[social_warfare]

SHOW NOTES

Almost every multi-million dollar live launch follows the exact same strategy.

Why?

Because it works, every single time.

Live launching isn’t something you can do last minute.

If you really want to maximize your results, you have to implement a robust pre-launch strategy too.

Luckily, I’ve been behind the scenes of countless of these multi-million dollar live launches and I’ve even implemented the strategy numerous times for my own live launches

In today’s episode, I’m sharing that exact process of maximizing a live launch with a pre-launch with you so that you can implement this strategy and start crushing your launches too.

Tune in for an inside scoop into how the biggest names in the game are knocking their launches out of the park.

If you have an upcoming launch and need support creating a killer strategy, head to helpmystrategy.com to see if you qualify to work with Team Hirsh.

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Emily Hirsh:

Hello everybody. I hope you’re all having a fabulous week, productive week. I’m feeling in the zone. I have been busy, but also traveling. So I’m busy, but I’m not working full time. I don’t really work 40 hours a week. I work a very focused like 30 hours a week. I just can’t right now, like with my kids and if I want any form of self care, I have to replace it with work hours, which I have really found that the more constraints you put on your time, the more efficient you are. That’s a trick I learned a long time ago. Like if you actually schedule in workouts and appointments and things and places you have to be, and you have this condensed amount of time that you actually have to get work done, you’re more productive. So that’s one of my tricks.

And I think kids have changed that for me, but I’ve been feeling really busy. But also manageable because I’m really prioritizing like what is a yes and what is an absolute no, and actually been saying no to some opportunities that maybe some people would be like, oh those are amazing. But they just aren’t bidding and they feel like too much and I don’t feel all in with them. Or they just start stretching me too thin, or they’re not something I’m excited about and I say no to. So it’s something I’ve learned a lot over the last year and I’ve gotten really good at it. So anyways, okay.

I’m excited about today’s episode because I have been very deep behind the scenes. You guys don’t know a lot about what’s been going on, but we are launching soon. And so I’ve been so, so deep, like with my marketing team and all the things launch. And we did an epic launch last year for Ignite course and another one’s coming. And this one is already like 10 times better just because all of our marketing processes and team members and everything is just, up-leveled a lot over the last six months. And so I’m so excited to go into launch. I love the energy of launching. It’s a lot of work for sure. A lot of work, but it’s also so much fun. It’s kind of like a game. I love it. 

So today what I want to talk about is maximizing your live launch with a pre-launch. Here’s why I want to talk about it. One, because it’s something we’re doing and so I always tell you guys. You know what we’re doing behind the scenes with our marketing and I always like to point out to you guys like engage in my content, opt-in to our stuff of course, sign up for our valuable content, but also pay attention to my strategies. Pay attention to what I’m doing as I release these things. So if you haven’t caught on, for the last two months we have been well, all of August, all of September, so almost two months. We have been in what I would call pre-launch mode. So I’ve been very strategic with the podcast content that we put out and we also have had five different opt-ins that we’ve released for you guys. If you haven’t captured any of those, you can go back and find them, but we have all different ones. 

We have a How Do I Know If I’m Ready For Ads Checklist, we have a whole Social Media Toolkit, our Nurture Sequence opt-in is killer it our calendar, nurture sequence checklists and swipe file, really good. We have an Ideal Client Avatar, one, so, so good. And they were all centered around The Hirsh Process, and so I would do strategic content around that and then we had content upgrades and opt-ins surrounding that. We ran ads directly to those opt-ins, and some did better than others. And so we put the budget into the ones that were doing really well and we had a specific lead goal of where I want to get the list before we go into launch mode. So I’ve been doing this for two, almost two months before we go into launch mode.

Here’s where a lot of people miss the mark. Now you can have a launch and prepare it and like get ready in two or three weeks and launch something, but so many people hinder their success by last minute launching. Now at the same time of me going through this, we have one of our big name clients who recently launched and did a killer job, like truly they’re our client and I’m still envious about how good of a job they did. And I’m like, I know all the behind the scenes and the strategies and we supported with it. And I still have this launch envy because she totally knocked it out of the park in so many ways, not even related to our team. Some of them, like our team did all the ads, but just they are a whole social media and content team and everything like, oh my God, she crushed it.

And when I look at what they did, they did the same thing. They did a two month pre-launch and you can see it happening publicly, everything that happened. And we’ve worked with a lot of big clients in their launches, a lot of big name launches that I’ve been behind the scenes of and watched play out, every single one of them does this. I want you guys to really let that sink in. If I’m telling you every single multimillion dollar launch I’ve been behind the scenes does this pre-launch strategy, it’s something you should be doing because it works. 

So here’s the concept behind it. What you don’t want to do is launch your product, launch your course, and just launch and hope it works, launch it out there to cold traffic, not have a lot of lead up to the launch where you have content and value and an experience and you’re building relationships and you’re building trust. It will not convert as well. What a pre-launch does is it captures leads and builds an audience of new people to your brand using valuable content, whether that’s opt-ins, videos, podcasts, or all of the above. And it really brings in the audience, ideally new audiences, but also re-engage your warm audience, in a way that you’re producing valuable content. You’re producing value and you’re putting it out there, and you are growing that following and growing that email list. 

And the reason it needs to be, you know, a good amount of time is because you want to really grow it like big, a lot of people, but also a level of trust so that when you go to lunch and it’s time to actually have your launch experience, one, you have way more leads that you can market it to that already have familiarity with your brand. Two, you have way more followers and people who are consuming your content and can’t wait for the next thing that you put out. And then three, they’re way more qualified when it comes time to actually pitch the offer so they’re way more likely to convert. That is the goal with the pre-launch. 

Now, the important piece of it is that all of the content and the pre-launch seeds your main offer so that it’s attracting the person who you want to buy your big offer in your launch, through all the pre-launch content. And it’s building that trust, building that relationship. So like I said, a pre-launch should come at people in many different ways. It should be through, you know, video, podcast emails, opt-ins. So you should be growing your list. You should be growing whatever form of brand awareness and visibility you do. So if you do regular videos, then it’s that. If you do regular blogs, it’s that. If you do a podcast, it’s that. Whatever form of content you consistently put out, be strategic over the months leading up to a launch and making sure that you are building your authority around the problem you solve and the type of person you want to attract to your offer and you’re really continually seeding what you offer through the content of a positioning you as an expert in whatever that is that you solve. 

So making sure you’re strategic that way, making your sure that you’re strategic and attracting the right person. And then that you’re consistent and you create this level of trust in this large audience so that when it comes time to start the webinar ads, or the video series ads, or the challenge ads, or whatever the big launch is, you have a ton of people to market it to that’ll have trust with your brand and they already believe, they cannot wait for you to bring your offer. And that’s the biggest thing I see behind all of these large influencers who do this as I watch. And by the time it comes time to open their cart, people cannot wait. People are like two more days until this is open and I can buy this product or this service, like I cannot wait. And that’s what you want leading up to a launch. 

And I’m just going to be so honest here, there are so many smaller entrepreneurs who haven’t been doing it as long, or haven’t had a very big launch before, that for some reason think they can outsmart this and think they don’t have to do it and they can throw together a last minute launch. And we have a lot of conversations with clients where we’re like, can we just push this back a couple of weeks, at least so we can do this pre-launch stuff and sometimes they’re very hesitant to agree. And I think don’t feel bad if you do this cause I do this too, where we get it in our minds where we’re like, we’re launching on the 15th, I don’t care what happens. We are launching on the 15th. Like I will do this and I will, I don’t care if this happens, or this team member can’t get this done, like we’re going to create this stress, this overwhelm. And we are launching on the 15th come, whatever, right? It’s like, why? Why not push it a week or two weeks if it meant a better launch and letting go of kind of that ego piece of like holding on to, I have to launch on this date cause I committed to it. 

And I know like for me, it’s hard to do that too, but there have been many times where I’ve been like, okay, we’ll push it back a week and it feels like this weight’s lifted off me. And it’s like, okay, why was that so hard cecause now I can do everything better. I have an extra week to get my webinar done, my team has an extra week to write the emails, or whatever it is, and we can create something better. And so if you’re launching something, I really encourage you to treat it as like a quarterly goal and at least, you know, if you’re launching something that you give yourself a one to two months in advance notice so that you have the time to not only build up the pre-launch, but also create all the assets. 

We put so much into my launch in the last month and we still have a month ago. At least we put into creating the content and thinking through the video series, and the topics, and the webinars, and all of that in the sales page. And that takes time to do well. And so I encourage you that if you’re going to put money into a launch and you’re going to really do it, go all in and plan ahead. Set yourself and your team and whoever’s supporting you up for success so that it’s not like a halfway done thing that you just rushed because you felt like you had to meet a deadline.

And what I’m saying is from behind the scenes that I really want you guys to grasp every single multimillion dollar launch I’ve been behind the scenes of, dozens does this. And so you’re not above that to outsmart that. That’s even more reason for you to do it because these people have large, massive followings that they can already count on and they’re still doing this. Why? Because it works every time. It works and it creates a launch where you hit your goals, you succeed your goals. It’s fun, people are super engaged and if you watch anybody do it, you’ll see that they do this pre-launch. 

And so I encourage you that if you’re going to do a large live launch, consider at least the month before. What’s the content that you’re going to kind of seed this launch with? How are you going to build your list? How are you going to build your podcast subscribers and listeners with the right listeners and the people who are actually consuming your content that are your buyers? And with that, you should have goals. So if you know your sales goal for your launch, we have several case studies around this too, where when we did a launch they came in and it was like, okay my goal is to sell X amount of courses in my live launch. Okay. Where do we need to get your email list before you live launch? And we’d spend a month or two months getting their email list up to that point, and then they would launch and hit their goals. And so for us, I know how many people I want signed up to my video series. I know how many people, how big I need my list to be, to most likely hit that number. Sometimes I’m guessing. And I know that based on that, that will achieve my sales goals. 

So when you’re in a pre-launch phase, maybe you set your goal I want to add a thousand leads to my email list. Ours was 3000. That was my goal to add 3000 new email leads through our pre-launch opt-ins, and we will hit that goal. And our goal was a $3 cost per lead. We will also hit that goal and it was a lot of work creating the content, but now I have 3000 new leads on my list going into the launch. And so everybody’s is going to be a little bit different. It should be based on your sales goal, but if you say, okay, 1% of my entire list is going to convert in my launch. Okay. Where do you need your list to be? How many more leads do you need? How much is that going to cost you? And how quickly are you going to do it? 

And then also your engagement content is really important because what I sometimes see people do is they put so much effort into a launch that before and after the launch, they kind of go silent. They stopped doing consistent podcast episodes, they don’t post as regularly on social media, they’re not engaging with their audience. And then all of a sudden they launch. That’s not okay, like it’s not going to work. You have to engage with your audience with valuable content so that it’s like a three to one ratio value, value, value, okay. Then I’m selling value, value, value watch, right? So you need to have that ratio. And if you’re just launching and then going silent and then launching again, you’re going to totally burn your audience out and they’re going to stop engaging with you. So when it comes time to launch, they’re not going to be an engaged audience. And so that content, whether it’s podcast, video, blogs, regular emails to your list, you’ve got to keep that up in between launches. 

So if you’re planning a live launch or you do live launches, take all of this into consideration because I promise you, it will make a massive difference in your results. And like I said,  go back and listen to the last couple of months of podcast episodes and you’ll see exactly what I’m doing and you’ll watch me go into this launch and do the same thing. Right? And I think I have a pretty unique viewpoint because I’ve seen so many multimillion dollar launches behind the scenes and I can take all those strategies and implement them for other entrepreneurs. And sometimes we’re coming up with the strategies, but one thing that we do not budge on is we will not last minute launch a client.

So this has happened actually I think two times in the last 30 days, our team has said nope, we’re not launching. You’re going to lose money or waste your money. You might make some, but you’re going to waste your money. We’re better off pushing it out to three weeks. You do this, we’re going to do this. And this is going to be successful for everyone. To be honest with you, this applies so much in business because a lot of times we have a project for our team and we’re so set on a deadline that it makes people rush through it and hit that deadline, which I am all for deadlines. Like we get stuff done. That Team Hirsh is pretty incredible because we’re super focused, but if there is opportunity for me to do something better and spend an extra week on it, or give my team that extra time, I will absolutely do it all day, all night, every single time to create the better quality end result or end product.

So some stuff to think on. If you are planning on doing a live launch, or you do regular live launches, if you want support with your live launches, if you’re even considering live launching in 2021, you should start considering who’s doing your ads. Who’s creating your strategy. Who’s driving that. We crush live launches. They are so fun. Our team has, oh my gosh, so many resources from launch campaign planners, to documents, to all the audiences to target, and how to set up the ads. If that’s what you want behind the scenes in your business, go to helpmystrategy.com and see if you qualify to work with Team Hirsh. Thanks so much guys. I’ll see you next week.