Let’s start with a tale of two budding entrepreneurs – yes, my kids, who I am willing to publicly humiliate for the sake of making a point.
A few years ago, they got seriously into cute Japanese stationery and decided to launch their very own monthly subscription box.
Luckily they knew someone who could build them a cool website and bankroll their first stock purchase, and thus Pop Bubble was born.
Kid 1 (then aged 11) mentioned it to a few friends at school and the first few sales came trickling in.
Kid 2 (then aged 8) decided to go ALL IN on the launch.
She told all of her friends. Repeatedly. Â
She told her teacher who discussed it with the whole class.Â
She gave away free boxes to a couple of key friends who she thought would be super excited and tell their friends.
(Yes, she was WAY early to the influencer game).
Boom! 24 boxes sold in the first month.
She absolutely smashed it! I couldn’t have done a better job myself.
When you launch anything, there are really only 3 ways to get your product in front of people.
- Use your personal contacts (her friends)
- Borrow someone else’s audience (her teacher’s)
- Paid ads (gave away stock for free)
In this post, I’m going to be showing you how to successfully launch ANYTHING, whether that’s a new lead magnet, course, website or service.
I’ll walk you through the exact process we’ve been using to generate 5 figure launches for all of our recent Funnel Fix clients, because there actually is an easy-to-follow formula that takes all of the guesswork out of launching.
Start With Your End Goal
When you launch anything, you need to define a very specific outcome, and one that is possible to measure.
For example, if you’re launching a website, the goal of getting ‘more traffic’ isn’t going to be a clear enough call to action to build significant momentum around.
Instead, you’ll need to choose your preferred outcome and that will really depend on what you’re selling. People buying higher ticket products and services, like web design or wedding photography, are likely to need more nurturing before they buy, so capturing emails with a lead magnet or driving them to book a call is a better bet.
Here’s a list of the most common conversion events / goals.
For lower ticket items
- Product sales
- Booking a service
For higher ticket items
- Capture emails
- Attend a webinar / live workshop (leading to sales)
- Book a call (leading to sales)
Your Launch Runway
Your launch runway is just a fancy way of describing which content you need to create and share in the 6-week period before you launch.
When we work on a launch with clients, we insist on a minimum of 6 weeks before the launch to make sure that all of the content has been planned and created with time in hand, because the actual launch week is HECTIC.
Here’s a rough outline of our standard launch runway.
Minus 6 weeks (or earlier)
Emotion-based research & analysisÂ
Before you create any content at all, make sure you’ve carried out some deep research into the issues or pain points users of your product or service experience.
Analysing their answers to a set of carefully crafted questions will enable you to identify their most pressing pain points or needs, which you can then use as a foundation for creating content that will resonate emotionally with your audience.
Not only will their answers give you the general topics you need to create content around during your launch, you’ll also be able to build up a rich and appealing selection of words and phrases that you KNOW will engage your audience.
Yes, you can plug their actual answers straight into your sales or product pages, social media and email or ad copy. Head to this blog post to swipe my emotion-based research questions.
Tech Set up
As far out as possible, set up and test anything technical. This includes your email marketing platform (set up lists / tags / segments), your Facebook pixel and your Google Analytics.
You’ll need both your Facebook pixel and your Google Analytics to be accurately tracking in order to measure your launch results.
List reactivation email
Oh, so you’ve been collecting emails but not actually been emailing your list? This is true of most clients we work with so don’t feel too bad. BUT you can’t just pop up out of nowhere and start selling to them.
You need to send them the ‘bad friend’ email, where you explain that yes, you’ve been quiet, but that’s because you’ve been working on something totally awesome which you’ll share with them as soon as you can. But in the meantime, you’re going to be sharing some excellent content with them over the coming weeks / months. You get the drift…
(By the way, I learned all of these psychological email tips from Rob and Kennedy over Email Marketing Heroes. You should totally check them out.)
Potential partners
One of the key ways to make sure your launch is as successful as possible is by looking for partners with a similar and hopefully bigger audience than you, but who you don’t compete with.
If your product or service would work with an affiliate programme, get that set up now.
Most potential partners will have their promotional and content scheduled planned out several weeks in advance, so giving them plenty of time to sign up and get your event in the diary is key.
Minus 3-5 weeks
Positioning emails & social media content
It’s time to start getting your audience in the right frame of mind to hear your sales message or call to action.
This is a set of 3 emails and / or content pieces and each one has a specific role to play in priming your subscribers or followers.
- Mind shift – they need to believe that they have a problem which you can solve
- Proof – they need to see some evidence that you have fixed this problem for someone else or that your product or service really works.
- Desired Outcome – paint a picture of the outcome or result that they could be experiencing. This final email needs to create a desire for your service or product without explicitly selling it.
Website sign up and sales pages
Of all the things on your to-do list, get any sign up, product or sales pages done early. There is NOTHING worse than trying to build one of the most important pages on your website when you’re under pressure.
Creating these pages well in advance will also help write your email copy too.Â
Minus 2 weeks
The pre-launch email sequence
This is where the real selling begins. The sequence we use is a series of 5-6 storytelling emails which are designed to get people to sign up AND show up to the live launch event, because getting people signed up is only half the battle. You want to make sure that they actually turn up.
These emails debunk popular myths, explain the quick wins your launch event will give them and why what they are doing currently isn’t working.
Paid ads
If you’re going to be using paid ads on social media, then start your campaigns now. At the very least, a simple retargeting campaign will give you a serious boost.
Launch Time
In the build up to a launch event, you need to be VERY present on social media. The great news is that the email content you have to create for a launch also becomes your social content across all channels.
You should be able to easily repurpose the stories and selling points into social media posts with a strong call to action. ie. attend your event.
From about 2 weeks out, I recommend posting daily on Facebook and Instagram, or wherever you get the most traction to build momentum as your launch date approaches.Â
The launch event
Whether you’re holding a webinar or just going live on Instagram daily, your launch event has the potential to become a key piece of evergreen content which you can use for months to come, as part of your sales process.
It’s worth putting the effort into getting it right. How to create the perfect webinar is a whole other topic, which I will be covering soon but every great workshop should include 2-3 actionable learning points which cause them to think differently about a problem they have.
There needs to be genuinely useful content for your attendees. As long as you deliver value during your event, and do it well, by the time you pitch your product or call to action, your audience will be happy to hear about it.
Launch plus 1 week
Open & close cart
Although you can expect to make some sales or book some calls during your live event, you’ll actually make the bulk of your sales in the first 24 hours after the event and then again in the final 24 hours before your offer goes away.
So it won’t surprise you to hear that you need to be as present as ever during this period, both in people’s inboxes and on social media.
How many emails you send during this period is up to you (we usually send 6), but make sure that you are quick to deliver access to the replay and be generous with sharing the link.
The emails in a post-event sequence are all about presenting your product, painting a picture of the transformation you and then can achieve together and providing lots of proof with testimonials and case studies.
Make sure you set aside plenty of time during this phase to jump on calls with any fence-sitters who just need a little nudge.
Launch plus 2 weeks
Have a lie down. I’m not kidding. Pulling off a big launch is exhausting because there are lots of moving parts and you’ll need to re-group afterwards.
You’ll also need to be ready to answer questions about your service or product, so if you think you’re going to need help onboarding a lot of new users, make sure you’ve got some helpers up your sleeve.
If you’re interested in learning more about launching, our Marketing Fix membership covers this subject in detail. It’s a membership for small, creative businesses that really need to build an automated marketing system.
Another epic post absolutely packed with value. You are the best, Melissa!