Effective ways to launch in 2023

Today’s episode of the podcast is a solo episode all about ways you can launch your products and services in 2023! In this episode I take you through the launches that I have done in the past and how effective they were, and I also talk to you about what is coming up for this year too. As always, I’d love to know what you think, and please feel free to share your own reflections and learnings with me, by connecting over on my social media. KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST ● The pros and cons of different types of launches ● My own experiences of successful and unsuccessful launches ● How to get people to invest in you THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE If you are thinking about launching, doing what feels the nicest is the key! Think about what you like to do and how you like to show up, because those are the things that will work best for you. Transcript Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? Okay. As we are in the new year, you might be thinking to yourself, How am I gonna show up this year? How am I going to launch my products and services? How am I gonna make a fuss of them? So I wanted to talk about launching. Now, traditionally, I would say that online businesses that sell like courses or memberships or masterclasses or masterminds or coaching programs, tend to do launches more than say maybe a physical product. But I do think that some of the things, even if you don't have the online business side. I do think you're still gonna get quite a bit from this because I'm gonna take you through the launches that I have done last year and the years before, and I'm gonna talk to you about how effective they were, and I'm gonna talk to you about what is coming up for this year and what sort of things am I thinking about doing. Okay, so let's jump in with what I have done so far. Now there's pretty much no launch I haven't done so, I've done challenges and webinars and workshops and boot camps and open houses. I've done longer launches where it's been over seven to eight days. I've done short launches where it's literally just been one webinar. I've done multiple webinars of the same thing. I've done loads of different ways of launching, and it's really hard to sort of say, actually, you know, I can compare them all fairly cuz I can't, because they were for different things and different effort went into them. Let me talk about what I did last year. I did a challenge last year. I did a five day email challenge, which I have done previously to promote Build My List. So if you are not sure, I have a course call Build My List that literally takes you step by step through the entire process of creating a lead magnet. And also the tech side of it as well. And then it includes things like onboarding emails and ideas of what you can email them. And lots and lots of good stuff and it has a huge success rate. But I did a five day challenge, which I've done before and has been successful before. However, this time not quite so successful. What was super interesting is the challenge is meant to introduce you to each step of building your list. So for instance, day one would be like, How'd you come up with your perfect customer. Now, obviously that's a lot of work coming up with your ideal customer, but I give people a kind of thing that they can do. So the challenge is definitely something where they can come away and have stuff done. And when you are launching anything, if you're doing any of these kind of things, I think that's really, really important that you give your audience something to take away whether they buy from you or not. I can't tell you the number of webinars I've been sat on that have told me nothing because all they're trying to do is sell to you. So in my opinion, I want someone to get value from me, whether they buy the thing I'm selling or not. So the challenge was great because people got lots of value. The problem was they did too much work. Like so, whereas normally no one would build a lead magnet in that timeframe because there's a lot more to it or kind of the the work it takes is a lot more to it. And like I said, my idea is I just introduce people to it. They did it, they did the work, and I was kind of blown away and super pleased in one sense because they came away, a number of them with live lead magnets by the end of that week. But then of course, the other half of me was like, well, there's no need for them to have the course. And in my right mind and my fair mind, I couldn't sell the course to them. That wouldn't have been fair. Like they didn't need it. So when I had a number of them ask me at the end, do you know, do you think this is suitable? Do you think I need this? I was like, "No." And I had to be honest with them. I had to say, you, you know, you've taken what I've said in this this challenge and you have ran with it and you've done a really good job. Now, are there things that will add value in that course? Yes. Is it worth you spending all that money on that course? Probably not. So that was super interesting. So the sales did not go as I would've liked for that. Although the challenge itself was really successful, the engagement was really successful, the results for the people and the challenge was really successful. But because it was all so successful, it meant that they didn't need the course, which was super interesting because of the fact that I've ran it before, I've ran it exactly as it is, and this never happened. So for me, I think that's really fascinating that if people are going to get involved, they're gonna work really hard at it and try really hard to make it work for them and do the stuff. And, and I always talk about the fact of, you know, use me, use my brain, pick my brain when you are doing these things with me. So, That was really interesting. Will I run one of those challenges again? No, I don't think so. will I run a challenge again? Yeah, I'd absolutely run a challenge again, because the beauty of a challenge is that they get to see you every day. That you show up every day and you get to see people and engage with people and have that connection with people, which is really important. Will I do my five day challenge as I've done it before? No, because like I said, they were amazing and they did all the stuff and they didn't need to buy the course. However, one thing that was interesting was a number of people who were brand new to my world took part in that challenge, then joined the membership. So that was really interesting. So it's not like I'm sat here going, the complete thing was a flop. It wasn't. And like I said, the Challenge was fantastic and what people got from it was fantastic. And the results they had was fantastic. But as a sales exercise, it didn't hit the hit the mark. However, Having people bought them into my world and see what I'm like and show them what I'm like actually did really help when they looked at the membership. So that was really interesting. But challenges are great. They just take a lot of work and you gotta show up every day and that takes a lot of energy. The other thing I've done this year, the beginning of the year, I did a bootcamp and the bootcamp's aim was to bring people into the membership. So the idea of the bootcamp was during that week, I would do certain select things that were similar to what you might find in the, no, actually it wasn't that it was. I did three lessons and then I did a coaching call and then I did a Q and A. But the three lessons covered the main areas at the club cover and, and obviously they got to do a coaching call with me and they got to do a Q and A with me. And I'd done a bootcamp previously that worked really nicely. And again, this year, for whatever reason, at the beginning of the year, didn't quite hit. Now it wasn't too bad. I can't remember my conversion rate. I should have had my conversion rates actually, in order for me to tell you these, but I can't remember my conversion rates off the top of my head. But they, they weren't amazing, but they weren't terrible. But again, running a bootcamp is a lot of work and effort and even things like. So it's not just the case of showing up every day, it's a case of, right. So you've gotta plan out the bootcamp or the challenge first, because these things tend to be done over a number of days. So you've gotta plan it out. You've gotta create the content or create the presentation or know what you're gonna say, then what you've gotta do is you have got to do things like create the Facebook group for it. If you're gonna have 'em in a different Facebook group, you've gotta create posts to go every single day to say, this is what's happening today. You've gotta create emails to go out every single day to say, this is what are happening today. You need some kind of landing page or kind of dashboard where everything gets stored for them. You need things like, I have a schedule at the beginning so they know what's happening when we have an addevent thing. So they know again, they can add all the things to the calendar. So, Yes, it can be done simpler, but for me it's quite a lot of work. So like I said, that was good. I liked it. I liked showing up, I liked...