It’s the moment you’ve been busting your tail to get to — it’s time to turn your funnel on so you start seeing sales roll in! 

Of course, it’s not as simple as clicking the “publish” button on your funnel’s sales page, as we’ve already discussed a lot more goes into getting the sale and a big piece of the process is launching!  

In this episode, we’re going to delve into what it means to “launch,” why it’s necessary and some considerations and tips for planning that will help you decipher your launch style and zero in on your game plan. 

By taking these steps and strategically thinking about your launch plan, you can give your funnel the best chance of initial success whether you’re running an open/close cart launch or keeping your product open and for sale from here on out.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1. Why launching is a non-negotiable part of the process for getting your funnel up and running and your product in your initial customer’s hands
2. How to determine the launch mechanism that’s going to work best for you and key questions to consider to help you choose what style of launch you’ll run with
3. Understanding which assets you need to create leading up to your launch so that you can focus on being there for your initial customers and providing top-notch customer service

Resource Mentioned In this Episode:

• For hands-on launching support or full-service launch management, check out The Launch Guild

Read the Transcript for Season 1, Episode 9 – It’s Time – Launching a Digital Product Funnel

Hello and welcome to episode nine. Are we on episode nine? Yes, of the compelling convert season one, all about digital product sales funnels. I am super happy to have have you here. But first, listen, I have no one to talk to because my husband is currently deployed and I mean, I do talk to my son, but he’s three and a half, so the conversation is limited.

I podcast for my closet. I think I’ve mentioned this before because I live near an airfield, so there’s very loud planes that fly overhead frequently. My closet gives me some good acoustics here. And I found the perfect pillow to sit on. Like a little butt pillow.

It’s perfectly rounded, perfect shape, just slides right into the bottom piece thing in my closet. It’s perfect. I just had to share that because it really makes this whole podcasting experience just even that much better. And I’m already excited to talk to you today, but now my butt is excited too. That’s weird.

Let’s just forget I said that. In any case, let’s get into what we’re talking about today, which is launching now. The last episode all about tech. That was the episode you probably hated. And the part that you were like, why I don’t want to talk about this?

This is the part that everyone loves to focus on is the launch. Right? You’ve done all this work and now it is time to launch. This is also the thing that is scary because you have created something that you’re going to put out into the world and you hope that it’s going to work. So before I get into some of the key questions that you want to ask around launching and getting it live, I want to just call back and I can’t remember what episode I mentioned this in.

But you might want to do your initial launch as a beta launch. Meaning if you have already done some community building, an audience building, or you have a preexisting email list that you could market to, you might want to do some sort of an internal launch. And that’s typically called a beta launch, which is where you want to get some initial testimonials for your product. 

You want to kind of do a little bit of a test run before you launch it like officially launch it. That way you can work out some kinks or you can put in some recommended things like your initial students are basically saying, yes, we agree to be your first students because they’re typically getting a little bit of a deal on the price.

So you typically want to beta launch something at a slight discount. So let’s say you have I’m just going to use a round number here. Let’s say you have a workshop that you want to sell for $100. You might offer it to your beta students for $60, right? Like it doesn’t need to be a huge, massive discount.

You still want to be at least breaking even on it. But it allows you to get in some of those initial testimonials and also allows you to have that initial student pool that you can say, hey, what would you improve? Excuse me, what needs to be added? What do you think would be more helpful? Right.

So it kind of gives you that testing ground. Then you can launch it bigger out to an external audience. Okay. So if you haven’t done a beta launch yet, you don’t have to do a beta launch.

It’s highly debated. Some people are like, never launch something without beta launching it first. I don’t agree with that. I say launch it however you feel best. If it feels better for you to beta launch something, do that.

And if you’re like, no, I just want to get it out there and I’m going to offer it at let’s say I know the goal is eventually I want to raise the price of this product to $200. And for now, in order to get more easy. Yeses. For people into the program, I’m going to charge $100 for it. And then the next time I launch it, the price is going up.

You are always allowed to move the price of your products. If Amazon Prime can do it. I’m a little salty, in case you can’t tell. I just got an email from Amazon Prime that was like we’re raising our membership rate to $15 a month. And I’m like you people don’t already make enough money.

But listen, they’re Amazon. I’m not going to get rid of them, at least not for right now, because I live in Japan and I survive off of Amazon Prime to get certain products because they are the only company that ships out here. But all that to say, all my grievances aside, they are allowed to raise their prices. It’s just what they can do it. And if I want to continue being a customer, I will pay that price.

Ok. So just know, you can always start lower and go higher. You could also start higher and go lower, but I don’t recommend that. Okay, pricing aside, back to launching. When you are launching, you want to have some sort of an event.

So when I say an event, I mean something that is bringing in attention during your launch campaign. Because here’s the thing that I think most beginners with digital products get a little lost. They build this product and they go, okay, I created it. It’s here, come get it. And there’s nothing that is specifically driving the attention back to the product on a continual basis.

You have to have launching built into your overall marketing calendar, even if a product is available all the time. And this is where you want to create some element of urgency or scarcity. I know I’ve talked about this in the past episode, but essentially, let’s say I’ll give you a few different examples here. Let’s say you have a workshop you want to sell, you might have 20 spots open for the workshop. That is an element of scarcity, because only 20 people can sign up now if you’re like.

No, I don’t want to cap it at 20 people. Great. Then maybe you have a deadline in which people can sign up for the workshop. So you are hosting the workshop on Monday, March 1, or actually, I think March 1 is a Tuesday. But let’s just say you’re hosting it on March 1.

You tell people you have up until February 28 to get into the workshop, and then that’s it. I’ll provide a replay. You don’t have to be there live. There’s no cap as to how many people can come in. But I’m not selling the workshop past February 28.

Now, you might be going, but Danielle, I want to be able to utilize that workshop as an evergreen product. Great. Nothing says you can’t repackage it later as a standalone evergreen workshop, and then you still need to have some sort of launch element around it, whether it be with an automated email sequence or just something you’re selling through a specific sales campaign that you’re running at any given time. But typically there needs to be some element of urgency or scarcity around the launch or the campaign that is going to drive people to take action. So I’ll give an example.

Actually, it’s something I’m considering purchasing. There is a workshop from a digital creator that I have had my eye on for a while. It’s available in her shop all the time. I can go purchase it at any time, but I have not had an incentive to do so yet because I have gone. Okay, well, until I’m ready to actually sit down and watch this workshop, there’s no point in me just buying it today.

I’ll buy it when I need it. Right. But I just got an email from her a few days ago that said, hey, I’m raising the price of this workshop by $50. If you purchase it by this date, you’ll get it at the current price. Also, you’ll get a $50 credit to my shop.

So she’s creating an element of urgency there by putting a deadline around the price range or the price hike. It doesn’t have to be a price hike that causes you to tell someone that, hey, this product that’s available all the time. Here’s why you want to get it now. You could be offering in different bonuses throughout the year. You could be hosting a live version.

Maybe you do a live version of the workshop a couple of times a year, and then throughout the rest of the year you offer it as an evergreen product. There’s so many different ways you can structure launching, but the main idea I want you to take away here from this first point is that you need some sort of a I’m using air quotes here event something that is moving people to pay attention to the product. 

Whether it be you’re doing a dedicated campaign around it, you are creating some element of urgency or scarcity. You are effectively doing some sort of launching of the event to get people to move on the product. Okay, next question I want you to ask yourself.

So first question is what will your launch event be? The next is what’s your launch mechanism? So when I say mechanism, what’s going to be the vehicle that does the selling for you? So in the instance of this workshop that I just mentioned, I talked about, she sent an email sequence. I believe she’s also doing a social media campaign around this.

So she’s actually got a couple of mechanisms going. She’s got her social media campaign and then she has this automated email sequence running. Those are her two mechanisms. She could also do a webinar about this product. It’s a low ticket product, though, so the webinar is likely not worth her time, but she could do that.

She could also do a challenge or a live video. I guess that’s also a little bit of a webinar, but it would be more on social media. So there’s so many different ways that you can launch something with the vehicle. It could be email, social media webinar. It could solely be the sales page.

And the sales page is a limited time thing. So if you have a product that you’re only opening for a set period of time, like your open cart period is only a week, the sales page could be the main mechanism that you’re using for selling. You still have to get people over to the sales page in some way, but maybe you’re not doing like a webinar or something else that would necessarily drive a much more traffic. Okay, so what is your launch mechanism going to be? Okay, the next thing and I already kind of alluded to this.

When do you want people to be able to purchase? So your product could be limited in the sense that you’ve got the open cart period and that alone is going to put a parameter around your launch that builds in the event. So when something is only available to get into for say a week or two, that immediately is going to give you a sense of urgency because people only have two weeks that they’re even able to purchase the product and then it’s off the table. 

Right. If you want people to be able to purchase all the time, you still need to figure out what your event is going to be in your mechanism. But you want to put in some markers around. When do you want people to really be purchasing? When do you want to be getting this influx of people through the door? When do you want to schedule your campaigns so that you are seeing a bump in the sales? 

Because the reality is that if you are, let’s say, doing coaching and consulting, and maybe you also have a couple of digital products on the side, you will see a small trickle of people who purchase digital products through a shop. If you have things that are available all the time, people will come in and just purchase randomly. But if you want to see a steady kind of stream of sales coming in, you have to be doing these event style type of campaigns. 

And this is where I don’t want to get too in the weeds of advanced strategy. But you can have things working for you on the back end, like automated email sequences that essentially are running events all the time. And the key there is that every lead or prospect who’s coming into your ecosystem or your world is having their own event created for them via an automated email sequence.

So I’ll actually give you an example because I just went through this. This is both my blessing and my curse. As a marketer, I see all the marketing. Like anytime I get an email I’m like, that’s a smart marketing strategy, or I’ll get an email, I’ll go, I don’t know what this is doing right now. This isn’t propelling me to buy anything.

It’s very hard when you’re constantly wearing your marketing hat. But it’s also a blessing because it gives me lots of examples to work with. So I digress. The other day I signed up for a freebie around Pinterest marketing. And actually I think I’ve mentioned her on the podcast before.

Simple Pin Media, Kate Ahl. She’s fantastic. I’ve followed her for years. I just completed her ideas Pins workshop, which was great. That was a limited time offer.

It was a workshop she was offering for sale for, I want to say a couple of weeks. And then the workshop was a live workshop and now it’s done. But during that workshop, she mentioned one of her freebies. So I went and signed up for that freebie. That freebie was a five day automated email sequence.

Each day had a video that corresponded with the challenge. I want to say it was like a five day set up your business Pinterest account challenge type of a thing. That freebie exists all the time, but because it drips out to whoever signs up at any given time, it’s creating a unique five day challenge based on my timeline as the lead. So I get sent this automated email sequence. I have day 12345.

On day six, I got pitched a bundle, I think, and actually I did not even look at it in time. It was a limited time offer. So she put a time window on it where she said, for the next 48 hours you can get this limited edition bundle. I believe that window has already passed for me. That’s fine.

I didn’t end up purchasing that product, but now I’m on her email list. So that when her membership opens back up, which is the product they actually am more interested in. I have the ability to go and get in on that and I’m on her email list. But you can see where she created this kind of launch style event leading up to an initial product that she wanted to sell. So the event was the freebie the five day Pinterest set up challenge.

The mechanism was an automated email sequence. And then when do you want people to be able to purchase? Within a 48 hours window? You might have a much longer window where you say, oh, no, people can purchase at any time, but maybe you want to give them a limited time offer where you say, hey, if you purchase this workshop within the next 48 hours, you’ll also get this extra bonus or whatever it is you’re then creating an element that is driving people to take action. Now you don’t have to do that, but it works.

Okay, next question. What is your launch runway? This is a big one, especially when you’re doing a bigger launch to external audiences, not just your internal email list who already knows like and trusts you. But if you’re sharing something on social media and you plan to go live on Facebook and Instagram and you plan to do some reels about it, and you also want to send emails like you want to really try to get as many sales as possible by sharing your product far and wide. You need a launch runway.

You cannot just say, okay, I’m going to open the cart next week and hope people buy. You need to do pre marketing, and then you also need to be prepared for the pre marketing. So what do I mean by pre marketing? Pre marketing is essentially where you’re letting people know that something is coming and you don’t have to be secretive about it. You can tell them, hey, next week my new workshop where I’m going to teach you facial massage techniques.

I’m going to be opening the car. Only 25 people are going to be able to get in. Doors are going to open on Monday. Be sure to be on my email list to be the first to know when you can grab your seat. I do expect they’ll sell out whatever you want to pre market before the cart officially opens.

Because if it’s like Monday, your cart opens and then Friday, your cart closes, there’s probably going to be a good number of people who don’t even find out what’s going on until the close the end of your cart period. And by then they don’t have enough time to make a decision. By pre marketing your launch and telling people that something is coming or that you’re going to be launching, you are effectively widening your marketing window while still keeping your launch window shorter to create that urgency and scarcity or not scarcity, just urgency. But you want to have that full runway and it depending on what type of offer you are planning to sell. Having a long runway is not a bad thing.

You can be teasing your product for a whole month before you even plan to launch it. Maybe you want to talk about the process of creating this thing that you’re going to be creating. Maybe you want to tell people about it and get their opinion and Instagram story polls. Or you want to have them ask you questions that will be helpful when putting together your sales page. You want to talk to your audience and be in communication with them.

Let them know what’s going on. That way you’re building that anticipation leading up to your launch event. Think of it like a wedding. Now, I didn’t do this with my wedding, but many couples do. Many couples send out a save the date.

It’s a way of saying, hey, we just got engaged. And even though we don’t have the full thing ready yet, we want you to know that we’re planning to get married on XYZ date. Save this date in your calendar. That way you don’t book anything. It’s a similar sort of scenario.

By doing pre marketing, you’re letting your audience know, hey, this big event is coming. I wanted you to know about it. That way you could plan for it, or that way you have it on your radar. Because if someone were to just all of a sudden be like, hey, we’re getting married next month or we’re getting married tomorrow, can you make it? You might be like, no.

I mean, I would have loved to have made it, but I didn’t really know this was going to be happening. Let me see if I can shift things around or it’s catching people off guard. And of course, some people it depends on this is where I know I’ve talked about this in past episodes as well. People are highly nuanced and layered. Some people don’t need that much time to make a decision.

Some people and I tend to be like this with certain things. I can look at something even if I have never encountered you before on the internet. But you are running a launch for something, and I can see that there is a well put together funnel that clearly explains what I’m purchasing. Like a good put together sales page. Maybe you’ve got a video on there.

And I’m like, yeah, I want this. It might be considered an impulse purchase, or maybe it’s actually something I’ve kind of been in the market for, but I haven’t found the right fit and all of a sudden it’s right in front of me. I will go ahead and make a purchase pretty quickly. I don’t need a full month of marketing leading up to a launch. That’s different when it comes to other products or other purchasers.

Some other people need a lot of warming up time. And when I say a lot of warming up time. It is also not terribly unusual to have some people who will not purchase the first time you launch, but will purchase on the second or third time you launch. So this is why launching is very important. And creating events consistently is important because you will then help move that person into making a decision whether it’s to purchase from you or not.

So kind of going back to that initial example of the person who sent me an email about her workshop going up in price. I’ve seen her run launches for that workshop like two or three times. And every time I’m like, this looks like a cool workshop, but nothing has been pressing enough for me to buy it until now. 

And the reason that I’m considering it now is because I’m actually thinking about it like, oh, I could actually use that right about now. So you want to keep in mind that certain people will need to go through a few different launch events of yours to make a full decision.

Okay. But that’s why having a runway is important, because when you give people more time and more heads up in anticipation, you’re more likely to get more people on board during your launch. Open Cart Window okay, next question is, what assets do you need to create for your launch? We’ve already talked about this a lot throughout the season of all the different things you need for your sales funnels. 

But in addition to the actual sales funnel itself, like the sales copy, the sales page design, the cart where people are going to enter in their payment information and check out, you need to get your course put into the platform.

There’s a lot of Todo’s when it comes to launching a digital product. What assets do you need to have in place to make this all run and to have it be live? And what I’m going to do, I’m going to put together a launch list. It’ll be just a quick checklist where it’s going to have all the things listed out for you. So you can go grab that in the show notes.

If you go to the description for this episode, click the link in there. It will take you to an opt in form where you can grab that checklist of all the things that you need to launch. Okay? And that will be from A to Z. I’ll cover the whole thing.

That way you don’t have to think about it. But if it helps you, you still need to have some sort of a list where you outline all the assets that you need to create, and that way you can check them off as you go because it’s too much to keep in your head. I know some people who will, some people my husband, mainly. That man has not written a detail down in his life. I don’t know how he keeps his life straight, especially his career.

He’s the type of person that doesn’t have a calendar, doesn’t have a planner. Just if he sets a doctor’s appointment, they’re like, oh, yeah, Tuesday at 03:00. And he’s like, great, I’ll see you then. I don’t understand how this man keeps the information in his head, but it’s the same principle. Like with your funnels, there’s a lot of moving parts and pieces.

Don’t try to keep it all in your head. You’re going to drive yourself absolutely nuts. And I think most people that are listening to this podcast with me probably have that in common with me, where they are not the type of people who can cram everything in their head at once and having a list will help you out. So get your list together or grab the one that I’m going to create for you. And that is pretty much what you need to launch.

So let me go back through. You need the event, the thing that is going to be like the propelling agent of getting people in. You need the mechanism that you’re going to sell with. So webinar, email sequence, social media campaign. What’s the thing that’s going to actually get people over to the product to purchase it?

When do you want people to be able to purchase it? Create some sort of a timeline for your event or for your campaign or when your cart window is create a larger timeline of your launch runway. That way you know when you need to start pre marketing to build that anticipation and then have a list of what assets you need to create to get that full launch done, including the runway time. 

Because if you have the full list and you also have your timeline, that’s when you can start reverse engineering your plan where you go, okay, if I want to get started pre marketing my product in a couple of weeks because I want to have two or three weeks of lead up runway time, and then this is when I want my cart launch open period to be. 

You can essentially just reverse engineer your timeline and go, okay, well, if I need to, based on my list of things that I have that I need to create, I need to have XYZ done by this date so that I can start pre-marketing.

I need to have these pieces done by this date so that people can actually purchase and you can just match up your assets with your timeline. And essentially, that creates a timeline based to do list for you and that will lead you up to your lunch. And then once it’s launch time, your job is to be of service. By launch time, you should not be creating anything other than maybe in the moment content that’s going to help more people make a decision. But overall, you should not be like writing your launch emails as you’re actively launching.

You should have everything done beforehand. That way, when it comes to launch time. You can be present, you can be of service to the people who are potentially going to purchase from you. And you can actually enjoy all the fruits of your labor because launching is labor intensive. So be sure to do yourself a favor by giving yourself enough time, not trying to rush the process.

Really outline your full plan and your full timeline and it will serve you well. If you have any other questions, I am by no means a full blown launch expert. I’m really the funnel building expert when it comes to copy and design and having it conversion, optimized and strategic. Those are my wheelhouses. I will admit launching is not like my specific expertise.

I do not actually coordinate or project plan any launches. If you are on a bigger scale wanting to launch, I don’t recommend unless you have a sizable audience that you’re able to launch to. I recommend doing your internal launches, like by yourself or with your own internal team or a VA. But once you progress and let’s say you want to have a larger launch, maybe you’ve already beta launched something and you want to do like your big launch and it feels like a lot. Tasha Booth with The Launch Guild she is fantastic.

I believe it’s thelaunchguild.com I’ll put her link in the show notes. She’s fantastic and her team has launched, I mean countless things and they will take care of your whole launch for you, ads, getting the stuff built, like everything you need. So if you need that kind of help, you can hire it out. 

But if you are in those initial stages of getting a simple workshop launched and it’s not like a huge group program or a huge flagship course and you’re really just kind of getting your feet wet into this world of digital products, which I think is most people listening, you can totally do this on your own. It’s just about planning properly.

So give yourself enough time, don’t try to rush the process and reverse engineer. And if you have any questions, let me know. I’m @Studio Clary on Instagram. Also, quick favor to ask if you have not left a review. I would super appreciate it if you just left.

It will take like 20 seconds of your time to leave. A rating or a review helps more people find the podcast. And I would just love to hear your thoughts on the show and hopefully they’re good. But honestly, honest feedback I value more than anything. So let me know what you think and I will catch you in the final episode of season one of Compel and Convert.

Next episode, we’re going to be talking about optimizing your funnel. So once you’ve launched it, how do you make it better for next time? So even if you haven’t launched yet, this will help you understand. But if you have already done a preliminary launch of a funnel and you’re trying to tweak things and make them better. This is episode for you.

Alright? I will talk to you then. Bye!