ep 450: live launching is critical for most businesses – Here’s why
Live launches are CRITICAL. Yes, critical. They are THAT important.
You’ve probably heard from other places that live launches are dead and that automating is the best way to go…and I agree that having an evergreen funnel in place IS a necessity…
But, when you look at sales conversions and the success of live launches, they are almost always more successful than evergreen. You simply can’t replicate the energy of a live launch into an evergreen funnel. The data speaks for itself.
Listen in on today’s episode to hear more about what I consider the ultimate sales strategy, and why having that live launch component is essential for your success.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh:
You’re rarely gonna see someone say, I get worse success when I live launch than when I have an automated funnel. Almost always when you look at sales conversions, and when you look at the success of live launches, the live launch is more successful than Evergreen.
You are listening to the Not for Lazy Marketers podcast, episode number 450.
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I cannot believe we are in November. I am excited. I love the holidays, I love fall. I love when it gets cold in Texas. I love how we decorate our house for Christmas after we remodeled and it’s like all white everywhere. Last year it was so fun to decorate for Christmas, so I’m excited, but I cannot believe we have two more months left of this year. And I’ve done a lot of planning with my team over the next couple of months in our industry. I feel like in marketing in general, November and December are pretty big months, so it’s not like we slowed down a lot. And so it’s a hard balance of slowing down for the holidays and taking some time off. And a lot of people take time off with also some big holiday promotions and things that happen in our client’s businesses, but also for us historically, December is also a pretty big month, so lots happening there.
Alright you guys. So today I wanna talk about why I think live launching is important and I almost titled it critical. Like Essential. And so this is going to go against what some people out there believe and teach you. And I’m gonna explain why, because I have been doing this for a really long time and I’ve seen successful businesses, successful marketing, and I’ve seen not successful and people who are struggling. And I also see this constant argument, right? You’ll see it in ads, you’ll see it against multiple people where they’re like, You never have to live launch. Like, just go evergreen… live launching sucks. And then you’ll have people who like just live launch and they do a live launch every other month or every three months, and they’re prepping for that live launch and they’re exhausted from it. And there’s like two extremes, right?
Usually, and at least that’s what you hear about, right? But I know, and I know this in my business and I know this with helping clients and especially as I’ve been back involved in strategy, and I’ve seen this play out over like a three, four month period where this kind of ultimate strategy that I’m always trying to create that I’ve talked about on the podcast before, of this balance between evergreen automated consistent strategy in sales with occasional like every two to three months or two to four months really live launching. And that is the ultimate strategy that I teach. That’s what I implement in businesses, that’s what I do myself. And I think that having that live launch component is really critical. And so I think what happens is people who do live launch a lot, you are rarely gonna see someone say, I get worse success when I live launch than when I have an automated funnel.
Almost always when you look at sales conversions, and when you look at the success of live launches, the live launch is more successful than evergreen. But the con of a live launch is, it’s not consistent, right? Because you can’t live launch every month even. I mean, it’d be pretty difficult to live launch every month. I I do see some people do it, but even then, like once a month is the maximum that you can because you’ve gotta prep the beforehand and you’ve got like the sales that happens after. So it takes usually three to four weeks just to run a single live launch, right? And so if you did it every month, you’d finish a live launch and go right into the next live launch, which is gonna burn your audience out. So that’s not necessarily consistent and sustainable to have that be the only way for you to make sales.
And I think that’s where people burn themselves out is because they live launch and they like, they get themselves in this place where they have to do it in order to make sales in their business. And then if they’re exhausted, they start hating it because they’re like, I’m so exhausted, I don’t want a live launch again. But if I don’t, then I’m not gonna get sales. And that’s where it’s not a good, healthy thing for your business. But if you pair having a consistent evergreen automated, whether that’s an automated webinar, whether that’s a lead magnet, whether that is a, a VSL funnel, something that’s bringing in consistent sales, if you have that happening and then you pair that with about every three months a live launch, what you do is you increase your overall success tremendously. And the live launch is not dependent on your business being profitable and making sales.
That’s the key is you’re not just waiting for that live launch to get the sales, you’re getting the sales in the off time. And so here’s why I think live launching is so important because your audience and your leads, they get tired quickly of hearing what you ha what you’re putting out. Like, so if they come into a webinar funnel and it’s on a specific topic like that gets old pretty quickly, you can’t come and reengage someone and be like, Come sign up for the same training that you didn’t sign up for, that you did sign up for and you didn’t watch because there’s already kind of like a, eh, like I didn’t, I didn’t really want that or I didn’t watch it or like I watched it but I didn’t finish it. You know, there’s all those like experiences happening with your leads, right?
But if you take something and you put different wrapping paper on it and you make it exciting and you make it new and you make it relevant to what’s happening right now, now you’re reengaging your audience and your leads and all of these people that you’ve likely already paid for, whether in the resource of time and organic strategies or money through paid ads you’ve already paid to get them into your world. And so now you’re just capitalizing on that. And so an ideal scenario is you have this automated, it’s running every single day, every single day you have new leads coming onto your email list, you have new traffic, new people coming to your business, and you’re using paid ads to create that. Because paid ads is what is able to create that consistency because you cannot post on social media for three weeks, but if you’re running paid ads, you’re going to get more followers, you’re going to get leads on your list, and hopefully those leads are converting into sales.
You need both. You really, a healthy business has both. So you have this consistency and that’s bringing in sales. And so imagine if, let’s say you spend, you know, a thousand dollars a month or $2,000 a month on ads, and you bring in, you know, 300 leads or 400 leads and those leads convert 2%. So you are getting six to eight sales and that is putting you at two x return on your ad spend. So you’re spending this one to two K and you are making two 4K back. So you’re making this two x, right? But you’re, you’re growing this list and only I said 2% are buying. So 98% of the leads that you’re bringing in are not purchasing through the initial evergreen funnel that you have, which is probably like a promo period of five to seven days after someone comes in. So 98% of your leads are not purchasing.
Now let’s say you do this for a couple of months, you get some sales, it’s not that great because you’re not spending, this is where people get into this place where they’re not spending, they’re spending a thousand dollars, they’re making two to $3,000. Anybody who looks at ads and says a two to three x return on ad spend is like, that’s pretty good. That’s above average if you’re hitting two to two and a half. But you’re like, but it’s only $3,000. I can’t run my business with $3,000 of profit and so I need to make more money. It’s like, okay, but you have to spend more. And so if you’re able to go into a live launch and capitalize on those 98% of leads and convert another 3% of them even a small amount, right? Then you just made sales that are completely profit because you’ve already paid for the leads, you already paid for them, you’re nurturing them, you’ve paid for that asset in your business and they just weren’t ready to buy yet.
And now they are. And so now you, you do this, this live launch and it’s basically a cash infusion, a surge of cash in your business that you’re able to create. And so I think having that is really important because what it does is it takes an automated evergreen funnel that’s maybe converting at that 2% and it’s converting at two to three x row as, and it brings it to like four to six x return on ad spend, but it’s the long game and you might have to do two live launches before some of those leads convert. Like I know, and this is such important information to know, I know that my customers convert in an average of six months time. So that means what I did six months ago, the lead generation I was doing six months ago is impacting my sales today. And, this is where people don’t play this long game.
And so I try every, I try every month to every other month to do some sort of a live experience, but I’m also constantly running lead generation and, and visibility adds. And the goal with those, for me, even if I break even on those, I’m golden. Like I’m good to go. But if I get two x rows on those, I’m really good to go because I know when I live launch, I’m gonna get a massive surge of cash and sales that I don’t really have to pay for. And if I do have to pay, it’s really a low amount because I’m leveraging my warm traffic. And so I think live launching is so critical because it gives you an opportunity to put new wrapping paper on what you teach or a message that you have. It gives you an opportunity to connect with your audience and leads in a way that you can’t replicate in an evergreen way.
You just can’t, you can’t replicate something like a live challenge or a live webinar while you’re on their live and you’re talking to people one on one and you’re creating this experience and that’s okay. They’re not meant to do exactly the same thing. And so it’s that, or trying new things too. Like I’m doing a paid workshop the day that this podcast comes out. I’ve done open houses, I’ve done live webinars, I’ve done all different types of things. I’ve done no opt-in required, come to this training or come to this insider you know, session with me and you just, here’s the zoom link. I’ve done that to my warm audience. I’ve done opt-in required, I’ve tried all different things and I like to change it up. I also like to, and this is what I encourage my clients to do, is make the live launches relevant to what’s happening right now for your audience.
So for example, the holidays, November, December, January for businesses, there is an opportunity for almost everyone to leverage the holidays. So for some people that could happen in December when it’s like planning for the new year for people in the health and fitness space. It’s mid-January, it’s early to mid-January that you’re obviously able to capitalize massively on what’s happening. So having this live launch and this live experience allows you to shift and change the wrapping, wrapping paper on what you’re talking about, but also making it super relevant to right now like I’m doing a Black Friday workshop because that’s something that serves people, but I couldn’t turn that evergreen, right? I wouldn’t run a Black Friday workshop promo all year round, but I can run it one time and we’re only doing it to warm traffic people. I’ve already paid for the leads. So it’s all profit sales into the workshop and for the sales that I make after the workshop.
And so thinking about also what your audience is going through right now allows you to create something that’s just more serving them and, and a better experience for them. And that’s what live launching can do. It also is just an upleveled way for you to connect with them and create opportunities for conversations, for engagement, for relationship building. And I want you to think about how if you, if you’re someone who’s like, I just never wanna live launch again, what is it that you don’t like about live launching and how could you create a situation where you do? Because whenever I talk to clients who say that it’s because they’re burnt out from putting in so much work and not getting enough out of it. And so if we either streamline what they’re doing or we increase the impact by spending a little bit more on ads by making a bigger push to it, by making it a bigger deal, they’re gonna do it.
They’re gonna be happy to do it because it’s rare that I meet someone who’s like, Oh, I’m gonna make thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars, but I don’t wanna do it. Like I’m too burned out if that’s, so if someone says that to me, I’m like, Okay, come on. Like what’s the root of that? And usually the root of people’s burned out from live launching is they don’t feel that their effort put into the live launch is yielding the results that would equal that effort. And that can be shifted and that can be changed and adjusted just through strategy and ad spend and the impact that you can make. And so if you look at people who like successful business owners that you follow, you’re rarely gonna find one who doesn’t have this, who doesn’t have an automated strategy paired with live launching.
And I think it’s dangerous to go one or the other and be like, I never live launch or I only live launch. I think both of those are very dangerous for your business. And I’ve explained why in this episode. So as you start planning your next year, the end of this year, I want you to think about, you know, how do I create this kind of holistic strategy where I have consistency in my business through an evergreen funnel and then I live launch about every three months, maybe every three to four months, people who can have really big live launches can go every six months. But I think the sweet spot is every three months. And I really like, this really hit home for me because I have a couple of clients who, and I think I share this on one of the most recent, but they’ve been an elite now for four months.
And so I’ve seen this come full circle where we started out with an evergreen strategy that was bringing in consistent leads. A, a few of them weren’t really getting a lot of sales, but a couple of sales they were at just under two x return on ad spend, so not near where they wanted to be. And because they started their ads spend low, they weren’t paying for agency fees. But both of them we planned a challenge and then we planned a three day like video series launch, which was unique for each of their audiences. And it was actually planned coming into the strategy, but it was like, first we’re gonna do two months, three months of this automated funnel to build the list to build the audience. And both of them had massive, like it turned their entire experience of elite management fee ad spend all of it into massively profitable because they stuck with it for that three to four month process.
And they saw through the consistent generation getting some sales, but definitely not exactly where they wanted them to be. And then going into a live launch and getting this massive surge. And now they’re like, and I have way more people on my list. Like I talk to all these people in the Facebook group during this live launch and this person might buy and this person might buy, but they haven’t yet. And so they see that happening and I think that is the ultimate thing. And so that was planned months ago, but you’ve gotta do those steps beforehand, especially if you don’t have a big list or you’re just starting out. But I plan this for every client and I take this into consideration because I always wanna have ways to create cash infusions, ways to reignite your list, ways to reignite your audience. And there’s obviously a lot of strategies that can also go into making sure you email your list regularly and you’re connecting with them.
And I think way too many times people are like, Well, I got those leads and they didn’t buy, so I need new leads. And it’s like, yeah, but the easiest thing to do is to go re-engage and connect with the leads you have to try to get the most out of them to try to serve them the most and you know that they potentially want your offer because they wouldn’t have signed up for whatever your lead magnet is or your webinar is, if that wasn’t the case. And so there’s a lot of people sitting on opportunity right now that are not capitalizing on it and could be a lot more profitable if they did that strategically. All right, you guys, So I hope you, I hope this got you guys thinking and I try to bring balance to the extremist of like, live launches are terrible. I see those ads all the time and I’m like, I’m pretty sure those people live launch. And I’ve actually seen behind the scenes of a couple of businesses who do that and their numbers are terrible. And I’m like, You guys got a live launch? And they’re like, We can’t, we teach no live launching. And I’m like, We’ll change that because it’s not working for you. So alright everybody, I will talk to you on Thursday. Thanks so much for tuning in.
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