Want to sell more of your offers? 5 reasons why you should consider live launching them

Today, we're talking about making sales of your courses, programs, memberships, all of your digital offers. And personally, I think one of the best ways, one of the most effective ways to sell more of your offers is to live launch them. So today I'm going to share a couple of reasons why you might want to consider live launching your offers as a way of selling them.

But first what is live launching?

I know that there's this common misconception that launching is this thing you do the first time you create an offer and you put it out into the world and you tell people about it and you make all this hype around it and people get excited and they buy because they don't want to miss out.
That is not my style of launching. I know that is what some people talk about launching as, but that is not what I am referring to when I'm talking about live launching. When I am talking about live launching, what I mean is it is a limited-time sales campaign for one offer where you have a few weeks of free content strategically designed to bridge what I call the magician's gap.

There are some audience-building activities where you're trying to grow your list with the right people for this particular offer. And you're usually going to do this through something like a launch-specific lead magnet. There is a clear cart open date. When you pivot from all of the free content to sales-focused content, and there is a clear cart close date where you stop the sales focus content.
There is a real deadline. And then after that you gather intel, you review the launch and you can rinse and repeat it. But like I said, there are some pretty big misconceptions about live launching and I know it gets quite a bad rap in the online world.

 

Misconceptions about live launching

The first big misconception is that it's all about creating hype and FOMO and using these as a way to get people to buy.
Now, I don't believe that hype and FOMO are the most effective ways to sell courses and programs and memberships. Instead, I believe in creating focus around your content, nurturing your audience through the magician's gap and giving them everything that they need to make a decision about whether it's the right fit for them.
Or not. The or not part is really important. This is not a, you must buy at all costs, pressuring somebody into buying, but it's more about helping them to decide whether it's going to work for them or whether it's not. Then the next big misconception is that the deadline of a live launch is designed to pressure people into buying.
I don't believe in using deadlines as a way to pressure people, but instead, I like to use it as a way to give them a deadline to make the decision because otherwise they will naturally want to keep putting it off. We have a tendency to put off things that are a little bit uncomfortable. It's why we don't go, ─ me personally, I have put off going to the dentist.
So I put off going to the dentist for a checkup for like three years. But then, if you get toothache, it's you need to solve it ASAP. So you're going to go to the dentist because you have that deadline. It's that pain, right? So the deadline is there to stop somebody from delaying something that they don't want to do because it feels uncomfortable.
The next big misconception is that you have to have a webinar or a challenge or some kind of live event. While these are super helpful for nurturing your audience really quickly, and I love them because it gives me an avenue to answer any questions my audience might have while we are live on the call, they're not compulsory.
And I actually tell my Launch Magic students, if you don't have enough time to follow the entire process from start to finish, skip the section on the webinar in the first launch, and then come back the next time you launch, you can add it next time. You don't have to do that. ─ The next big misconception is that you have to spend the entire launch talking about your offer and teasing what is coming, telling people I've got this course coming. It's going to be amazing. Jump on the wait list. I believe that is a waste of content and a waste of time. Instead of trying to tease your offer and talk about your offer nonstop, how can you use your launch content to bridge the gap between where your ideal client is right now? And where they need to be to be ready to buy.
How can you use it to educate them on what they don't know that they actually need to know before they'll be ready to buy. This is going to be a whole lot more beneficial in selling your offer than telling people that something exciting is coming or giving a little bit of a teaser of what's inside your course or your program. ───
Another big misconception is that your launch begins the day doors open and you start promoting your offer. No, if this is when your launch is starting, you have left it way too late. Your launch begins at least four weeks before you start promoting your offer. ─ 90 days, ideally 60 to 90 days. If it's the first time you are launching this offer to your audience.
And this is where you're starting to share that free content. That's moving somebody closer to buying from you. And you're not necessarily talking about your course. You're not talking about the program. You're not telling people something exciting is coming, but you're sharing content that is nurturing them so that when you do open doors and you do tell them about your offer and you do invite them to pay for it and join, they are already at the point where they are ready to buy. ─
Alright, another big misconception about launching is that launching has to be this huge exhausting push that burns you out. You don't need to do all of the things in your launch. You don't need to have all of the bells and whistles in your first couple of launches. Even in like your third, fourth, fifth launch, you get to pick and choose what bits you want to add and what you want to leave out.
And launching can feel really easy if you want it to be. If you allow it to be easy, it will be easy. The alternative To live launching is always selling your offer, which when you think about launching as like the stressful thing that you have to do, then, yeah, obviously you're like, Oh, it's easier to just put it out there, but you still need to be selling your offer even if you're not launching.
And honestly, for me personally, I think constantly selling is actually more exhausting than just a limited time push. And then we can chill.

And lastly, the last misconception, before I get into the reasons why live launching is so effective, the last misconception is that you can only live launch an offer that has a doors open and a doors closed. So it's only when it's cohort-based and you're running it these certain dates and you can't sign up outside of those dates. ─ You can still live launch an offer that is always available for somebody to join. But you just can't use the deadline of doors are closed. You can't join anymore. You have to use a different deadline, something like a limited-time bonus, or I'm running it as a live round this time, and you can join and get live calls, or this is the early bird price. And then the price is going up. Those can be used as deadlines in a launch as well. It doesn't just always have to be doors are closed and You can't sign up anymore.

So let's talk a little bit about why live launching works. Why is it such an effective way to sell your offers?

 

It has a deadline.

It has a real deadline. It's not a fake last chance to sign up and then you go and look and the price is still the same tomorrow and you can still sign up, right? It's a real deadline and the deadline has two big. roles. Firstly, it forces you to get it done, which is super important. If you are, if it's the first time you are launching this particular offer.
A deadline to create it and get it done is great because otherwise it will stretch out forever. Our tasks fill the space that we give them the time that we give them. The second big role of a deadline in your launch is it gives your audience a date to decide whether they are in or out. Our tendency as humans is to delay anything that Feels a little bit uncomfortable, such as spending money or making a big change and signing up for your course or your program.
It's both of those things. If I said to you, you can go to the dentist for a checkup tomorrow, or you can go to the dentist for a checkup next week, you would probably say next week. And then when next week rolls around, if I said to you, well, you can go right now or you can go next week, you'd probably say, well, I don't really have the time right now and I don't like, I don't want to go to the dentist.
So I'll go next week, unless you enjoy going, of course, which. I don't, it's a little bit uncomfortable, right? Because it's painful. It's a little reminder that we need to be more diligent with flossing our teeth and brushing and everything. It's a reminder that we need to change our behaviour. We don't like changing our behaviors as humans.
We like to do things the way that we have always done them. And when you are selling a course or a program or a membership, it is requiring somebody to make a change, to do something differently, to get the result. For example, launch magic. My 12 week course on launching or making more sales of your digital offers through launching that requires someone to stop procrastinating their next launch.
It requires them to try something different, to show up differently, to do the work, to show up online for their audience. ─ That's a huge shift for a lot of people. So they're going to put it off. ── Having a deadline means that your audience can't keep kicking the can down the road. They can't keep delaying this change.
They can't keep delaying spending money. Are they in or are they out? So see how it's about giving them a deadline to make a decision. It's not about pressuring somebody who's not a good fit to buy.

 

It can give you meaningful data on conversions at each step of the launch process.

When you are running a live launch, all of your energy is focused on selling one offer. You are sharing free content to nurture your audience for that offer. You are promoting your free lead magnet for that offer to grow your list with the right people for that offer. You are possibly running a free event like a webinar or a challenge.
You are sharing sales focused content to convert your audience into that offer. And these components all form what we would typically call a funnel, even when it's not a live launch, right? If it's not a live launch, you still have all of these components. They are just in a different format. They're not live.
But because in a live launch, your energy is laser focused, you are bringing a huge chunk of your audience through this journey with you in real time. And because you have a huge chunk of your audience going through it, you can start to look at the numbers. The data becomes a lot more meaningful when you have A chunk of your audience going through, then if you only had a really slow, small trickle going through at a time, for example, if you have three people who downloaded your launch lead magnet and one of them buys your offer, that's a conversion rate of 33%.
Is that going to be reflective of how your conversion rate will scale when you have a hundred people downloading your launch lead magnet? Probably not. ─ But if you have a hundred people who download your launch lead magnet and 10 of them buy your offer, that's a 10 percent conversion rate. Because it's a larger sample size, it's probably going to be a closer estimate of the true conversion rate.
So we can start to use those numbers, that data to guide our decisions for future launches, where we can improve, what to change, what to double down on. ─ And we can use that with a bit more confidence than if we've only got smaller numbers going through.

 

Your non-buyer survey gives you really meaningful insights and intel.

You can use to improve your launches and improve your business going forward.
Again, because your energy is so laser focused and your audience is coming through that journey with you in real time. After you close doors on your launch, you have a unique opportunity to survey the people who showed interest but didn't buy. And this survey is going to tell you so much more than you will ever learn from the people who did buy.
Your non buyer survey is going to tell you what stopped people from buying, what might make them buy in the future, what knowledge gaps you didn't address well enough in your free content in that magician's gap. What misconceptions they had about the offer. So for example, somebody might think, well, I thought that this was going to be too advanced for me.
And when you read that non buyer survey and you see, well, actually this person, this person was the perfect fit for this offer. I just obviously didn't communicate it well enough that it would have been a good fit for them. ─ And it can feel scary sending out a non buyer survey. I know, because it can feel like you are asking them, why didn't you think my offer was good enough?
Why didn't you like it? But it's actually not, it's really just asking them, why didn't you think this was the right fit to help you achieve this thing that you want to achieve?

 

Showing up live allows you to address any questions and hesitations your audience has about your offer.

As they arise, the whole cart open period is really focused on helping your audience decide is this offer right for me? ─── And they will have questions. They will have hesitations. They will have reasons why they don't think it's going to work for them. They're going to have fears about whether it will work for them.
They're going to have questions. Is this going to work for me in this particular situation? ─ And a lot of the time they might Assume the answer rather than ask you because they think you're too busy. They think it's a silly question. They think that maybe they're just afraid to ask you the question, but when you are there with them live on a webinar or wherever, it can break down some of these barriers.
They might see other people asking questions and they feel more comfortable to ask their own. They will see that you have time allocated to answer their questions. They can get their silly questions answered because somebody else asked the question. And yes, we can and we should preempt some of those big hesitations.
I don't have enough time. I don't have enough money. Those are pretty common hesitations, but you can never guess what all of them are going to be. There pretty much will always be some surprises, even in Launch Magic, which we've launched seven times now, I think each time I launch it, there's still a brand new objection that I'd never had.
In a previous launch and each time we launch, we do find out what the objections are. We add them. The next time we launch, we update the sales page, cart open emails, free content, webinar, making sure that we're addressing all of those hesitations ahead of time, ─ but still having that avenue for somebody to ask their questions is really helpful.

 

It is a limited time push rather than always having to sell the offer.

And particularly, if you have a lot of different offers to sell, it can create a lot more focus in structure around what you are talking about and when it can create a lot of structure in your year. So for example, Launch Magic, we launch it twice a year and I teach it for 12 weeks twice a year.
And I know at the start of the year, I know exactly when we're going to do it. And then in between those launches and teaching, I can take time off. I can have a bit more of a chilled month. I can use it to get ahead or content. I can travel, whatever I want to do in between those launches. Whereas if I was selling it all the time, I would have to be doing calls.
So I'm going to be doing this weekly, every, like for the whole year, essentially, rather than just for 12 weeks at a time. So that way I can keep my energy up for the calls. I have a really close cohort. They go through it together for the 12 weeks. You are all in it together. You're launching together. The community is there in between the rounds.
We archive the community, then we unarchive it for the next round. And we have the live calls again. So it creates a lot of structure in my year and I don't always have to sell it. That's the other big thing is I'm not constantly trying to sell it. I'm doing two limited time pushes for it a year and that's it.
Whereas when your offer is on Evergreen, you still have to sell it. You still constantly have to get people into the Evergreen sales process for the offer. It's not just gonna fill itself and you know, Evergreen is a whole nother kettle of fish. I'll do another episode on it in the future as well. But even if you are planning to not Continually live launch your offers.
I always recommend live launching a few times first, because it's going to give you that data, those insights that you can use to create an evergreen funnel that actually converts, uh, and you can get the real time feedback, the real time hesitations, the questions so that you can preempt that. Before you go and set up this entire funnel.
Otherwise, if you go straight to evergreen, it could be more than six months before you get the same amount of data and insights, and then you have to go back and rebuild the entire funnel because you forgot to address one of the big hesitations in your webinar, for example. Like I know live launching gets this bad rap as a really hype y, stressful, high pressure thing, but it can be fun, it can be effective, and it can generate a really sweet cash injection for your offers each day.

 

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