Launching just about anything online is one of the most rewarding, yet challenging things you can ever undertake.
It can be an extremely lucrative way to make money online too, when you do it right.
For example:
You create a valuable course on a topic people really want to learn about. You price it right, and set up a great marketing funnel to attract people to it, and if all goes according to your plan, that course will bring in a consistent stream of recurring revenue for you.
Or
You decide on doing a one-off launch, where you put months of planning and energy into a five to seven day window where you open your course for enrollment. During that time, if your launch went well, you’d potentially make an entire year’s salary in a matter of months.
Creating online courses and offerings is one way to build a successful online business that scales, because there’s no limit to how many online courses or offerings you can sell, once you’ve created them.
This is why so many people have been lured into the world of online course creation and the hope of making a living from selling their knowledge.
In fact, according to Industry Forecasts, by the year 2025, online learning will be a $331 billion industry!
It’s exploding.
But here’s the thing I’ve noticed, poorly planned launches, that don’t have a clear strategy or plan, can be a huge waste of time, money and energy.
What’s more, without a long term aim, they can really knock the wind out of your sales and leave you wondering if launching several times a year is sustainable.
So let’s look at ways to make sure that you feel motivated and energized by your launch and ready to take on the next challenge.
Step 1. Focus On Your Health
Another big reason why you may feel deflated, even after a successful launch, is that due to the intensity of the launch period, you probably didn’t look after yourself well enough and now you’re paying for it.
As I’ve stated already, launching anything online is super rewarding, yet also, no matter how much of a seasoned pro you become, it’s still challenging.
I see way too many peers burning the candles at both ends, pulling all nighters, working 24/7 – whatever you wish to call it, in order to hit the launch goals they have.
They stop exercising, eat poorly, stay sedentary and do nothing to release the stress and tension that’s building up each day.
It’s like they almost enjoy running on the smell of an oily rag, because it makes them feel like they’re really doing something special. I know because I’ve been there!
Initially those tight deadlines you need to hit (because you set them!) work in your favour, propelling you on, making you work on all the moving parts of your launch like a boss.
But within days, or weeks, too much of that intensity can leave you feeling exhausted, unfocused, irritable and indecisive – pretty much the last way you need to feel in the most critical periods of your launch.
The number one concern you have is not your sales page, your copy, your email sequence, the module you’re building or your payment gateway setup. It’s YOU.
So do me a favor and make sure you schedule in ‘YOU’ time before, during and after a launch.
Your energy, your peace of mind, your focus, your health and your happiness are key.
If you’re not enjoying every moment of it, even the stressful parts, you’re not going to want to launch ever again!
Step 2. Get Help
This last one is so often overlooked. You get into superhero mode thinking you can rock this launch by yourself.
Newsflash! You can’t do this alone, nor should you want to.
It’s so much more fun working on a launch with a small team, even if that’s just one other person helping you out and making you feel like you’re not going insane.
If you’ve already done a launch or or thirteen, you know just how many moving parts there are to juggle. Too many for one person.
Each time I launch, my small but nimble team are always surprised and a bit overwhelmed, if I’m honest, with the launch plan I share with them, because they can see all the different phases and tasks that need to happen sequentially to pull it all off.
I often bring in 2-3 specialists to help me out at the very least, just for the launch period, like an expert in paid advertising, copywriting or design.
Basically anything that’s not in my zone of genius, or that I can do, but will take me too much time to do, or take me away from what I do best, I outsource.
It works wonders. It works even better if you have those people on your team before launch time so that you don’t get stuck in operations or managing your team.
The more you get to know each other and how you work, and your rhthyms, the smoother and less stressful the launch period is going to be,
Note to the person reading this who thinks they can’t afford a team…
YOU CAN!
An ads expert who knows their stuff should be giving you a 2-10X return on investment on what you’re paying them and the money you spend on ads.
On one of my launches we got a 5X return on investment which was completely worth it!
A talented copywriter can do the same. A friend of mine recently paid $20,000 to a copywriter to do her sales page and emails. That investment right there returned her half a million in sales from her launch.
A systems expert who can deal with your tech set up, integrations and testing is going to save you a ton of heartache.
If you believe in your product or course, have priced it right, know your audience are going to love it, and have done your launch financials, you should be able to factor in the cost to hire the right people to help make your launch a success, and to help you scale it again and again.
Step 3. Launch Reflection and Review
After the huge high of getting through a launch and closing your cart, one of the first things you should schedule in is a full review and analysis of your launch.
It may sound a bit ‘meh’ but it’s best to do it while everything is fresh in your mind.
The real reason behind this, and why it’s so beneficial to do it right away, is it gives you a true picture on what really happened, and let’s you gain perspective on how you really went, versus what you ‘saw’ happen or ‘felt’ went on.
For example, in my main launch last year, I felt like it was the biggest failure I’d ever had. It hit me really hard, as in the past, I’ve had multiple six figure launches that all went to plan and exceeded my expectations.
I would have continued to think it was an epic fail if I hadn’t looked at the stats from Google Analytics and Facebook ads, or run the numbers to get the true picture of what happened.
Even though I didn’t hit any of my goals, and actually made a loss, it wasn’t related to the marketing or the content of my course, but to the execution, and getting too caught up in the operations.
The actual facts showed the conversion rate of people who went through my video series to my sales page and bought, was actually above average and that had we targeted the right audience and built a better funnel, we would have had better results.
When I looked back over my launch strategy, I could see where things could have been timed differently or what steps I may have overcomplicated or missed.
This made me get out of my funk, and get my big girl panties back on!
I was able to look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and look at options to make the most of the outcome, salvage what I could, and then focus on areas I could improve on for next time.
Remember, the only time you truly fail is when you don’t learn the lesson!
Step 4. Plan Your Escape Vacation
The best thing you can do when you’re planning a launch is to plan your escape when it ends and give yourself a well-earned break – particularly if this was a launch over several months.
This may seem counterintuitive to you, but you have to factor in a celebration period, no matter what your launch result is, and rest and recharge, mentally and physically.
Part of the fun of launches is that you can use the momentum and energy you have during your launch to get an incredible amount of work done and achieve more than ever.
But that can take its toll. And you have probably underestimated the importance of escaping all that momentum and stress, by rolling straight into the next project.
STOP. Don’t do that. Take a freakin break.
You are not designed to do launch after launch after launch – unless it’s a fully automated launch funnel which means you don’t have to do anything after running it live a few times and testing it.
Even after the smoothest launches I’ve done, I always factor in time out to celebrate and reward myself no matter what the outcome.
This really matters as it keeps you motivated!
I truly hope these tips will help you in your next launch, because every single launch is different and you have to embrace this fact or you will find yourself struggling.
Instead I want you to truly make the most of your time, money and energy and have FUN on each and every single launch.
We are living in such an incredible time where it’s possible to sit at a laptop, and use tools, technology and a remote team, to make an impact in thousands of peoples’ lives by simply sharing your knowledge through your online products and courses.
That’s one heck of a privilege right there!
Natalie Sisson is driven by what most value so highly but few achieve – uncapping your true potential. She’s an entrepreneur, No #1 Bestselling author, speaker, triathlete and lifelong learner, who’s on a mission to show you how to tap into your true potential to optimize your life, business and mindset.
With a laptop and a smartphone, she built a six-figure education business The Suitcase Entrepreneur, that she ran from anywhere in the world. Now she’s on a mission to show other entrepreneurs how to tap into their potential to design a life and business they love at https://nataliesisson.com
The post 4 Steps To Avoid Fizzling Out After Your Launch appeared first on Fizzle.
from 4 Steps To Avoid Fizzling Out After Your Launch
No comments:
Post a Comment