Kate McKibbin argues most creators should live-launch new offers first, not jump straight to evergreen funnels. Live launches let you test before investing heavily, validate faster and cheaper with your existing audience, and usually convert better. She makes exceptions only for experienced sellers who already know their offer works.
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Hey, everybody, it is Kate here from hello funnels, and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Now today I am answering a question I get asked all the time and then I totally understand why people want the answer to be a certain way. But I'm here to kind of be the bearer of bad news with some tips and tricks, even if this wasn't the answer that you wanted. So the question is, can I go straight to Evergreen or do I have to live launch first? And I'm going to dive into all of that right inside.
This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 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.
Okay, guys, I hope you're having a wonderful week so far. As I mentioned, today is a Q and A style episode. So I'm gonna be answering a question that I get asked just all the freaking time and the question is, can I go straight to Evergreen or do I have to launch? And I do understand why people want to know this, right? I mean, it totally makes sense to me as a big introvert, the idea of doing anything live and having to put yourself out there that extra bit like creating a program and sharing it with the world, that's putting yourself out there quite a lot. It's freaking scary, I get that. Particularly if it's one of your first sort of goes round. But even 10 or so years later, it can still be really daunting. And then add to that that launches take a lot of energy, a lot of time, a lot of resources. Like, who wouldn't want to go straight to the, you know, the happy place of being able to just have sales on autopilot. Unfortunately though, if you do skip this step, you really are doing yourself a disservice. And I'm just gonna put in one little caveat here though, guys, and that is if you are listening to this, you have launched a bunch of programs, you have mastered how to launch them, how to promote them, how to message them, how to market them that you know with a pretty good level of certainty that this, whatever this thing is that you've created, people gonna want it, they're gonna love it, and you know how to sell it. Then feel free to go straight to Evergreen if you want, because you probably have the capacity to drive a bit more traffic to it than most people would. It's probably filling a hole. Perhaps, like, maybe you're looking for something that's an upsell or a downsell or an intro product or whatever that is. And it's just looking to fill a gap that you already have. Like, if that's you, go for it. I still think it's still great to launch these things live. But if you're going to go straight to Evergreen, or even if you're going to use Evergreen to test out something new, go for it. But that's not what most people are meaning when they ask this question. Most people are more in the beginner stages or, you know, even a few years in, and they're like, I just don't like doing the live part. Can I skip it? And for those people, I would say, look, a hundred percent get it. I know it sucks, but sometimes we gotta suck things up and just eat our broccoli, okay? And this is a case where we gotta eat the broccoli. And me as a person who does not like doing things live, who loves doing things batched and automated and systemized, I still understand the importance and I still, most of the time, 85% of the time, when we create something new, we will still live launch it first. And I'm gonna tell you why. So first of all, one of our really key mantras here that we live by, that we base all of our, not all of our, but we use to frame a lot of our advice with our clients is that you always test before you invest. We always want to know, does this work? Do people want it? Will they buy it before we spend too much time, before we spend too much money? Now, the fastest way to do that is to share it with an audience of people who already know you. Like, if they're not going to buy, then the cold people are even less likely to purchase. It's the other reason why having a live promo to test out your new offer or test out even the way that you're planning on selling your existing offer before you put it into something evergreen, is that you're going to get your data so much faster than doing it Evergreen. So again, this is why I said that if you're really established, you're driving a ton of traffic that you know, you kind of don't need, you know, you can sort of do what you want because you're able to say, right, I need 500 people to go through this offer so I can tell whether or not it works. And you know how to turn that lever or Pull that, turn that dial, pull that lever, whatever it is, versus someone who's just getting started. And maybe you're getting like 20 people onto your list a week. It is going to take you months and months and months to know if that thing works. And you don't have that time to waste. We don't want you, we want you to know that it works, get it set up, know that that's the thing that's now running in the background for you, and then be able to get on with the rest of your business. This isn't something you want to spend months and months waiting to hear about. So you can definitely do it much, much faster. You do it live out to your whole audience, plus you can do it free. So that's the other part of the test before you invest motto is we don't want you going out and spending a couple thousand dollars on ads to get enough eyeballs to be able to tell if you've got the right people coming through. And if that offer is going to convert, you'll be able to do that much faster and without spending a cent if you promote it to your list. So third reason is why would you want to deny yourself a little bump in sales or a big bump in sales? So usually the way that we work with our clients is, is that when we are planning out a certain thing that's going to be used in their evergreen, we want to test it. You know, like, obviously time is taken to craft emails, to craft whatever the sales mechanism is. And it's not as same amount of time, nowhere near the same level as you would spend on creating a whole launch. But it's not totally insignificant. You're not doing this in 25 minutes. So if you spend a few hours on something, why not reap the benefits of it and then have the extra benefit of going, okay, well, that's just freed up some promo space in my calendar because I know that this is the month I'm setting up my funnel. So in this month, I'm going to be testing something which is like doing a little mini launch. So I'm going to get some sales and then my funnel is going to be set up and then I can go move on with my life and my, the rest of my marketing. But why would you want to not have that little bump of sales? Kind of seems crazy to me. And then the final point, if I haven't convinced you with the others, is that traditionally, and it does depend exactly on what your sort of sales mechanism is going to be for this offer. But traditionally, if you're doing any type of video, whether it's a masterclass or you're doing a video series or doing challenges or whatever it is, any type of video that you do, it generally is more engaging, more interesting and higher converting when you are able to do it live. So when you are able to be answering the questions that get asked, to be engaging with the people on it live, even for people watching the replay, even if it means your toddler streaks behind you in the background or the doorbell rings with a delivery, it makes you seem so much more real. And also, and this is, I think the more key point is we speak differently when we're speaking to actual people versus when we're just reading a script by ourselves at home. So even though you might start out with good energy, you'll probably quickly bowl into the monotonous reading tone. And no one wants to listen to that. It's super boring. You're going to have people like falling asleep or checking out. So do yourself a favor, do your offer a favor, suck it up, eat the broccoli, do it live, and reap all of those rewards like faster outcomes, a bunch of sales, and usually higher conversions. Why wouldn't you want to do that? I know it sucks, I know it's not fun. But once you've done it and then you've automated it, you're gonna be so glad that you did. So hope that was useful, guys. Sorry for the tough love. Sometimes it's needed. Hope you have an amazing, amazing week and I'll see you all next week, same time, same place. Bye.
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