AMY PORTERFIELD: Welcome back to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Porterfield and I’m going to start us off with a story.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been sharing on the podcast about a good family friend of mine who has been putting together her first online course and putting together a webinar style launch to promote it.
I helped her a little bit with her webinar title and webinar content so I was kind of “in the trenches” again, which was a great experience because I got to see how much she struggled with it. I think that’s totally normal when it’s your first time putting a webinar together.
I had a newfound compassion and sensitivity around doing it your first time. Even when you have someone that knows webinars well helping you it’s still really tough.
So I went through the whole experience with her. She put her entire launch together and did a great job with her webinar, follow-up email sequence, and everything that went into it.
But there was one huge obstacle that set her back and kept her from reaching her revenue goals. I wanted to share it with you because I want to turn her challenge into your win.
Of course, I asked her first if she would be okay with me sharing the story and she said if it means we could help one person knock it out of the park with their launch then by all means share away. That’s the kind of heart she has an I love it.
Just to give her her own privacy let’s just call her Jane. Jane makes the bulk of her income from client work. She has a service-based business and does her own thing (coaching/consulting). She’s really well known in her industry.
She’s been in it for a long, long time but she wants to be well known in a totally different sector, hence why she’s starting her own business and online program to really put her on the map in this one new area.
For a while now she’s been talking about her new topic and has been posting on social media. She has a pretty good, solid engagement on Facebook. She’s a natural connector so she has a lot of people sharing her content and supporting what she’s doing as she builds her business.
Over the past year she’s been approached by Bravo and CNN to work on special projects and be interviewed on prime time television. She’s getting some exposure, for sure.
She’s been hustling to get her name and content out there and she’s been doing a great job in that. But, as I mentioned, there was one huge obstacle during her launch. One that I don’t really think she anticipated.
You know the whole saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know”? I think that’s what happened here. Her obstacle was the lack of engagement from her email subscribers.
She has about 800 people on her email list and I know to some of you that might seem really small. But I know a few people that have had really big launches with just a few hundred people on their email list.
I’m thinking of one guy in particular who had 600 people on his email list. His launch was over $100,000 and he was pretty new in his niche. So I know it can be done and I’ve seen it done time and time again.
I actually believed her email list was going to be the huge factor in her success with this webinar promo because I knew what a connector she was. I knew she was very likeable and people love her content.
She didn’t have a lot to invest in in terms of Facebook advertising to fill up her webinar so she was really counting on her email list and her social media following.
To be brutally honest, when I saw the dismal results of webinar registrants from her email list, and even from social media, I actually thought maybe her emails were not getting delivered. It was that bad.
Backing up a little bit, when she started to grow her email list over a year ago, her subscribers joined via a really cool freebie she had created. Like most situations, her subscribers were really excited to get that freebie.
In the beginning they loved to hear from her. However, over the last year her emails to her list became less and less. She had a newsletter but with the crazy client load she was lucky to get a newsletter out maybe once a month.
She never made offers to her tribe, never surveyed them to really understand who they were and what they wanted, and the list was also not segmented.
Her webinar was geared toward women but she was mailing to men and women because she did a tiny bit of segmentation but not enough to really understand the whole list of 800. So, she was mailing to people that would never even sign up for her webinar.
So there was no consistency in terms of emailing her list. It was, for sure, not happening weekly, not even close. There were huge lags between when she was communicating with them.
She did not totally understand her ICA (Ideal Customer Avatar), not enough to really get where they were right then and what they needed. She wasn’t asking them questions and getting feedback so that hindered her ability to really get them.
She was not creating original content. She had a blog but didn’t blog often. She was not sending them original content where they really got connected to who she was and what she was all about and how she could help them.
There was no original content, no engagement, no consistency, no offers of any kind. That is all a recipe for disaster. No matter how strong her social media was, no matter how much she was connected this was truly a recipe for disaster.
For the record, this is a judgment-free podcast. Actually, I have major compassion for my friend. I see how hard she’s been working, juggling what feels like a million things, to support her family.
Her focus has to be on her client work because right now that’s what’s paying the bills. I get it 100%.
All of that leads me to today’s episode, which feels very near and dear to my heart because if you, too, have not been growing and nurturing your email list you may be a little better than my friend, Jane, but not much better.
If you are hoping to launch soon, you’re working on something you want to sell online or are even working on a launch right now, this episode can literally change your business.
Not only can this help you make more money and a bigger, more profound impact on your audience, it can also give you massive business confidence and pride in the business you’re creating. To me that confidence and pride is golden.
Today I want to provide you with an exact blueprint to create pre-launch momentum, which can greatly contribute to launch success.
First, I have two disclaimers.
Disclaimer #1: There is no one way to do a pre-launch strategy. There are many, many ways to do this. I’m just going to give you one proven step-by-step map to get you ready for your next launch or promotion or whatever you have brewing right now.
I say there is no one way and at the same time I’m going to give you literally a blueprint of exactly what I want you to do. The reason for that, sometimes I teach in my podcast episodes in a way that gives you a lot of ideas. You could try this, do that, or this.
That’s really good because I want you to decide, based on your business and what’s needed and what you want to focus on. But sometimes it’s really nice and refreshing when someone you trust says, “Listen, let’s cut through all the noise. You need a plan. Here it is. Follow this.”
If you feel you can embrace that right now then I think you’re going to love this blueprint.
Disclaimer #2: This is not for the faint of heart. This will take work and dedication and patience. Know that you’ve been warned.
One more housekeeping tip. If you want a visual for the blueprint I’m going to lay out in this episode then definitely grab my PDF. I’ve laid it out for you inside of a PDF so that you can go to it when you’re ready to implement.
You’re going to want to take a bunch of notes right now and that’s cool. But you’re going to need to have it all right in front of you and I love when something’s really nicely designed so that’s what the freebie is for today. It’s your blueprint for pre-launch momentum.
To grab that go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/149download or you can text the phrase 149download to 33444. Definitely, get your hands on this.
One final, very cool addition to this ultra-important topic, this episode was not only inspired by my friend, who really had a rough start with her first webinar launch, but on the flip side, it was also inspired by a friend of mine, Terri Cole, and her business partner, David Vox.
How do they fit into the mix? Terri and I have been friends for a while. One day I’ll tell you about the time Terri and I had to chant in the woods for what felt like 5,000 hours while doing some crazy moves in sequence. That story is going to be reserved for another time and preferably over a glass of wine.
Anyway, I digress. Let me get to it. Terri and her business partner, David Vox, just had a very successful high six-figure launch with Terri’s course, The Real Love Revolution.
Until this point Terri and David would both say that something wasn’t quite clicking with past launch experiences. They had a few stops and starts that just did not produce the kind of results they wanted.
Then, using a combination of the strategies I teach in all of my courses, they have had huge success. They definitely followed some of my strategies and some of their own strategies and BOOM, it totally worked for them, finally.
In next week’s episode Terri and David are going to be on the show talking about what they learned from their successful launch and what they would do different next time for their future seven-figure launch. That’s how I like to look at it.
I’m bringing them on directly after this podcast episode because they killed it with their pre-launch strategy. Coincidentally it will look very similar to the blueprint I’m laying out for you today.
They are going to fill in some holes and are going to answer some questions you might have and they’re actually going to enrich the entire blueprint process I’m going to lay out.
The two episodes go back to back and you’re going to love next week’s episode. It brings what I’m sharing with you here to real life and that’s pretty cool, right?
I keep saying we’re going to jump in and we are in one minute. But before we do, a quick little ditty from our sponsor. Let’s talk about Fresh Books.
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Let’s get to it. First and foremost, you will need to dedicate three months to this. That’s 90 days of a pre-launch campaign. I know that might sound like a lot. I’m saying, “Don’t promote anything for a full 90 days.”
It reminds me of something that Marie Forleo just said in a podcast episode I did with her. We are just wrapping up B-School at the time of this recording, and someone was asking her about her program.
They asked how quickly they could make money with it. She said that B-School is not really a get-rich-quick plan. It’s more of a get-great-over-a-long-period-of-time plan.
When I heard that I thought it was so good. I believe any online marketing strategy that is worth its weight is going to be something that is not a get-rich-quick kind of thing. If anyone tells you it is don’t believe them.
I can get onboard with the get-great-over-a-long-period-of-time concept and I feel that’s exactly what the 90-day pre-launch blueprint will do for you. Again, 90 days…you can do it.
The next thing is that you need to decide on your pre-launch and launch dates. When it comes to prelaunch you’re going to choose which date you’re going to start and then move it out 90 days and that will be the end of your prelaunch.
When it comes to launching you’ve got to decide how long you’re going to launch. For me a launch is the day my cart opens (Day 1) and the day my cart closes is the last day of my launch.
Back in the day I used to do 21-day launches. It burned me out. By Day 21 I never wanted to market on the internet again. That’s how stressful it felt.
I stopped doing 21 days and we moved it to 14. I think the last time I did a live launch was 12 days. Even Marie, with her B-School program, had the shortest launch period we’ve ever done.
What’s amazing when you shorten your launch period, you have more energy. You are more in it. You are there. You are present. You’re not dragging by the end when it’s most important to rally those still on the fence.
Think about a 14-day launch or maybe a 12-day or 10-day launch. I think if you make it shorter than 10 days it’s a little rough to get the momentum. You are sending out webinar emails and post-webinar emails. You need some time.
Speaking of sending out webinar emails, if you’re in my Webinars That Convert course you know I encourage you to send out webinar invites about seven or ten days prior to the actual webinar.
You might be asking whether they overlap. Are you sending out webinar emails during the last few days of prelaunch? You could. Or, if you could add a little cushion I would love for you to go with the 90 days of prelaunch and then give yourself seven or ten days of sending out a series of webinar emails to get your list on your webinar.
From there you can start the cart open. If you can extend it a little bit it would be nice. If not, there might be a little overlap where you are sending out webinar invites during the last few days of your pre-launch campaign. Hopefully that makes sense.
Let’s break down your pre-launch blueprint month by month. Month #1 the theme is “Create.” In this month you will do the most work. You need to either create or strengthen the foundation of your business and you really need to set the stage.
We’re going to do a lot of work now so that we can easily move into Month #2 and Month #3. I’m going to walk you through, step by step, what you need to do to get your month #1 up and running smoothly.
Remember, I have a PDF for this so you don’t have to take crazy notes and remember it all.
In Step #1 you are going to commit to a weekly blog post or a podcast episode or a weekly video. You’ve got to commit to one of these platforms and do it every single week.
The first question I always get asked is whether it can be mixed up. Maybe you will do a blog post this week, a video next week, a podcast you can throw in. No. We don’t want to do it that way.
I want you to choose. Are you going to blog every week for the next 90 days? Are you going to podcast every week for the next 90 days? Or, are you going to do a video?
To be really clear, obviously if you are blogging that goes up on your blog. If you are a podcaster the show notes go up on your blog and you broadcast through iTunes. If you’re doing a video it goes up on your YouTube channel and also on your blog.
The blog is important because we want that central hub where you are really creating a lot of your original content so people can come and see all of this great stuff you’re doing.
It’s important that you’ve got that central hub that people can come to and drive traffic to.
So #1 is that you are going to create original content every single week. If that stresses you out or if you think you can’t do it because you get stuck and don’t know what to create so it’s not going to work for you, I want you to listen to Podcast Episode #122, Get Your Content House in Order.
In that episode I was trying to give you a little tough love but let’s not joke, I’m not really tough. It’s not really tough love but instead it’s a lot of guidance and really good mindset strategies around the importance of creating weekly content.
If you need to get your head in order in order for you to attack this very first step in Month #1 then by all means check out Episode #122.
Step #2 is to offer a freebie for every piece of content you create in the next three months. WHAT??? That sounds like a lot. It is a lot. I didn’t say this was going to be easy but it’s going to be oh so rewarding.
Stay with me here. I want you to get into the habit of thinking of freebies each time you create original content. This is going to go far for you. Remember, we are trying to build up your email list.
If you already have an email list we want to nurture and engage and love them up. But if you need to add to that email list, and most of us do, we need to have multiple opt-in opportunities.
I’m going to put that on overdrive for you now and encourage you to create a freebie for every piece of content you put out on a weekly basis over the next 90 days.
Something to think about when it comes to freebies, I don’t want you to always make a freebie that regurgitates what you did in your podcast episode or what you talked about on your blog post or in your video. That’s okay sometimes.
Today I’m literally giving you a regurgitation of what I’m teaching you. But that’s because there are a lot of steps. This is a big mini training and you will want to follow it step by step in order to get results. That’s when the whole regurgitation thing makes sense for a freebie.
A lot of times you want to go a little deeper with the freebie or you want to help people get to the finish line a little bit faster or you want to enhance their understanding of something. Really get creative with your freebies. Push yourself a little bit and make them extra good.
These are the people that will eventually be showing up for your webinar or watching your three-part video promo series or whatever you’re going to do to promote. These
are the people that are going to be doing that so you want to get them really excited around your content.
You are going to create original content every single week. You are going to create a freebie that goes along with that original content every single week.
In Step #3 you are going to create a stand-alone opt-in page to drive traffic to for your freebie. I don’t want you to create a pop-up box on your blog. People will see your blog post and see a link that says, “If you want the freebie checklist for this blog post click here” (let’s not use that language but you get the point), people click it and a pop-up box appears.
I actually don’t want you to do that. I want you to send them to a stand-alone opt-in page that lives off of that blog page. I’m going to encourage you to put the Facebook pixel on your opt-in page and on the confirmation page you send people to so when someone opts in to a cheat sheet you will send them to a thank-you page that says, “Great. Go check your email.”
I want the Facebook pixel on both of those pages. I will make sure to note that in your PDF so you don’t forget it. Why is it important? When you are ready to launch and let’s say you are going to do a webinar, you start running Facebook ads to your webinar registration.
You can retarget all of the people who visited your opt-in page or who opted in. We are talking retargeting, which is a whole lot cheaper than going after a cold audience with Facebook ads.
I’m going to help you get that retargeting group up and running on Day #1 of starting your pre-launch blueprint campaign. Good?
You’ve got your weekly blog post. You have your freebie that goes along with it. You have your stand-alone opt-in page. One of the tips I want to give you with a stand- alone opt-in page is that you can use Lead Pages. That is exactly what I use.
I have a tip even beyond that. When we do podcast freebies we send people to a stand-alone opt-in page, like I told you it’s http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/ 149download. That takes you directly to the opt-in page.
We are actually creating a brand new website that is hopefully coming out soon. Anyone who has ever launched a brand new website, I’m pretty sure you get that it takes longer than planned. It’s not my designer’s fault and not my programmer’s fault. It’s actually my fault.
I’ve been getting my hands into more projects that I should lately so it has slowed down the process. However, we’re very, very close. So my designer, Jess, got into Lead Pages and did a little design magic to make the Lead Page look really nicely branded to the podcast and the new website.
We then take that Lead Page and clone it (duplicate it) every single week and change out the text (because it’s going to be a different freebie) and integrate it with our email service provider so the right freebie will go out.
We do that every single week so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s okay if every opt-in page looks exactly the same for the next 90 days. You’re just going to change out the title.
I wish my website was going to be up and running when you actually hear this episode but I don’t think we’re going to be ready. I’ll let you know when it’s ready and I’ll point out some of the cool features I love.
One thing I love is that Jess branded the opt-in page for my podcast freebies. You know when you go there you’re going to see a picture of an iPad with a podcast freebie mockup in it and you will know you’re in the right place. Just the title changes out every week depending on the freebie I have.
Make it as easy as possible because, remember, you’re putting together a process. I’d love for you to use a project management tool like Asana (what we use) so that you can put your process in and know that every week this is the process you go through to get the blog up and get the freebie out and to set it up so that you collect emails, connect it to the email service provider, and the download gets sent properly.
If you put it together inside a project management tool and duplicate it every week, all of the things you need to think about when you’re doing a freebie through a blog post or podcast episode will get done and I’m going to give you a gold star.
You get a virtual gold star because that will make your life a whole lot easier.
Step #4 is that you are going to email your list every single week with a link to the original content you just created for the week. That means you are going to draft an email and this is where you will get a lot better at your copywriting because you will do it every single week.
I’ve got some really cool, free copywriting resources I love so I will link to those in the show notes as well. Copywriting is going to be a big part of this. You will email your list every single week.
I don’t care if you have six people or 6,000, you’ve got to get into the practice of emailing them every single week. I want you to get creative with those emails. They do not need to be super long.
Practice telling a story in one or setting one up with a question or play around with an example. I want you to play around with your copy so you start to see what people gravitate toward the most.
Pay attention to the emails you’re sending out every single week. Remember, the goal is that you’re linking them to your free, original content.
I like to put in the P.S. that I’ve included a freebie to remind them to pay attention or look for the freebie because once they go over to the free content they will get it. I always like to add a little extra P.S. saying, “I’ve got this freebie. I can’t wait until you get it. Just click the link.”
The link is going to the blog post, the show notes, or the video on your blog. That’s important. You’re not linking to YouTube, you’re linking to your blog. You’re not linking to iTunes, you’re linking to your blog.
I know 99% of you know that but just in case the 1% doesn’t I just wanted to make sure you knew. That’s where you are linking. You are emailing your list every single week.
This does two things really quickly. One it gets you into the habit of emailing your list every single week. Two, it actually gets your audience into the habit of hearing from you every single week and opening the emails.
Start to pay attention to open rates. Some weeks will be better than others. I love what Melanie Duncan does. Because Melanie’s husband, Devin, is my business partner, I get to see the stuff she does inside of her business as well and that’s pretty cool.
They have a grid and they have every single subject line they’ve ever sent out. Then they have all of the metrics with the open rates, click-through rates, and all of the other good stuff. It’s impressive.
Right away I could tell which subject lines were killing it for her versus the ones that weren’t so exciting to people. You can bet they always go back to that document and question how they can play around with the subject line to get it closer to the one that got the most opens.
I’m not saying to create a grid. You don’t need one more thing on the list I’m giving you. I’m just saying to pay attention to the subject lines and what’s getting opened and clicked on the most.
Remember, Month #1 (Create), has the most steps in it.
- You’re creating your weekly original content,
- You are creating a freebie that goes along with the original content,
- You are creating a stand-alone opt-in page to drive traffic to the freebie,
- You are emailing your list every single week with the original content, and
- You are going to be doing weekly Facebook Live sessions.
I just hear some of you say, “NOOOO!” Yes. This is important. It’s actually important that you do Facebook Live every week and I would love to see you start jumping on InstaStories every week.
Come on. If I can do it you can definitely do it. You know how much I hated video last year. This is something you can definitely do. I want you to do Facebook Live sessions on your Facebook page.
Let’s be really clear where you’re doing your Facebook Live. You are doing it on your page where you are attracting Facebook fans every week. I want you to choose a date and time so that you do it the same every single week and put it on your calendar.
That is literally the only way I can make this work in my world as well. It’s on my calendar. It’s going to happen. If it’s in my head it ain’t never going to happen because
I don’t love to do video so I put it in my calendar the week before so I know it’s going to happen.
For you, I want you to put it in your calendar for the next three months. Let’s say, Wednesday at noon. Make it easy for you even if it’s not maybe the perfect time for your audience because the most important thing is that you are showing up.
I’m pretty sure doing video at 6 p.m. is going to attract a bigger audience for me. I’ve played with times a little bit, especially through Marie Forleo’s B-School launch. I did a lot of Facebook Lives and 6 p.m. (Pacific) was a pretty popular time with my audience.
However, I don’t want to do video at 6 p.m. on a weekday because I know it gets right into the time I have to pick up Cade from wrestling. That’s never going to work on a consistent basis.
Sure, Hobie can help me out but what if he’s at the fire station? Then I have to stop things and go get Cade so that’s not going to work. So, make sure the time actually works for you.
You might need to move it around once or twice in the next three months but try to stay as consistent as possible. The day before you go on Facebook Live I want you to post and let people know on social media that you are going to be live and let them know what the topic is.
That means you need to do a little planning ahead. I know you will be fine with that. What are you going to talk about on your Facebook Live? You’ve got some options.
You can go into detail around one of the topics in your blog post that week or if you have a podcast episode you can pull out some of the nuggets from that and talk about it and take questions about the topic that went live.
I think it’s good for the topic to go live and then do the Facebook session so that people might have already had a chance to already read it and get involved in the conversation. That’s kind of ideal.
You can create something new that week. If you have the bandwidth to create a piece of original content for your blog and also something different and new for your Facebook Live, by all means do it.
If you don’t have a big audience yet don’t do a Q&A. That’s going to fall flat. You have to be careful how you decide or what you decide to do based on whether you have an audience yet.
I’m well aware that some of you will be doing Facebook Live to ten people. Five of those might be your sister, brother, mom, dad, and cousin. But I want you to get into the habit of showing up every single week on video. Video is not going away. It’s only getting more powerful.
We really need to start to embrace it. In the next three months you’re going to make it your mission every single week to do a Facebook Live. Use the content you already created in your Facebook Live session.
One thing that’s really important is that you always have to have a call to action at the end of your Facebook Live. An easy call to action is “Go get the freebie that I created this week” and that’s another reason why you want the stand-alone opt-in page.
You can create a pretty link (if you use WordPress I love the pretty link plugin). I could say, “Go to amyporterfield.com/rabbit hole” and that was one of the URLs we used on a recent Facebook Live session about going down entrepreneurial rabbit holes and getting stuck and not coming back up.
On the Facebook Live I got to say, “Go ahead and grab the freebie” and it was a stand- alone opt-in page. That’s another reason you want that. And now you’re driving more traffic because the Facebook Live is obviously live but once it goes into a recording it’s still getting traction.
Here is another thing. When you’re ready to promote you can retarget all of that Facebook Live traffic with your Facebook ads. Imagine if the Facebook Live has been running for three months because let’s say you do a Facebook Live the first week, three months later you will have a lot of views that you can retarget.
That’s why it’s important for you to pay attention to the content you’re putting out there. I think it goes without saying that for the next three months the content should be somewhat geared toward what you want to launch.
It’s not always going to be perfect or always going to be aligned. That’s a lot of content to created based on one topic, which would be your program, product, or service. Just
make sure there is some alignment there and you’re not totally off track because I don’t want you to attract the wrong audience.
Just make sure the content you are putting out there is going to attract the kind of audience you want to attract during your launch as well. That’s the most important thing with the content.
There is one more thing I want to talk to you about in Month #1. I know, I warned you, it’s a lot. It’s going to get easier.
You are creating original content. You are creating a freebie to go along with that original content. You’re creating a stand-alone opt-in page for the freebie. You’re emailing your list every single week, driving traffic to your blog, and you are jumping on Facebook Live on the same day and time every single week so your audience gets used to seeing you on video, connecting with you, and on that Facebook Live your call to action is to have them check out your freebie to help grow your list and find your audience.
The final thing that you’re going to be doing in Month #1 and then, of course, this all gets carried through Month #2 and Month 3. We are aware of that, right? I just want to make sure you know that after Month #1 you don’t get to jump ship and move on to something else.
This is happening throughout the entire three months. I know you know that but I just wanted to make sure.
Step #6 in Month #1 is that I want you to find three different opportunities to survey or assess your audience. I’m going to give you a few different ideas but next week when Terri and David are on the show you are going to love the assessments they put together to figure out who they were talking to.
Let me give you a hint. Terri’s program is all about relationship and love. It actually caters to those in a relationship and those who want to be in a relationship. It is for singles and those in a relationship.
Early on they did an assessment. When you took the assessment after you got one of her freebies you would first indicate if you were single or in a relationship. From there you would get to take an assessment. If you were in a relationship you took an assessment to find which type of love archetype you are.
If you are single you get to learn your attraction strategy. I thought that was really cool because they are giving value in terms of the assessment. They are teaching through their freebies and content but ultimately are finding out if you are single or in a relationship. Once you answer that they are tagging and segmenting you inside their email service provider.
We’ll talk about how they did all of this next week. But it is important to know now that they have segmented those two audiences they can do webinars that are only geared toward singles and webinars that are only geared toward those in a relationship. That’s exactly what they did even though they were selling the same product.
It is a lot of fun because my mom is single and I want to find her a really nice gentleman so very badly. I really want this for my mom. She’s an amazing, sassy, fun woman. I love her so much.
I want to find her someone and said, “Mom, you’ve got to go through The Love Revolution because I think you will learn so many tips and tricks and it will just make you a smarter dater and help you attract the perfect guy.”
She is going through the program as a single and I’m going through the program as a married woman but we get to talk about it a lot. What’s cool is that we got very different emails through the promo.
The emails to my mom were geared toward being single and what to do about that. They gave her advice, tips, and tricks. If I got that same advice I would think it was weird because it wouldn’t pertain to me.
Obviously I would stop paying attention to Terri’s emails. But because the emails I got were geared toward someone in a relationship I was all ears. It is pretty cool.
Again, we will talk to Terri and David about how they did that next week. But I have a few different tips for you. You could have a P.S. in an email. Let’s say you are delivering one of your freebies. In the email when you deliver the freebie you can say, “Before you download the freebie make sure to take a quick assessment/quiz/survey because I want to learn a little bit more about you.”
Of course, an assessment will help you learn about them but will also help them learn about themselves. It’s more work for you. A quiz is the same thing, but in a survey they are just going to give you feedback but you are more likely to get traction with an assessment or quiz. That’s why I want David and Terri to talk about it next week.
I want you to find ways to do this. James Wedmore and my dear friend, Phoebe, just put out a podcast about surveying your audience. It is really good. It’s called Mind Your Business (the podcast) and it’s all about surveys. I’m going to link to it in my show notes because I think you will get a lot of ideas of what to ask your audience and how to ask them in order to get them to engage in a survey.
That will be really cool because you could put a link to a survey on a thank-you page once somebody opts in to your freebie. That might be one way you do it.
I’m saying to only do this three times over the next three months because it’s a lot of work and you’ve got to go behind the scenes and figure out how you’re going to collect the data, how you’re going to get it into your email service provider so that you can segment your audience.
Because I know there’s a lot of moving parts there I don’t want to overwhelm you too much. You’re probably laughing at me like, “Are you crazy lady? You already totally overwhelm me.”
Remember, we’ve got the blueprint PDF you can use when you’re ready to implement. I act like that makes it all the more easy. I know this stuff isn’t easy. But again, it’s a big, big player in your success so stay with me.
Assessments, quizzes, surveys. I’m going to link to some resources for you in my show notes at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/149 and I’m going to talk to David and Terri about it in detail next week so you really see how to put this into play.
We just got through Month #1. You are, of course, going to do all of that throughout the next 90 days. Really quick, I’m going to sum it up.
- You are creating original content every single week.
- You are including a freebie in that original content.
- You are creating stand-alone opt-in pages that you can duplicate every single week, use the same one, change out the text, and of course, connect it to youremail service provider. Don’t reinvent the wheel every single week. That goes for this whole process. Get a process in place that works for you.
- You will email your list every single week with your original content.
- You are going to do a Facebook Live session on your Facebook page every single week with a call to action.
- You are going to find three opportunities to survey or assess your audience so that when you are ready to promote you can speak to people in the very unique way you need to. You might not have something as specific as, “Are you single or in a relationship,” but I can promise you getting a little information from your audience before you start to promote will go a long way. Even learning the language they are using and how they are talking about their struggles or challenges will be huge for you. Again, I’ll link to a bunch of resources to help you do those assessments, quizzes, and surveys.
We are moving on to Month #2. The theme for Month #2 is to “Connect”. You are going to do this by creating a closed Facebook group to build community. Did you guess that was coming?
This one’s big. I’ve been talking about it week after week after week on my podcast. I really do believe the most valuable thing for your Facebook page, where your fans are, are your Facebook Live sessions.
To me that’s about it. If you want to build a community and you want to get people talking and you want to be that go-to source, you’ve got to bring them into your own closed Facebook group.
I’m not going to go on and on about this because I’ve talked about it a lot. Here are a few things I do want you to pay attention to. Inside of the Facebook group community you are going to create, I want you to find ways to engage your audience.
With that I think you should also do some Facebook Live sessions, in your Facebook group. You don’t have to do them every single week. But to get people talking, maybe do a mini training to give people value and really just get them rallied around a specific topic.
If you’ve never heard me talk about creating a Facebook group I’m going to link to a few really valuable podcast episodes that I’ve done in the show notes. I recently did one where there was a cool freebie about all of the different ways you can engage in a Facebook group to get your audience talking.
I also have a podcast coming up with Jill and Josh Stanton talking about how they grew their Facebook page and some of the strategies they use. That’s coming out so when it does come out I’ll add it to the show notes resources links.
There is a lot of good content out there about how to create a Facebook community but your goal here is to find your tribe and to really get them talking about the topic related to what you’re eventually going to promote.
What’s really cool is that next week Terri and David are going to talk a lot about the closed Facebook group that they started in their Month #2. They started creating original content on a YouTube channel and the next month they started a Facebook community.
That Facebook community was huge for their success when they were ready to launch their webinars to sell their online training program. One thing that Terri did that I thought was really cool, and you can do this, every week when a piece of her original content went out (when a video went out on YouTube) she would link to it in her group and she would talk about it. She would then do Facebook Live sessions around those topics.
One thing I really want you to think about is that you do not always have to create new content. You can expand on it and do Q&As around it. You can go deeper with it but you don’t always have to recreate the wheel.
Inside the Facebook group they weren’t always creating new content but, instead, they were taking the YouTube video from the week and talking about it, promoting it in the group, and doing live Q&As. That’s a really cool way to build a community and you can pull your free PDFs in there and encourage people to check out the PDF of the week. It could be really cool.
If you feel it’s going to take a while to build up the community then you might need to give yourself a little extra time. But when your Facebook group is live I want you to mention it in the P.S. of every single email you send out for the remainder of your 90 days.
Once the Facebook group is up and running, the community one that you will create, put it in the P.S. by saying, “Hey, did you know I have a free Facebook group about XYZ? Click here to request access.” Or you can say, “Hey, this week we’re doing
something special inside my Facebook group. Are you a member? It’s free. Come on over. Click this link.”
I want you to put that in all of your emails. Put it in your follow-up emails. When someone opts in to get a freebie you are going to send them a link and say, “Here’s your freebie.” Put it in there. Say, “Before you download this freebie make sure to click this link to request access into my closed Facebook group” and then give a reason why they should.
There are a lot of different places you can put it. You are going to talk about it on your Facebook page. You will mention it in your Facebook Live. I know this tip because when I interviewed Jill and Josh, the episode that’s not live yet, she said it is their #1 focus. They talk about it and put a link to it everywhere.
The private group is the start of their funnel. It can really be the start of your funnel too. Once people are in the group, as you have new content that comes out every week you have an audience that’s in the group really paying attention. You are emailing your list and you’re telling your Facebook community about it.
This community is going to live beyond the 90 days. I don’t think you should do a pop- up group, which I talked about a few episodes ago. I did a 30-day Facebook pop-up group with those that were thinking about joining B-School. It was an amazing experience and I’ll talk about it on a podcast episode a little bit later.
Oh my gosh, I finally figured out how to get an audience engaged even if it is just for 30-days. I was really, really happy with it. But I don’t want you to do a pop-up group because that was around a promotion. I want you to do a community that, after your launch is over, you still have to nurture and love up on so that the next time you launch, imagine how many more people you will have in the group and how much more they will be interested in buying.
Yes, it’s going to take time. Yes, you have to nurture it. If you don’t have the time to jump into the group a few times a week then you might need to get a volunteer community manager to help you. You are resourceful. You can definitely figure it out but it’s a really cool way to find and strengthen your tribe.
Month #2 is all about connecting and you’re going to do that inside of a closed Facebook group and I’ve got lots of resources to help you do just that at http:// amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/149. All of the resource links will be waiting for you there.
Moving on to Month #3 the theme is “Commit”. You are going to get your audience to commit by creating a 21-day challenge. Yep, a 21-day challenge. This is different than the challenge that Zach Spuckler talked about in Episode #144.
If you are an avid listener of my podcasts you likely heard Episode #144 where I interviewed Zach about his five-day challenge that led directly into selling a program, product, or service.
This is different. By the way, Episode #144 was a huge hit so thank you guys for all of the feedback. Zach is definitely a little go getter and I love that episode.
This is actually different. I don’t want you to do a five-day challenge here because our goal is to love up on our audience and nurture them and really give them immense value. In Month #3 it is time to also get them into the habit of taking action with you.
A 21-day challenge allows you to ease into this and if you don’t know much about challenges I have a great resource I’m going to link to. We did a lot of homework before we went live so I know all the resources I want to link to.
We found a great article by my dear friend, Natalie Lucier, about the kind of challenges I am talking about here. If you want to know how to do it I’ve got you covered there.
I want you to understand the “why” before the “how”. It is important because of the whole idea of longevity. I want you to have the time to email your audience every single day for 21 days. I want you to create great content they are actually going to test out, try it out, and then come back and give you feedback.
You can use your Facebook group you already created in Month #2 as the hub for your challenge. If people join your challenge you invite them into your Facebook group as well. Everyday for 21 days in that group you will talk about the challenge.
You will say, “It’s Day #1, here’s your challenge.” If you don’t know how to do challenges, just to give you a little hint, let’s say you are a stylist. You are going to do a 21-day challenge so you will encourage your audience to try different outfits, colors, fabrics, vintage shops, and stores to try things.
Everyday it’s almost like they just have a new action item they are going to go out and do and come back to share with you. They don’t know the challenge until they get their daily email.
That’s important because I want your new audience to get used to opening your emails and finding something really good in there every single day. Yes, challenges take time to prepare.
With all of this you have probably already seen that you need to get out in front of it. If Day #1 of your prelaunch is June 1 you are obviously going to be working on all of this in April and May.
The pre-launch setup is going to take time just like the launch does. Remember, this is not a get-rich quick plan it’s a get-great-over-a-long-period-of-time plan.
Give yourself the time and you will be amazed what can happen. I know I’ve said that a million times but I really, truly believe it. I want you to hear it as well.
For your 21-day challenge you are going to get a link to a resource that will help you set it up but I want you to understand that the “why” is to get in front of your audience every single day and get them to do something and trust you. They will see little, mini results and little sparks of inspiration to make them feel that you know what you are talking about.
They will feel it is so cool that they did “this” and got “these” results. That’s what’s so cool about a challenge, they really get engaged with you.
After the 21-day challenge when you start to invite people into your webinar or finally release your three-part video series or whatever you are going to do, imagine how engaged your audience is going to be. They have heard from you every single week.
If they are in your challenge they have heard from you every single day. They have seen you live on video. They see that you are putting out original content and are getting your freebies. They are finding value in it.
Now they are sharing your stuff. This is a really cool process. It takes a lot of work. Remember what I said at the beginning. It’s not for the faint of heart.
What I think might happen is some of you are going to say, “Screw that. That is way too much work. I’m not doing all of that. I know such and such and he made $500,000 on his launch.”
You can always find somebody who did none of this and had amazing success. But that is very, very rare. In addition to that I can tell you 20 people who did it similar to this and have had success over and over and over again.
Over the next 90 days this is the blueprint for your prelaunch that I recommend you take on.
Before I wrap up I want to walk you through what this pre-launch blueprint might look like throughout the entire year if you launch a few times this year, which I am hoping you will.
You just went through your 90 days where you did weekly content with the freebie. You now have your Facebook group and you did a 21-day challenge. You launch and then what happens?
I’m hoping you will continue your weekly content and you might not do every single week with a freebie but at least twice a month would be ideal. That’s what we try to do. We don’t always do it with every podcast episode but we get out a freebie at least twice a month.
You have your Facebook group so it’s growing and you’re becoming that go-to source, which is really cool. You may or may not want to do another challenge. You can refine it and do the same challenge over again and make it even better if you want.
Then you launch for the second time. Imagine how engaged your audience is going to be. You’ve been loving them up for months and months and months now. As I said in the very beginning, it only gets better if you keep these rituals and habits inside of your business.
I hope the idea of building this really engaged group of raving fans is going to get you to take action on the blueprint.
There you have it, your pre-launch blueprint. Remember, I have all of this outlined for yo u i n a very stylish P D F . All you need to do is go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/149download or you can text the phrase 149 download to 33444 and we will send you the PDF right away.
I love this episode because a lot of times I want someone to just tell me, “Here, do this. These are the strategies that are working right now. You have enough to think about. You’ve got a million things on your plate. Do this.”
I made this such a specific blueprint because I want you to get into the habit of creating original content every single week and emailing your list every single week. I also want you to get into the habit of engaging with your tribe.
I want you to do Facebook Live. I want you to get out there. I want you to treat your business like a pro. Part of that is having daily or weekly habits. This blueprint means you’ve got to show up every single day.
I really do think it’s going to give you some amazing momentum. Is it the end all, be all? Is it going to make you a million bucks when you launch? Let’s not get crazy. Everything you do in the launch is equally important.
There are so many moving parts and important factors when you want to do business right online. When you are launching, of course, there are a lot of factors involved in that as well. But I believe the pre-launch blueprint will set you up for success from the get go so you’re not scrambling around or crossing your fingers that maybe your audience will remember you when you email them after a month and a half of never sending them anything.
We can’t do that anymore. We’ve got to move on from that. We’ve got to go pro. So here is your blueprint.
Thank you, so much, for being with me here. Today we talked about the exact blueprint to pre-launch success and, as promised, next week I’ll bring on Terri and David to talk about what they learned from the successful launch they just did weeks ago including how they crushed it with their pre-launch strategy.
I have tons of questions for them. I can’t wait until you meet me here next week. Before we wrap up, a quick word about our sponsor.
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Alright guys, I can’t wait to see you next week. Bye for now.
