What You Need to Learn from Alix Earle's Reale Actives Launch

Welcome to the Business Without Burnout podcast. I'm Kirsten Roldan and I help entrepreneurs make a lot of money peacefully. I'm a New Rican who went from working in healthcare while cleaning houses and braiding hair on the side to building a business that's generated over $4 million and counting. But there was a time I almost shut my business down because I had a lot of money but no peace. I managed to turn it around and that's why every week I share the 4 strategies that help you grow without burnout: email marketing, team systems, and mindset. So let's dive in.

Hello, Peaceful Millionaires. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're gonna do another celebrity product launch breakdown. We're gonna talk about Alix Earle. For those of you that do not know who Alix Earle is, this is a very popular influencer on all platforms, but especially on TikTok. And she really became known through doing get ready with me. She's really the one that popularized that content format. I think she was technically like the first one to do it. Don't quote me on that, but Either way, she definitely made it popular and is, you know, known for that. And so she has a very strong brand as an influencer and something that she has always struggled with and talked about, uh, you know, her journey with has been her acne. And in March she launched her skincare brand called Real Actives and she made $1 million in under 5 minutes. And by the end of the day, she had crossed $5 million in sales and every single product was sold out. Now last week I did breakdown on Cardi B's Grow Good campaign, and I broke down the difference between influence-driven sales and strategy-driven sales. If you have not listened to that episode, make sure that you do. So here's my hot take that I wanna talk about in this episode. The Real Active's launch was definitely influence-driven, but the strategy had some major gaps. So let's get into it so you can see what you can learn from it. First and foremost, what did she do right? I wanna make sure I'm fair here. There's some things that she definitely did right. So for for example, she didn't rush this. She spent years building Real Actives. She brought in a real CEO that is familiar with the skincare industry. She developed the line with her actual dermatologist, which was smart for credibility reasons. And she also had a very interesting pre-launch campaign. So she created this cryptic Instagram account called WTF is Alex doing? No context, no product, just speculation. And then she sent these physical puzzle piece mailers to different influencers and, you know, was creating hype online. And then there was a billboard in SoHo that revealed the brand piece by piece over several days. So, you know, it, it kind of was like this gamified launch, which was fun. It was interesting. She also sold from her story. So like I said, Alex has been talking about her acne journey publicly for years. The Accutane rounds, the low confidence, the dread of looking in the mirror. By the time Real Active's launch, she didn't need to convince anyone like, Why is she doing this? This is so random. It very much made sense for her. And what I want you to take away from what she did right is how important it is to be creative and to make your launches as fascinating and engaging to your ideal clients as possible. And also the importance of selling your story and building your brand with it. I've been seeing this as a major gap in a lot of my clients' marketing. I'm like, where's your story? Why aren't you talking about your story? Why aren't you really grounding this in your why and why you created this? So that is really, really important. Now here's what was missing. Her initial launch was missing an email strategy completely. They didn't do a waitlist at all. I was actually very, very shocked by that. And you know, because of the nature of what I do, I was a little horrified, but you know, it, it's all good, right? That's, it's, we all learn, right? But they would've, in my opinion, they would've sold out completely in 5 minutes if they had done a waitlist. They would not have had to wait the whole day. They would've sold out in the 5 minutes. So, you know, at the end of the day, I I wonder what it would've been like if they had sold out faster that day. And then from there they could have already had a restock waitlist going and what that would've done for their restock. I don't know. They actually just restocked today. I don't know what the numbers are. And I think regardless of what it is, I think it could have been higher if they had had an email strategy in place. So, you know, now with that said, like I, like I mentioned, they just launched their restock today. Mm-hmm. And I see they have an email opt-in form up now and it's decently positioned. It says weekly tips for skin that doesn't wanna hide, but it could be better. I would approach it as something along the lines of like weekly routines to heal your acne or something like that. Something stronger, less generic. But they have generic copy right now because they have a very generic promise, which I will get into in a minute. So when you go to their website, here's what it says. Our formulas pair clinically proven actives with barrier-loving support so skin can chill while breakouts are addressed. And then on the homepage it says their brand is built on 4 things: dermatologist-developed, clinically proven, built for breakouts, a simple routine. Now, none of that is wrong. None of that is wrong, but I want you to notice something. What is the specific promise? And if I covered her face on the website, if I put my hand over her face, what makes this different? Mm-hmm. Than any other skincare brand, right? Because here's what I know about Cardi B's Grow Good launch, which I broke down, like I said, in the episode prior to this. The promise was simple, it was visual, it was easy to understand. Booty length hair, two words. You knew exactly what you were buying, exactly what result to expect, and what made this product different. And that specificity is what makes copy convert because the customer can very easily see themselves in it before they've bought anything and they see what's different. They see why they should open their wallet for this. But what does Real Active's promise? It says, visibly clarify and calm acne-prone skin, which is what every acne brand says. That's what every skincare brand says. That is the category benefit, not the brand benefit. And it tells me what the product does, right, as like a class, but not what this product does differently than the 15 others I've already tried. And here's where it gets interesting, because they actually have a stat buried on their product pages that could have been the whole campaign, in my opinion. The Go Deep Mandelic Serum has clinical data showing that 80% 97% of participants agreed that their post-acne marks faded significantly after 4 weeks. Now that's a promise. Heal your acne marks, heal your acne in general. Maybe they can't use the word heal, and I totally get that. That's, you know, I'm sure there's some disclaimers and issues with that, but they could go a little deeper. They could go a little deeper than just calm your skin. You know what I'm saying? And that is something that is specific. It's a promise. It's something a customer can hold onto. It differentiates her. But even that is hidden. In a dropdown accordion on a product page. It's not the headline, it's not the hook, it's not what their bio says or what their homepage leads with. And even looking at the products, remember if you listened to the Cardi B episode, I really broke down how good their product copy was because it was so easy to understand for the client. One of the products on this website says exfoliating LHA and BHA cleanser. I have no idea what that means. What does that do? All I know is that it's a cleanser. What does it actually do? If you look at the products themselves, RealActivz also has the infrastructure for a system, like what I talked about that Cardi B did really well. She really sold her system and her proprietary framework, but they aren't really selling it as a system because again, there's no clear promise. Does that make sense?

Mm-hmm.

And even just in general, from a brand perspective, I just think they could have done a stronger job and I hope they do, right? I hope they do. They still can. This is just the first launch. Their messaging I'm sure will improve over time. I hope it does, but You know, Alex is known for being a party girl and it looks like this was, the goal was really to make it very, look very serious as opposed to lean in, right? The way Cardi B leaned in so well, I think that into her branding, I think Alex Earl could have leaned in a lot better. For example, the cleanser could have talked about like a cleanser that you actually wanna use after a night out. You know, something like that. Like the copy just could have been, it could have still positioned her as luxury and serious while still being very well branded. And I don't think the copy was brand specific. Honestly, I think the copy is very generic and it's not very brand specific. That's just my opinion. Okay.

Professionally.

Now she also had some objections that came up. So this is the last thing I wanna talk about is how Real Active handled objections. These major objections surface around this launch. One, the Accutane question and the Accutane objection. So Alex has done Accutane multiple times. So when she launched a skincare brand, the internet immediately said, uh, your skin looks good because of the drug, not the products.

Right?

And that's a valid question. Valid objection. Alex addressed it in a thorough, long TikTok walking through her skin journey. And that's not bad, but here's what it actually is. It's a reactive piece of content on a platform she doesn't own addressing an objection that should have been handled in one email. If she had built a waitlist, she could have been actually really like building up the anticipation through storytelling to her email list. Mm-hmm. She could have had the subject line say, "Accutane didn't work for me, here's what finally did." But she couldn't do that because she didn't collect any emails in the pre-launch. And then there was the shea butter concern. So customers questioned whether shea butter in a moisturizer was safe for acne-prone skin. And the brand ended up responding with like an Instagram post explaining the non— I'm gonna mispronounce this, but comedogenic, I think it is, testing. Again, reactive. They could have addressed this in one email. They could have— remember how I said in the Cardi B episode how they were able to address multiple objections in one sentence. So for example, one of the things that they said was like, Beauty Supply 21st Century Science. So that was able to answer multiple objections. And I talk about it in detail on that episode. I won't go into it here, but here they could have had a one-sentence objection handler. Like for example, they could have had a line of copy about the ingredients, not overexplaining it or being overly scientific about it, but something that's like ingredients that calm the skin, not irritate. Yeah. It, right? Ingredients that reduce inflammation. There's so many ways they could have gone just depending. But you know, they, again, I think that there was a copywriting issue throughout, throughout the campaign. So my honest read on the Real Active's copy overall, it was generic, right? It, it was generic. And I think they missed a lot of opportunity with their branded copywriting that they could have had. I think this was a very influence-driven launch and there could have been much better strategy. So I would wanna see, you know, some improvements in their messaging and their copywriting moving forward to really make it land. So here are the takeaways I want you to have. Okay. I want you to know that every product you have, every offer you sell needs a clear promise and it needs to be a strong one. If I cover your face on your website, I need to be able to differentiate. This from the copy. I need to be able to see why this is unique, why this is different, why you're not any other, you know, person that I've already bought from. Okay. And just saying it calms the skin.

Okay.

I have a moisturizer in my vanity right now that calms my skin. I'll just stick with that. That's not a strong promise. It's not a big promise, especially not for the price point that it's at. Right. Also, where can you get creative with how you build anticipation for a launch and make sure you build a waitlist while you do it? Also from Download all the objections that may come up in advance and don't wait to address it in the pre-launch. You should be answering objections as you go, not waiting until the cart opens. And don't over-engineer your copy to sound like an expert and to make it look serious. Simple branded copy sells the best. Okay? So that is what I want you to take away from Alex Earle's RealActivs launch. I hope this was helpful. If you want to learn how to improve the promise of your offer and make sure it is both very clear but also very strong, something that is attractive, something that when your clients see it, they automatically are like, this is unique. This is something I actually am going to consider buying, or, or this is something I am going to buy right now. And you wanna improve your overall copy and make sure it's not generic or sounds like everyone else, then make sure you join Million Dollar Email at the link in my show notes, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.

Peaceful millionaires, I have an announcement. We are about to do one of the most special launches in my business. It's going to be the last launch of my signature scaling mastermind, Million Dollar CEO. This program helps entrepreneurs hit their highest revenue and profit year while working less and has created multiple millionaires. I am going to pour into this program for the next 12 months and provide you with every resource you need to scale your business peacefully. If you want high-touch business support from myself and my team, this is the best chance to do it. Join my email list in my show notes so you don't miss our final launch. See you there.

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