Sales page vs. product launch
How do I generate new customers profitably and consistently?
Jump to
The challenge that every marketer ultimately is working to solve is:
“How do I generate new customers profitably and consistently?”
- Product launches
- Traditional sales pages
Let’s look at the benefits of a product launch and/or marketing event (like a webinar):

The conversion rate of a product launch is typically much higher than a traditional sales page, engagement with leads and customers is dramatically better, and an element of urgency is in place to motivate potential buyers to purchase the product before a set deadline.
Sources:
- http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/17/what-is-a-good-conversion-rate
- https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/adobe-revamps-webinar-strategy
APPLE PROVES PRODUCT LAUNCHES ARE THE WAY TO GO
On June 24, 2010, Steve Jobs released the iPhone 4.
Within three days, Apple had sold more than 1.7 million new phones.

Five years later, the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus sold 13 million units in their first three days on the market, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Then in May of 2015, Carl Icahn (31st richest person in the world as of 2015) gave Apple a market value of $1.4 trillion.
So as a marketing model, product launches can obviously be extremely lucrative.
And Apple’s only one example – just in the offline world!
THE POPULAR & PROFITABLE LANDING PAGE STRATEGY
In the past, when you wanted to create a website, you would need to hire a developer (or team of people) to plan, design, and develop it for you.
This process would cost thousands of dollars and take months to finish.
With the advent of easy-to-use landing page builders – such as LeadPages, ClickFunnels, WordPress, etc. – a marketer can go from zero to having a full suite of landing pages, optin pages, sales pages, and a checkout process set up in a couple hours…
… even with no prior tech experience.
Below is a screenshot from ClickFunnels. It’s stupid simple to create an entire funnel using a drag-and-drop editor:
And this technology empower the idea of creating a landing page one time, and then driving as much traffic as possible to it, running experiments to increase the conversion rate of that page, and working to acquire as much revenue as possible.
Which isn’t a bad thing at all, and has been used by tons of über successful marketers like Ryan Deiss, Perry Belcher, and others.
ADVANTAGES OF THE TRADITIONAL SALES PAGE
Let’s break it down further.
In comparison to product launches, the traditional sales page has several advantages:

Landing pages require minimal planning, can be super automated, and remain on the Internet as long as you want them to.
A HYBRID APPROACH – HOW TO GET THE BEST OF BOTH MODELS
Faced with the pros and cons of a product launch vs. a traditional sales page strategy, where should you focus your time and energy?
Like we’ve mentioned above, the advantage of the traditional sales page is that once it’s live on the Internet, you don’t really have to do a whole lot – aside from making sure traffic is flowing steadily to the page.

Still, product launches KILL IT with conversion and revenue.
Why? It’s a dedicated one-time event where there is a lot of hype, consistent communication with interested buyers (through the “sideways sales letter”), and a deadline.
You can’t just come back and get the same deal in 30 days – either you purchase by the end of the launch or you miss out.
But what if there was a way to combine the power and effectiveness of a product launch with the ease of creating a traditional sales page?
THE EVERGREEN DEADLINE FUNNEL
Guess what? With an evergreen deadline funnel, you can have the best of both worlds:
- A specific start date for each subscriber
- A specific end date for each subscriber
- Pre-launch content
- Education-based marketing
- Better lead engagement
- Higher conversion & revenue
The one thing that makes an evergreen deadline funnel different than any other type of funnel is that each lead going through the funnel gets their own unique deadline.
Check out this simple diagram that outlines a five-day evergreen deadline funnel…

We’re going to walk through the four steps pictured above (and a bonus step!) and examine the experience of a single user from when they first enter the funnel to when they buy.
1. EMAIL OPT-IN

So we’ve set up an evergreen deadline funnel that has a five day evergreen deadline.
This means that the deadline for each visitor who subscribes to our list will be five days from when they subscribe.
If someone subscribes on Monday, February 1, then their deadline would be Saturday, February 6th.
And if the next person subscribes on February 2, their deadline will be February 7th.
2. EDUCATION-BASED MARKETING
After someone opts in, you’ll automatically start sending educational content to your new leads through your email provider.
80% of your content should teach what the problem is, why it matters, and how to solve it.
The other 20% will be selling your product.
3. INTRODUCE THE DEADLINE
Three days into this five-day funnel, we’ll introduce our subscriber to their deadline.
Going back to our previous example, if they subscribed on Monday, February 1, then their deadline would be Saturday, February 6th.
So we’ll use marketing automation software to insert the plain-text version of the deadline into our emails (we’ll show you how in a minute), so we can say things like this:
Hey John,
The deadline for purchasing Awesome Product is this Saturday, February 6th.
Just hit reply if you have any questions.
-XYZ Corp
The other way to tell the subscriber about the deadline is to use an animated countdown image:

4. EXPIRING LINKS (BONUS!)

On days 3–5, we’ll give the subscribers the opportunity to go to the sales page – with the deadline embedded on the sales page.
How do you enforce the deadline, so that after the five days are over they can’t access the sales page?
Using a marketing automation system, we can create expiring links to do this for us. Expiring links are a little magical, a little techie, and ultimately they make sure your leads end up where they need to be!
Here’s how an expiring link works:
- Enter the URL you want visitors to go to BEFORE the deadline expires (i.e. your sales page)
- Enter the URL you want visitors to go to AFTER the deadline expires (i.e. a waiting list page)
- Generate the “expiring link” which will send users to the Before URL or After URL based on whether the deadline has expired or not
Check out the example below:


5. THE ORDER PAGE
Then, when someone clicks to go to your order page, it will have an animated countdown included on the page – just like in the screenshot on the right.
And if someone visits your sales page after the deadline has already expired, they’ll be automatically redirected to the After URL page that you set up in the previous step.
Sweet!
“SO HOW DO I CREATE AN EVERGREEN DEADLINE FUNNEL?”

We created Deadline Funnel because it was very difficult to find a solution for implementing an evergreen campaign that met these requirements.
It integrates with almost every email provider, CRM, and landing page builder.
Deadline Funnel is mobile responsive, allows you to create authentic evergreen deadlines that sync across any device and network, work across opt-in pages, sales pages, and email, and a lot more.
There are five elements that are critical for building a profitable evergreen campaign:
- Deadline can be triggered upon opt-in
- Syncs across any device (desktop, tablet, mobile) and any network
- Deadline is synced between landing pages, order pages, and email
- Countdowns are mobile-responsive
- Integrates with the majority of landing page builders and email providers
If you want to get started creating an evergreen funnel today, you can start today with a free of Deadline Funnel. No credit card required and you’ll have 14 days to try it out.
If you’d like to go through our 7-day crash course on evergreen deadline funnels and download a blueprint of the Ultimate Evergreen Funnel, click here to get started.