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
freebies, and did all the courses, but it wasn't until I started taking
imperfect action that my business had its first million dollar year. 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'll send you a bite sized prompt designed to help you grow your business in
a more intentional way. Sign up at steptaylor dot co, forward slash DBB,
or at the link in the show notes. Hey, welcome back to
Imperfect Action. This is episodes eight hundred and eight. Today we're talking about
launch profits when you have a tiny audience. Now, if you are thinking
of launching an online course, a 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 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 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. 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 serf 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 cull 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, close, 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 other episode about Threads another day because there's a lot to unpack
there. But with all social media platforms, you're 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 when somebody's downloaded that lead magnet, the freebie 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 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
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 sick 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 sell More, which, unlike Launch Magic, is always open.
Somebody can sign up for offer Less sell 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 sell More, so we still have that
free content to nurture the audience. Podcast episode that 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, its 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 of 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 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 freebie that everybody wants. It's a freebie 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, a 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 co. If you send me the number six seven four,
six hundred and seventy four, just in number 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. The 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 that, 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 gonna 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 gonna take action. They're not gonna buy, they're
not gonna 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 with 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 they won't be
a replay. So if you want to get access to this event, you
need to jump onto the wait list. It's happening early June, 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 Stephtaylor dot co. Or if
you prefer to just opt in the old school way, you can go to
Steff Taylor dot co slash Magic for the waitless page. Okay, number three,
The third thing you can do to maximize your launch profits with a tiny
audience is 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 one
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 pretend 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 I tick a box to
add three coaching sessions for one 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 dollar 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 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 and 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's
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 phis or
virtually in front of new audiences, and then you can send them back and
say, hey, follow me on Instagram or follow me at wherever, join
my email list, 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 if this messaging works, Let's see if this messaging works. We
still even though we've launched launch Magic like nine times, and if 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 little under
a month, 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. Anytime that you want it, you can get on the waitlist,
and if you're on the waitlist, you will 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 stephtaylor dot co, send me the word magic and I'll
add you to the waitlist. Or if you prefer the website version, go
to stephtaylor dot co slash magic and you can join the weightlist over there.
That is it today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Catch you
next time.