Trena Little shares what she learned launching multiple online courses in her first year. She covers planning, finding your audience, and marketing strategies that actually worked for getting people to buy.
You created this awesome course, you came up with this great idea or you're ready to launch this information product that you know so many people could benefit from. So you hit launch and nobody buys. I know that feeling. I've been there with you. So today I'm going to share with you the lessons that I learned from launching two courses this year and what you can do to to make sure you aren't launching to crickets. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Just the Tips with Trina where I provide online entrepreneurs tips and tricks on how to create a video content strategy that works for them and their business. If you aren't subscribed to this channel, make sure you do so by clicking the red subscribe button. That way you'll know when I upload more content for you. I'm also on social media giving you behind the scenes of how I set up create content and and all that fun stuff. So if you want to check me out there, the links will be up here. So like I said, today I'm going to share with you lessons I learned from launching. This was my first year in business and I launched quite a few things this year because brand new in business, I wanted to make money. I had so many ideas and I figured let's do this right. So before we jump into all this, let me know down in the comments section below if you did you launch anything this year and how did it go? Were you happy with the results? Not happy with the results? Let me know down below. The first lesson I'm going to share with you that I learned was be prepared. And if you think you're prepared, you're not prepared enough yet. What I mean by this is you need to have a social media plan, you need to have a content plan, you need to have your total schedule figured out for your launch time and the time before you actually launch. You want to start creating a build up to your launch. You don't just want to launch and say hey, today I'm going to launch my product and hit go. You want to build up that anticipation. You want people to get excited for it. That's how they're going to buy it is because they're excited for it. I totally did not do this enough with all of the things that I launched this year and so I know the importance it is to really create and build up that anticipation. You also need to have everything planned before you even start launching. That means email sequences, opt ins, blog posts, video content, social media posts, all of that stuff. You need to have planned in advance because when you, you jump into that launch time, things get crazy, things pop up and you just don't have the time to do it. And it could really make your business slip a bit if you aren't keeping up with social media or your emails or your newsletters. So you need to have all of that prepared too because I didn't, I figured, oh, I'll launch and then I'll work on this while I'm launched. Yeah, no, doesn't happen. You also want to think about affiliates or brand ambassadors. So reach out for other people in your industry and see if they will help you out, share that you're launching. Maybe be an affiliate and tell them if they give them an affiliate code and they make money off of your course every time they sell from their link. But what's important with this is you need to have all of that content done too. So email, swipe, social media graphics, explaining to them the timeline, keeping up with them to let them know, hey, this is when the doors open. This is when the doors close. This is what you can send today, this is what you can send tomorrow. You really need to be organized and have all of that done before you even launch. As far as a launch timeline, I do think it's important to have a presale. I did have a presale. The only thing is I think I would have definitely made my pre sale time frame a lot smaller. So I believe I did a prelaunch of three weeks. I think a week is good. It just took up a lot of time and people couldn't wait longer to buy. I'd do it for a week, say, hey, doors open, doors closing. Here's the actual launch. My price is going up here. As far as launch time frame, I did around 10 to 14 days, I think maybe 14. And you really need to be strong on that. Door is closing. If you're going to close doors, you can't just say hey, doors closing this day, but then still have it up on your site and still allow people to buy it because it doesn't make sense. If you said doors closed, which is something I did with my first course, I launched and definitely learned from my mistakes. My next tip is to know your audience and have a niche. So you can't just launch this product out to any Joe Bob or Cindy Lou. Cindy Lou who? You need to know your audience and have a very specific audience that you're targeting. You need to know who your people are and what they're paying points are and what it is that's really going to sell them. Definitely did not do this in the beginning of this year, but now towards the end of the year, as I'm thinking about next year and my strategy for 2017, I reached out to friends that I've made online and I did some interviews with them. It was my way of market research to figure out what could they use when it comes to video content. What do they struggle with? What? What is a product that they could have that would really help them create video content and make it easier for them? So I reached out to actual ideal clients and customers to see what they're struggling with, what their pain points are so that I could better create a service or a product crafted specifically for my niche, my ideal client. And finally, you do need to have some sort of a following to launch a product or service because nobody is going to buy from someone they don't know. If you only have 10 Instagram followers or 100 email subscribers, really focus on providing quality content that's free to that audience and growing your audience before you decide to hit the launch button because nobody will buy. You got to build that know like and trust factor with the free content that you're providing and let them get to know you more. Once you start to have a bigger following, then you can launch and people will be ready to buy from you because they know you. They know the free content that you're providing is awesome and they can only expect what kind of great content you're going to be providing. That's paid content. Those were the lessons learned during my first year in business. Launching probably five different things and really figuring out how to do it the right way by the end of the year. And if you are launching a product, let me know what you're launching down below. Let's talk. Maybe I could be some market research for you. Maybe we could jump on a call and talk about it. Let me know what you are planning to launch soon or in 2017 if you have any business besties or followers that you think this information would be really helpful. To make sure you share this on social media, you can easily click those little social media link buttons down below and share it on Twitter or or Pinterest or Tumblr if you're on Tumblr. And as always guys, I thank you so much for coming to watch my videos. I appreciate the time you take out of your day to listen and I'll see you next time. Bye.
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