Launching a product can be scary. With so many moving parts and details to focus on, business owners can easily be overwhelmed while trying to figure out every tiny detail that goes into launching their offers. To help with this, I will outline the process that my clients and I use when launching. This process gives a step-by-step timeline that will ensure that you know you are following the correct steps while launching an offer or revamping a previous offer. It will also outline key phases of an excellent launch and important actions to take during the launch process to increase visibility and ensure success.

THE LAUNCH OVERVIEW

Phase 0: Pre-Launch 

Before the cart for your offer officially opens, there are numerous steps to take to warm up your audience and increase your odds of having a successful launch.

Priming

Priming your offer involves “planting the seed” of your next offer in the minds of your audience, starting well before the launch process actually begins (typically 1-3 months). This involves tailoring your messaging, language, and content to align with your next offer. This will draw your audience to think more about the subject that your next offer focuses on or addresses.

For example, If I were to launch an online course on personal branding, I would make sure that in the 1 to 3 months leading up to that launch, the majority of my content would be focused on branding. This will ensure that my audience’s interest in the topic is peaked and top-of-mind far before the actual course launch happens.

Hype Phase

This is THE most important stage of any launch (even more so than the official launch phase itself!!). The hype phase focuses on getting your audience excited to buy your offer before the launch even happens.

One way to ensure that you get your audience interested in your offer is to focus on the problem that your product will solve. The hype phase can also be called the “problem aware phase” for this reason. This phase is an opportunity to educate our audience on what they are struggling with, why they are actually struggling with it, and showing them what they need to solve it, as well as hinting that you will be offering something to solve the problem soon. This will get the audience thinking about needing your offer before you even officially launch it.

Utilize the hype phase to focus on this problem, while the launch phase will focus on the solution. 

Presale

The presale phase before your launch and preferably involves opening up a waitlist two weeks to a month before your launch. You can grow your waitlist by incentivizing sign-ups through waitlist-only bonuses or discounts, use of a market research survey, promoting the waitlist on social media and to your email list, and by sending personal invites to hot leads.

Launch Trigger

Another step I suggest you take during your pre-launch is the launch trigger. Launch triggers are free educational events that lead directly into a pitch for your product offer. By sharing useful information and providing your expertise for free, the launch trigger will give your audience a taste of your knowledge and generate interest in purchasing your paid offer!

Cart Opens

Your offer is now officially open to the public – announce your offer and sell it effectively by following the 3 phases of a successful launch.

Phase 1: Hard Sell

This is the step where you announce your offer, highlighting why you created the offer, as well as the benefits and features of your product. During this, you also want to call exactly who this offer is for, outlining struggles your offer helps with or goals the product will help the audience achieve. It is very important to explain why this is the next offer you are providing, implementing storytelling to explain why you wanted to address a particular issue.

Phase 2: Drive Engagement

Aka… the dreaded “quiet phase”. This is the time you use to let go, have fun, and be creative. During this phase, you experiment with and use whichever content will drive engagement the best. The goal is to just keep eye on your content and have people consider your offer multiple times. Good content to use here includes “how-to” content, inspirational/aspirational content, bonus freebies, or client case studies. Again, the most important part of this phase is having fun and detaching from overall results so you don’t create unneeded stress or doubts upon yourself.

Phase 3: The Last Efforts

In this phase, you apply tough love, handle objections in your promotional content, and create urgency to drive your audience that has an interest in your offer to make the leap and purchase the product. This is the time you use to explain why your ideal client can’t afford to continue staying where they are at, talk about common objections and uncover why they are arbitrary, and hold Q&As to provide important information to those making their decision on purchasing. Explain why now is the time to take action and what your audience will lose by not purchasing your offer, and remind the audience that the cart is closing soon, creating a sense of FOMO and urgency.

On the last day, double down on these last efforts – this is your chance to get the “lurkers” to make their buying decision. I suggest you send out at least two emails this day and stay visible all day, pushing a sense of urgency and FOMO, and really drive anyone who hasn’t purchased your offer to take action before the cart closes.

Cart Closes: 

Your offer is no longer available to the public for purchase. However, you aren’t done yet and can continue to see returns from your launch with a successful implementation of a down-sell.

Ready to launch your next digital offer? Here are some recourses I’ve created to help you!

• Profitable Offer Builder: A step-by-step course on how to create an offer that SELLS for your next launch

• Objection-Handling Script: A Plug & Play Script to help you respond to the most common – and toughest – sales objections.

• The $5K Method: A 9-Module Online Business Course that will give you all the fundementals and advanced trainings needed to scale your business to $5K months and beyond.