Coaching call: How can I make my next launch even more successful?

Today I am coaching Jemima Flendt, a quilt pattern designer, author and teacher who launched her course earlier this year. Jemima is approaching her second launch and is seeking guidance on the areas she should be focusing on, to not only meet, but to exceed her previous launch results. Today we chat about how she can analyse, grow and build on her previous launch.

– How reflecting on your non-buyer survey results is a great place to start.
– The importance of addressing hesitations head-on through messaging tweaks and content shifts.
– Why breaking down the numbers is critical to understanding what resonated with your audience AND identifying the areas that may have missed the mark.
– Strategies to grow your audience through lead magnet promotion, affiliate marketing and alumni partnerships.
– The benefit of exploring social media opportunities and creating content that aligns with your ideal customer.
– Why offering time-sensitive bonuses during cart-open can assist in driving sales momentum.

 

 
Today is a live coaching call with one of my former launch magic students alumni who had an epic first launch and now coming into her second launch. She's starting to think about how she can tweak and optimise different parts of her launch to have an even bigger launch the next time around with her online course.

In this episode, we're talking about the different steps, the different elements of each launch process, where you can tweak different things, how to start to overcome those hesitations that somebody might've had that held them back from buying in the last time and the importance of getting the different elements of your launch in front of new people each launch so that you don't have that second launch slump where everyone who was on your list or in your audience bought in that first launch and then you don't have anybody new in your audience for that next launch. 

“ Jemima Flint here. I'm actually one of your previous launch magic students and I’m very excited to be chatting with you today. So I'm actually a quilt pattern designer, author, and teacher, and I launched earlier this year, my first round of my online beginner's quilt course, and I'm hoping that you can help me now as I'm looking to my next launch, which is of the same course and for what things, in particular, do I really need to be setting my sights on to improve and to hopefully grow this next launch so that it'll be even more successful this next time round?”.

 

How reflecting on your non-buyer survey results is a great place to start.

Now, one of the first places I want to start is by asking you if there was anything that came up when you did a non-bias survey or any unusual questions or hesitations that you noticed were coming up during that cart open time.

“I didn't have anything very specifically come up that I hadn't previously sat down to address. It was things that I was thinking of as the launch was going, that it was like, right, these are things that need to maybe tweak for next time. It was more around things like, everyone was happy with the timeframe and their skill level. That was probably more their hesitation. So really sort of taking it back to people starting right at the beginning of their quilting journey and how did I move them forward to actually get them across the fence.”

Okay, so that might be a little bit of an indicator then if they're saying that's why they're not signing up is because they don't have the tools, or they're wondering if that's right for them, that could be a little sign that the messaging could be clearer, that it's for absolute beginners. You don't need to have any tools yet, you don't need to have any of these things. You don't need to know where to buy your fabric because this is all covered in the course. 

So I would be doing a quick read-through of the sales page again. I'd be reading through those cart-open emails and noticing anywhere where maybe it could be a little bit more specific around that. It could even be that you add a section on the page that this is for you even if, and then have some bullet points. And one of those bullet points could be if you're brand new, you don't have any quilting tools and you don't even know where to buy your fabric. And have a little paragraph explaining that in this course we take you from the very beginning through to whatever the final outcome is and that could also be an own email in the cart open sequence where you're addressing. Hey, you're at that very beginning point. You don't know what tools you need to get. You don't have anything, and that's great. That's where I want you to be because when you join, we're going to go through all of these step-by-step. 

 

The importance of addressing hesitations head-on through messaging tweaks and content shifts.

So if that's a huge objection, I would be putting one entire cart open email around that and making sure that's really clear on the sales page as well. 

“One thing that didn't come up but was something that I had thought of was I didn't offer a payment plan with the particular course. So even though no one really voiced any objection to it being expensive or out of their reach, that was something that I wasn't sure whether or not, I should be offering as an option, even though it's not an overly high price ticket item.” 

It might be worthwhile, especially, with a lot of people sort of starting to freak out about the cost of living and the recession and all of that. It might be worthwhile to offer a payment plan. I wouldn't do a particularly extended payment plan in this case, because we're not talking $2,000, we're talking $250. It could even just be that it's two payments of $140 or so, just to add a little bit of a buffer to cover your risk that they don't pay. So that could be something that would make a big change. It could even be that you leave that payment plan and only introduce it in the last 24 hours of the cart open.

So that anybody who's there on the fence who's like, oh, like I want to do this, but I just don't have the cash right now, or it's expensive, then that's going to help them to make that decision as well.

 

Why breaking down the numbers is critical to understanding what resonated with your audience AND identifying the areas that may have missed the mark.

So, you mentioned that you don't have the number of people who viewed the lead magnet landing page, but you do know how many people signed up and what I really would want to look at, so the lead magnet is the very first step in the entire process, entire funnel. Where the lead magnet is specific to this particular course. 

It's not a general lead magnet for building your email list and I would be wanting to look at how many people viewed that lead magnet landing page and what percentage of them signed up because if we are getting more than, say 30 to 40% signing up from that page, that's great. But if it's not converting at 30%, then you're driving people to that page and they're not for some reason, they're not downloading the lead magnet, they're not landing onto your email list. 

So that's the first step that we would really want to look at. You mentioned you do have the open rates from those lead magnet emails. 

Open rates are a little bit artificially inflated these days because Apple mail just marks everyone's emails as open, basically. It won't be a true reflection of how many people opened, but that's a really good percentage. 

So now it's a matter of getting more people to sign up for that lead magnet so that they're on your list for that next launch. And part of getting more people to sign up for the lead magnet is we first want to make sure that the lead magnet page is converting well.

 

Strategies to grow your audience through lead magnet promotion, affiliate marketing and alumni partnerships.

Now it's how can we get this lead magnet in front of as many people as possible? And that might be paid ads. Is that something you've considered running? 

“I was very much tossing up which way to go for the next launch. In terms of Facebook ads, I've never run those. They have been something that's sat at the back of my mind. I had thought as a more positive way for me to move forward with my audience was actually more in affiliate marketing.” 

I wouldn't focus on just one place though affiliate marketing is a great way to do it, but you need to have really good affiliates who will actually promote and the challenge that we've had with affiliate marketing as well is we have a lot of people who sign up as affiliates. And they do it with the best intentions and then they never actually get around to promoting it. So, If you are going to have affiliates in for the next launch, I would be getting them in as early as possible and I would be asking them to start promoting the lead magnet.

Because you didn't run a webinar in the last one, I probably looking at testing that for this launch, especially because you have affiliates, it makes it easy for the affiliates to send their affiliate link to your webinar. And then the people who they've introduced you to, they now get a taste for your style, your approach, what you're like, rather than just hearing about the course. And then that's the first time they're hearing about you. 

 

The benefit of exploring social media opportunities and creating content that aligns with your ideal customer.

So giving them swipe email copy, and swipe social posts. Literally just copy and paste and fill in the blanks and then they can send that to their list. That's what I would be doing there. Potentially past students as well. Asking them if they want or giving them a referral link or referral code where they can invite a friend. Sometimes past students are the best affiliates, especially with yours because at the end of your program, they've got a quilt, which is such an easy thing for them to share a photo of on social media, and then their friends might ask where they got the quilt from, and now they've got a link to share and they get a bit of a kickback for that. 

 

Why offering time-sensitive bonuses during cart-open can assist in driving sales momentum.

So we want to make sure that we're tracking where people are coming from to that lead magnet landing page and looking at where are we getting the most people from because that's what's working the best. Let's double down on that. 

“How often should you be talking about this in that lead-up? I mean, I'm in just in that 90-day window now. Once a week should you be talking about it every sort of second day? How much content should you be making that drives that?” 

It depends on how much time you have and when I say talking about the lead magnet, I wouldn't do posts just with the lead magnet because the algorithm's not going to show that to anybody. If you're doing a reel, then the call to action in the caption, or at the end of the reel would be to download my cheat sheet at the link in my bio.

If you're doing a carousel, it might be the last little image on the carousel is, Hey, I have a free cheat sheet. Download it at the link in my bio, or something like that. So I would be then focusing on posting the normal amount of content you did in that last launch. 

So however much content it took to bridge that magician's gap, stick with that. That obviously worked really well. But I would be giving the call to action to download the cheat sheet. Then if you do a webinar in sort of the seven days before the webinar, give the call to action to register for the webinar, then when the cart is open, then you do your cart open content like what you did last time.

“The other question I guess I had was last time I had a really good signup rate right at the beginning and I kind of expected at the end that I would have a whole big heap of people sign up at the end where basically the majority of my people who signed up literally came from my first day.”

So schedule as much as you can. Cart open emails and social posts, make sure they're all written and ready to go out before you go into cart open because this happens a lot. It usually happens more when people have no signups at the start, and then they're like, ah, this is doomed. And then they lose any motivation to write the emails or send the emails. 

So make sure everything's written and scheduled ahead of time and then also look at what bonuses you have in mid-cart because people will buy in the middle of cart open is always going to be the quietest part, but if you have a really solid bonus in the middle of cart open, then that can help to get a few more people in.

And then in that last 24 hours, thinking what are those cart close bonuses? Maybe adding an extra cart close email towards the end because we really can send more emails. Most of us don't send enough and if you add that payment plan in the last 24 hours, that might also help to nudge a few more people over the line, over the fence.

So if you notice that you're not getting as many people in the first 24 hours, that doesn't mean your launch is doomed. It just means the people who are there need a little bit more assistance to make that decision. And I would use that as motivation to really like hit the ground, start talking to people, start sending DMs them or emailing them wherever you know that they are. Reach out to them and find out what else they need from you to help them to make that decision about whether it's a good fit for them or not.

“My other question was in terms of non-bias surveys. Are there specific questions that absolutely you need to ask? Like what are the gold questions for getting the content that you need to make changes for your next launch?” 

So a lot of it will depend on the actual offer but the one question that you need to include is what made you decide not to buy and word it like that as well. If you ask, why didn't you buy, it's really like it can be a bit of a cop-out for them cause they're just like, oh, it just wasn't right, right now. But what made you decide not to buy? We're framing it as an active decision that they made, not just a passive thing that happened. And you know, I also love to ask what would make it a no-brainer for you in the future. 

Those two can really help us to understand where the gaps might have been in the messaging. Obviously, take all the responses with a grain of salt because I've had people who've said they chose not to buy launch magic because they wouldn't have paid more than $50 for a launching course and I know that's not my ideal client, so take it with a grain of salt but it can be really interesting to see what sort of trends you notice in those responses. 

 

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