You're never going to feel like your audience is big enough, and going through
the whole process of launching will actually grow your audience because that is what forces
you to show up intentionally. It forces you to show up consistently. It
forces you to show up with content that is the right fit for the right
people, and that's how your audience grows. Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm
Steph Taylor. For years, I read all the books, downloaded all the
freebees, and did all the courses, but it wasn't until I started taking
imperfect action that my business had its first million dollars. Here, imperfect action
is about doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action,
and moving forward even when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this
show, you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips and strategies to build
a business that brings you more profit, more freedom, and even more joy.
Are you on the list to get my Daily Businesses? Every day I
send you a bite sized prompt designed to help you grow your business in a
more intentional way. Sign up at step taylor dot com, forward slash DBB,
or at the link in your shot notes. Hey, welcome back to
Imperfect Action. This is episode six hundred and seventy six. Today we're talking
about launch profits when you have a tiny audience. Now, if you are
thinking of launching an online course, group program, membership, or literally any
other digital product or online offer, but the thing that's holding you back,
or that is limiting you or challenging you is that you have a small audience.
This episode is for you. Now. I'm going to start by covering
off on some of the biggest mistakes that I see business owners with the small
audience making when it comes to launching, and then I'm going to share a
couple of ways that I think you can maximize your launch profits when you do
have that tiny audience, because we all have to start somewhere, right,
So, biggest mistakes that I see people making when they have a small audience
when it comes to launching. The first big mistake is waiting until their audience
is big enough to launch their new offer. And this happens mostly when it's
the first time somebody is launching something new and they're like, Oh, I
want to launch this, and I want to make sure I'm getting lots of
sales at the launch so I'm just going to wait until I have more people
in my audience. But the problem is, you're never going to feel like
your audience is big enough, and going through the whole process of launching will
actually grow your audience because that is what forces you to show up intentionally.
It forces you to shop consistently. It forces you to show up with content
that is the right fit for the right people, and that's how your audience
grows. And one of the key pieces of feedback that I hear over and
over and over again from my launch Magic students is that once they started showing
up and sharing that strategic content for the launch of their course or their program
or whatever it was they were launching, they also, as a side effect,
started getting more inquiries from potential clients for their services because that content was
growing their audience, it was resonating with the right people, and those people
wanted to work with them. The second big mistake is launching once and then
putting their course or their membership or wherever into a shop on their website or
it just lives there. There's a call to action from your homepage, Join
my course, join my membership, and that's the extent of the sales process.
Now, launching is a way to sell your offer. It's not just
something that happens the first time you put it out into the world. I
know it sounds it's very counterintuitive. A launch is not just the one thing
that happens the one time when you create that thing and put it out there
for sale the very very first time. And if you don't want to live
launch your offer a few times a year, if you don't want to do
the whole webinar, cart, open cart, clothes deadline, all of that
thing, that's fine. But I still recommend live launching it at least once
or twice, because that's going to give you a really good insight into the
messaging and the strategy that's going to work to sell it before you make it
available all the time. Mistake number three putting all of their eggs into the
social media basket. The thing with social media is that you are very much
at the whim of the algorithm, and your content only reaches such a small
percentage of your followers. Yes, even on Threads, and I will do
a whole another episode about Threads another day because there's a lot to unpack there.
But with all social media platforms, you are very much at that whim
of their algorithms. So trying to build your social media audience isn't necessarily going
to be the best use of your time, and a better use of your
time would be building your email list, creating some kind of strategic lead magnet
that's designed just for this particular offer that you are launching, nurturing your email
list, right, so I want somebody's downloaded that lead magnet, the freebee
that's going to get them onto your list. Then nurturing those people with the
content that's going to move them closer to buying from you, and I'll talk
about that a little bit more in just a second. Mistake number four using
their content to build hype in a launch, Nobody else this is going to
be as excited about your offer as you are. Excitement isn't what sells,
and trying to get your audience excited in the hopes that they will buy from
you that is never going to convert, as well as strategic content that's designed
to nurture your audience so that they're ready to buy when doors open. Mistake
number five not giving a long enough runway before doors open. So this is
where when I say your audience is going to grow as you launch. If
you give yourself that sixty to ninety days of lead up where you are sharing
strategic content before doors open, that's going to start to grow your audience with
the right people as well as nurture them. And a lot of the time
there's this big misconception that if we create, if we just create the right
offer, then all we need to do is find the right people who want
what we're selling. And most of the time, even the right people who
want what we're selling, they still have a little journey they need to go
on before they'll be ready to buy. And I call this little journey the
magician's gap. There's a little gap between where they are right now and where
they need to be to be ready to buy, and your lead up,
the content that you're sharing in the lead up to doors open, is helping
them to bridge that gap. It has nothing. You're not talking about your
offer, you're not telling them something exciting is coming. You are sharing strategic
content that is shifting them to where they need to be. And that is
why I usually would suggest at least sixty days of that strategic content in the
lead up to doors open, it's going to be longer. It might be
ninety days if you have a smaller audience, or if there is a larger
magician's gap, a larger gap that they need to bridge to be ready to
buy. Okay, So the key idea that I want you to think about
as we are going through today's episode is I want you to think of your
launch as a rinse and repeat process. It's not just something you do once.
It's something you can do multiple times a year with the same offer,
each time bringing in a cash injection. Because launching is a sales process.
It is a one way to sell your offers. It is a vehicle for
a sales system, a sales system which is a strategic, repeatable process for
selling your offers. For example, we have launch Magic, my signature course
that I created back in twenty twenty and I've updated it since. But we
launch it twice per year, and each time that we launch it, we
have a limited time kind of lead up where we're sharing free content to nurture
the audience and bridge that magician's gap. We have a limited time promotional period,
cart open period, and a deadline to sign up when doors close.
We also have offer less Cell More, which unlike Launch Magic, is always
open. Somebody can sign up for offer Less Cell More at any point in
time, whereas Launch Magic you can only sign up for it twice a year.
But we still do launches for offer Less cell More, so we still
have that free content to nurture the audience podcast episode. I have a webinar
that I've taught for it. We still have a limited time promotional period where
if somebody signs up in that cart open period, they get bonuses, and
we still have a deadline, even though the deadline isn't doors closing, it's
bonuses expiring. And this is how you start to scale an offer by launching
it again and again. So when I first launched the podcast launch Plan,
which is one my offers, it's a two hundred and fifty dollars offer.
The first time I launched it, I think it made around two to three
thousand dollars in sales at first launch, and twelve months later by launching it
over and over again before I put it on an evergreen sales process, twelve
months later, it made eight hundred thousand dollars in sales from just repeating those
launches and then taking that strategy and putting it into an evergreen automated process.
But it would never have scaled if I hadn't done those live launches multiple times.
I think we did seven or eight live launches in total. Now,
how can you then, if you have a tiny audience right now, how
can you start to maximize those launch profits? I'm going to share four things
you can do. Firstly, focus on building your email list with the right
people. Building your audience on social media, whatever platform it is. It's
like building a house on sand and at any point the algorithm can change and
your audience can just wash away. Whereas your email list, that's an audience
that you own and even you know, I've got seventy thirty seven not seventy
three thirty seven thousand followers on Instagram, and every time we do a launch,
most of the sales still come from our emails to our email list.
But that's also because I've spent a lot of time growing this email list with
the right people. We've got offer specific lead magnets, which is a freebee
that somebody can opt in for by giving us their email address. But they're
not a shiny freebee that everybody wants. It's a freebee that is the right
fit for the right person. Now, if you go back to episode six
hundred and seventy four, I talk a little bit there about how to create
a lead magnet for a specific offer, lead magnet to fill your email list
with the right people for one particular offer. If you want the direct link
to that episode, send me a DM on Instagram. I'm there at Steph
Taylor dot com. If you send me the number six seven four, six
hundred and seventy four, just numbers numerals, I will send you a DM
with the link to listen to that episode directly, so you don't have to
go and look for it. Second thing you can do to maximize your launch
profits with the tiny audience is being intentional with the content you share in the
lead up to the doors open. So I talked about the magician's gap a
little bit earlier in this episode. Basically, there is a big gap between
where your audience is right now and where they need to be to be ready
to buy your offer, and until you bridge that gap for them, it's
going to be a whole lot harder to actually sell to them. For example,
with my podcast launch plan offer, it's a course on launching a podcast,
somebody who is the right person for the podcast launch plan. They're probably
believing or they're probably thinking, yes, I want to launch a podcast,
but they believe that the equipment is too expensive or that they're not tech savvy
enough to start a podcast. And until they can see that actually, the
equipment can be really cheap and you can do you can start a podcast without
being tech savvy, they're never going to buy the podcast launch plan. I
can get them really excited about launching a podcast, but if they're still thinking,
oh, I'm not tech savvy enough to do it, then they're not
going to take action. They're not going to buy, they're not going to
start their podcast. And this gap exists with literally any offer. It's not
just with courses and memberships and programs. It's with literally any other offer that
you are selling. The only difference is that when you are live launching,
you can help your audience to bridge that gap in real time. You can
take them on a journey in real time with you. And basically the entire
purpose of your launch is to bridge this gap. It's to help your audience
to make a decision about whether your offer is right for them. Or not.
So having a longer runway, allowing that sixty to ninety days and sharing
content that bridges this gap. That's going to help you to convert your audience
a whole lot better. And I'm running a free event where we're kind of
deep diving into this. I'm running this free event. It's only for people
who are on the launch Magic waitlist, and I'll be teaching you Module one
of launch Magic for free live on Zoom, where we can start to uncover
the magician's gap for your offer. I am capping it at one hundred people.
It's first in, first served, and there won't be a replace.
So if you want to get access to this event, you need to jump
onto the waitlist. It's happening at the end of July. So if you're
not on the launch Magic waitlist, send me a DM on Instagram, send
me the word magic. I'm there at Steff Taylor dot co. Or if
you prefer to just opt in the old school way, you can go to
Stephtaylor dot co slash Magic for the wait list page. Okay, number three.
The third thing you can do to maximize your launch profits with a tiny
audience. It's being strategic with how you price and structure your offers. Now,
if you want to make ten thousand dollars in sales, you can sell
a one hundred dollar offer to one hundred people or a one thousand dollar offer
to ten people. And when you have a small audience, it's going to
be way easier to sell to ten people than it is going to be to
a hundred people because you just don't have that kind of reach yet. And
it's actually not much harder to sell a one thousand dollar offer than a one
hundred dollar offer. You know, in my experience, I've found it sometimes
actually easier provided that I've nurtured that audience really well. If you really do
want to sell a one hundred dollar offer, then you do also need to
think about what kind of upsells you can potentially add to it to maximize that
launch profit. For example, can you give somebody the option to add on
one on one coaching to the offer a checkout that can they know tick a
box to add three coaching sessions for a thousand dollars and that's increasing the order
value and then also starting to think about what is the next step after this
offer? If someone buys my one hundred dollars offer and then there's no way
for them to work with you after they finished that offer. Then your lifetime
sales from this one person in your audience is one hundred dollars. And since
you don't have a lot of people in your audience, you're not really maximizing
the number of the amount of sales you can make. But if they finish
your offer and then something there's something else there that they now need help with
and you can help them with, and they sign up for another offer,
whether it's one hundred dollars five hundred dollars, you've now increased your sales from
that person in your audience. Okay, The fourth thing you can do to
make more sales maximize your profits in your next launch with a small audience is
intentionally and consistently showing up to grow your audience. Social media isn't really an
audience growth tool anymore, but most people still treat it like it is,
and I like to think of it as more of a place to nurture your
existing audience. So instead, how are you intentionally getting in front of your
audience? When I say intentionally getting in front of your audience, that does
not mean showing up on social media right Intentionally getting in front of new audiences,
I should say, does not mean showing up on social media, because
the algorithm is not really showing your content to new people. And if you
are struggling to reach new people right now, guess what. You can't keep
doing more of the same thing and hoping that by just doing the same thing
something's going to change. One day. You have to try something new,
and it's probably going to feel really scary and hard, because doing something new
is always going to be uncomfortable, and that's something new. Might look like
doing podcast interviews on somebody else's show to get in front of your ideal clients.
It might look like doing collaborations and partnerships. It might look like working
with affiliates, networking, going to events, speaking at events wherever you can
get physically or virtually in front of new audiences, and then you can send
them back and say, hey, follow me on Instagram or follow me or
wherever, join my email with whatever. That's fine, but we need to
actually get in front of those new people first. We can't rely on the
algorithm to show us to those new people. Okay, I'm going to wrap
this up with a question that I get asked quite a lot, which is
should you invest in paid ads for the first launch of a new offer?
And my answer to this is it depends can you invest that money into paid
ads with an expectation of zero return and be okay with that because in reality,
you don't know how your launch is going to convert the first time.
You don't know until you get your offer out there and you ask people to
pay money for it. And the same offer that has been launched with two
completely different strategies, two completely different versions of messaging, can have two completely
different results. You don't know what's going to land just yet, which is
why launching is really an experiment. A lot of the time it is testing,
tweaking. Let's see the messaging works, Let's see if this messaging works.
We still, even though we've launched Launch Magic like six times, seven
times, I've lost count. Every time we launch it, we tweak the
messaging a little bit to see if we can optimize it and make it better.
And yes, you can do a lot of audience research. You really
do need to do some audience research. But even all audience research in the
world won't guarantee that your launch will succeed until you get it out there and
you test it. Now in a couple of weeks time, I'm opening updoors
to launch Magic again for the second time this year, the second and final
time this year. Join me inside Launch Magic. You can create a rinse
and repeat launch strategy to make more sales of your digital products and offers,
more on demand cash injections and more freedom in your business. Any time that
you want it. You can get on the waitlist, and if you're on
the weight list, you'll also score that invite to my free virtual event where
I'm teaching Module one of Launch Magic for free. Shoot me a DM at
steff Taylor dot co, send me the word magic and I'll add you to
the waitlist, Or if you prefer the website version, go to stef Taylor
dot com slash magic and you can join the waitlist over there. That is
it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Catch you next time.