If you’re putting the finishing touches to a course or product that you’re ready to launch, you’re probably already considering the next step: getting it out there to the dreamy clients who need your solution.
The digital marketing space is likely swaying you more toward the live launch route—especially with the big names of the industry like Amy Porterfield, Marie Forleo, and James Wedmore all swearing by this marketing strategy.
People are certainly spurred to action when they have a deadline and that’s one of the key reasons the evergreen model just doesn’t work—when you let people buy anytime they want to…they never do. But live launching has the ability to create urgency and excitement around your offer, building a lot of FOMO (fear of missing out) among your audience.
However, just because people are willing to wait months for the launches of big business coaching gurus, doesn’t mean they’ll wait around for yours. Even business owners who give their all to a live launch can still not generate the results they expected or needed.
That’s not to say live launching never works. Lots of business owners have successful launches that hit their goals. But it’s also very common for subsequent launches to not bring equal success, making it an unpredictable and unnecessarily stressful way to run your business.
So before you go “all-in” on live product launching, here are four key tips that will help you understand what you need before going into a live launch, as well as what to do afterwards.
Tip #1: Get Clear on Expectations
But not the way you might think…
When it comes to live launching, a lot of tips will refer to setting goals, but that can be extremely hard to predict when you don’t have much to base it on. Comparing to launches from the past—particularly ones that haven’t gone well—is usually a recipe for disaster. Bad launches happen and that’s one of the main problems (as many of our students know!) with live launching: it’s just so unpredictable.
That means it’s vital to go in with a clear head about what you want to get out of your launch—beyond the financials. What are you hoping to learn? What questions are you hoping to answer? For example, your customers may give you ideas for gaps you need to fill in your program or ways to better communicate with them in future launches.
Although these goals are less tangible than revenue-based goals, they’re still incredibly valuable. After going through four live launches, Circuit Sales System student Lisa learned a lot about the pain points of her target audience, as well as things that helped her to refine and improve her offer.
She could then use that information as she moved into a new, automated way of selling, which allowed her to prioritize her health and her business, while making sales every single week—you can read more about Lisa’s story here.
Tip #2: Communicate Pricing in a Different Way
The “it’s too expensive” objection is a common one but the truth is, price is rarely the real reason people won’t buy. If would-be customers truly understood the value of your offer, they would purchase it.
What your prospective customers are actually saying with this objection is that your offer doesn’t feel valuable enough for them. And that’s why revisiting the messaging around your offer’s value is so important.
What is the big transformation they are going to get out of your offer?
This requires you to dig deep into the benefits of your offer and detail the emotions that resonate with your audience. Show them what life could look like after they purchase your product or service.
Giving some additional context to your price can also help to overcome the “it’s too expensive” objection. You could compare the cost of your offer to something comparable that’s far more expensive. For example, if you offer career training, you could highlight that although a few hundred dollars can feel expensive, when you compare it to the $100,000 average cost of college—where you don’t even necessarily graduate with any job skills—the price isn’t so bad. It’s all about putting it into perspective.
Tip #3: Dial in Your Messaging
If you want to build trust in your brand, you have to create a dynamite marketing message that connects you with your audience on a deep, emotional level. Just because you’re promoting a free event doesn’t automatically mean people will attend—you have to dig deep into the benefits that they will get out of going to your launch.
That means putting on your target audience hat and looking at the world from their perspective. What are their true wants and needs? How will your offer deliver the results they want? And why does that really matter to them?
One of the biggest errors course creators make when it comes to their messaging is mistaking themselves for their target audience. You are no longer your target audience. You might have been before you created this program when you had this challenge you needed to solve, but now you’re on the other side of the transformation, you are no longer using the same language as your target audience.
Tip #4: Have a Plan for Post Live Launch
Wondering what to do you do if your online course launch flops? First of all, don’t make it mean something that it doesn’t (like you’re not cut out for business). It just means live launching isn’t the best way to sell your course (and actually, that’s the case for most people). As we said before, what works for the Amy Porterfield’s of this world, won’t necessarily work for you.
You can simply use information you’ve gained from your audience to inform adjustments and move forward with a plan to create a more predictable income stream—leaving you less stressed and more in control of your business.
Lots of business owners still enjoy the excitement of live launches—they just don’t allow them to hit their goals. Others…well, they’d probably be quite happy to NEVER face the prospect of a live launch ever again. Either way, automating your sales will help you combine the excitement of live launching, without the high stress and risk to your revenue. And if you are one of the rare breeds that enjoys a live launch, there’s no need to ditch live launching altogether.
If you’re seeing some success with live launching, you may be hesitant to give it up completely, like Circuit Sales System student Carina was. And you certainly don’t have to. Like Carina, you could continue doing a few launches each year in combination with your automated sales system.
In fact, this turned out to be a winning formula for Carina (and that’s an understatement!), with her sales increasing by a whopping 50%. In addition to that, she also gained a lot of time back to put into developing her programs and focusing on existing customers. Even if you have a good launch, it still requires a certain amount of time and energy from you, which limits how much you can focus on people who have actually purchased your course. As CSS student Megan told us:
“I feel like it takes me 10 days to recover from just showing up live for 30 minutes a day!”
Dedicating that amount of time to each live launch has a considerable impact on how much you can scale your business. Since automating her sales, Megan’s now able to work on her business more than ever before (more on that here), and when she does do live events, she can show up with a completely different energy.
Combining the Best of Live Launching with Predictable Sales
What people often overlook with live launching is that it’s done on our schedules. We expect people to make their plans around the days and times that we choose, and show up when it’s convenient for us.
But if people have the freedom to go through your course at a timing and pace that works for them, instead of making potential clients put everything aside to fit your schedule, you might just find that even more people are willing to purchase your offer.
And that doesn’t mean you have to lose the urgency of live launching. Customers need deadlines to take action (as long as they’re authentic– fake deadlines could damage your brand). With the Circuit Sales System, prospective clients have their own personalized deadlines to ensure they receive your best marketing message at the time they are most interested. That urges them to make a purchase decision and helps you to generate more sales.
The other great part about automating your sales is that you don’t have to wait 6 months between launches to test. Testing is crucial to any business, helping you make choices based on what your audience wants and needs. And making sales every single day means you can also get data every single day to inform your decisions.
Ultimately, the marketing tactics that will truly allow you to scale your business are based on solid messaging and effective systems—not whichever “big name” marketing guru has been using it most recently.
The Circuit Sales System combines proven psychological principles to always give your audience the right offer, at the right time, in the right way. It brings all the consistency of evergreen offers, combined with the urgency and excitement of a live launch—but NONE of the chaos or stress.
Instead, each customer gets their own, automated “live launch” so you can sit back and watch your ideal customers flood in on autopilot.
Learn more about the Circuit Sales System right here >>
Read More
Making the switch from live course launching to autopilot might sound impossible…until you actually stop and delve into the possibilities. This blog post encourages you to be explore a new direction when it comes to selling your offer.
Watch More
In this Energize Your Online Business podcast episode, we meet Carina, a Circuit Sales System student who has successfully combined live launching with a Circuit. Listen in to learn how the Circuit Sales System helped Carina grow her business to seven figures in less than three years and opened up doors to take her business to new heights.
Your Turn!
Have you experienced any limitations of live launching in your business? Let us know in the comments below!