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  First, people started to use Product Launch Formula and get amazing results—to the extent where people in the business were completely stunned. The results were two times, five times, ten times, even fifty times what they were used to seeing.

  And second, many “experts” in the market almost immediately started to predict that all that success would immediately start to die off once the tactics became widespread. They said that PLF was a fad, and people would soon stop responding to the launches. Once everyone had seen one of these launches, it would be a case of “the bloom is off the rose” and the results would quickly fall off.

  Of course, that didn’t happen, because the results my students are getting today are even better than back when I first started teaching Product Launch Formula. As I type this, we just saw one of the biggest-ever launches in one of the most competitive launch-crazy markets. The verdict is in: PLF-style launches haven’t gone away. They’ve just gotten better as we’ve refined the model.

  Here’s what those self-styled experts missed back in 2005, and here’s what some of them continue to miss to this day: A big part of the reason the model keeps working is that we have continued to evolve the tactics. But an even bigger reason is that the success of this product launch model is due to the integral STRATEGIES that we use, and those strategies are timeless. PLF has withstood the test of time because it’s solidly rooted in the very core of our mental psyche.

  That might seem like a big statement in a book about marketing and entrepreneurship, but that’s what we’ve got in store for you in this chapter . . .

  I’ve already teased you with a little introduction to the mental triggers—those things that directly influence how we act and make decisions. They’re incredibly powerful, and they act on a subconscious level. These mental triggers have roots that go back thousands of years, and they are present in all of us to varying degrees. And unless there is a fundamental change in the way our brains work (highly unlikely!), these triggers will continue to exert massive influence over our actions.

  Part of the power of the Product Launch Formula is that it gives you a canvas on which to activate these mental triggers as you move through your launch. The mental triggers (along with your sequences and your launch story) form the very cornerstone of your successful product launch. Hit these triggers over and over in your Prelaunch Sequence and your Launch Sequence, and you can create a nearly hypnotic spell over your prospects (and even your entire market).

  With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

  Before I give you the details of these mental triggers, I have to warn you this is powerful stuff. And, unfortunately, it can be used for evil as well as good. Frankly, I know this knowledge will fall into the hands of some people who will use it unethically. But I also know from years of working with my PLF Owners, that the vast majority of them are really cool people who have and will apply this knowledge ethically and create tremendous value in the world.

  My sincerest wish is that you do exactly that—create something amazing and use this knowledge to share your gifts with the world.

  Okay, let’s get started—here are nine of my favorite mental triggers:

  1. Authority

  People tend to follow others in positions of authority. Think about doctors in their white coats. For most of us, as soon as we see that white coat walk into the examination room, a certain part of us becomes deferential. We listen to what the doctor has to say and take any advice seriously. We probably feel at least a little intimidated to disagree with anything the person in that white coat says.

  This isn’t unusual. We often look for others to help guide our decision. Like so many other mental triggers, the authority trigger helps us shortcut the decisionmaking process. As we move through our everyday lives we have thousands and thousands of tiny little decisions to make all the time. Every action we take requires some level of thought and decision. Following people with authority is a way in which our brain has evolved to make those decisions more efficiently.

  If you want to be more influential in your business and marketing, it pays to be seen as an authority. And the good news is that it can be shockingly easy to create authority. When I was a teenager in high school, I learned a very important lesson about authority. Three of my friends and I were driving home after a school football game—just like a few hundred other people—and got stuck in a traffic jam in the parking lot. There were so many cars trying to get out the exit that no one was moving at all. One of my friends, who understood a lot more about authority than I did, found a flashlight rolling around on the floor of the car and immediately knew what to do. He jumped out of the car, turned on the flashlight, and started directing traffic. Actually, he didn’t really direct traffic; he mostly just walked in front of our car and waved us forward through the congestion. Seeing the flashlight’s beam, other drivers made way for our personal “traffic director” and we drove right out of the parking lot. The only authority he had to direct traffic came from the flashlight. But people saw that flashlight, and they assumed he was in a position of authority. And I learned a big lesson that night: It just doesn’t take very much to create authority.

  The Product Launch Formula is a perfect tool for establishing authority. As we move through the prelaunch and share high-quality content with our prospects, we create authority almost automatically. When Barry Friedman mentioned being on The Tonight Show and performing at the White House, that gave him instant authority. And since he talked about those accomplishments within the context of wanting to help his clients, it didn’t come off as empty bragging but instead helped him bond with his prospects.

  2. Reciprocity

  Reciprocity is the idea that if someone gives something to us, we will feel some obligation to give them something back in return. This is a very important mental trigger and again this is something that goes back thousands of years. In fact, reciprocity is the very basis from which humans were able to create commerce and trade. For trade to occur, there has to be some amount of trust that when we give a product or service to someone, they will complete the trade by “holding up their end” of the agreement.

  Reciprocity is a very powerful trigger. For example, in my family we celebrate Christmas, and a very strong part of the Christmas tradition is the idea of giving gifts. And trust me when I say that one of the worst feelings in the world is when a friend or neighbor shows up at your house with a gift for you, and you don’t have a gift for them. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I’m sure you can relate to this feeling. When someone gives you a gift, and you don’t have a way to reciprocate, that triggers something deep inside of you. You want to “make it right,” and you look for a way to reciprocate, to give something back.

  During a PLF-style launch, you spend the entire prelaunch giving to people. That’s what the whole prelaunch is about . . . giving out great, free content. When you give out that content, you’re creating a large reciprocity imbalance. The greater the value of your Prelaunch Content, the greater that imbalance. In the end, when you ask for something back, your prospect will have a greater tendency to want to reciprocate. And at the end of the launch, that reciprocation often equates to a sale.

  During a prelaunch there will be several cycles of reciprocity, of giving and receiving before you even get to asking for the order. But make no mistake—reciprocity is an extremely powerful mental trigger, and you’ll be activating this trigger throughout your entire launch.

  3. Trust

  Building trust is the ultimate short circuit to becoming influential in someone’s life. I’m sure you can think of many times when a trusted friend or parent or teacher told you something that you believed without question because of your relationship with that person. Something that, if a stranger had told you the same thing, you absolutely wouldn’t have believed. That’s the power of trust.

  Obviously, if you want to influence someone, it’s much easier if they trust you. If you want to get someone to do something, it’s much easier if
they trust you. If you want to convince someone to buy something from you, it’s much easier if they trust you.

  Of course, in business it can be difficult to earn someone’s trust. Especially in the current marketing environment, where everyone is completely inundated with marketing messages all day long. Your prospect is getting thousands and thousands of messages. Cutting through that “marketing fog” is hard enough. Trying to actually create trust in that environment is even harder.

  One of the easiest ways to create trust is through time. You can probably think of a time when you had a neighbor who seemed a bit different or even strange. You didn’t consider them to be a friend and probably didn’t even know them all that well. But after you lived next to them for a period of time, and after they proved themselves to be reliable and honest, you developed a sense of trust in them. Time makes it much easier to trust people.

  That’s one of the luxuries that the Product Launch Formula® and the Sideways Sales Letter™ gives you . . . time. Compared to a normal “drive by” advertisement or sales pitch, these tools give you time and repeated interaction with your prospects. They make building a trust relationship with your prospect much easier than with the old way of marketing.

  4. Anticipation

  Another super-powerful mental trigger is “anticipation,” and this is one of the cornerstones of the Product Launch Formula. In fact, when I first started teaching PLF, many people referred to it as “anticipation marketing.”

  Anticipation is one of the triggers that allows you to cut through the marketing fog. It lets you grab your market’s attention and not let go. Think back to when you were a child and you looked forward to some special day. Maybe it was your birthday. Maybe it was Christmas morning. Maybe it was your last day of school before summer vacation. Time seemed to slow down as the big, anticipated day approached. It was all you could think about. You couldn’t wait for that day.

  Well, here’s a newsflash—all of us are really just big kids. We haven’t gotten over anticipating those special days. And if you do this right, your launch is almost like mixing together your prospect’s birthday and summer vacation all in one bundle.

  Anticipation is closely related to scarcity, which is another super-powerful trigger I’ll get to in just a minute, but basically it’s the idea that people will want something more if there’s less of it available. Anticipation is also closely tied to “events” where you’re circling the date on the calendar and focusing all your attention on that date. If you use anticipation right, people will put the date on their calendar and look forward to your launch. It’s like you’re putting your prospects into your storyline. They can’t wait for the next installment, they can’t wait to see what’s going to happen, they can’t wait to get your product.

  As with all the mental triggers, when you mix anticipation with the other mental triggers, the power is magnified and the impact is often breathtaking.

  5. Likeability

  Likability is a mental trigger that you have certainly experienced in your life. The simple fact is that we enjoy doing business with people we know, like, and trust. We are more influenced by people we like than those we don’t like.

  So how do we become more likable? At the risk of stating the obvious, you become more likable by doing likable things. When you’re seen being gracious, kind, generous, and honest . . . well, people will like you more. And the more likable you are, the more influence you will have.

  People generally like to do business with other people more than with a large faceless corporation. If you look around, you’ll see even the biggest corporations are starting to realize this, and they’re doing their best to humanize their message. And in the age of ever-increasing digital communication, we’re all looking for increased connection and authenticity.

  If you look at what I’ve already shared with you about the magic of the Prelaunch Sequence, you’ll see that a well-constructed sequence will inherently make you more likable. You’re giving people great free content, you’re interacting with them, you’re responding to their questions and comments. All of these actions make you more likable. You’re building a strong connection with your market and your clients. And that makes you more influential.

  6. Events and Ritual

  When you turn your marketing into an event (which is what running a well-executed PLF-style launch is all about), then you instantly make your marketing truly magnetic. People love events, and they get pulled in by them. It makes them feel as though they are part of something bigger than themselves. This is one of the reasons that sports fans get so caught up in the fate of a team. In reality, the people on “their team” are usually made up of a bunch of complete strangers. But watching their team compete becomes an important event in fans’ lives.

  A big part of this trigger is the idea of “ritual.” When people go through an event together, it becomes something of a ritual. Rituals pull people together and create some of the most powerful experiences we as human beings can have. In fact, ritual is a cornerstone for nearly all religion. In the modern Western world, we are somewhat starved for rituals (which, again, explains why sporting events are so important to so many), and that’s why this type of experience can be a peak experience for us.

  Now, this isn’t a manual on how to start a religion or build a sports franchise, but this is powerful stuff that you can tap into quickly and easily. Turn your marketing into an event, and you will transform your results.

  7. Community

  Community is a very powerful mental trigger. We act in accordance with how we think the people in our community are supposed to act. Where I grew up, in the American Midwest, almost everyone worked hard to have a green lawn in front of their home. The amount of time, effort, and money it took to create and maintain a lush, green lawn was considerable. I think it’s safe to assume that not everyone who was working so hard on those lawns did so because they loved growing grass in front of their home. But the social norm of the community was that the residents had well-cared-for lawns in front of their homes, so they tended them very carefully.

  If you reflect on your own life, I bet you can think of many communities you’re part of. These might be work communities, social communities, communities of friends, even online communities. And all of those communities have norms that govern how community members are supposed to act. These norms can be wildly different from community to community, but they are very powerful within the community.

  But here’s something exciting you might not know. While communities may seem large and established and difficult to get going, that’s not always true. You can actually build your own online community right in the midst of your launch. Once you get people interacting with you, with your marketing, and with each other, you’re on your way to forming a community. Which means, of course, that you can create your own community norms. Those norms could include actions like helping spread the word about your Prelaunch Content, making comments on your launch blog, or “liking” your posts in social media. Or even buying your product.

  8. Scarcity

  Scarcity is one of the most powerful mental triggers in existence, period. It’s simple—when there is less of something, we want it more. And, in reality, it’s the perception of scarcity that motivates us. If you think about it, the power of scarcity shows up in our lives over and over, in all kinds of different ways. Why do people value diamonds more than other pretty rocks? Because they’re harder to find. They’re more difficult to cut. There are fewer of them. And they’re very expensive.

  Same with gold, or Rolexes, or Ferraris.

  One of the things that scarcity does is force people to make a decision. The vast majority of people will put off a decision if you give them a choice, especially when it comes to spending money. One of the key objectives you have in your marketing is to force people to make a decision. That’s what scarcity does. If something is truly scarce, then a person needs to act quickly before the scarce resource goes away.

  To c
reate a well-executed launch, you absolutely need to build scarcity into that launch. There has to be some negative consequence if people don’t take action and buy before the end of the launch (for instance, the price might go up after the launch). If you make sure there’s always some scarcity built into your launch, it will take your results to a completely different level.

  In fact, we often see as many sales in the last 24 hours of a launch as we do during the rest of the launch combined. If you structure your launch correctly, the last-second rush is every bit as predictable as the rush to buy flowers on Valentine’s Day.

  It’s almost like a spectator sport. If you have programmed scarcity into your launch, plan on making a big bowl of popcorn and sitting back and watching all the orders pour in on the last evening of your launch.

  Read those last three paragraphs again—because the power of scarcity will transform your results. If you implement nothing else in this book but that one tactic and you absolutely INSIST on using that tactic in EVERY launch you do, it will literally pay you back 10,000 times what you invested in this book.

  9. Social Proof

  Social proof is another super-powerful trigger. While it can be very hard to create in an old-style marketing campaign, social proof is extremely easy to build into your PLF-style product launch.

  Social proof is the idea that if we see other people taking action, then we will be inclined to take that action as well. Typically we take cues from the people around us when we’re unsure of how to act. We are social creatures, and it’s hard to overemphasize just how completely we are influenced by what we see other people around us doing.

  For example, consider this scenario. It’s 7PM and you drive into a strange town. You’re hungry and you’re looking for restaurant. Let’s just say the battery in your smart phone is dead and you don’t have any way to check restaurant reviews, so you’re on your own when it comes to picking a restaurant. You see two restaurants. The one on the right side of the road has no cars in the parking lot, while the one on the left side of the road has six cars. Which restaurant are you going to pick? Most people would go to the restaurant with the cars in the parking lot, assuming that all those people must know something, right? That’s social proof in action.