5: Five Ways to Launch Your Offer - Which is right for you?

Learn about the 5 ways you can launch your offer. Learning about the different types of launches will help you choose what is best for you and your audience.

Highlights

00:00 - Introduction and welcome
03:56 - Why live launching is key
06:19 - Free challenges that deliver quick tips
11:33 - Launching using a paid challenge or bootcamp
14:33 - Connect with your audience using a video series launch
15:50 - Creating an email launch of your offers
17:35 - The incredible power of video
19:46 - Strategies for determining how often to launch
28:48 - Feel the fear and do it anyway

Resources and Links

Register for Challenge Launch Bootcamp and learn how to create and deliver a 4-Day Challenge that boosts your revenue and skyrockets your business. CLICK HERE

Download my free guide, 3 Things You Need to Launch and Scale Your Online Business at banishbusinessclutter.com/guide. 

Want to organize your digital systems? Go to Banish Business Clutter.

Join our Facebook community at launchperspective.community. 

Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes, or ask a question that I answer on the show? You can do this and more at launchperspective.com.

My favorite tools:

Kajabi / Learn Kajabi

Canva / Learn Canva

Evernote / Learn Evernote

Ecamm / Learn Ecamm

Connect with us:

Instagram | YouTube | Pinterest | Facebook

Follow the Podcast:

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Podcasts Listen on

Transcript:

Welcome back. Before we jump into today's episode, I just wanted to extend a thank you and appreciation to everyone who's been listening so far. This has been such a fun journey and it's been really exciting to get all of your support. I've received so many sweet comments and messages that you are loving the podcast so far, which means so much. Before we jump in, I just want to mention two resources because I would love to connect with you, get to know more about you and your business and what your needs are as a course creator, a coach, or an online business owner.

And the first resource is my private Facebook group for course creators and coaches. We talk about launch strategies, and I offer some tech support. I know a lot of people have questions about what tools to use, or they're wondering how to do a challenge, which is what we're going to talk about in today's episode. So, I just wanted to make sure you knew how to get connected with that Facebook group. All you need to do is go to launchperspective.community and that will take you to that Facebook group. You can request to join and be sure to introduce yourself. We'd love to get to know you.

The other resource that I'm going to talk about at the end of this episode, especially if you are listening to your first episode with us, is to be sure to get our free guide: Three Things You Need to Launch and Scale Your Online Business. You can get that by going to banishbusinessclutter.com/guide and that resource is something that you can refer to as you listen to these first few episodes that we're sharing on the podcast.

I thought it would be super helpful to go over the three main things that I focus on every day in my business. I know that it will make a difference in yours as well. And then stay tuned, I have some very impactful stories to share, mindset, things that I've learned through the years. So, stay tuned, make sure you follow our podcast, and we would love for you to leave a review as well. So, thanks again for listening and I hope you enjoy this episode.

In this question, it's like, great, I've created this offer, but now how do I sell it? Right. How do I launch this thing? How do I make sure that I don't create this digital course that collects dust on the digital shelf? Or maybe I have a product that, you know, is not selling. Or I have, you know, a coaching program and I just don't know how to bring awareness to my offer. I don't know how to get enough eyeballs on the offer so that it sells. 

Live launching is key in my opinion. Okay. If you are not live launching your offer in some way, okay, and I'm going to share with you what that means, then I feel like you are stalling the growth and those bursts of revenue. I mean all of us need those injections of cash. Right. You cannot continue to run a business and pay for all the expenses of all the things that you do if you don't have revenue coming in. And a launch is like a designated set time that you are going to focus on giving value that leads people to your offer. That is what a launch is in a nutshell. Okay. 

Now there are a couple of different types of launches.  A webinar launch is typically what comes to mind for most people. This is a free event, a free webinar, sometimes it's called a masterclass or a free workshop, but the point of a webinar launch is that you're going to do these webinars. Typically, people will do like three live webinars in a launch.  And in this live webinar they invite people to come on the webinar to learn something. They're going to teach something of value in the first, let's say 45 minutes. And then in the next 20 to 30 minutes they're going to promote their offer. 

And  you're going to give away some amazing, valuable nuggets to open up people's minds to understand the value and the reason why they want to take this next step. It's the whole purpose of a webinar. Okay. 

And a webinar launch can be so, so, so effective. I have done a webinar launch. It was very successful. I learned how to do a webinar launch from Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy. She's definitely the webinar queen. But I will tell you that is one way to do a launch. It is not the only way to do a launch.

Another type of launch and my personal favorite is to do a challenge. So, you probably have seen many different types of challenges, most of them held, not always, but a lot of them are held in like a Facebook group. Some of them have a course aspect to it where you log in to get the content. You can call these challenges, you can call them boot camps, any sort of thing.

But the first one I want to talk about is the free. So, unlike a webinar where you have one hour typically, maybe 90 minutes, to take a potentially cold audience and convert them into a paid offer. Okay. This is all you have in a webinar. In that timeframe you have to create this know, like and trust factor. You have to build this relationship, so that by the time you promote your offer they're with you. Right. That is a skill that most people have to practice to get really, really good at. It's worth learning, for sure, even if you do challenges. Learning how to promote your offer is key, even in any other type of launch.

But my point is I knew for me that I wanted more time with my audience to build that bridge and that's what a challenge does. Instead of a one-hour thing that someone attends with you, they join a challenge with you and you're going to deliver free quick tips or free little training nuggets every day for typically three to five days. I'm not a big fan, especially if it's free, for much longer than that. Most people don't have the attention span or focus to hang on with you with a ten-day, twenty-day, thirty-day challenge. Okay. I love four days. Four days to me is the sweet spot, but five days is also very common. You can also start off with just three days.

But the great thing about a challenge is that you get to go live in a Facebook group, or you can prerecord the content, and they get this nugget from you, not an hour, but just 20 minutes here, 30 minutes here, and the goal is not just information, it's implementation. So, they get to learn something from you and take action on it right away. This to me is the magic of a challenge, because let me tell you why the majority of people are not buying your offer. It is often not about you. We think they either don't like us or don't like our offer and that's why they didn't buy. Do you know that a lot of people do not purchase an offer, not because they doubt you, but because they doubt themselves?  

Why did I not buy Digital Course Academy prior to fall of 2020? It wasn't because I doubted Amy Porterfield. It's because I doubted I'd be able to do it. I doubted that I had the time to do it. I doubted that I had the know-how, the expertise, the ability. All these doubts are what kept me from purchasing her course all the years until the time was right and I was ready. Okay. And let me tell you one of the reasons why I bought her course is because she did a bootcamp right before and we were able to experience quick wins.  And because I was experiencing quick wins and I was like, oh my gosh, I think I can actually do this. Oh, my goodness, I'm gaining some momentum. I didn't just gain belief and trust in her. I gained belief and trust in myself, and that is what I love about a challenge. 

So, when I do challenges, I love just having that group for that three to five days. And every day I end with an action step that they're going to do. It's something super simple, it's something they can implement in a few minutes, and then there's a post where they get to say, woohoo, I did it, or here's my result or here's my screenshot or whatever. And there's so much energy and there's, you know, everyone cheering each other on and that sort of thing. Now that is my personality. I love community. I love being in a Facebook group. So, challenge may not be for you if you would prefer to have more structure, like a webinar, where you have your slides and you know what you're covering. I still use slides on my challenge. That is what prompts me for the training I'm going to do. But again, I just want you to understand the value of the different types of launches. Okay. 

A challenge launch, the really amazing thing is by the time they get to that final day or second to last day, they are often ready for whatever your offer is going to be because now they have built this relationship with you. They trust themselves. They're excited about the difference. You've  created this bridge that says, you know what, imagine if you took what you just did in four to five days together, what would happen if you now purchase this offer and you got to do another four weeks together, eight weeks together, twelve weeks together, whatever it is. Right. It just is a really nice logical next step. Okay. Now a free challenge or boot camp, you guys have probably seen lots of those. The one great thing about a free challenge is that you'll get a lot of people typically that will join you because they want to learn about it. 

But the other option for a launch is a paid challenge or bootcamp. So, you can do a paid launch even on webinars. You can do a paid workshop that's run similar to a webinar, but there is a fee to join. Okay. It could be $10. It could be $7. It could be $27, even in your challenges or bootcamps. I did my first paid bootcamp just two months ago. This was the first time that I did a challenge that was not free. And the benefit of my free ones is that I would have as many as a 1000, 1100, 1200 people joining my challenges. 

But the downside is, is what happens when people join something for free? They don't quite have enough skin in the game.  So, if they don't have enough skin in the game, they're more likely to not take it seriously, to forget. They don't even add it to their calendar. They don't participate. So even if I would have 1200 people register, how many people are actively engaging in the group? Versus a paid challenge or bootcamp. Even if it's $37, if they've paid, they're more likely to show up. They're also not just a cold audience person. They're a paying customer. So, a paying customer, think about that. Someone who has already said, I looked at your page to join your bootcamp. I already know I need this. Here's $37. If they are likely to spend that with you, they are probably more likely to purchase your offer. So, whereas you have way less registrations, you have more potential conversions. Okay. So, your conversion rate goes up. So, this is always an option with a launch. The main plus that I really realized from that paid bootcamp is it allowed me to take the money that people were paying upfront and that is what I use for my ad spend. 

So, we'll talk about ads when we get to leads.  I started all my launches organically, but now that I'm expanding with ads having that initial payment allowed me to scale my ads and all of the money then that I made on the offer was profit. Whereas on a free challenge, you have to deduct your ad spend from what you make from your offer. Right. So, it's not just about generating revenue, we need to generate profit. Right. So, a paid launch is a great way to kind of cover some of that ad spend. It is a lot harder of course to get people in because if they don't know you and they're a cold audience, you know, it's a leap of faith, even for people to spend 27, 37 dollars. Right. So, keep that in mind. 

But there are two other types of launches. Maybe you actually learned about launching from these first and you've never live-launched through a webinar or a challenge. If you've ever read Launch by Jeff Walker, you've probably heard of this concept of a video series launch, where you are connecting with your audience through a series of videos. The videos are offering value and then in the end of this video series you promote your offer. This is a very effective launch strategy for a lot of people, especially those that want to prerecord content. They want to schedule out this email campaign and they want to get all of that content out there without having to show up live. Okay. 

Now there are still some live elements that I think help you maximize a launch like this. All right. Maybe you have a Facebook community where you're showing up. Maybe you're showing up on Instagram stories or Reels. Right. We'll talk about a lot of these things when we talk about leads, but a video series is another type of launch. Typically, they get one email a day over three to four days, so they're sent to a landing page on your website where they can watch the content. It's almost like a challenge, but it's delivered through a video series. Okay. So that is launch style number four. 

And then I don't want to forget and leave out number five. You can actually do an email launch of your offers. Now those who sell physical products this is probably very much the norm for you. You have a new product that's just come out and how are you going to launch it to your audience? You're going to do an email blast, right, an email broadcast. And you're going to say, "Exciting news. Here is our April special" or "Here's a new bundle we're offering". Like you're doing email launches all the time, even though you didn't really think about it. Right. So that might be a physical product launch, but you can also launch courses and memberships and all the other things through an email sequence.

Now, if you've never heard these stats, I do want to share them with you, because I know some of your thing thinking, oh my gosh, this is my style of launch right here. If all I have to do is write some emails and people will buy my offers, I'm in. Right. It sounds like the easiest thing to do. There are some challenges to this because if you don't have a big email list, or you haven't been engaging with an email list, you don't have a warm audience in your list, you have to be very skilled at copywriting. You need to be skilled at creating that story and that path that gets people to your offers. Okay. It is a hundred percent doable if that's your gift. Some of you guys are amazing copywriters. You're very good with the written word. Okay. 

I have used email launches as a supplement to my main launches. Okay. And I'll explain the story about that in a minute, but before I do, I want to share these stats with you. A few years ago, I attended this conference, and I was in a session where they were talking about the value of video. Now this was a number of years ago, so I'm sure these stats have changed, but this just resonated with me so much. This is what they said.  They are only 7% likely to connect with you and your message when they are reading your written words. Okay. This was a statistic they were sharing. They are 7% likely to connect with you. 

So, if I post on social media, no image, no video, and I just say something or I text someone or I send an email, there's a 7% chance that someone is going to connect with me, what my message is, what I'm offering. Okay, 7%. When you add audio, it jumps to 38%. So, this is why podcasting is such a relevant  source of content. Right. 

But not just podcasting, audio messages. Right. Audio anything, if they can hear your words, they can hear the inflection of your voice, it jumps from 7% to 38% likely to connect with you in your message. It jumps to 55% when they can see and hear you. So, this would be in person, this would be a video. This is why video messaging, video conferencing, video calls are so valuable to you as a business owner. Because video means 55% versus 7%. So, I'm mentioning this because yes you can do an email launch, but keep in mind that you're going to have to work really hard in making sure your messaging comes across so that people are connecting with you in the same way that they might connect with you through audio or video. Okay. So, knowing all of this now hopefully will help you kind of narrow down the type of launch you want to have for your offer. 

Now, how often do you launch? Some people like to launch something once a month, some people do it once a quarter, once, twice a year, once a year. It really depends on your offer and the type of launch that you have. Here at Banish Business Clutter our goal is to do one launch a quarter. So, every quarter, whether it's in January, February, or March, sometime in that first quarter of the year we are launching a significant offer. Typically, it's a course, maybe it's a course/coaching type thing. It just depends. But most often it's for my signature course The Digital Clutter Cure. So, we just did a launch in the first quarter of the year. Now second quarter of the year we're doing a launch of a brand-new program. Okay. So, sometimes it's a new offer. Sometimes it's a repeat of the same offer. So each and every quarter, we have a plan of something that we're launching. 

But let me tell you what happened in the fourth quarter of 2021. So, in 2021, I did a webinar launch in March, a challenge launch in June and a challenge launch in September. Just so you know, live launching like that, these launches, they're generating two thirds of my annual revenue, two thirds. So, this is why I'm so passionate about launching. There're so many people that have offers and they never launch them. And launches are a huge piece of this puzzle.

But here we did our three launches and now we were in the fourth quarter of the year. And the fourth quarter is a tricky time of the year. Would you agree? Right. You've got Thanksgiving. You've got Christmas. You've got people starting to check out mentally and, you're like, how am I going to launch something where people are even going to pay attention? You know, who's going to buy a course, you know, mid-December? You gotta get over this limited thinking, because let me tell you, people do buy courses in December because once Christmas is over, they have typically this like week before New Year's and they are very motivated to learn professional development, get things organized. There's a lot of people that will still buy your offer in December. Trust me.

Don't give into those limiting beliefs that it's not a good time. It's a good time anytime you want to launch. But this was my thinking. I was like, I wanted to do a launch of some sort, but I knew I didn't have, you know, the bandwidth to do a challenge. I didn't want to re-offer, you know, the same things as I had just launched Digital Clutter Cure three times and I remembered something that I had done in my direct sales business years before. 

When I used to sell products, we did a promotion every December called the 12 Days of Christmas. And the 12 Days of Christmas, every day, the first 12 days of December, even though I know that really 12 days of Christmas I think doesn't start until after Christmas. I had somebody email me one time all upset because I said 12 days of Christmas. And she goes I cannot follow someone who does not know that December 1 to 12 is not the official 12 days of Christmas. And I thought, okay, it's totally fine if you don't follow me sweetie if you were going to be that exact. I was like, okay, bless and release. But my point is I was like 12 days of Christmas, I don't want to run promotions over Christmas. I want to be with my family. I want them to be with their family. So, December 1 through 12 though, I want to work hard because I want to bring in revenue that feeds not only end of December, but most of January. Because January for me is a planning month. I want to be preparing for whatever we're going to be launching in February or March. Right.

So here I am. It's literally like the end of December, November, sorry, end of November. And I'm like, oh, what could we launch in December? And then this 12 Days of Christmas comes to me because I actually saw a variation of it through another entrepreneur that I follow. And I was like, oh, I could do a 12 Days of Christmas email launch where every day, the first 12 days of December, I email my list, which I had never done before by the way. I had never emailed my list even three days in a row, let alone twelve. So, I was like is this going to work? Is everybody going to unsubscribe from me? I really didn't know. 

But I came up with some really cute graphics with my team and we came up with twelve offerings. Twelve things that we were going to promote. All things that I had already created. I think there was maybe one or two things I still had to put together for this, but almost everything was created because I had created multiple courses. I had these digital downloads. I had different offers. Right. And I thought I'm going to do this 12 Days of Christmas thing, an email launch basically, that puts a designated time in front of my audience to say, when you buy this offer today, December 1, you're going to get it for this special price. And then that ended at midnight that night. And then they got a day two special and then a day three special. And I'm just here to tell you I was blown away. I didn't even know my email audience was paying that much attention. Okay. 

And the other thing I learned was I was not promoting my offers in my email list enough because I had created starter courses that I hadn't ever really, like, launched publicly. They were there and I thought, oh my gosh, I should be telling people about these courses I have, and I'll give them $10 off, 20% off. I was just picking random discounted amounts. Right. So, I did this for 12 days and then I had this idea, brilliant idea, that on days 13 and 14, okay, no sorry, on days 12 and 13. Okay. So, the final day. And I gave them one extra day, so they had 48 hours. I brought back all eleven specials for those 48 hours. 

This is an example of a type of email launch.  Now I did of course eleven different offers. Most email launches are focused on one offer, but I just want you to understand the power of an email list. Because when we talk about leads in our next episode, I want you to understand why having an email list, even if you feel like, oh, I don't do enough with my email list, I don't know how to nurture my leads. It is so invaluable to have an email list. When I did that 12 Days of Christmas promotion.   I generated over $21,000 of revenue. More than my first three live launches. Okay. My first launch was about $10,000. My second one was about $11,000. My third one was $13,000. I think my fourth one was like $18,000. 

So, think about this for a minute. Now, why was that email launch so successful? It was successful because of the work I had put in before it. It was successful because of the live launching I had done before that. So, every one of those live launches was building relationships with my audience, where they were starting to understand the type of trainer I am, the type of coach I am, you know, the ways I can help them. I added courses on Kajabi, and Ecamm, and Canva, the tools I knew my audience was using, and I made little spotlight courses for those. And that's what I sold in these 12 days of Christmas. 

By the end of the month, okay, by the end of the month, this was December of 2021, it was my second highest month of revenue since I had launched my business.  And I've had huge live launches since then by the way. So since then, I have topped that but at that point of time that December was my second highest revenue month of all time. From doing an email launch. So, I just want you to remember that everything you're doing is building on top of each other.  And launching is so key. This marketing, yes, you do have to market your offer. These things do not sell themselves and any one of these launches is a way to get those eyeballs on your offers.

Now, in our next episode I'm going to talk about how to generate leads because if you don't have leads an email launch is not going to work for you because we don't have anyone to share that with. Okay. So, we got to work on generating those leads as well. But for today, I really wanted to focus on the types of launches and, you know, they're all scary to start to be honest. Any time we launch something, when we don't know what the result is going to be, it's scary. Right. We have fear of what people will think. We have fear of failing, which remember in episode one I talked about there's no failing in that. It's the opposite of success. We all have to go through those experiences to get to success. It is part of the process. Okay. 

And I have learned to feel the fear and do it anyway. I've learned to let go of the things that I used to focus on, how I sound, how I look, am I saying everything perfectly, and focus on the audience I'm serving, the people I'm connecting with. I believe so passionately in transforming people's lives through whether it's saving them sanity with digital organization or helping them be more profitable in their online business. That is what I focus on. That has helped me gain confidence as I share. Now, I also pray before I go live. I'm often saying, Lord, give me your words and let the people who need to hear it be on the other end because that is just my way of making sure my focus is not on me and on the people that I'm serving.

So, you need to find the things that help you step out of that comfort zone. Try something new.  We'll be talking a little bit more about, you know, these types of launches and things, but more than anything, I just want you to be reminded that if you want to make sure you are focused on the things that are going to move the needle in your business, remember it's the offer, it's your launch, and then it's your leads. And we're going to talk about leads next time. 

Thanks so much guys for joining me today. And next I want to share with you a resource. This is a resource that is going to tie together all of the things that we've been talking about: your offers, your launches, your leads, and even the types of tools that you may want to check out as you're building your business. So, the link you want to go to is banishbusinessclutter.com/guide.  All of the options of offers and all of the types of launches and all of the different ways that you can generate leads are inside this guide.

So be sure to go to banishbusinessclutter.com/guide and go ahead and get that now. You're going to want to look at this again and again and it's definitely going to help you get some clarity on where to focus and the types of things for you. Remember indecisiveness is the enemy. Right. We're going to decide and do because it's that motion that leads to momentum.