Which Launch Strategy Is Right for You? - Melanie Battistelli

Tune in to find out how to evaluate which launch strategy is best for your business, offer, and energy.

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[00:00:00]:
Hi there, this is Melannie from Duxbury Digital. And today we are going to talk all about how to determine which launch strategy might be best for you, your audience, your offer, with some questions and some reflection. Because as you're probably aware of, there are a ton of people out there, launch gurus, there's a lot of us, right, who are saying, oh, you know, challenges work or webinars work, or the only way to launch is with affiliates. And my personal opinion is that every launch type can be successful, but it does depend on your offer and your energy and your audience. So let's dive into a couple questions that you can ask yourself to kind of figure out which type of launch launch strategy might be best for you. So some things to consider. Does your offer lean more towards something that is more hands on or educational, like learning to grow tomatoes, for example, or learning to start your own garden, or learning to sew or knit? Or is it more of an informational, educational kind of course or program membership offer? So that's the first thing you want to think about. The next thing to consider is is this something that you launch fairly often? Is this something that you're usually launching once a year, quarterly? Maybe you run webinars monthly? Consider that and then also think for your audience and your overall offer suite, is this offer high or low price point? And finally, how do you generally feel about live content? Do you enjoy going live? Do you enjoy working webinars? Or maybe even like not enjoy, but is it something that you're at least willing to do? So let's think a little bit.

[00:02:07]:
If your offer is something that is more transformational, more hands on, more doing, you might want to consider a challenge launch because that way your content can be broken down into some small actionable wins, achievements that are very, very clear for your audience. So building something again, creating something actually forming tangible habits. If not, perhaps consider a different type of launch style, which we'll get into here in a second. If you launch this often more than two times a year, let's say you may wish to consider something like a webinar launch. So despite the fact that webinars do require tech setup, registration, page things as things, things like that, compared to something like a challenge launch, once you get the messaging correct in your webinar, it can be a fairly low lift effort once you nail down your niche, your topic, and really start to move forward in coming into your own messaging. If this is something though, if you only maybe launch your program once a year, let's say, then you may want to try a little bit more type of bells and whistles, a little bit larger of a launch event like a challenge or maybe even a summit or something to that effect. Other things to consider if your offer is a higher ticket offer you could and big disclaimer on could you could consider something like a paid launch event. So this is a great way to qualify people.

[00:03:49]:
Even something like very low ticket depending again on your audience, anywhere from honestly 7 to $97 to depending on your audience and their general like budget and price point. This can really help to qualify people for your larger offer if it is something higher ticket for your audience. That being said though, if it's not something higher ticket, I would definitely not put an additional pay barrier in front of your event. I would probably choose to leave it free. Now that being said, I don't want you to think like oh, I can never have a paid workshop or something to launch. It's up to you. I mean I I do also definitely recommend trying out different type of launch events just to see what works really well for you and your audience. Plus paid launch events like a paid workshop or a paid challenge or something like that can be really helpful to increase a little extra revenue and offset things like ads for example, if that's something that you were running and then obvious.

[00:04:56]:
Lastly, lastly, if you are not willing at all to do a live launch event or anything live, then I would for sure stay away from anything like a live challenge or a live webinar. You can certainly record challenge videos. You don't have to go live though. There is something to be said about the energy of being live during a launch event. So if you feel even like maybe I could do it, then I do encourage you to deliver at least one aspect of your launch live. Okay, so the first launch strategy that you might have, I'm sure you've heard of, is a webinar or masterclass style launch. And there are Let me just preface this by saying there there are numerous ways to run a webinar style launch. You could of course offer it just one time or multiple times.

[00:05:47]:
Webinars can be a great way to test a new concept. The main thing that you need is is to make sure that you are delivering a training that is very clear about what they will be learning or taking away and then leaving them with this sort of knowledge gap, so to speak, that will be a natural transition into your paid offer, whatever that might be. So what a webinar promotion might look like is it could be having your promotional period open for anywhere from really as long as three weeks up to I wouldn't really go less than seven days. Inviting people to your masterclass, then of course you would. If you were just doing one, deliver the webinar and then you would have a cart open period, either with or without a bonus. And then you would be inviting people to your program during that time. So webinars, believe it or not, can be fairly easy to put together. If you're comparing it to something like a challenge style launch, this can be great.

[00:06:54]:
If your audience is already warm, it's a really great way to interact with your audience. Usually they're going to be anywhere from 30 ish to 60 minutes long, depending on, you know, what it is that you're, that you're covering, what you're teaching. And one of the drawbacks, I guess you could say, about webinar master class style launches is that you don't have a huge amount of time to convert people to buyers. If they are coming from a cold audience like ads or something like that. Doesn't mean that they won't, it just means you have less time to do it. So if they are new to your world, it just might be a little bit harder to convert them right away. Doesn't mean that they won't eventually. Then of course we have a challenge style launch.

[00:07:44]:
So again, just like a masterclass or webinar style, there are numerous ways to run a three to five day challenge. This is just like what I'm about to describe is just one blueprint. So a challenge is a series of free trainings where at the end of each day, usually three to five days, I would not go more than five, but usually at the end of each day you will have an action step that will give your audience value and give them a little quick win. Now this generally works best with a proven concept, mainly because it's the largest and most involved type of launch style. But it can convert really, really well. Sometimes though, it is tricky if you are working, you know, completely by yourself or you don't have a team. So again, similar though to what you would need for a masterclass or a webinar style launch is similar to a challenge. So you need an enticing training.

[00:08:47]:
Again, delivering that kind of knowledge gap that leaves them needing a little bit more and that more can come from hopefully your course or your program. You also need clear action steps for them to take at the end of each day and that can help them to implement what they're learning and build trust, all while seeing results now you don't have to do a challenge style launch live of course. I usually recommend going live and delivering this live when possible. But you could also prerecord your challenge steps and run it as more of a sort of evergreen video series. So the timeline would be pretty similar. You would open your registration anywhere from one to three weeks ahead of your challenge, get people into the funnel and registered for your challenge. If you are running a Facebook group, open that a day or two before your video drops, your first video drops and then you would host the three to five day event whether or not you're going live or doing something pre recorded. And then from there again you would open your cart for your program, your course or your membership.

 [00:10:02]:
Now as I mentioned, the challenge style launch can definitely have a big impact in that it can attract and nurture people, provide a ton of value, really take people from cold audiences to warmer audience in a short period of time and converting them to buyers because they're getting those quick wins all throughout. Now that being said though, it is definitely the longest and most complex launch strategy that basically has to be planned ahead. It would be very, very hard for people to wing a challenge style launch and just kind of throw it together. It would be very, very difficult to do that. The other sort of last option that I want to leave you with because we did talk about possibly paying for a masterclass or webinar style workshop which would make that a paid event. You could also put a paywall in front of a challenge style launch and make the challenge paid. And additionally you could of course prerecord or deliver any of those things live for a little variety. The last sort of launch style that most people generally do is an email only style launch which would take out any type of live component and you can add and take away things from an email.

[00:11:24]:
An email only style launch, like perhaps you are bringing people into your email list through something like a quiz or a private podcast opening with a freebie, leading them in like that, leading them into a strong series of email copy that would sell them into your, into your program. And again you could do this in more of a live fashion where you are doing this with a certain cart open and cart close period of time, time. Or additionally you could make this more of an evergreen ever selling sort of launch where people can constantly opt into your freebie, whatever that might be and then they get this series of emails. Now a couple mistakes that I have seen people make with email style launches is that there is no sense of urgency. So a couple of emails will be sent, but there's no bonus timeliness, any sort of urgency factor that will get people off the fence and to purchase. So I would say this with any style of launch, but especially an email style of launch, make sure that you have some type of urgency factor that is getting people to purchase. Some benefits about an email only style launch is that of course you don't have to necessarily go live. So it can be better if you are really strong with with copy and maybe not as into the whole live sort of thing.

[00:13:01]:
There's no algorithm to contend with making sure that your information and your posts get shown to certain people. You have your email list and they're yours and usually you can reach them pretty easily. So that kind of removes a barrier and as well that being said, though it does rely on making sure that your email list is warmed up engaged. You might not be capturing as many new leads as you would with something like a challenge or a webinar or a video series. Often there's less sort of hype and excitement, which is okay, but let's just make sure that we are adjusting our expectations because generally speaking, not always, but generally speaking, if there is some type of live component, launches do tend to convert a little bit better. So after considering those questions that we asked ourselves at the beginning, thinking about if your offer is something more transformational or more educational, how often do you launch your offer that you're selling and is this offer high or low ticket? Plus, how do you feel about live events in general and are you willing to go live after kind of asking yourself all of these questions and reflecting on your answers and thinking about the different types of launch strategies that might be available to you, Go ahead and decide which type of launch strategy you are willing to try next based on your offer, your audience and and your own energy. If you need some help creating the timeline for your next launch, I have a free resource for you. It is called the Launch Timeline Toolkit and it is available in the Show Notes.

[00:14:58]:
What it is is it is a spreadsheet where you can plug in your ideal cart open date and then it will auto populate your milestones for your launch based on your ideal cart open date. So you're not guessing what to do when or what to do next or the order in which to plan your launch. So again, that is the Launch Timeline Toolkit. You can grab that in the Show Notes. If you have any questions for me at all, my DMs are always open. Again, this was Melanie Battistelli from Duxbury Digital, and you can find me over on Instagram at Duxbury Digital.