5 Keys to Launching literally anything successfully
Launching ANYTHING is hard – but also, not that hard. I’m sharing the 5 keys to launching literally anything successfully. From a new business to a course to a new content platform, these are the keys to launch anything, anytime.
5 Keys to Launching literally anything successfully
Want to listen to the podcast version of this post? I’ve got you covered!
Not enough people talk about the keys to launching
Between personal launches and launches that I've coached students through, I've seen a lot of them. And I've learned the differences between a successful launch and an unsuccessful one. Plus, I’m a nerd who pays attention to other people's launches to see what they do to ensure its success! Let’s dive into the 5 keys to launching literally anything successfully!
1. Give yourself and your audience enough time to be ready for a launch
I would bet this is the biggest mistake I see everybody doing during a launch. They don’t give themselves and their team enough time. But, they also don’t give their AUDIENCE enough time to prepare for it.
If you’re launching a course that has a higher price point and your audience hasn’t had enough time to see that they actually want it, then your launch isn’t going to go super well. Taking the time to build up to a launch encourages people to show up on the day of the launch.
Not to mention there’s a LOT of prep work that goes on behind the scenes of a launch. If you don’t give yourself time to get the work done, then you won’t be able to do it well.
Your audience needs enough time to decide they want your offer and be ready to invest in it!
If you’re offering seats to a course, it’s likely that you’ll only have a 5-7 day cart open period. That’s not a lot of time for someone to make a purchase decision! You want people to KNOW they want to buy your course before the cart opens.
2. Be REALLY clear on who you’re helping. Know the journey they go through to become a customer and as a student.
This one’s a lot, so let me unpack it.
There will be two different journeys that people go on during your launch. There will be the journey that a student takes when they go through the program. Anything that you’re launching has a PROMISE. You’re solving some problem, making someone’s life easier, or something else. There should be a result that someone gets whenever they subscribe to your channel, listen to your podcast, or get your product.
Everybody focuses on that student journey, but not enough people think about the journey that someone goes through to DECIDE to participate in your launch. That’s the journey from where they are right now to where they are when they need your podcast, need your product, or purchase from you.
If I’m launching a course about how to start a podcast, my goal for my student’s might be that they understand how to start a podcast, how to handle the technical aspects of a podcast, and how to market their podcast. That course is created for people who want to start a podcast. Now, I need to think about the journey that convinces someone to buy that course.
Maybe this person knows they want to start a podcast, but aren’t totally convinced it’s the right thing for them. The content that you create leading up to the launch (in all that time you’ve given yourself!) should be focused on convincing that person that a podcast is right for them.
Or, maybe they aren’t sure that a podcast is the way they should go and they’re debating between a podcast versus YouTube. They might not know the benefits of content marketing via a podcast.
You’ve got to take a potential student from all those positions of uncertainty to the point of knowing they want to start a podcast and knowing they need your course to do it.
3. HYPE
You HAVE to hype up your launch SO MUCH that people can’t help but know about it. Refer back to number 1 here. That means you need to give yourself runway time to hype it up and get people excited about the launch.
Taylor Swift does a great job of this. She can have a shorter runway time than other people because she’s Taylor Swift. Think about the times she has created hype for a new album by clearing all of her social media. That makes people get SUPER EXCITED and hyped up about the launch.
You want to do something similar to hype up your own launch! Whether that’s teasing it to your audience in exciting ways or something else. If you just launch something with a “here you go,” your audience won’t respond as well as they would if you hype it up a lot.
4. Get OTHER people excited and ready to share
Hype is how you do this. The key to creating hype is to organically branch out. Lead other people to get excited and hype up your launch with you.
Anytime you can cause someone ELSE outside of your business to share for you, that’s key. And if you can make that a BUNCH of other people who are excited, that’s even better.
This is why a lot of people who are about to release books create a Book Launch Team. It’s a group of people who fit into their ideal client or customer who get the book in advance so that those people can help build the hype around the book!
Getting other people really excited and ready to share with their audience is major!
You can do this in so many ways! Create a group of launch helpers or create a giveaway that requires someone to share about your launch on their Instagram story. Tons of possibilities!
5. Create FOMO
FOMO stands for “fear of missing out.”
FOMO is a REAL thing, and people react and make purchasing decisions based on FOMO.
If you can create FOMO during your runway period and launch to make people feel like they're missing out if they don’t listen to your podcast, watch YouTube, or buy your course, then your launch will go through the roof.
Take the example of the book launch here again. Sharing other people’s life-changing reactions to this book will create FOMO, because someone else will read it and think, “I want that.”
Giving people a reason to want to show up at a certain time or day will create FOMO. Imagine that you see about 10 people you really admire having dinner together at a conference. That’s going to give you FOMO! You might not have paid to have that conference experience this time, but that FOMO will motivate you to pay for it the next time.
Create FOMO leading up to the launch so that people are ready to buy when the launch happens. And all of these other tips will help you create FOMO.
Those are the five keys to launching literally anything successfully!
When is your next launch?
