Lessons from our most successful launch yet

"Launching" is something that you become very familiar with when you join the online business world. It's the concept of making your products or services available with lots of additional bonuses for a limited period of time. To have a "successful" launch you have to bring in lots of new clients and new revenue.

In this post, I share my top three lessons and reveal the numbers behind them.

The first time I launched I didn't really know what I was doing or how to make it a success, but over the years I've done a number of launches. Last January we had our biggest revenue launch to date but to me, the big success came in the form of some really inspiring entrepreneurs that we got to work with and the fact that I pulled the whole thing off, including the delivery of the course the following month, at 8 months pregnant.

At the time of writing, we are in the middle of another launch. This one is pretty different to any that I've done before and I thought it could be helpful to share what I've learnt in case you want to try those things too. 

If you're thinking of launching and you haven't checked off all of the legal elements yet we have a super duper helpful checklist for you. You can check off the legal elements you need in place for each stage of your launch using our Legals for Launching Checklist - Grab a copy here. 

1. The Pre-Launch Is The Most Important 

The part before you launch determines the success of your launch. You cannot build out a whole membership without creating a community of people who want it and expect to be able to sell it on the day you launch it. Believe me, back in 2016 I tried to do just that!!

You've got to focus on your community and network and create an offer that they really want. Something that they are willing to invest their money into. Ask them what they want and create that. 

Prior to selling, ideally you'd also be in a position to give lots of value to your community. This can be through social media or via your email list. I email my community every Friday and I have done so for the past 5 years or so. I'm sure that you can probably only email your list when you want to sell something but that doesn't sit right with me and it's a huge part of us building our community that we email regularly. 

Plus, we've often pre-launched our course to those on our mailing list first and made thousands of pounds from one email because we're giving exclusive access to discounts and bonuses. 

Being prepared in the pre-launch phase is also a huge win. When I first started launching I was creating email copy and promotional posts as the launch progressed which was exhausting but honestly, I didn't really know what I needed until I was in it. 

Since then we've honed and refined our marketing throughout the launch and I can draft all of the email copy in advance for the team to tag and schedule. We don't actually use any ads so we don't have to factor the timing of when we need to turn those on to grow our list but it's definitely something that we will look to do in the future. So far, we've grown the business entirely organically. 

2. Keeping Going Right Until The End

There are times when I've thought the launch was going to be a complete flop. There have been times when I have wondered whether I should really send another email and I've cringed a little as I hit 'send', only to get a couple more sales directly from those emails. 

It's always worth keeping going. Not in a spammy way. We don't use targeted DMs or lead lists or anything scientific like that. Instead, I keep showing up. I'm visible in as many places as possible, directing people to our mailing list and then emailing from there. 

We're getting better at using tags in our email marketing too. When you do this you can direct your emails only to the people who have expressed an interest in what you're offering, e.g. clicked on a link, that way you know that there's a good chance that they actually want a follow-up email, with a nudge and reasons why they should buy.

3. Have a Plan B Offer

This is something we didn't do until recently and it's hard to do if you're new in business or you don't have an appropriate offer suite. You have to close off the promotion on the date you say you will, that's actually a legal requirement, despite many people "letting people in through the back door". However, you can have a plan B offer that you present to people who were interested but who didn't buy, this is known as a downsell.

It may be that people don't want an all singing all dancing course, like Get Legit. But they do want ongoing legal support and guidance, so we shared the membership, which gives weekly access to live Q&As. It was the downsell that tipped us over a huge milestone in our last launch. It's great for people to consider if the initial offer wasn't a good fit. 

The Numbers

The numbers for this launch were really interesting. As I was heading off on maternity leave I had hoped for a big cash injection with the launch. What we actually had was a lot of people paying on payment plans, which was perfect because we then had some clear revenue for the following five months which was really reassuring.

Firstly, the expenses:

We tinkered with ads a tiny bit, around £200 worth to get people towards our quiz opt-in just before we set off on the Bootcamp/3 day challenge. I don't think that really took us anywhere.

We had a tiny bit of additional VA time in the run-up but that wasn't huge. Everything else was done within the team within our usual budget. (Our team is we have a graphic designer who creates the visuals and an OBM who helps run everything now that we have our launch plan and system refined).

Our starting numbers:

It's possibly helpful to know that my list at that time was around 1,000 and we have a community of less than 5,000 on Instagram and less than 1,000 on Facebook.  

We had 151 people sign-up to the challenge and 127 of those made it into the challenge group. 

Instead of leading the challenge live, I decided to pre-record the daily videos this time. This was a technique I'd learnt from Jeff Walker and PLF. I've never done that before and there was a lot that I learned from that, which I'll share another time if you're interested. Going into a launch pregnant was making me a little nervous so I felt reassured having those videos recorded, scheduled and ready for people to view first thing in a morning.

We had 14 fantastic entrepreneurs join Get Legit The Course and every single one of them went for the VIP option, which I found really interesting. 

Two of the people that joined did so when we introduced a 10 part payment plan, which again meant more secured revenue for the year. 

9 people took advantage of the downsell offer and joined the membership. Not directly linked to the launch stats but still very relevant, 6 of the 14 people who joined the course then joined the membership.

I think that the biggest takeaway for this for me was that you can have a £20k+ launch with relatively small numbers. I think I need to find an ads expert next so that we can get in front of more people!

In writing this blog, I have realised that there is SO much to launching and I could add a lot more to this list, I'll leave that to you though, what's the one thing that you think has the biggest impact when you're launching, pop it in the comments under this blog post (and feel free to leave a link to your business so that others can easily find you.

Also, I should probably add the link again for you here. If you're launching and need to check you've done the legal stuff, grab our Legals for Launching Checklist here.