Having a profitable launch should not be stressful. If you are feeling overwhelmed and you just want to throw in the towel, then that means that something is wrong and I really want to help you fix it.
Before working with me, my clients are so frustrated, irritated, overwhelmed, all the things, because they have heard all of these nightmare stories about launching and they really just don't even know where to start. But the good news is that, after reading this blog post, you'll have three key steps that you'll be able to use to avoid all of that and plan your launch without overwhelm.
Set Your Timeline and Goals
The very first step to planning your profitable launch is going to be setting your goals and your timeline. I really like to do this using an acronym that I learned in the third grade. Yes, you heard that right. The third grade. When I was in the third grade I had a teacher, Mrs. Griffin, and she told me that if you ever wanted to write a really good story you had to answer these six questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? And how? Somehow that has always stuck in my brain. Whenever I am writing anything or planning anything, I like to ensure that I'm always answering those six questions. There is no better time to use that than when it comes to planning our launch. So that way, when it's time for you to plan your launch, you know exactly where to start. Again, Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?
You want to know who are you launching to. Who is your ideal client avatar? You want to know their pain points. You want to know their desires, their motivations, what objections they may have, what competitors are they looking at when it comes to people who are in your industry? What have they tried before coming to work with you and did it work? Why didn't it work? You just want to be able to really have a really good idea. Right? Of who they are and what they look like.
One of the things that I really like to do when I'm identifying my ideal client avatar is give them a name. It helps me keep them in the front of my brain whenever I'm doing anything for them. If I'm creating content, if I'm writing emails, if I'm building out a landing page or a sales page, I want to make sure that I have this ideal client avatar at the top of my mind and that everything that I'm doing is structured and centered around this one person.
Before you even get into planning your launch, you want to be super-duper extra clear on who it is that you are talking to. You want to make sure that every single time they encounter your brand or your content or anything that they are feeling evoked with the emotion, that they are feeling like you are the person who can serve them and who can help them to really get to the desires of their heart and what they are looking to accomplish in their life or business using your framework and your strategies.
Once we have a really good idea of who it is that you are talking to, you want to know what exactly it is that you are launching. The reason for this: you want to be able to connect the thing that you are launching to your ideal client avatar's pain points, their problems, their desires. You want to be clear that the program or the service that you are launching is in direct connection to your ideal client avatar. You want them to feel like you created this program or this service specifically for them.
You also want to be clear about why your target audience needs this offer right now. What is the urgency? What are they struggling with in their life or in their business that they absolutely have to have fixed right now or they will face negative consequences? When you're able to pull out what that motivation is, then you're able to speak to it in your content, you're able to speak to it in your emails, on your landing page, in your lives, in your mini trainings, everywhere. If you are able to make your target audience feel like "oh, if I don't work with this person in this program or in this service, then I'm going to continue to struggle, or I'm going to miss out, or I'm not going to be able to do whatever the end goal is for them," then you will see higher conversion rates and more profitable launches.
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Next, you want to be clear on where you will generate leads. Will you use YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn? Will you be doing more in-person marketing? Will you be going to events and passing out flyers or business cards? How will you leverage your audience, or podcasts, or guest trainings? Where will you focus the brunt of your energy to attract the leads that you need in order to move down through your funnel?
After you've identified how you will generate leads, you will have to nurture them. Where will you keep in touch with them while they are moving through your funnel so your audience doesn't feel lost or they don't get too far removed from the offer? You want to make sure that you're either going to nurture them in your DMs, in your emails, or both. Consider how you will ensure that you keep yourself at the forefront of their mind during your launch and your open cart period.
Once you are clear on lead generation and nurturing, you will determine your key launch dates. Ask yourself: when does my cart open? When does my cart close? Will I have a waitlist? What will the waitlist period look like? How long will I promote before the launch goes live? You just want to know what the key pivotal dates are because these dates will allow you to plan out your deadlines and structure your content to support those deadlines. Also, keep these key dates front of mind, so when you are requesting deliverables from your team, everything falls into the schedule. With this structure, you won't have to worry about planning your launch and running your launch at the same time. You want your launch to be planned ahead of your open cart date. That way, while the cart is open, you can focus on serving and selling and not on implementing the launch.
Now that you have determined your who, what, where, when, why, how and you're feeling solid with the launch, the next step is going to be planning out your goals. Identify a good, better, and a best goal. Sometimes your launch may not go as planned and you just want to make sure that you always hit the minimum number goal that you need to be profitable. A lot of times we don't look at our past data. We don't look at our current conversion rates or what is already happening in our business, and then we create this goal for our launch that isn't really in alignment with what our data is already telling us. When we leverage a good, better and a best goal, what we are able to do is say, "These are the three benchmarks that I would like to hit during this launch. If I hit good, then this means that this is okay. I was profitable. It wasn't exactly what I wanted to do, but I felt confident in this goal." Obviously, better is going to be a little bit, well, better. A lot of times your better goal is the goal number that you actually want to hit, so let's say you really wanted 10 people enrolled into your program. Your good goal may be seven, your better goal may be 10, and your best goal may be 15.
With the good, better, best goal system, you have space to say, "Even if I don't hit the number 10 and I only get seven people my launch was not a failure. I just know that I need to look a little bit more into the data in order to increase that conversion rate or to increase the number of leads that I have into my funnel." Your good, better, and best goals are going to be so important because this is what you're going to look at. This is what you're going to leverage during your open cart period to see if your content is on track, if you need to implement any new strategies into your plan, or if you are doing well and maybe your goal was too low.
So you always want to make sure that you plan your good, better, and your best goals, because what they're going to do is help you to stay prepared and to stay focused in the event that your launch does not go in the way that you most want it to. A good example of this is my past three launches for my accelerator. The very last launch I really wanted 20 people into the program. I did not get 20 people into my program, but we did have a $68,000 launch, which was 50% bigger than the previous launch before that. So if I had only relied on the number 20, then it would have been very difficult for me to understand that, although I didn't hit that goal I still had a profitable launch and I still had a really good launch.
And I was able to come to that conclusion after looking at the data and after looking at the good, better, and best goals that I had set for that launch. So it's also just a really good way to keep your emotions in check, especially if you're launching for the very first time.
Map Out Your Funnel
Step number two is going to be mapping out your funnel. So within this, you really want to be clear on that your lead magnet is attracting the caliber of clients that are best suited for your offer. So a lot of times, one of the things that entrepreneurs, service providers, coaches will do wrong, is they will have one lead magnet for all of the offers even though their offers are speaking to ideal clients and different pain points at different stages in their life or in their business.
As a recap of what we've covered so far: when you are creating your funnel, you want to make sure that your lead magnet is attracting and nurturing people who are best suited for this offer. If you have four different services, you may have four different lead magnets because you want to ensure that the person who is engaging with this lead magnet is going to an offer that serves them at the next best step. Once you are clear on what that lead magnet is going to be, then you want to make sure that you are publishing it in places where your ideal client avatar is. So if they are in certain communities, if they are at certain sequences or in certain tags of your email lists, you want to make sure that you are using this lead magnet to attract the ideal clients that you need in your offer to make it successful.
Once you have those leads, you want to make sure that you are nurturing them. You want to make sure that they're not just subscribing to your email list and then being left hanging high and dry. Make sure that you have DM conversion set up, so once they subscribe to your waitlist or enroll into your program, you're giving them another touchpoint. And you're either saying, "Hey, thanks so much for enrolling onto my waitlist, or thanks so much for enrolling into my program. If there are any questions that you may have, I would love to answer them. Just reply to this DM." You may also want to have email sequences set up on the backend of your funnel that are nurturing the leads for you without your additional labor.
Now, the very last step in mapping out your funnel. You want to figure out how you are going to increase the value of your launch. A lot of times when we're thinking about a launch, we're only thinking about our freebie and we're thinking about our main offer. But you can increase the value of your launch by considering: are you going to have an upsell? Are you going to have a down-sell? Are you going to have a tripwire? And how will these different offers fit into your funnel? Once a consumer has entered into the funnel, whether they are downloading your freebie, or they are applying to work with you, how will you move them so that way they are either down-selling or upselling or hitting that tripwire at the perfect time? This is important is because, let's say, you don't meet your enrollment goal but you're able to hit your launch income goal because you have these down-sells, upsells and tripwires in place. You always want to make sure that you are leveraging your full suite of offers when you can and if it makes sense for your ideal client.
A good example of this is if you download my freebie, a lot of times you will receive a tripwire for you to enroll into my mini course. The reason for that is because the mini course is in direct connection to the free guide that I offer. Alot of times if you are interested in the free guide, you will be interested in the mini course because it is just a step further from the information that is provided in that guide.
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Delegate, Create, and Schedule
The very last step in the framework is to delegate, create and schedule. Now, I know this sounds like three big steps, but it's really not. These three steps are going to be important in planning your profitable launch because you don't want to be planning your launch and running your launch at the same time. You want to plan your launch, have it set to forget, and then you want to be serving and selling. A launch can be overwhelming if you're trying to plan, sell, and serve all at once. When we delegate, create and schedule ahead of opening our cart, then we're able to eliminate a lot of that overwhelm and release some of that burden and that stress.
You want to consider who are going to be your launch MVPs, most valuable players. A lot of times as a solopreneur we are wearing so many hats. We are the graphic designer. We are the copywriter. We are the talent. We are the operations manager. We are the VA. We are all these things. Right? But, when we're able to identify key roles that give us stress, or that if we could delegate them it would just make our lives and our launch so much easier, then we're able to relinquish some of that frustration on to our MVPs and get the help that we need to show up in the best way without those feelings of overwhelm and fatigue.
So, think about your launch MVPs. For me, my launch MVPs are always my copywriter, my graphic designer, and my virtual assistant. I like to take the tasks that I have within my launch and say, "Do I need to do this or can this be done by the graphic designer? Can this be done by the copywriter? Can this be done by the VA?" And I like to release as many tasks as I can. So that way, I'm only focusing on the things that only I can do. And I'm focusing on serving and selling because no one else can show up and serve and sell for me, but me.
Also, think about what it is that you need to do even aside from the launch. One of the things that I like to do when I'm launching is, I like to either order meal prep from a chef, or I like to order HelloFresh. This allows me to not think about what I have to eat and helps me to also not forget to eat. Think of ways to make your life easier. I like to schedule my laundry pickups. I like to make sure that I have my housekeeper coming to clean the house. All of these things that I'm normally keeping track of in my brain are handled by others so I can focus solely on showing up and serving my audience.
Next, you want to think about what content or assets you need to create. You do not want the cart open and you haven't created launch graphics, sales pages, etc. You want to make sure that you already have a checklist of these items based on previous launches or from what you have witnessed in other launches. Are your pages live to go? Are they ready to be released? Are your graphics created and in files or scheduled in Facebook Creator Studio for Facebook and Instagram? Again, make sure that these things are already done. So that way when the cart opens, you are only focused on showing up and serving and selling. That's it.
Finally, you want to make sure that you schedule all of your content and your emails ahead of time. I've had launches with 28 scheduled emails for the month and they just ran without me having to think about them, without me having to write them at the last minute in real-time. It really helps because it just takes one more thing off your plate. When we're trying to eliminate the overwhelm in our launch and we're trying to eliminate the overwhelm in our business, a key part of this is always going to be taking as many things off of our plate during our open cart period as possible.
Final Thoughts
The 3-Part Framework for planning your profitable launch is setting your goals and timeline; mapping out your funnel; delegating, creating, and scheduling as much of your content and your emails as possible. If you follow these three steps while planning your launch, you'll avoid so much overwhelm and you will feel like you know exactly what it is that you need to do as soon as your cart opens. You'll be able to show up confidently during your open cart period, sell and engage with your audience, and just feel like the expert that you are.
If you liked this blog post and strategies and you want to learn more about how to increase your brand awareness and visibility online, then click the link below and sign up for the Profitable People Program or Apply to Work With me.
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Don't forget to pop on over into the comments and let me know what the most overwhelming part of planning your launch is. I really want to talk to you about it and ensure that I'm creating content and resources that will help you eliminate this overwhelm.