Podcast episode (#144) by Kate McKibbin (Doing It Online). Kate explains why many online product launches hit a growth ceiling when increasing ad spend becomes unprofitable and presents ways to make launches profitable before cart opens. She emphasizes the mantra "make your marketing pay for itself" and gives two main approaches: 1) run a paid workshop/challenge (best when you have a sizable list and a premium offer) with order bumps/upsells to raise average order value; 2) run a free workshop/challenge but offer a paid VIP upgrade on the thank-you page and in follow-up messaging to monetize early while still driving list growth. She contrasts this approach with traditional launches that front-load ad spend and delay returns, and closes with a CTA for a free 90-minute coaching workshop at HelloFunnels.co.
I did this myself. I did it with both of our this current business and the previous one as well. And I would get so frustrated. I'm like, why could we get to here and get stuck here every single time? Like, maybe we need a new program. Maybe sometimes you go back to the start, but actually the problem was that when it broke down to it is you needed to be able to spend more on ads, but you needed to be able to do it in a way that was profitable. That is how you're going to grow.
This is the Doing it online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figures figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.
Hello. Hello there, guys. It is Kate here from hellofunnels and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Now today we are going to be diving into a really juicy topic, and that is how to make your launches profitable before they even start. So before you open cart, how can you make sure that your launch is actually already bringing in money into the bank? And why would you even want to do that? Besides the obvious? So let's dive right on in. Now, as anyone who has either been listening to this podcast for a while, or maybe you're a client of ours, you probably know that one of our mantras is make sure your marketing pays for itself. Like this is one of those things that was such a big game changer for us that really has helped us and helped our clients to, when they get to that point, when they've created a program, it's selling well, or that's a premium offer, or whether it's a signature program, doesn't matter. They've been able to grow it a bit. And then we'd find that again and again people would kind of hit a ceiling. And it was usually that ceiling was caused by, you know, a, a whole kind of combo of things. But it normally came down to the fact that as they wanted to make more sales, they then had to spend more on ads. But as you spend more on ads, it actually would cost you more to make those sales. So where it may be cost you $100 to make the first 10 sales if you go, great, well, now I want to make 20. Just spending double wouldn't get you double the sales. It might. All of a sudden, it might cost you $200 a sale when you doubled it. And people would always find they'd hit a point where it just wouldn't be profitable to spend more. And then people go down this rabbit hole of trying to just optimize every single point. Like maybe if the opt in page worked better, maybe if this email's headline was better, maybe if this button was blue instead of yellow, you know, and they could spend months and months stuck there spinning their wheels, trying a thousand things and really not getting a big chunk of progress. And we did. I did this myself. I did it with both of our, this current business and the previous one as well. And I would get so frustrated. I'm like, why could we get to here and get stuck here every single time? Maybe we need a new program. Maybe sometimes you go back to the start. But actually the problem was that when it broke down to it is you needed to be able to spend more on ads, but you needed to be able to do it in a way that was profitable. That is how you're going to grow. So how can you do that? And that's where that mantra like making your marketing pay for itself. Now we're going to talk about this today in how it relates to launches. But of course, this is something that absolutely applies to funnels. And I'll do a separate episode on that as well before I do start talking about this. For those of you that I can kind of hear with my spidey senses already saying, but hang on a second, Kate, you hate launching and didn't you quit launching? Like, why are you telling us about this? Well, one, it's because I know that my clients and listeners, still, a lot of them still are launching, are still not ready maybe to quit launching. If you are, come chat to us. But really it's because, you know, yes, we help our clients to design and install marketing systems so they don't have to do the big live launches. It's our, our other mantra is that your, your funnel should pay all the bills, right? So they, when we work with people, we get them to set up that funnel that covers all the bills month after month, pays them, pays them well, pays their team, all of that stuff. And then when they have that rolling, when you sort of have that reliability, like, yes, you can and probably and still should do live launches if you want to. Just don't, you just don't have to do them as often. You don't have to do them as big and crazy. They don't have to be as expensive. They don't have to take up as much time, they don't have to have as much pressure. And everything that you do in that live launch should be profit. So it becomes a great place to play, just a great way to go. Okay, well I'm just going to do a fun thing, a valuable thing, something I can do to interact with my audience instead. And it becomes a much more enjoyable process rather than, I think, the ducky, the ducky, the sucky doom spiral that, you know, most launches are and I think most people are really familiar with. So that is my caveat why we're talking about how this relates to launches right now. Let's, let's get back to the topic. How do we make your launch is profitable before they start? Well, like I said, it is embracing that mantra of making sure your marketing pays for itself. And we've got two ways that you can do that. Now traditionally, when it comes to a launch, usually the way it goes is you might say, okay, well I've got a budget for this launch and it's, it's $5,000. And you spend that upfront, right? You spend that usually with the list building up front maybe a little towards the end, like some retargeting ads, but usually the bulk of it, it's spent at the start. And then depending on how your launch is structured, you know, your cart might not open for a few more weeks, might not close for a few more weeks after that. So you're realistically not seeing return, you're not seeing any money back till, you know, way down the line. And not everyone can fund that. The other thing that happens is that when you do start making the sales, is that usually the first X number of sales, it's not actually profit until you've covered back that cost of that initial marketing. So say you had a thousand dollar program or maybe $500 program for easy maths, and you spent $5,000, then you need to sell 10 programs before you're even in the black. So you know, that means those first 10 sales that come through, like you could, they kind of cancel each other out. And that's, you know, that's terrible. Particularly if you're doing small lists and things like that. Like you may only make 15 sales or 12 sales. So we want to be able to make sure that one, your launches can be as profitable as possible. Like imagine if instead of starting with a deficit of I've got to pay back this Facebook ads I've just done, you were like, well, my Facebook ads paid for themselves. So now every sale I make that very first Sale is profit. The other magical thing to think about is if you knew that your Facebook ads were going to pay for themselves. So if you knew that right up front your marketing paid for itself, it was covered, would and you normally spent $5,000, would you maybe be tempted to spend 10 knowing that if you gave a dollar to Facebook, it gave you a dollar right back? Or you know, within 24, like in a very short time period, 15, like this is where all of a sudden you can start to grow. It's really, really powerful. So there are two ways to do this that we've seen work really well and they work for very different circumstances. So one is probably one you're quite familiar with, you've probably seen it around, is that is to do a paid workshop or a paid challenge. So traditionally most launches or like pre launch activity, it has been free because you only get a lot of eyeballs on it. But there was a bit of a switch over the last couple of years to start to make it paid. These work really well when you have like two things already in place. One, when you already have a decent size list, because that means that you can get the bulk of them from your email list. Because going out to cold traffic and trying to get them to pay you anything rather than sign up for something that's free is much, much harder. So you're gonna get a much smaller number of people from your paid traffic, from your cult traffic. So you need to know that you're gonna still get enough people from your list that you're gonna get enough eyeballs into your launch to then sell. The aim of the launch isn't just to do this paid workshop, it's actually to sell your main offer afterwards. Right? So you wanna make sure you've got a bit of a list. This is not something to do if you are like, I've got 10 people on my list and I'm wanting to list build. Don't do the paid workshop. It's a very, very slow way to get there. The second thing that you need that you know generally means these work better is if you have a premium program at the other side. So which means that you need to be able to, you're happy with a lower number of sales. Like maybe you're wanting to make 20 rather than 200 because you have a $10,000 program rather than a thousand dollars program. So those are sort of usually the two markers for success. And if you tick both of those boxes, then a paid workshop can be brilliant. Of course, to get it to work really well it's usually not. Again it's usually not that paying that sort of first amount that does cover the ads cost. Like whatever your workshop say it's at $67 or it's $50 or a hundred dollars, whatever it is, you gotta make sure you've got, and this applies to both, you gotta make sure you got some killer order bumps upsells to go along with it because the average order value usually needs to be higher than that initial ticket price to you know, achieve that goal of making the marketing pay for itself or even getting close. Like even if it was 85%, 80%, like it would just mean that your marketing spend was just so, so tiny in compared to what it had previously been. That's a paid workshop, the second workshop. And this is what I see work generally better more for like a signature program or for people who are still definitely in the, you know, need to get some big numbers on their list, like they're still in that list building phase is to still keep the workshop or the challenge or whatever it is free, but to offer on the thank you page and then like in a follow up sequence a paid VIP upgrade option. So it depends and like this works for summits and all kinds of things. So it depends on how you've got it structured. But basically, you know, I've seen this work where you know and again depends on what you're doing. But I've seen this work really well where people said, hey, don't want to wait for the challenge to start. You can get access to the trainings right now, get instant access to all the videos right away to pay X or you know, want to come to a VIP group coaching session, you know, get access to that or get access to be able to ask a question of one of the guests or you know, there's lots of different ways you can create a VIP experience, get the recordings afterwards, get some extra worksheets, get this template that you'll need. Like just think about what would be like I've already signed up for this challenge. What would make it like 10 times better? And then offer it to them for $27, $47, whatever it is going to make sense for your market. But then of course you have your order bumps and you have your upgrades. And so the benefit of doing that is that you will get the higher number of people coming through. So that helps with that list building. It helps you to get those big eyeballs on the launch later on. And it does work better I think for that signature offer as well. So if this has been useful, guys, if you would love to learn more about how we do launching here at hello Funnels, about how we've created the evergreen launching system and how to create a funnel that can run behind your launches and helps to make you sales every single week, then make sure you grab a spot in our free 90 minute coaching workshop which is on this Friday at HelloFunnels. Co coaching save your seat. I look forward to seeing you there, to answering all of your questions about launches, funnels, everything. It's gonna be super fun. I'll see you there and and if not, I'll see you back here same time next week. Alrighty guys. Bye.
Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subs and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.
