Your Step-by-Step Guide to Launch Planning

Part 1: Secrets of a $300K Launch Series

🔼 If you’d like to listen to post instead, click “play” above and I’ll read it to you! Like a bedtime story, online business marketing edition.

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I’m about to attempt the hardest thing I’ve ever (physically) done.

This Saturday, I’m competing in my first (only?) HYROX race in Chicago.

Over the course of 90+ minutes, I’ll run 8k, broad jump burpee, row, ski erg, lunge, farmers carry, sled push, sled pull, and wall ball my way to the finish line.

Just thinking about it makes me want to puke. And yet… I’m doing it!

I didn’t just decide a few days ago that I wanted to compete in something like this. I decided 6 months ago, came up with a training plan, started training, hired a Hyrox coach, pivoted multiple times, fell off the wagon, got back on, hurt my toe badly in Barcelona, and kept training.

In other words, training for this super intense fitness race has been just like planning a launch (or really any project) in my business.

It takes months of calculated planning, strategy, adjustment, and hard work.

You don’t just show up to HYROX and race— just like you don’t show up one day and announce, “new course! Buy this!” to your audience as a sale. Because if you did, it wouldn’t work.

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Over the next month or so, I’m going to walk you through step-by-step how I planned, strategized, and executed a 4-day $308,000 digital product launch in my online business this past October.

I know everyone says that “online business is changing” or that it’s somehow not working anymore (I wrote about that here), but I hope this launch series is proof that you can still do really well in your online business — if you’re willing to get creative.

This launch was bananas. But even more importantly, it was easy (note here: “easy” meaning it was low-stress and drama free. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication - from a lot of people behind the scenes! - to pull off a launch like this. My friends couldn’t believe how much fun I actually had.

Although this was far from my first rodeo, this was my biggest and most successful launch to date, for many reasons.

Here are some launch stats to mull over:

• Nearly 5,000 signed up for my live webinar

• 138 people purchased the Ultimate Bundle® (my signature legal product)

• 57%+ paid in full

• 44% purchased an order bump at checkout

• We had the highest show up rate ever (# of people who show up to a webinar who signed up for it)

• We had 100s of email responses to engagement-driven emails in the days leading up to the webinar

• We had over 35 on-webinar purchases before it was over

I think that this launch went so well for several reasons. For one, our launch plan is tried and true — that’s what I’m going to teach you today. Two, our bonuses were great. Three, I know how to teach a good webinar (that will be in Part 2). And four, I very strategically chose to focus on some “end of year” marketing messaging that I’ll talk about in a later issue.

Up first: let’s talk how to plan a launch for success. I hope you take this plan and make it your own. After you’re done reading Part 1, leave a comment and let me know what was most helpful.

1 - Annual Plan

First thing’s first, towards the end of the calendar year, my Director of Operations, Lindsey, and I sit down and figure out when we want to run launches the following year.

The further we get into the following year’s plan, we go from specific, nailed down launch plans to more flexible ones. I like to have a rough idea of when we plan to do what, while also keeping our options open. For Quarter 1, we usually pick actual dates and nail down our launch calendar (which I’ll teach you below). As we get into Quarter 2, we have relatively specific dates but they’re movable. Then for Quarters 3 and 4 we pick loose time frames and keep our options open.

Since I’ve been doing this for a while, we have a rhythm down that works for us. But there’s really no right or wrong time to launch. I think there are advantageous (or less advantageous) times to run launches based on what you do. What works for me might not work best for your audience and vice versa.

Personally, I like to have a January-ish launch, a mid-summer quick and easy promotion (we call it a birthday sale) and a fall launch. You might also choose to run weekend sales, black friday sales, etc. But for the purposes of this series, let’s focus on the big launches instead.

2 - Pick the Centerpiece

Once I’ve decided about when I’m going to run my promotion, I decide what date the main event, or the “marketing centerpiece,” will be. For me, that’s usually a live webinar. For you, it might be Day 1 of your sale or a live challenge or Q&A call.

From there, the rest of our launch calendar is going to be built around our marketing centerpiece.

3 - Reverse Engineer

Once we have our marketing centerpiece date picked out, we have to do some reverse engineering.

I typically spend at least 10 days inviting people to sign up for my live webinar. And I spend at least two weeks before that telling people that something’s coming. Following the webinar, my sale starts and lasts anywhere between 4-8 days, depending on my strategy for that launch.

You should consider a few factors when deciding how to structure your own sale:

• how expensive is your product? (typically the more expensive the product, the longer the sale, but mine is $2k+ and I only ran it for 4 days)

• are you going to run fast-action bonuses, midcart bonuses, and closed cart bonuses? (you can run any combo you’d like, but my fast-action bonuses always perform the best)

• are you bumping up against any holidays or tricky times of year? (my launch ran the week before an election, so that’s why I made it so short!)

• how long can you realistically maintain the same big-launch energy? (regardless of how well or not well your launch goes)

Let’s build out a sample calendar based around a live webinar being held on November 18.

SAMPLE LAUNCH CALENDAR:

• October 28-November 6: tease to your audience that something’s coming (we’ll talk about that below)

• November 6-November 18: invite your audience to sign up for your live webinar (we’ll talk about that in next series installment)

• November 18: host your live webinar

• November 18-??: your offer goes on sale.

• Optional: post-sale, you can run a downsell offer to a smaller, less expensive product.

Voila! That’s how you create a launch calendar.

4 - Teaser

For my October promo this year, I started teasing that something was coming nearly one month in advance. Due to some personal travel plans for me and the team, I was running my promo much later than I usually do. I knew I was competing for their attention during a busy life season (back to school vibes!) and against many other sales going on around the same time.

When I first started running launches, I would be coy and secretive about what was coming during my teaser period. But that all changed in the past year or so.

Now, I’m upfront with my audience that a live webinar is coming, followed by a sale. I’m upfront about what day the webinar will be, when the sale will start, how long it will last, and maybe even a few key details about my bonuses. That’s worked really well to prime my audience!

This year, I also emphasized the day that sign-ups would open for my live webinar the way you would the doors opening to a concert or something. We got people hyped about the “sign up doors” opening on a specific day, and really drove home the message that they should pounce on signing up when the doors opened.

Besides letting people know that something’s coming, you should also take this time to prime your audience and speak to their pain points. If you know what they’re struggling with, create teaser content that speaks directly to their struggle and let them know that the thing you’re cooking up for them is going to help them with it.

Up Next

In Part 2 of my Secrets of a $300K Launch series, I’ll teach you how to get people to sign up for your marketing centerpiece (ie, live call, webinar, challenge, etc.), how to get them to show up, and how to structure a webinar, if you run one.

What launch questions do you have for me? Tell me in the comments!

xo,

Sam

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