Should You Offer a Pre-Order Option

You can give your customers the option to pre-order certain products or services before you are ready to launch them. Pre-orders can be used in almost every industry- hand-made products, luxury goods, books or services. Pre-orders allow you to collect money ahead of the release of your book or product.

Pre-orders can be a significant part of many authors’ and business’ new product release marketing plans. One of the advantages of using pre-orders is the different strategies you can use to boost sales. There are other reasons to use pre-orders. But there are some downsides to the strategy as well.

Benefits of Pre-order Product Options

1. Pre-order sales can give your book a boost in the chance of hitting the New York Times bestseller list or USA Today bestseller list.

2. Pre-orders are a great way to drive existing readers into new sales to a subsequent book. Link to the pre-order in your books back matter to capture readers while they are still hooked, ready to read more.

3. Running a pre-order boosts rankings and buzz about your book or product before it’s released. This begins building visibility and excitement for the product which translates into sales.

4. Guaranteed revenue, from pre-order sales, allows you to pay for creating or publishing the product.

5. Pre-order sales give you early data about the product. You can learn about how the product is received, if it needs revising, the pricing and your demographic.

6. Using a pre-order option pushes you to finish the product or book on time. You have a timeline you must meet; otherwise you will end up losing customer loyalty and revenue.

Downsides to Pre-order Product Options

1. Sometimes a pre-order campaign isn’t the right strategy for your new product or release. Some believe a pre-order is only effective for authors or businesses with a huge following or name recognition.

2. Managing customer expectations might be difficult. Long wait periods or products that never get delivered might cause disappointment and lead to loss of customer loyalty.

3. Unsteady revenue flow after the pre-order when it is the only strategy you employ in the marketing of the product. The pre-order option shouldn’t be the only marketing campaign of your product. You get a big boost in sales at the time of the pre-order then sales slack off.

It’s a good idea to not set your pre-order too far in advance. People want instant gratification and are impatient. They don’t want to have to wait months after they purchase something to receive it. One week up to three months is a good time frame.

During the pre-order period, schedule podcast interviews, do related blog posts, and advertise to raise awareness. The goal is to get high rankings so the book will be more visible during the pre-order period, which gives you momentum during your launch.

Setting up a pre-order option for your products or books is an excellent way to build buzz, create revenue and push you to finish. Before you decide to offer the option, look at the reasons why you want to do it and set up a detailed plan for making it work.

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