Speaker 1: If you're finding that something a product of yours is
always available or service of yours is always available and
it's not selling. Yes, it might be that you need
to promote it more, but a lot of the time
it's actually that you are not moving people through that
sales process. 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
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in a more intentional way. Sign up at Steph Taylor
dot Co, forward slash DBB, or at the link in
your show notes. Hey, welcome to Imperfect Action. This is
episode eight hundred and forty five. Today, I'm talking about
why you don't need to live launch every single offer
in your business. And I know that might sound really surprising,
given that one of the core things that I teach
as part of my business is how to run those
live launchers. I teach it through my program launch Magic,
twice a year, and I have seen so much success
in my own business and in my students businesses through
live launching. But today I'm sharing why you don't always
need to do that with every single offer. So, first
of all, what do I actually mean by live launching.
When I'm talking about live launching, I'm talking about that
limited time campaign where you're sharing maybe sixty to nine
days worth of content that leads up to a limited
time cut open period. So you might have a live webinar,
then you might open doors, and then doors might close,
say seven days later. Now, when people think of a launch,
they generally think about it as something that's building hype,
something that's building buzz. But none of this is to
do with building hype or buzz. The whole process of
that live launching is designed to bring the right people
into your audience and nurture them through to the point
where they are ready to buy when doors open. So
that is what the point of that sixty to ninety
days of content is. It's not there to generate hype
so that they're excited. It's there to nurture them so
that when you open doors, they already know that it's
a good fit for them. So when live launching works best. Now,
live launching works best for most digital products. You generally
don't need to put in that amount of effort and
that extent of a live launch if it's going to
be something lower ticket, something say under one hundred dollars,
but anything really over one hundred dollars. Yeah, you can
see absolute benefits from live launching. And I'll talk a
bit in a minute about how it doesn't have to
be doors open, doors closed. It works really well also
for memberships, and also it doesn't have to be for
a digital product that you have never launched before. Live
launching works really well for courses even when you've launched
them before, memberships even when you've launched them before. For example,
I run launch Magic twice a year every year. For
about ninety days before I open doors to launch Magic,
I am already in that launch. I'm already sharing that
content so that when I do open doors, people already
know me, they like me, they trust me, they know
everything they need to know to be ready to sign
up for launch Magic, and I do that over and
over every year. You don't need to live launch. On
the other hand, when you are launching services most of
the time, okay, services, generally you can go without live
launching them. You can, of course do the whole live
launch campaign, but you generally don't need to as much
as you would with a digital product. You also generally
don't need to live launch if you are launching something
that is quite capped in the amount of people that
you can take on. So, for example, if you're launching
a group program where you can take five people maximum,
you probably don't need to do a huge launch. Unless
you really don't have anybody in your audience and you're
starting from absolute scratch, then I would suggest doing a
live launch. But if you already have an audience, you
already have people who are engaged, then you don't really
need to do a big live launch to fill five spots.
So three things that you can do instead of live
launching to ensure that your offers, your products, your services
are still selling. Option one always open, so the product
is always available to buy at any point in time.
And this is best for services that you offer ongoing
as in they're always available to buy, and it's also
best for digital products that solve a very specific, painful
problem that somebody wants to solve at a very specific
point in time. And a great example that I can
think of for this is one of my good biz friends,
Riz from found Legal. She has a digital product called
the Copycat Kit, and it's a kit of basically what
to do when somebody has ripped off your content or
ripped off your brand, copied anything in your business. Now,
if she were to do a live launch, then only
really people who have that specific problem that only people
who have a copycat at the moment are going to
buy that. Whereas if it's always available, somebody has a
painful problem at that specific point in time when they
have a copycat, they want to solve it now. So
these kinds of always open products, they are available all
the time, but you do have to promote it. You
can't just put it on your website. You can't just
say well, I'm creating an online shop and it's available
all the time. You have to actively promote them, and
that means creating some kind of promo plan, some kind
of promotional rhythm to ensure that you're actually telling your
audience about it. Now, the caveat here is that promotion
might not necessarily be enough. So much of a live
launch is sharing content that moves somebody to be ready
to buy from you, so that when you open doors,
they are ready to buy. This is really all a
sales process, and that means that even if doors are
open all the time, you still need to be nurturing
through them through the sales process. And one way to
do this is through your free content. Now, if you're
finding that something a product of yours is always available
or service of yours is always available and it's not selling, yes,
it might be that you need to promote it more,
but a lot of the time it's actually that you
are not moving people through that sales process. Now, I
always talk about how launch magic is. Yes, it's part marketing,
but it's also a huge part sales. Because you can
have awesome marketing, you can bring loads of people into
your business, you can get it all in front of
loads of people. But if your sales messaging, if your
sales content. If all of that is not there, then
it's going to fall flat. These people aren't going to buy.
So yeah, it absolutely can be worth live launching these
always open product at least once. And like I said before,
you don't have to necessarily have doors open, doors closed
to be able to live launch it. You can have
a product that is available all of the time, and
then you can still run them those limited time launch
campaigns a couple of times a year where potentially you
are adding a bonus, so if somebody signs up during
that seven days, they get twelve months of Q and
A calls with you, for example, And that limited time
launch campaign is really moving people through that sales process
in a really strategic way. Now, a more advanced option
is automated funnels. This is something I actually do with
the podcast launch plan. Where as long as I am
bringing people in at the top of the funnel, I
have marketing automations and sales automations set up to move
people through that process, to nurture them through that sales process.
And it's not something I can teach for free in
a podcast episode. It's definitely not something to set up
or even think about setting up until you already have
offers that are converting. And unfortunately too many people think, well,
I just don't want to sell this, so I'm going
to set up this automation and it's going to sell,
and then they don't look at the numbers, they don't
make any tweaks, they just leave it there and it
doesn't sell. But you need to actually live launch it.
You need to make sure it's converting first before you
can automate this. Okay. The second way that you can
do this without live launching is by doing a limited launch.
This is best for something where it's a really small
group or a really high ticket offer, or maybe it's
a limited time service or a limited availability service, and
it's really good in times when you need a quick
cash injection and you don't have time to do a
full launch. It works really well if you have a
small and highly engaged audience. For example, I did this
with a small group intensive that I ran previously. It
was a small group. I kept it at I think
eight students, where it was weekly calls for four weeks
and accountability and support, and all I did was I
put it out to my Instagram Stories audience. I said,
is this something you'd be interested in. Everyone who said yes,
I I DM them the information, I sent them a
link to sign up. I sent a few emails to
my list, but maybe only a handful of them, and
we filled the spots really easily. This is a really
easy way to test a new offer, to see whether
people want them, to see whether they work, without having
to put in all of the work that goes into
a full launch. Now it works really well when it's
a capped group, so when you only have space for
five people in that group, or if you only have
capacity to work with five people, this is a really
great way to do it. And this is actually a
process that I teach in offer Less Sell More, where
we are intentionally designing and refining your office suite so
you can make more sales more consistently. You can sign
up for that at Steph taylor dot co slash Offers. Okay,
the third way you can sell without launching is like
a next step offer. That's the best name I can
call it next step offer, and this is best for
your existing clients and students. When somebody finishes working with you,
I mean giving them that next step that they can
keep on working with you and offering it to them only.
It's only it's only available to people who have already
worked with you. You can also use this as a
way to re engage past clients. Maybe somebody finished working
with you six months ago and you have a new
offer that you think would be perfect for where they
are at now. A really great way to do this
is direct reach out. You're sending them an email or
a DM or a voice note, and you're checking in
and letting them know, hey, this is how you can
keep working with me if you want to keep working together.
For example, maybe somebody finished six months of coaching with you,
and now the next step is joining a community with
your past clients where they get access to monthly coaching calls.
Or another example, maybe somebody has come through your online course,
they've finished it, and now the next step might be
a one on one ninety minute session where they can
identify their next steps, identify their strategy to keep moving forward. Now,
these are really limited size offers. You're not taking a
lot of people. They would probably be a higher price point,
they wouldn't be a low price point because it's a
small group of people and you're offering them a high
level of support. These people already know you, they like you,
they trust you, They've worked with you before, so they
know how much value you can deliver, so they don't
need you to convince them of that. They really just
need you to preempt what they are currently struggling with
and give them the solution to that so they have it.
Three ways that you can sell without live launching. You
can have a product that is always open as long
as you're promoting it and moving people through that sales process.
You can run a limited launch if you're running something
that is capped in size, and you can do a
next step offer to existing or past clients and students.
That is it for today's episode. Thank you so much
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