives you a reason to get in touch with your customers multiple times, alerting them to the end of the offer, and then announcing a FINAL DAY.

This works so well in email marketing – and I know from experience!

In fact, just this week we ran a highly successful bank holiday offer and as I mentioned 53% of the sales came in the final day!

So here’s the takeaway from all this…

If you create a course (or any other info product for that matter) and you get a lacklustre response in the first few days of your launch then…

DON’T PANIC!

It’s okay.

Take a deep breath, and trust in the power of your marketing efforts.

You can go out again and again to your customers, so it’s not about making all the sales from one advert, or one email promotion.

But, if you really want to encourage sales, then consider adding a deadline.

This could take the form of ‘doors close on 6th June’, where you only offer the product for a limited period of time.

It might sound strange to limit sales…

But there are advantages for you.

It means that you don’t have to deal with new customers all year round… you can deliver support or extras to your customers at a high level… and you can take holidays or focus on new projects when you need to.

However, it doesn’t have to be that you close the doors.

There are other kinds of deadlines too.

• Offer an added bonus or benefit for a limited amount of time.
• Offer a discount or enhanced guarantee for a limited time.
• Offer a bundle or extra product for a limited time.

You can also create a deadline based on when a course will start, or when a webinar or event will be held.

In other words, you tell customers that they need to get in before the start time.

If you then decide to replay the webinar or hold another online event, you can put a deadline on how long that will be available for, too.

All these techniques work really well, I promise because I’ve tested them and used them myself but also with clients and students.

So do consider trying this yourself when you launch your next product – and let me know how it goes!