How my business has evolved in 500 episodes and predictions for the future of online launches

2018 feels like a long time ago and it was a completely different life. At that time I was running a marketing agency with my small team and we were working with those retainer clients when I launched the podcast, that was really the start of Steph Taylor.

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How my business has evolved in 500 episodes and predictions for the future of online launches

 

How my business has evolved in 500 episodes

 

In 2018, I launched the Socialette membership which I ran for about 12 months. I made all of the mistakes and I was struggling. I was wondering why isn't growing? Why am I struggling to retain people? Because nobody tells you the hardest part about having a membership isn't getting new members, it's retaining the ones that you have.

If you can retain the ones that you have, then growth happens a lot quicker, but the issue that I had with my membership was that there was no real transformation. I wasn't building an ongoing habit and I wasn't solving some kind of ongoing problem, I was just adding more content, I was delivering monthly masterclasses on certain elements of marketing your brand but it was just more content for my members to consume. This became overwhelming and that's where I struggled with retention.

So that was the start of my big transition into the online business.

Then 2019, I had a launch that flopped because my webinar crashed. I talked about this tech glitch that happened – nobody could access the webinar – all 700 people who had registered for it. I had poured my Facebook ad budget into getting them to sign up for the webinar but it just didn't happen and I closed down the membership that year. I nearly gave up on my business and I applied for a whole bunch of jobs and had one of those jobs call me for an interview. But before I even thought about it, my brain was like, “No, you have already taken another role” and that was the point where I realized that I'm not ready to give up on this business yet.

Fortunately, I didn't give up because late in 2019, I had the idea for the Podcast Launch Plan. I initially launched it as a group program where only two people signed up and I surveyed the people who didn't sign up and got the idea for the podcast launch plan, as it stands today.

In January 2020, I had an event in LA that I wanted to attend, it was a small kind of conference event and I knew I had to be in that room. So I launched the podcast again and that paid for my flights and my accommodation and I was realizing at this point that I'm launching this to a cold audience. These are all people who had registered via Facebook ads and I thought that this is working so when I got back from the event in LA, I spent a few weeks automating the podcast plan launches. Instead of delivering the webinar live each time, I had it now on evergreen and I could put money into Facebook ads knowing that it was going to convert consistently. And it did, they just started converting and I started scaling it up and within the first 12 months, that podcast launch plan made about 750,000 U.S. dollars. This was using my live launch framework that I teach inside Launch Magic but automated. That was how I managed to scale it up so quickly because it was a $197 product and we sold 4,000 of that in the first 12 months.

Then late 2020, I launched Launch Magic for the very first time after I'd put it off for months and that was kind of the biggest change in my business, it gives me so much structure in my business. In 2021, I launched Launch Magic twice that year. I went on a five-day off-the-grid hike and I hired my first permanent team member.

Now 2022 with 500 episodes into this podcast, it's feeling like a much tougher year and I'm getting that sense from everyone around. We're all feeling that it's a little bit tougher this year than it has been in the past and if you're feeling that, you're not alone.

For quarter one this year, we put so much work and the results just didn't reflect the amount of work that we put in. We launched in LA in quarter one, we launched Launch Magic live, we did Boost Your Brands Superfans twice, I launched my book finally and so far for quarter two, we launched Launch Magic and we're not even halfway through the year.

We've done so much and it's kind of exhausting, but what is next for us? It's consistently and constantly evolving. We've made loose plans for this year but with all my plans, I'm flexible about where we're going to launch Launch Magic again in September, that's for sure. But other than that, it's kind of exciting because it gives us this position where we can look at what's going on? What are the trends? How can we pivot quickly and move quickly to be the first or amongst the first? Because I have no doubt that the reason why Launch Magic has been so successful is that it was one of the first courses about launching and since then, there have been a lot of others coming out. But the results have also kind of backed us up. We've got so many good testimonials that I almost don't feel like we're competing with anybody else anymore. So that's the overview of how my business has evolved in the last 500 episodes.

 

My predictions for the future of online business and the future of launches

 

Relying less on ads

 

I know in my business we barely spent anything on ads. I do run list-building ads all the time, or most of the time but for the actual launch, we didn't run any cart or open ads. We just ran webinar registration ads and it's starting to go up and I'm noticing people are becoming more blind to ads. This is a really fun challenge for us because it's like how else can we start to reach these new people? And that's where we start looking at partnerships, affiliates, and media. Running Launch Magic Live was a great way to get in front of new people because every student who was in Launch Magic, got a Launch Magic Live ticket and they got two tickets to give to their friends. This is also one of the reasons why I created Boost Your Brands Superfans because I know that people struggle with growing their audience organically. I know you're struggling with building your audience with the right people for your business without spending money on ads. And that was where the idea for booster brand superfans came about.

 

Less artificial urgency and scarcity

 

People are becoming more and more clued up. There's a Nike outlet store here in Brisbane at the airport outlet center and pretty much every 30 minutes or so they have a deal and they announce it over the loudspeaker and you save 20% off the ticketed price and you will know that there's always going to be a deal and if you miss this deal, that's fine because there's going to be another deal. So, this is what a lot of people in the online space have become. So instead, during our launches, we are thinking of how can we be more authentic with bonuses and with deadlines rather than the classic example of somebody who says that there are only 10 spots and then they take 15 people which is not authentic. People are starting to see through that, so how can we be more authentic with that scarcity. Another thing I'm noticing is that it is taking so much longer to build trust now that somebody needs to know you, like you and trust you before they will buy from you because we have more noise, more content saturation, more emails in inboxes, more posts in our Instagram feeds.

 

How can you stand out and get in front of your people?

 

How can you build that know-like and trust by getting in front of the right people to buy from you? Just because somebody is following you or has subscribed to you, doesn't mean that they are listening to you, it doesn't mean that they are seeing every post, doesn't mean they are reading every email. This is where we sometimes have to repeat ourselves a lot and I don't think I had the feedback that I'm being repetitive. Now, something that I have noticed with smaller audiences versus larger audiences is that you can actually build know-like and trust with more people when you have a smaller audience compared with those who have a larger audience. Just because you have a larger audience doesn't guarantee you're going to make more sales. I have seen people with smaller audiences stand out better and they've built better know-like and trust. They get more engagement than the people with larger audiences because they stand out, because they resonate with the right people and not with the wrong people.

Now, I also want you to start thinking about how you can get in front of the right people at as many touch points as possible rather than just getting them to subscribe to your email list and start building that know-like and trust? There's another thing that's a bit concerning in the online space is there are a lot of people creating really shoddy courses and not great programs. It's leading to longer timeframes for building that know-like and trust. How can you prove to people that your course or your membership or your program is good quality? Good testimonials are one way to do this. If you can get video testimonials, that's even better. Something that we tested in this most recent launch of Launch Magic was giving people a sneak peek of Launch Magic. We gave people access to module one for 72 hours to complete the video lesson and the course content so they can see that this is not just an average course and it's not something that they are going to buy and not complete and that was the goal behind people giving a sneak peek of Launch Magic.

 

How can we get completion rates up?

 

Something else that is a bit of a struggle with launches and something we're going to focus on in the future is how can we get completion rates up of our courses, the memberships of our programs, and what can we put into place to get people to the finish line? Currently, the element that really helps is having those live calls, having a community that's working towards a common goal as well as challenges and gamification.

 

How can we keep them coming back?

 

How can we keep them using your membership, your course, and your program? So, as I mentioned before, another challenge that we are facing is we are battling a new objection of “I have too many unfinished courses”. Every time I launched something, I always come up against this objection but it's really important that as a course creator or somebody who's launching one, you've got to have some strategy to overcome this objection just like you have to overcome time and price objection. We want to make sure that you have a strategy to overcome this objection and if you don't have strategies for overcoming objections, that is a huge part of what we teach inside Launch Magic. It's a huge part of what we teach because if people have these objections, then they're not going to buy unless these objections are adequately addressed.

 

Educating people in the lead-up to cart open

 

This is another prediction that I have for the future of launches. It's not about hype, it's about educating people and this is what I teach in Launch Magic. Your content in your launch is about educating people on the problem that they have and the solutions that you have for them and the transformation that they can get so that when you sell it to them, it becomes a no-brainer for them to buy. I think that's going to be a huge game-changer in future launches.

 

The biggest prediction that I have

 

It's the Web Tree, the technology that is behind NFTs and FTS. There is so much potential for that and we're starting to see it and one huge example is a lot of luxury fashion brands. Now when you buy your designer handbag that costs a ridiculous amount of money. You also get an NFT to prove that it's an authentic designer handbag so if you were to resell that handbag, you could resell the NFT with it. That's a huge game-changer.

 

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