How to promote a product launch?

I'd Highly Recommend that you check out Mike from Maine's 'Product Launch Formula' - it helped me a lot with understanding the whole process!
Good luck
Art

The best way is to build relationships and get known in the industry. It's a process not just something you can expect overnight. Many of the top affiliates all promote one another because they have those relationships and so it's often very hard to get in the door with those affiliates... and they are the ones you want promoting you.

So start getting active in the industry. Get on Facebook. Join all the popular Internet Marketing groups and start getting your face seen and heard.

With familiarity comes trust and authority.

I think Will hit it right on the head...to do well you need to have the affiliates to promote you...and to do that you need to reach out and befriend those people where there will be a mutual interest. it's all about Karma

Besides everything else that has been said...

Make it worth the time for your affiliates.

Ex: 100% commissions, and prize bonuses for Top X people who send sales

You can actually give away a big chunk of change for prizes & still make profit from your launch

Listing on places like MunchEye etc is OK but it won't make much of a difference unless you network and build relationships with people in your niche.

Get out there and get talking to people. ask them what they are working on, promote their stuff, help them, offer advice, do something cool for them.

Also make it worth while for affiliates to promote - 100% commissions across the whole funnel, leaderboards with cash and prizes, incentives etc.

Most importantly make sure your sales page converts and the product is high quality with low refund rates as if they promote and get no sales or everyone refunds they won't promote for you again - this should all be tested BEFORE you launch.

Which leads me to this question...

Before you did all the product creation, design, sales page, funnel, JV page etc did you test the product to see if there was actually any demand for it?

I always recommend setting up a basic sales page and sending some cold traffic to it to test the waters and see if people are interest.

The page should have a 'fake' buy button that doesn't actually lead to a payment processor but takes them to a page where you simply say it's not available / sold out and have that page tracked as a goal in G Analytics. Anyone landing on that counts as a sale.

Saves a lot of time, effort and money if it turns out no one is going to buy.

Depending on your budget its good to go through many different options when promoting a product, the ideal way would be is through affiliates as others mentioned but then acquiring those can actually be tough if they dont know you.

You can try paid advertising like PPC on facebook or google, even do some article marketing or a press release. The good thing about fb ads is you can target people by interest or actions that they have taken on facebook to narrow it down.

Lastly join up on relevant forums to promote it as well and add it in your signature.

I'd throw a few unique press releases on some high pr sites and take very into serious the social networks - it's where the buzz goes fastest. If you have one or two promotions to catch their eyes with, it will be even better.

It seems to me that you don't have any affiliates to promote for you.

You will have to get your hands dirty and do all the marketing yourself for this product. Then after you start seeing sales, have an "affiliate program" offer for your customers to take advantage on.

Yeah you can have an opt in form on the page they can enter their email to get notified when the product is available.

Go for free press release websites and social media.

I think it's free to use and if done well, you will get unexpected results.

Try for articles submission of your product for good traffic.

start getting known by using email marketing -promoting through emails- , facebook , linkedin, create a website with a trial etc

Congratulations on your new product! And now, all you need to do is have a little launchjacking!

My suggestions:

Create relationship with people who are into affiliate marketing. The more affiliates you have, the easier it will be to spread the good news about your new product. Just to site an example: Do you know about Jason Drohn? Well, he has this new product about helping students get good grades. Do you know what he did to establish relationship with potential affiliate marketers? He put up a site that teaches newbies on how to start blogging and marketing online products. And because of this free online course, he was able to get so many affiliates to spread the good news!

Use Press Release Sites. If you have a new product to promote, then using press release sites is a must!

Be active. Join forums (such as Warrior Forum). Comment on blogs (with a niche related to yours) with high page rank. Oh, and don't forget to leave a link of your blog site (not your product site) that points to your product.

Put up pages in social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Make it interesting enough so that people will visit, like and share your page with their friends. If you have extra cash, try using Facebook's Promoted Page program to give your Facebook page a boost

Agree with Adriel - make and maintain as many relationships as you possibly can, and make the most of the free online resources you have at your disposal (Social Media, Press Release Sites, Forums/Blogs, Affiliate Marketing, Online Directories/Listings)

You could even look into creating your own blog? We've recently started one to try and help with our product launches and, although it's early days, if you're willing and able to put the time into it then I think that they can also prove to be really beneficial.

Start looking into local trade shows, expos, and conferences - an absolute hotbed for networking and it's a great opportunity to see the kind of competition that you're up against as well.

Best of luck with it all!

I also suggest using a press release to announce the launch of your product. To dive further into that I would make sure the pr is written professionally more so for journalists than for the web. Although it's tempting to use free press release service, I would go for a paid one just to get a higher count of exposure and quality. Good Luck!

If your offer converts it will be easy to get affiliates on board... You just need one or two mid-level players to get on board first. If they get great EPC's (earnings per click) word will begin to spread plus all of the affiliates on those people's list will start to actively search out your product to find out how they can get piece of the action.

Once someone gets great results with your offer you want to contact 10-20 good affiliates who can each send you at least 10-50 sales on their own. Show them proof of the success from the player they may know. If an affiliate agrees to promote be sure to personally send them ALL the material they need to promote your offer: swipes, banners, etc... And sometime you even have to include their specific links for them. Yes, some affiliates at that lazy... LOL!

Offer better commissions for your affiliates. And maybe you could offer a prize for the affiliate that makes the most sells.

i have not lauched any product yet. But, couple months ago i saw one product developer was inviting other affiliates.
Jeff walker has an great course named "product launch formula' . I believe it will help you much more.

Put to together a press release to send out to any blogs that might be interested in covering your product launch. If possible, send these blog a demo or trial version of your product.

Here's another place you can go to post an announcement for your product launch.

JVPoint.com

(IM Products Only)

Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula is the best training out there IMHO. I bought a copy when it first came out, and it's really helped me a lot. I'm sure it's still available.