#161 - Do you know what a secret launch is?

Hey guys, it is Kate here from hello Funnels, and welcome back to the Doing It Online podcast. And today we are talking about launches and promotions, which I know, you know, we're hello funnels. We're all about funnels. But you know, I'm a big believer that funnels work best when they're not left, you know, completely do all the heavy lifting on their own, but when they're teamed up with the right types of promos or in my preference, lazy launches that can, you know, help to help them to work together, help them to build on each other and help you to get even better. And today I want to talk about a particular type of very lazy launch called a secret launch. And we're going to dive right on in.

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Okay, guys. So for those that don't know, there are three types of launches out there, and I'm not talking about a webinar launch versus a challenge launch. I'm talking about more like a more higher level category than that. And the three categories that I put launches into are number one, big event launches or promotions, also known as the all singing, all dancing launch. And these are launches that usually like the actual active launch schedule is usually about six weeks long. It's got multiple weeks of pre launch content. Then you know, you're spending a week or so inviting people to come to a workshop or a webinar or a challenge or some other sort of pre launch event, then the event happens and then you maybe got an early bird. Then you've got a big open cart for like seven to 10 days and then that all wraps up and closes and by the end of it you're a puddle on the floor. Now, big event launches do still absolutely have their place and you know, we still planning to do at least one this year. However, if that's, I think they, I think gone are the days luckily of them being the only way to promote. And I also think that, and we've talked about this other podcast, I won't go into it in too much detail, but it's both a very stressful way of living and a very risky way of living. And particularly for people getting started, usually that huge investment of time and Effort and resources is actually not returned because you just don't have the audience, you don't have the list, you don't necessarily have the know how, you don't have your marketing messages dialed in enough that you know you can do what Marie Fogleo does and launch once a year and know that it will all be okay. So that's, that's the big event launch. And as I said, I'm not here to rant about whether they're good or they're bad. They exist, they're a category. Let's move on. Second category is what I would call an all list promotion. So this is, is another type of promotion, generally not involving any paid traffic. This is just something that you're going to do to your existing list, existing audience, but it goes out to everyone. It's extremely broad. It's sort of, it just means you're going to promote, you've got put together some kind of offer, some kind of wine, our moment, and you're sharing that with absolutely everybody all at once. And these again, traditionally they are not the same amount of time or effort. These do fall under the lazy launch category as far as I'm concerned because they could be something like creating a webinar and then having a, you know, a 72 hour follow up sequence behind that. It's three to four emails promoting the webinar. It's running the webinar, which could be a repeat or just an upgrade or a refresh of a previous one and then it's three days worth of emails for an offer on the other side. Like that compared to the big event launch is wildly different. Obviously you wouldn't also expect the same amount of sales to come from this next level down. Although sometimes it does. Like we find for us that there's not much difference between the two, which is why we prefer the second anyway, but substantially different amount of time you're actually actively promoting time that you have to put into creating. And so it tends to actually work out to be a more profitable ROI for a lot of people. But that's the all list promo. And then the third, which what we're talking about today is what I would call a secret promo or a private promo. And that is when only a small percentage of your list actually knows this promotion is even happening. And that's usually the, it's a segment or a little tie, target market or cluster that is going to be the most relevant to. So why are secret launches so great? Why do we love them? Well, first of all, they are Also an even shorter timeframe generally than even the all list promo. Or they, although they could again, there's all so many different kinds of ways you can do these promotions. Like you could do a webinar as a secret launch if you wanted to. So that's not always the case. But sometimes they can be simply a 72 hour flash sale, but just sent to a particular really targeted segment of your list. So they're not taking up big chunks of your marketing and promotion and content calendars, you know, they, they just kind of slotting into. Maybe if you've got like a longer gap than you wanted between other promotions or had a quiet month or you know that some months not as your funnels don't, you know, seasonally, your funnels might not do as well in some months than others. So you want a little boost. These are great to slop in there. Slopping slot in. I don't know what I was trying to say. Second, which I always already kind of mentioned is they are just good to have in your back pocket for when you're having like a month or a quarter depending on how you track your sales and you're, you're a little bit off target and you need to give it a little bump. But you don't want to go and do another big launch because maybe you've got another one only a few weeks away or you know, you've just done one and it didn't perhaps go to plan. So this allows you to again, lower effort, lower input, but also really importantly, you're not promoting actively to your entire list all the time. So it means your list gets less fatigued, particularly if you're showing them offers like if you traditionally do offers to your entire list and not everyone on your list is going to be relevant for every offer. This will just give them a bit of a break and your list will thank you. And then as I mentioned the third point, I keep sort of talking about my next point in the previous one, but because it's not going to your, your whole list, it means that, you know, yes, it's, it's not going to interfere if you do have another launch coming up, you're not going to fatigue that list. And it's just generally just, you know, tick, tick, win, win. Now of course we wouldn't expect the same results from this little three day promo that you would get from a five week long big event launch, but they can give you that extra bump and sometimes that bump is quite substantial, particularly if you get the offer right and the targeting. Right. So how do they work? What are they? How do you know? How could you go away and do one? There's lots of ways to slice and dice these up. The two main sort of types of secret launches that people do. One is that people go and break off a segment that they already know exists inside their audience. So perhaps you might have want to do an offer on one of your programs to people who've brought one of your other programs. So you just go and find all the customers of that other program if that list is big enough. Like if there's only 10 of them, probably not a big enough segment. You know, you're wanting a segment that's probably got several hundred, preferably several thousand in it. You also could look at the even people. Maybe it's not customers, but maybe it's just people who have joined in on certain promotions. So maybe they've registered for and attended a webinar about your program sometime in the last, you know, two years. And so they're interested in that topic. So you're going to make a special offer just for them or challenges or like there's lots of different ways and hopefully you're, you guys are doing a lot of tagging whenever you do different types of content and different types of promos and different types of events. So you should be able to easily kind of get all these people into one list and then create something, an offer, a little why now? Moment, which is going to be perfect for them. The second way of doing it, if you don't think that you could get together a big enough group, is to actually check their interest first. So to do an interest based promo, this takes slightly longer because you have to do the interest emails first. But what this looks like is sending three to five emails on a certain topic, making sure they, they're good and juicy, they've got great subject lines, they're super valuable, and then tracking all the people who open and or click on those emails and sending a little, whether It's a little 72 hour sequence or something, inviting them to a special something or you know, sending them a private message or whatever you want to do. There's so many different ways of doing doing this. The way we normally do it is with a little 72 hour offer. But because you've got those people, they've shown intent, they've shown they're interested in that topic, therefore you know, they're more likely to be interested in the offer and it means that the rest of the list aren't seeing it at all. So that's a secret launch, guys. It is a little back pocket little ninja hack that I love particular and particularly this time of year. So if you are, you know, I know everyone has different tax years around the world, which kind of blows my mind. But like if you're in Australia, our tax tax end of tax year is a couple of weeks away and if you're not going to hit your financial year targets and you're like, oh, there's no time to do anything now, you could do a little secret launch, get another little bump of sales and hopefully that will push you over your end of year goal. So I hope this has been useful guys. If you've ever tried a secret or a segmented lunch launch before, let me know how it's gone. Or if you're going to try one, we'd love to hear all about it. You can DM us or tag us over at hello Funnels or leave a message below this video. I hope this has been useful guys. If it has, please share it. We always appreciate and love whenever you can help us get the word out, but otherwise I'll see you all same time next week for another episode. Have an awesome week guys and see you then. Bye.

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