Ep #377 – Should You Be Live Launching?

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You are listening to the, not for lazy marketers podcast, episode number 377.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast and happy week.

Happy Spring Break for those of you guys who have kids on Spring Break, it’s weird. My kids don’t have Spring Break until like April. So we’re going to Sedona in April and it’s actually not even their Spring Break. I do not like to travel when everybody is, else else is on Spring Break. Like I refuse. So I just take my kids outta school and we do something else at a different time. And I have two of my three kids. Plus my husband have birthdays in April. So it’s literally the craziest month. Like maybe Christmas is the next craziest month because my two kids insist on having separate birthday parties. Now they’re turning five and seven. And so last year was the first year there where they were like, no, we’re not sharing birthday parties. So we basically have to have two birthday parties, like spread out at one week.

Otherwise our friends probably wouldn’t come if it was like one day apart. And it’s just crazy, like the presents and just preparing for it. And it’s like my husband’s birthday then my two kids’ birthdays are two days apart. Um, so it, within that to add to the crazy, we decided we’re gonna go to Sedona and probably the grand canyon with our kids. So I’m very excited for that. I’m doing a lot of traveling. You guys are gonna see and notice this year. Um, I planned it out for the whole year ahead of time because I love to travel. It is like I would rather spend all my money on and traveling and just making memories than ever having things like the best gift you could ever get me is like, take me on a surprise trip or take me to do something. Um, because that’s what I always want.

So I have lots of trips, like a couple planned with just my husband and I, and then family trips. And then I took my older kids on a surprise trip. I’m gonna do some solo trips and do some hiking. And so I’m excited. I’m excited for this year, going into Q2 already insane, but it’s gonna be a good year with lots of memories and lots of just like living because life’s short and you’ve gotta do that. And you’ve gotta prioritize that. Or all of a sudden a year goes by and you’re like, what did we even do this year? And what you know did, and we just go about our day and Groundhog’s day, you know, it can feel like that with kids. I feel like too, cuz you get in that routine, which is good, but break the routine too. So today’s podcast episode.

I wanna talk about live launching. And this is a question that I get asked, um, frequently, I see it asked in our market like a pro program and people wondering like, should I live launch or should I create what’s called an evergreen funnel. If you don’t know what that means, it just means it runs every day. So like a quick differentiation between a live launch and an evergreen funnel, just for context, as I talk is a live launch is going to be based off of dates. And so you’re gonna have a live webinar on a specific date or you’re gonna run a challenge and it’s on a specific date or a video series where the videos drop on specific dates. And so everybody who signs up is participating in it together. And every green funnel is where you launch it. It’s just ongoing. Like people can always sign up for the webinar.

They can always download the lead magnet. Like it could go forever, as long as it works, it’s not dependent on dates. And so I see a lot of people question which one should I do? Which one is better. And also on that note, I see a lot of people who think that they should live launch, cuz they’ve heard that from a coach or somebody who does live launches and they’ve watched them live launch. And so they kind of feel like that’s the better thing to do. And so I wanna talk about it because they both work. And at the end I’m gonna kind of walk through like what’s the best case scenario marketing strategy, which does consist of both of these strategies being integrated in your business together. But I think a lot of people live launch too soon. They live launch and then they set themselves up for a lot of work, a lot of time that goes into a live launch and expectations that are impossible based on where they’re at in their business, but they don’t know any better cuz they haven’t done it before.

And, and then they don’t make any money and they don’t make any sales or hardly any sales worth for the effort. And they’re disappointed. And so I wanna talk about that. So live launching in and of itself requires a lot more resources because a live launch is date dependent and you have, you know, a live webinar happening on this specific date. You have to in a small window of time, get enough registrants to that live webinar, to make sure that then you can get enough sales to make it worth it. Because when you live launch like the amount of resources that go into, let’s say the webinar funnel, you got to write the copy for the pages, the opt-in page, the thank you page. You’ve gotta build it. You’ve gotta design it. You’ve gotta integrate that page with your email CRM software. You’ve gotta write all the webinar emails and typically there’s invite emails to your webinar.

And then there’s emails that go out in between when somebody signs up for your webinar and the webinar have happens and then there’s reminder emails and then there’s, we’re live right now, emails. And then there’s offer emails that follow the webinar that are actually selling your offer to the people who signed up. So that’s a lot of work in and of itself. Not to mention, you have to do the webinar, presentation, the slides and be ready to present. And that’s not bad. It’s not bad that it’s a lot of work, but you just need to realize the amount of resources that go into a live launch. And then it’s a pretty short window of opportunity now. Yes, you could hypothetically do a live launch, take that at webinar and turn it evergreen. But in my experience it doesn’t always work like that. Simply you, you have to, I don’t recommend like doing a live webinar and then taking that exact recording where you are actually live and then putting that into your evergreen webinar.

I personally don’t like that because it just doesn’t feel like good experience for the person who signs up for the evergreen webinar because you’re like answering questions. Like you’re pretending to be live and you’re not really live. So in the past, whenever I’ve done that when I do a live webinar and if the presentation and the content does really well, I’ll usually update whatever I want from it. And then I’ll rerecord it for the evergreen webinar. So it’s not as simple as like I can just do one live launch and then I can take all those assets and just turn it evergreen. You can, but it’s like, there’s gonna be some refinement that happens going into the evergreen funnel. So for a live launch, there’s a lot that goes into it. And then there’s a short window of opportunity. So if you don’t currently have a warm audience, if you don’t have an email list and a following of significant size, like over a thousand, ideally even more than that, I wouldn’t recommend that you do a live launch because the reason why for the most part live launches are successful.

Like when you watch Amy Porterfield Marie for Leo Russell Brunson, all these people do live launches. It’s their warm audience that is making it successful. Like, yes, it’s an opportunity for new leads to sign up for that webinar or whatever the experiences you’re creating in your live launch. Yes, absolutely. However, most of the time, and I’ve seen behind the scenes of hundreds of live launches and I have done many myself. Most of the time, the actual successful sales in a live launch are coming from significant, you know, significant proportion of those are coming from more audience. So if you don’t have that, I wouldn’t go the route of a live launch. And so I’m gonna dig in to this deeper, but that’s kind of like a summary of what I’m gonna tell you. And then again, I’m gonna talk about kind of like the best case scenario.

So here’s the pros of a live launch. If you’re considering this, usually in a live launch, you do get a higher sales conversion. So because there’s a lot more like energy and excitement around it and everybody’s going through the same thing, same time and you can generally create some more urgency and scarcity with bonuses or discounts that are relevant to everybody. Like usually you can get a higher sales conversion with your leads and you can also create this like surge of sales. Like I can tell you a hundred percent. So like if I just look at this year for us January, I did a live webinar. We had an insanely successful sales month. We had our highest month in business in January. And a huge part of it was because of our market, like a pro launch. I did a live webinar and we got all those sales pretty much 85% of those sales were warm traffic though, were people who were already on my list had been there for three to six months and just hadn’t purchased yet.

Okay. Then February, I didn’t do a live launch. I just ran lead generation. And so we had an average sales month. We didn’t get as many new sales. We, it is still a good month in business, but we didn’t get as many new sales March. I did a challenge and then a and a live webinar. I just did that. And we have already like surpassed our sales from February. So 100%, when you do a live launch, you’re going to get a surge of sales, but you can’t live launch every month. Like I have have a marketing team and we still can’t do it. And you know what? I will admit transparently. I think we live launch too much because what I wanna work on is our evergreen side of things to create consistency in our applications. Cuz I often feel we get into a place where we need to live launch, cuz we wanna up the, the volume of application and sales and that’s the best way for us to do it.

But it’s a lot of work. Like it’s a lot of work for my team. It’s a lot of resources. It’s a lot of planning. It’s a lot of work for me. It’s expensive on the Facebook outside of things cuz I have to generate all the registrations. And so I think we actually live launched too much. And my goal this year is to do it less and create the same volume of sales because you need to have time to prepare for a live launch, to fully build a launch out and to be able to do it well. And there’s no way you can do that by live launching every month. Like I think every three months is kind of like the most you should do. That’s my opinion. And also another pro with live launch is, is it’s a good opportunity to get a higher volume of people on your webinar or signed up for a challenge, which just gives you a quicker feedback loop around the conversion.

So for example, when you do a live launch, let’s say it’s a webinar. You have one webinar that you need to get. Every, everybody signed up for happening that day. So that means everybody is gonna be on that webinar who attends that webinar. And so you may have a hundred people or 200 people on that webinar whenever, you know, obviously it depends on registrants, but that’s gonna give you a quicker indication of the actual sales conversion of your presentation. Then evergreen will be, cuz let’s say you launch an evergreen funnel and you get, you know, five, 10 people signing up a day. It’s just gonna be slower for you to realize like what is that conversion that’s? So that’s a pro of it is you can kind of in increase the, the speed at what you get feedback on your actual webinar presentation. Cuz you’ve got a higher volume of people, all going to one thing, all attending one experience and that’s a positive, but that’s only gonna happen if you can get the higher volume of registrants, which really only happens.

If you have a warm audience to lean on now the cons of a live launch, if you don’t have the budget to get the volume, it’s a waste. Like I would not do it. And I think that the, the minimum, like if you wanna do a live launch, right, and you wanna really have a good experience, I would say the minimum budget you should spend is $5,000 on ju us that live launch ad spend. That means you’re spending it in about seven days of time, which we’re gonna talk about that in a second. And you should have a warm audience of at least a thousand people. Like those are the two qualifications. If you don’t have those things, focus on an evergreen funnel, focus on something you can launch and you can refine it every day and you don’t have, have to operate with that level of speed because if you don’t have the budget and this is where people get really disappointed is I watch people who create all of this work.

Like they build the live launch funnel, they plan it out, all the details, all the emails, all the components, they create the presentation, they put all this time into it. And often times it’s all them doing it. They don’t have a team. And then they have these big expectations because it’s like, well, I’m doing a live launch and I saw somebody else do it. Or my coach said, I should do that. And then they spend, you know, 500, a thousand dollars on ads and then they get, you know, a hundred people signed up and that’s, if you have a good sales conversions, might get one sale out of that. You know, that’s not going to make you feel good about the energy and the effort and the resources you put into this, if that’s the result. So if you don’t have the budget to get volume in a short period of time, it will be a waste of your resources.

The other piece with a live launch that I put under con it’s not necessarily a con, you just have to be aware of it. And this is something I have to specifically train my team on. Like when we train ads managers, they’re separate training for live launches because it is a different experience. When you do a live launch and you have something happening on a specific date, you have a very short window of time to get, which means your ad optimization and the speed at which you make changes has to be way faster than in an evergreen funnel. So normally my recommendation is you start at seven days before your live webinar. And so you wanna get registrations the week before. And so that means you have to spend all of your ad budget within seven days. So a lot of times, like my average budget is like 10 to 15,000 for my own live launches that has to be spent in seven days time and obviously spent responsibly and the most strategic way.

And if you like, and I see this all the time with people in the past, when they’ve come to us and we look at like past live launches in their ad account, if you go into it in like day one, you spend a half of the budget, you should have, you’re already behind. Like now you only have six days and then you do that again. And it’s like, you took two, three days to make significant changes or to scale up your budget. Now it’s almost gonna be impossible for you to hit your registration goal. So with a live launch, you have to know what’s your total budget. And then what does that mean for your daily budget? And then you have to spend that every day and try to get the lowest cost per lead and might end up paying a little bit higher for that reason because you’re trying to cram budget in a short period of time.

And so oftentimes you’re gonna see live launches might result in a little bit higher cost per lead, but usually the higher sales conversion makes up for that. But you have to be prepared and you have to act fast because you have a very short window of time. And so if you’re running ads and they’re like to totally not working and you need to pivot the messaging, you need to change the title of your webinar. You need to change things like it has to happen that day. And you cannot have delays with that with an evergreen funnel. You can take a few days to change it. It’s not the end of the world. And usually your daily budget is a little bit lower, cuz it’s spread out over a month and you’re able to take that time. But when you live long, every day matters and it’s a lot of work.

It really is. So those are kind of the cons of a live launch. And so if you’re like weighing, should I do a live launch? When should I do it? If I am gonna do it, you need to know like, do you have the bandwidth? Do you have the time bandwidth to do this? You because it’s not a simple thing. Like there’s a lot that goes into the funnel, the emails, the entire experience to do it, right? Two, do you have the investment to be able to make this worth it? So I would say, do you have $5,000 to spend on just a live launch and then three, do you have a warm audience? And if you don’t, I would say go the route of the green funnel. That’s my opinion. And the other piece with live launching that I would add in here, that’s really important is you need to know your numbers.

Like if you are planning, if you’re like, yep, I meet all those qualifications. Or maybe in three months you will. And you want to do a live launch. What is your expectation of sales? Because this is where I see people get really is they have this huge expectation. Like I wanna have a six figure launch my very first time. That’s fine. But what do you have to spend to do that? And how many webinar registrations do you need to get in order to make that happen? And if you are not clear about that going into this, then you’re setting yourself up for discipline. And so before you decide to live launch, you should sit down and figure out if I were to live launch and I’m willing to spend the budget and I have the warm audience and I have the resources to put into this and I wanna do it, then how much sales would you need to make for it to be worth it and not just for it to be profitable, but also worth the energy and the time that you’re gonna put into a live launch, what’s that like minimum sales number.

And then from there, how many webinar registrations would you need to get? If you got, you know, 1%, 2%, 3% sales and version of all your leads. And if you paid, you know, an average cost per lead of $9, what’s your ad spend. And can you spend that? And then if not, do you need to adjust your sales goals? Do you still wanna live launch? Like what’s your decision? So you need to know your numbers going into it so that you have clarified your own expectations out of orange. So you’re not setting yourself up for disappointment. So if you are somebody who is just starting out, you have a new funnel, you don’t have a warm audience. I am gonna generally recommend that you go the route of an evergreen funnel versus a live launch. Now I know I’m kind of like almost like maybe making you guys scared of live launches in this podcast ask, I love live launches because they’re highly successful on the sales side.

Like that’s why people do them. And you’re able to create that level of urgency scarcity, just a different experience because everybody hopefully like hundreds, if not thousands of leads are going through this same experience together, but is not going to work on day one. Like if I would’ve live launched like five years ago, it would’ve been terrible. Now when I live launch, it’s highly successful, but I have an email list of over 20,000 people and I have a, a significant social media following. I have a brand presence of years. And so I have people that are in my sphere of my, my brand and following me who haven’t bought yet. And this might just be the thing that pushes them over. And usually it is. And that’s why they’re so successful. And that’s the same for every single big influencer that you follow out there.

It is the same. So if you’re just starting out, you don’t have a warm audience. I would go the route of an evergreen funnel. So you can start to get data. You can start to see the response to your messaging. You’ll start to build your email list. You’ll start to do all those things. That’s gonna set you up for a live launch. And then in the future, kind of the best case scenario to aim for, with your marketing strategy is to have an evergreen funnel that is always running. That’s always bringing in consistent leads in consistent sales and you get that optimized and you kind of do that first. And then maybe every three to six months, you do some sort of a live launch. You do one live webinar, you do a live challenge, you do something that can be a surge of sales for you.

And if you’ve got the evergreen PO unlock where you’re consistently generating new leads and growing your audience, growing those leads, and then those are leading to some sales, but mostly that you’re growing those leads. Then when you go to live launch, you are going to be able to promote it to all of those leads, who you’ve been nurturing and they’ve been on your list and they just haven’t bought yet. And now you’re setting yourself up for a surge of sales that makes the energy and the resources that goes into a live launch worth it. So that is my opinion. And after seeing hundreds of live launches and like what we would recommend to clients kind of the way I look at live launching, and I think there’s two kind of PE types of people, there’s entrepreneurs who feel like if I live launch, it will be super successful.

As long as I can follow this formula or follow this thing and then go and live launch myself. And then there’s also people who hate live launches, who are like, you never have to do live launches, just have an evergreen funnel. It’s too much work. I really like having both in a business. I think that’s the healthiest way to go about it. And so depending on where you’re at right now, you can choose which one to focus on and then add the other one in, in the future. And I guess I’ll add in, you know, when is a time where if it’s like new, should I live launch it? If you have an audience, like when we rolled out market like a pro, there’s no way I would’ve done that in an evergreen funnel because I wanted the huge, like excitement and the surge of sales around it.

But that comes from having a massive, exciting event. My warm audience though. And so that’s, you know, if you have something where you’ve got a significant warm audience and you’re about to launch a new offer or a new webinar or something sure. Live launch it because you have that foundation. I wanna clarify one more thing too, when you live launch, you’re not only promoting it to the leads that you’re building in the off time. So like when I live launched market like a pro or when we did the challenge, I’m running ads to cold traffic and warm traffic and I’m promoting the event to my list and to my audience on social media, et cetera, I’m still getting new leads, a significant amount of new leads in, but for the most part, I know those leads. Aren’t gonna buy this time. They’re gonna buy at the next webinar I do, or the one after that.

And so I’m, I’m playing the long game at the same time. And so that’s why when you live launch and you have a warm audience, a lot of times the warm audience equals the sales, but it’s also an opportunity to grow your leads, who can convert later on. And that is ultimately like the way marketing works is like, you’re constantly playing the long game. You’re not just preparing for one single live launch or one single evergreen funnel. Like you are playing the long game to create leads that will buy down the line. And as you grow your business, trying to figure out how long does an average person sit on your list before they buy is a really, really powerful thing to know, because then you can plan, okay. My leads that came in this month, they’re going to buy in three months from now on average, cuz I have that number.

So I write everybody. I hope this was helpful. And if you’re doing a live launch soon, maybe this gives you Intel on, is it right for you? Or maybe you’re like, I should do a live launch. I want that surge of sales. I mean, I do live launches frequently for that reason. They’re the most successful months we have. But again, I have a huge warm audience and I have my messaging dialed in and my offer are dialed in and I’m able to spend a significant amount of money to make that successful. So that is a different live launch in evergreen and what you can do to apply it to your strategy. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today, guys, I’ll talk to you on Thursday.

Thanks for listening to the, Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support with your marketing head over to helpmystrategy.com to see how Hirsh marketing can help take your marketing to the next level. No matter where you’re at today, we help our clients scale faster than ever, find hidden leaks in their funnel, experiment with new creative marketing strategies, and help their business explode and be more profitable than they ever dreamed possible. Head over to helpmystrategy.com and see if you qualify for a free strategy audit with team Hirsh.

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