The Three Phases to a Successful Launch
So before I get into the phases of a successful launch, I want to separate launching your business, from launching a service in your business. If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about changing our relationship with the word launch when it comes to launching our business, to avoid remaining stagnant and caught up in the “necessary to-do’s’ when starting a business. In my mind, you launch your business the second you think of the client you want to serve and how you want to serve your client.
Now launching an offer or service within your business is totally different in terms of timelines. When you are launching an offer in your business, you’re going to want a 3-6 month runway minimum. And when I say this, I mean you’re going to want to think of your client’s journey through your funnel, and give yourself (and your client!) at least 3-6 months to build trust with you enough to become a paid client.
That may seem like a long time, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, spending money is an act of trust. When I was looking for an airfryer, I didn’t just close my eyes and point to one. No, no, no. I took time and researched, read blogs and watched customer reviews. I needed to know that it would work, work well, and work just the way I wanted it to. I took at least a month and some change to build trust with my chosen air fryer brand before I dropped $100 on it.
So if it took me a month and a bit to spend $100, think of what it could take for someone to spend $200, $500, $1,000, $10,000. I’ve heard some people being discouraged because they feel that someone should see you on social media and be ready to purchase your services within the day, but that just ain’t how it works. Building trust takes time, and having an unrealistic time frame is going to do you a disservice.
You can also think about putting yourself in your clients shoes. Say for example someone you’ve just heard of is offering a $300 service that will ultimately improve you. You know it will help, but you don’t really know the person offering the service except for a few instagram posts here and there. Not to mention the fact that you don’t often just drop $300 on something for yourself.
If you’re nervous about spending $300 on yourself, think about how your target client feels! What would make you more comfortable in this situation? Probably knowing more about the person offering the service, and building trust in their technique and success rate right? Well that requires research and time.
If we circle back to launching your business, then it’s a bit of a different story. This is where I see entrepreneurs getting tripped up and even holding themselves back because they feel they need to have this imaginary checklist of things completed before they can “launch” their business, and they're ultimately getting in their own way.
So if we're talking about launching your business, once you decide your service and who you’re serving, you’ve launched. You don’t need a website. That can come later down the line. You can start with a business one-pager, but honestly you don’t even need that to start.
My first three months in business, I didn't have a website or a one pager, but guess what? I got three contracts from my network. Because I was having conversations with people I had existing relationships with, that were either my target client or connected to my target client. You just need to start having conversations, letting people know your services are available and who you’re serving.
I want to highlight this point because I think when you’re just starting out, it can be hard to see how helpful tapping people in your network can be. There are already people who are willing to pay you, they just need to know what your services are. Like people who already know you, you already have established trust with. So you just need to put in the work to have some conversations, to connect with people, to start talking about your business. And then once you start building momentum after gaining those first few contracts, you can start actually thinking about the actual infrastructure of building a website and ordering business cards, and everything you think you ‘need’ to have when you start a business.
Alright, now I’m going to share the three phases of a launch that I have found the most important. Pre-launch, Launch, and Post-Launch.
Phase #1: Pre-Launch - Pre-launching is the time before you actually launch your product or service that you are building trust with your audience. I’ve already stressed the importance of giving yourself a 3-6 month long runway for your pre-launch, but it always bears repeating, because this giving yourself too short of a pre-launch is the biggest mistake I see when people are launching new services. Your pre-launch time is the time to begin building awareness and nurturing your audience.
For example, let's say, we plan to do a paid webinar. You cannot put that out into the atmosphere two weeks before the webinar. I mean, you can actually, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You want a longer pre-launch phase that is intentional in that it is actually warming your audience up for the offer that's to come.
It’s a little like lesson planning! We know that the best teachers don't create their lesson plans the night before. You can, but that lesson ain't going to hit, like it could. The best teachers are very thoughtful and are great planners. That's how you need to be approaching a launch. It’s all about warming your audience up and building trust with them, so you don’t even have to mention your offer in the pre-launch. But the pre-launch is the best time for you to build a relationship with your audience, so that when you do offer your service, your audience isn’t looking at you thinking “well where did you come from? And you expect me to spend money with you why? I ain’t heard from you in how long?”
Here are a few things you can do to nurture your audience:
If you have an email list, you should be emailing your list and reaching out to your audience at least once a week.
If you are on social media, you should be posting at least once a day if you can, and more often than that if you are able. And be sure to vary the topic of what you’re sharing, so your audience can get a full picture of who you are, what you do, and your expertise.
If you have a blog, you should post every week, and do you best to engage in meaningful comments to show your audience that you are there, you are listening to them, and that you value their opinions.
Phase #2: Launch - The Launch phase is when you share your product or service with your audience. You want to be sure that when you’re sharing your offer and any other information, everything has a very clear call to action that circles back to your offer.
For example, if you send an email with some tips for your target audience, even though it may not be directly related to your launch, you should end your email with a call of action reminding people to sign up for your service. It can look like this:
“If you want more tips on X sign up for my webinar here, where I share more information about my experience with X!”
Everything posted, emailed and shared during your launch window needs to have a call to action that circles back to your offer. Your launch window is the time that a client has to book your services or sign up for your offer. Now your launch window can be as long as you want, and just a tip; the higher your price point, the longer you’ll probably want your launch window to be. It’s also good to remember that people usually need some type of urgency in order to make some decisions, so you need to be very clear in all of your communications about the timeline in which you are offering your services.
Phase #3: Post-Launch - The Post-Launch phase is after you’ve launched your service. My biggest tip for this is that you set up a wait-list for those potential clients who just didn’t make it to your offer in time. The people on your wait list are going to be your hottest audience. And when I'm saying hot, I mean in terms of your audience. You have your cold audience, your warm audience, your hot audience. Your hot audience are people that are ready to buy, you just need to give them the opportunity. So you want to have a direct line to those people, which is why you’ll want to encourage those who didn’t get into your services during your launch window, the opportunity to sign up for a waitlist.
After you’ve established a waitlist, you want to analyze your numbers. You can have a little data meeting with yourself to reflect over the actions that you took during the pre-launch and launch phase. You want to determine what worked, and what things you'll want to tweak for next time.
Here are a few stats you might want to review:
If you went live on Facebook, how many people attended each live?
Additionally, if you went live at different times in the day, which time garnered the largest audience?
If you did a webinar, how many people visited the landing page as opposed to how many people actually showed up to the webinar?
You can also look at how many people registered for the webinar as opposed to how many people actually attended the webinar for some additional data!
If you had an email campaign, what percentage of your emails were actually opened?
Another part of your post-launch is getting feedback from the clients who signed up to work with you. So you might give them a survey after they've been onboarded, to ask them about their onboarding experience. You can also have an intake form that asks a few questions about them, as well as asking them how they heard about you and your services so you can gain clarity on where your leads are coming from. You also want to include a feedback survey for your clients after they’ve finished working with you, so you can get some information about how your clients felt about working with you.
I know this was a ton of information, but in terms of launching your service, I want you to remember that it is vital to give yourself a long runway! Oftentimes, we can rush through a pre-launch (or not have one at all) and then get disappointed and doubt ourselves if we don’t hit our goals. And when I hear these stories I just wanna go "No, boo-boo, you got the sauce, you just ain't give yourself a long enough runway in the pre-launch!"
And for a minute, I would want to rush through pre-launches because I thought my clients wouldn’t want to stay through my pre-launch phase, but I had to flip my thinking because it really is the opposite. The longer I pre-launch, the longer I am building relationships and trust with my audience, and we all know spending money is an act of trust! So don’t think that a long pre-launch is going to lose you clients, because the clients who are meant to work with you, are going to be ready the second you share your offer. If they're truly a fit for you, they're going to be ready.
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