Launch Is Too Late to Start Marketing — Here's What You Need in Pre Launch

Hello and welcome to another episode of her Empire Builder show. I'm Tina Tower and I am so happy that you are here with me today. Today I am talking to you about why launch is too late to actually start marketing and why pre launch is the most important time and what you need to be doing and concentrating on in that pre launch period so that you can have a successful launch. Because if the first time your audience is actually hearing about your offer is when you open cart, it is already too late. So we want to talk about your marketing strategy that happened so long before you actually say the words doors are open. Cue the confetti. You know what it looks like, the doors opening videos, the confetti. I love a good confetti throw. So we want to talk about what to do before you're actually opening your doors. Let's get to it. Okay, so why your prelaunch is non negotiable. Prelaunch does a couple of things. I call prelaunch that six to eight weeks before you're actually opening doors. I mean prelaunch to me is just all the time. You're not launching, but you're really kicking it into that prelaunch marketing plan that six to eight weeks before you're opening those doors. It builds awareness, it builds desire and it builds readiness. Those three things is what you need in a prelaunch campaign. You're warming up your audience so that they're already thinking, this is for me. When the cart opens, you want people to be ready. You don't ever want to be catching people by surprise when you first open your doors. If you're launching to cold traffic, you are starting at zero. Every time we launch, there are some people we will get from cold traffic, but it's usually like 10% if that most people are warm. They have already been on our email list for a while. Maybe they've been through a launch or two beforehand. They know what is coming. So we want to like pre launch to me is having a good prelaunch campaign is the difference between crickets and conversions. We want to make sure that your prelaunch is hitting every mark that you want it to hit. So that when you do say doors are open, you've got people that are like, I've been waiting for this ages. Oh, woohoo. And they're jumping in, ready to go. So what you need in your pre launch marketing plan, step one is crystal clear messaging. So you need to know your transformation promise like the back of your hand. I think that when a lot of people like if you see a launch and it goes wrong, or if you've had a launch and it's gone wrong, it usually comes down to a messaging issue. So what you really want to make sure of is that you can articulate your transformation promise in a very simple sentence. That is, when you're talking about transformation promise, it's I do this for this person to take you from point A to point B. You're really focusing on the result. So it's not just the features that is happening in your course, but the result, the end result that people are going to get from completing your course. You dial in what it is, who it's for and why. Now those three things, what it is, who it's for and why. Now we need to have all of those things covered off in our prelaunch campaign. Then we can start seeding the offer without selling. So always I launch her empire builder twice a year and I am talking about her empire builder constantly in our off season. So when we're not launching, I'm always talking about it. So that for people that are already having their launch course and they're like, you know what, I've got this course, it's already out in the world. Now I just need more people to buy it. They know the best place for them is going to be in her empire Builder because that's going to give them all of the tools, the support, the strategy to be able to pick that up. I don't want to only start talking about that when I have the doors open. Then we have idea to launch, which is opening very, very soon. And so I'm saying that now so that if you just have an idea, if you want to launch a course, but you've never even put a course together before, you're going to hang on, wait up. This might be for me. You always want to be talking about your ideas. Do not keep them a secret. Usually when I see people who have a flop launch, it's because you didn't talk about it enough. Number two is create content that builds desire. Some different types of content that can build that desire. You've got educational posts which your educational posts are going to position you as the expert at the moment. There's a few different types of that that are working really face to camera reels, gold, doing lives. Oh my gosh, Gold. Plus, when was the last time that you did a live. I see people that like, maybe you said never, maybe you said only once a month. Maybe you said only when I launch. This is sort of things that we want to be building in pre launch and in the off season. If you get into the prelaunch like that, six to eight weeks out and you start doing a weekly live, that is going to boost your credibility, your thought leadership and your audience engagement so much before you're asking people to buy from you. And so wherever your audience is, like for most people it's going to be Instagram and Facebook. But if you have an audience on LinkedIn, for example, there's not very many people that are doing LinkedIn live. So the competition is less when it comes to LinkedIn, which means it's a great place for you to be and for you to be doing those live sessions. So doing anything educational is going to be really helpful. Doing some storytelling. So this is where you're going to tap in. Information is everywhere, especially with AI that's come in. Information is so easy to come by. What is not hard to come by is a trusted guide who has been there before, who can take people through that transformation for them so they're not flying blind. Because let's be honest, you can get a lot of information from ChatGPT, but what do you do with could be right, it could be not right, but how do you put it all together in a really succinct. And so that is what people are buying your course for. They're buying your course so you can guide them through that transformation, so that they can get to where they want to go the quickest, easiest, fastest way that they possibly can. And so by you tapping into emotional storytelling, you're illustrating to people that you are the guide for this, that you have also been through the struggles that they have been through, or you've helped people like them through those struggles before. So that you can illustrate that one. I can get you from point A to point B. But also you want to be telling stories on your background, telling stories on storytelling cells. People will remember stories way more than they remember the facts. So you want to really go, what are the stories that have got you to where you are and that people will remember in them. The other one content that builds desires is testimonials and case studies. Now, this is very difficult if this is your very first. So this is not something that you're going to do on your first launch, unless you've been doing like private coaching and consulting. And then you can use some of those testimonials for your first one to many. But it gets much easier when you've had people graduate through your course. What I would say is have a really easy way to collect those testimonials and case studies. So one of the easiest ways is if you're using a platform like Kajabi or any of the course platforms will have. This is when you are on the final lesson. For example, when a customer gets to the final lesson, you can add an an automation to that lesson that when they start the video they get an email saying congratulations, you have made it to the end. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And then that's going to take them to a form to fill in their details. So written testimonials, you'll get the most with written testimonials. They're the lowest barrier to entry for people. But video is obviously much better. Video is hard to get from people unless you're in person. If you are having like most of our testimonials that we get for Idea to Launch and her Empire Builder are all gained in person, we get them when we have live events. So when we do our end of year conference and when we do our big mid year conference, that is when we get testimonials from our clients. Because if we ask them for the videos, people always think, yeah, yeah, I'll get around to that, I'll do that. But it's hard to get. The only way we've successfully got it from people as an automation at the end of a course is using a program called VideoAsk. VideoAsk is a program that will give them little mini videos of you saying hey, can you just say da da da da da? And then they hit record and they'll record their answer. We get a pretty good upload take on that. So that's a good strategy to use in there as well. You can also use your content to speak to objections, speak to past beliefs, speak to sparking curiosity. That is the goal of, of our pre launch is to kind of, you know, overcome those objections before you even launch is to get people to believe in themselves. One of the biggest reasons that people don't join a program is because they don't believe that the transformation is possible for them. They'll look at and go like if I take an idea to launch for example, and go, okay, you can go from an idea in your mind to a fully launched course in eight weeks. So some people will be like, oh my God, I'm there, show me the way. Other people will look at it and go, you know what, I don't have time to do this. How am I going to do it in eight weeks? I'm too busy to do that, I've got life and I've got kids and I've got this and I've got that. I can't possibly. And so what I have to do is go, all right, if you want more time in your life down the road, if you want to be able to have the freedom, you got to sacrifice a little bit of that time. Now, yeah, it sucks, but to create something epic is going to take a bit of time. And so if it's important, you need to carve out that time so that you can get to the other side of the rainbow, so that you can get that free time happening later. Remembering entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so you can live the rest of your life like most people can't. And so you've got to put all of that in in the prelaunch stage. Number three is list building activities. The results that you get in your launch are directly proportionate to the size of your email and the quality. I should say size and quality. If you are doing very clear, especially organic marketing, or if you're doing something like Facebook ads, but you're using very clear audience parameters, then you're going to end up with a really quality email list. If you've got a quality email list, the size of your launch is directly proportionate to the size of your email list to do your list building, because everything is about list building in the off season before you are launching, you just want to be building that list so you have as many people as possible that are ready and waiting for your course when you open those doors. Way to do that is with lead magnets. Lead magnets. Still one of the best ways that we can build the list because people want something for free. They're like, you know what, I'll try that. Like, that's exactly what I'm looking for. If you want to see one in action. My list building lead magnet that I have right now is our start your online course checklist. So you can get that atherempirebuilder.com Ready if you want to get that one. And you can see like when you look at it, look at the opt in page, look at what we do with the thank you page and how we invite people to then join the waitlist for ID to launch. Look at the email sequence that you get after, like sign up to other people's lead magnets and pay attention to the funnel so that you can then find out what do you like, what do you not like, what do you want to Adopt into your own business there as well. I love having when it gets into this pre launch stage, I probably wouldn't do this if it's six months until you launch because you want to put people into a funnel for an evergreen program at that stage. But when it gets to the two to three months out, we switch into that pre launch. And then after people have downloaded your free lead magnet, you then want to invite people to join your wait list. So on that thank you page you're saying, hey, that's in your inbox now. But while you're here, if you loved that, you're going to love this. This is the program we've got coming up. And you can, you know, anyone that's on your wait list, they get all of those early bird bonuses, they get any of those perks that are in there too. Another way is free training whenever you are launching. I am a big fan of free webinars and free training. Free training kicks the butt of a free webinar. However, I don't encourage like when we have members of her empire builder, I don't encourage people to actually do the training until you've launched about two or three times because it's just so many moving parts at the start. And I want to make sure that people are over all of those things before you actually go into the complexity of running a multi day challenge. But if you have the capacity to do that or if you're further along your journey, that's what you want to be doing every time. You can start promoting that free challenge three weeks beforehand. So really great pre launch strategy is to market the wait list, wait list, wait list. And then when you get three weeks out, market the challenge or the training or the coaching week, whatever you're going to call it, and then you're going into your launch there. Another one is to do a quiz. Weirdly, people love quizzes. I always see quizzes and I go, who's filling in these quizzes? I don't know. I never fill in the quiz. Actually I did do my enneagram not long ago. So that's true. But if someone's like people love doing quizzes. So if your business style lends itself to a quiz, could be a good idea. And the other thing to do before you launch is ads. Ads and collaborations. So let me talk about those two things separately. You don't want to only be running your ads when you open doors because it won't give enough time for the algorithm to work its magic and for you to know what's working audience wise and what's not. So you want to actually start ads that two months before you're launching and you'd run them to your lead magnet, then you'd run them to your coaching week and then run them to your launch. And then when it comes to collaborations, for a lot of us, if we want to grow, I mean, I don't think this ends like I'm still doing this now it's all about collaborations, it's all about how can I expand my audience. And so you want to get on other people's podcasts so that you can expand your audience. You want to do Instagram lives with somebody else so that it goes to not only your audience, but to their audience as well. Anything that you can do to collaborate and grow your list, it's going to be really helpful once you're launching. Number four is engagement boosters. So again, when you launch, you don't want it to be to crickets, you want it to be lively, you want it to be exciting, you want it to be loud. And so start the conversations so that you can increase those engagements. Things that you can do to increase engagements is polls, like doing polls on Facebook, doing polls on your Instagram stories, asking questions that people will want to answer back for you. Whether that's question stickers or whether that is questions in your social media posts, send people voice notes. So when someone like at the very, if you're at the very beginning, early stages, say someone follows you, you could send them a voice note back saying, hey, nice to meet you. I just wanted to start the conversation and say welcome to my world. You can do that. DM strategy if you're a bit bigger and you have a bigger following, you're obviously not going to have the time or capacity to voice note everybody. But I would pick different things of going, someone's engaging in your comments and you're going, gosh, this person's commenting on a few different posts, reaching out to them and saying, hey, loving the interaction. Tell me a bit about yourself or where are you up to with this? And start that conversation remembering that social media is social. It's not supposed to be just a one way selling track. Actually make a friend on there. Number five is nurture sequences, what you want to do. What I mean by nurture sequences is what is happening when people do all the different touch points in your business. So when someone is downloading, if you're looking at the whole customer journey, if someone is downloading your lead magnet, what is the nurture sequence in the emails that is coming after that, where are they going to next? If someone is registering for your coaching week, what is the nurture sequence that's coming? What are they going into next? Then as you're building into launch, as launch gets closer, what is that email sequence looking like? If you're a member of her Empire Builder, we give you all of that. You have every email sequence and the ChatGPT prompts to be able to change it to your own business, that makes life way, way easier. But if you're doing that yourself, really thinking about how you can build that excitement and how you can educate, because people will buy from you if they believe that they can get that transformation promise. And in a way you need to prove that you're worthy. You need to be able to say, this is what I can provide for you, this is how I can educate you and entertain you so that you're motivated to get that across in there as well. Then you want to share your story. So share your why behind the offer. Why is this important to you? Why do you want to be doing this? I mean, with idea to launch, we were looking at it because so many people go to join her empire builder and they're not quite ready yet. They're going, I know this is good down the track, but it's a lot like her Empire Builder is a big program. It follows how to do all your marketing, how to do launches, how to build your team, how to create systems, everything to do with your online business. Which for a lot of people, they're like a lot of people, they're engaging in our launch, they're going, well, I haven't even got my course yet. I haven't even got it there yet. Because we have so many people in our last launch say that to us. I was like, you know what, it's time to re record idea to launch and give it it the best we've got with all the latest AI stuff and how people can actually create their course so quickly and easily now. And so that is why we're doing a launch of idea to launch is because the why was compelling enough. And sharing that story makes people go, yeah, well that makes sense. Like I get it. And you want to build anticipation. So when you're coming into launch, have that plan eight weeks out, I'm going to be doing this minus seven weeks, I'm going to do this minus six weeks, I'm going to do this minus five weeks. Build that anticipation as you're coming up so that by the time you launch it's like, whoop, whoop. Like it's finally here. Think of it like a movie. Like if you see a really great movie trailer and when movie campaigns are done, I love the way they build anticipation with movie campaigns. If we pay attention to the way that they do it with the movies, the way that the stars are all out doing their press junkets before the movie's actually released. Like it's, it's a brilliant pre launch strategy campaign. You can take a lot of inspiration from the way they do it with the cinema. Like I said before, we'll wrap it up. When to start. Your prelaunch is pretty much always about six weeks out. That six to eight weeks out is when to really click in from normal off season to prelaunch. That's when you're really going to get your game face on and go, all right, I'm going to do this. But heavy visibility, you're starting two weeks out. Two weeks out. You're really dialing everything up. The amount of your content, your emails, everything starting to really increase that two weeks out. Remember that consistency is the key. So pre launch is a slow burn. It's not a loud bang. Launch is that loud bang. You can't go with the ferocity of pre launch that you do in the launch or you'll burn your audience out. So it's got to be a bit of a, of a slow burn. A bit softly, softly so that you're getting people ready but you're not screaming at them the whole time. So that then when it comes to launch, people are like, all right, I'm ready for the show. Like I'm ready for the party. There a couple of things to avoid waiting until launch week to talk about your offer. Don't be shy about it. Tell everyone about it. Do not keep it a secret. Another thing to avoid is over teasing without substance. So you know, you'll sometimes see people go, I've got something special coming. Come on, let's do better. You want to always have some substance behind that as well. Don't tease. If you're not going to give some education, you're not going to give some entertainment. Talk about what you're doing. Don't make it all about you. Make it about them. Make it about their transformation. Make it about the customer and what you're able to deliver for them. Your launch is the party. Your pre launch is the invitation. Think of it like that. Party time is launch. You need to invite. Well before that. Build the hype, build the anticipation. The more you invest in warming up your audience, the more that they'll be ready and excited to buy and your best launch ever will be just around the corner. If you want to get your online course up and running, go to herempirebuilder.com start. You will get the latest version of idea to launch which is brand spanking new and made just for you. I will see you in there.