STEP-BY-STEP: How To Plan A SUCCESSFUL Course Launch (calendar breakdown INCLUDED!)

If you have any type of services, any type of digital course or digital shop, you have got to have a launch lift off of I said it Delta rocket carrying glass, gamma ray telescope. I absolutely believe if you want to start creating some consistent passive income, you know, having a course or digital shop on the side, you must do a live launch to that offer to really get some key data points. And the same goes with the service side. Whether you're doing VIP days or you're done retainer work or project work, you need to have a launch to build up excitement, get some visibility so you can really get your client roster booked. But here's the good news, you don't have to keep launching forever. You just need to do a few, like I said to get some key data and metrics points. So when you set this on automatic or on Evergreen, you know your numbers and you can keep track of those to make the changes, make the tweaks wherever you need to to ensure sure you're making consistent income in your Evergreen funnel or in your digital shop or with your digital courses. The second piece of good news, your launches do not need to be over complicated. Once you walk through kind of the key parts of really any launch, no matter what you're launching and then you plan for it, with the right amount of lead up time to your launch, you could honestly have a semi stress free launch. I'm not gonna lie and say your launch is ever going to be stress free. Launching is stressful, but if you're really prepared for it and you have a solid plan for it, it's not gonna be as overwhelming and stressful as maybe you thought it was gonna be. Now I don't have the total number of times that I've actually lived launch in my seven years in business, but I know I've done probably at least 2:20. And for the first five years in my business, I did all of those launches solo. Just me, nobody else to help me with it. It wasn't until after my fifth year where I started to have some copywriting help or some funnel building or just an assistant to help me get some content out. I share this with you because even if you are a team of one right now, the plan I'm about to show you is totally doable for you. Real quickly, before we get to my wall over here where I'm going to break down the timeline, I want to clarify what is a launch is basically a promotion period. What you're gonna be doing during this launch period is really drumming up lots of excitement, lots of anticipation. And really your main focus during a launch is to talk about your thing. Whether it's your one on one services that you're trying to book up or a course or opening your digital shop, you're just gonna be really loud about this one offer and you're gonna give so many reasons why your audience needs it. Now, some of the upsides of live launching is a cash injection because when you are talking a lot about it in your sole marketing efforts for a couple weeks is for this launch, you're going to see more people buying that offer than if it was sitting to the side and you're not giving it as much attention as you are during a launch. And data, which is massive because so many solo entrepreneurs really don't know the numbers they need to be looking at to understand how they can sell more or why they aren't selling more or why they aren't booking more. In these launches give you a buttload really of numbers and data to understand what to keep doing, what to stop doing and what you can improve on. And like I said, you don't need to be doing these launches 24 7. I'd say maybe two to three live launches a year. You could even possibly take that back to one live launch a year. Once you have the data that I'm about to share with you and you set it on an evergreen funnel, meaning you're launching on the back end to people so that you're making consistent sales on your offers without needing to do the launching, the live launching piece of it. Now, before we go on a field trip over to my wall, I want to know if you've ever live launched before, let me know down in the comments below. And if you haven't yet, what's been kind of stopping you? What's been kind of the barriers for you to live launch? Let's go pull it off. All right, welcome to my calendar wall. Now, I have three months up here. I'm not putting specific dates on here, so you can use this for your own launch. So grab a paper and pen, go ahead, sketch out your calendar. Want to, and let's dive in. So the reason why I say 12 weeks is because I want you to have enough time to plan out this launch. So in this theory, where we have 12 weeks, you would be launching the 12th week, meaning this is where your doors would open, this is where you would have your launch mouthpiece. So let's put cart open on the calendar and then talk about what your launch mouthpiece is and what you can choose the most common launch mouthpiece is a webinar where you give some valuable information and then you pitch at the end. The most common types of webinars you're going to see are like the three Mistakes or the three Secrets webinars where you teach the biggest mistakes that your course or your service is going to provide the solution for. Right. There are other options as well. So I don't want you to think this is the only thing that you can do. Inside of my coaching program, 10k on replay, we talk about all the different types of launches and I test a bunch of different types of launches and share my experience. You could also do a five day challenge. You could do a private podcast. You could do a mini teaching series or mini masterclass series where instead of just having one big webinar like a 60 minute webinar, maybe you have three 10 minute mini lessons. You could hold a virtual conference. There are just so many options. You just really want to have something that's going to build up a lot of visibility where you can really talk about your niche in relation to your offer so that you can really educate your audience by the end of this mouthpiece. Why your product or your service is the solution they need right now. Now, the reason I'm starting at the end of this whole plan is because we need to know where we're going before we can back up and really start planning the right dates for, for us. Because it may take you longer than 12 weeks, that's totally fine. I just highly encourage you to set a date that you are going to launch because I know we can keep pushing it back, pushing it back to avoid it because typically we're scared, we're nervous. What if nobody signs up for a webinar? What if nobody buys our thing? So I just want you to set a date and stick to it. It can be four months out, it can be six months out, but set a date and commit to yourself to actually doing this launch. I do want to wrap up kind of this open cart phase before we start planning what needs to happen before that open cart. And what I mean by open cart is you want to have some type of launching bonuses. Maybe there's a special offer that they get when they buy, maybe it's a special pricing. But during this period it is kind of like Black Friday, right? Where they say, you know, 50% off for the next 48 hours. Right. I don't want to do something that drastic, but I want you to have a reason. Scarcity. Maybe the first 10 people get a one on one call with you. FOMO maybe. Everybody who enrolls this time period, from car open to car close, you're going to do a special workshop for the following week so that people get FOMO about it and they're like, okay, I really got to get into there. Because what's going to happen in most most launches is your audience is going to get stuck on a fence. They're going to be like, you know, I want to do that, but I don't know, they're going to waver back and forth. You need to give them a really good reason to get off the fence and jump into work with you or buy with you. That's where that FOMO and that scarcity piece comes in. It's just to really help nudge those people off the fence. Generally, a cart open period could be 5 to 7 to 10 days for me. Honestly, 10 days is too long. During the open cart is stressful. I'm not going to lie. You probably have a launch goal in mind and you're wondering, am I going to get there? You're doing a lot of customer service during this period too. A lot of questions and for me, seven days is good enough, five days is even better. But I will tell you, the last launch that I had in fall of 2020, we actually extended our open cart beyond 10 days. I think we did 14 days because I had to have my gallbladder out in the middle of my launch. And we did get quite a few more sales after even that 10 day period. So I was surprised. I wasn't stressing as much because I was down and out at the time. But I like I said I like a five to seven day cart open meaning when you're push wishing these extra bonuses or, or these reasons why they need to jump in right now. So we're looking at our calendar and it doesn't matter when you host a webinar. If you're going to do a webinar, I would say Mondays probably aren't the best day. I've done webinars on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays. I've done Friday webinars and Sunday webinars as well. I just think it's whatever is going to work best for you. For me, weekends just aren't going to work because the kids are here. So once you have your webinar, we're going to count out how many days your cart is going to open so that we officially close car. Those bonuses are gone. You can sell your course later, it's fine. But you want to give, you know, bonuses or reasons why to buy during cart open. All right, quick note about my calendars as well. I don't add Saturdays and Sunday cities because I do not want you working Saturdays and Sundays. I don't want to work Saturdays and Sundays. So I want to help you create a plan so that you don't need to work Saturdays and Sundays as well. So if you're doing a seven day cartoon open, you see that it ends right there the following Tuesday. So now we know what we're working towards. Now we got a plan for it and it's going to take this much amount of time. Now I know you probably have a lot of questions about a webinar. What should it be? Two quick tips here before we dive into the rest of the schedule. When you are doing your webinar, I know it seems like it's a lot of tech. Keep it as simple as possible. There are softwares out there like Webinar Jam or Easy Webinar. I don't use those. I've tried once. I hated them. I literally just use Zoom. I send a Zoom link out to my audience that signs up for my webinar and that's how I host my webinars. You could also do something like a YouTube video that is unlisted. So you could go live on YouTube with an unlisted video. Send that link out to your audience and just those people that have that link will see it. Honestly, don't overthink the webinar tech because it will stress you out. Make it as simple as possible. The second tip that I have here for webinars, when it comes to what should your webinar be about, it's really key in your webinar to share valuable information. You don't want people to watch and be like she just talked about herself the whole time. But you also want to start knocking down the dominoes why they may not enroll in your course or your service. I actually deep dive a lot more into webinar prep. The tech, the slides, the outline, the promotion emails, all inside of my coaching program 10k on replay. Not only that, but I have an entire launch asana board with all the steps that I'm about to show you locked and loaded that you can download and pop into your asana as well. And a launch one sheeter that you should do like day one of this entire prep series to really help you focus on planning on a successful launch. Now if you want all my launch templates and we're going to dive into pre launch content. All of that go over and apply to 10K on replay at trina little.com forward/10K because I give you all of that. Plus you have the opportunity to submit your launch one cheater in your launch plan to me with weekly audits. So if you really want somebody to help you walk along your launch plan that I'm about to show you, apply to 10K on a replay because that is just what you're going to need. We are going to keep working back from cart open because I really want you to understand the domino effect that's going to happen. So you have plenty of time in this area to plan for this stuff. This is when the actual is going to happen. You're going to be doing a lot of stuff between week eight to week 12. And so once you can see what you're actually doing and preparing for, then you can start sprinkling those tasks out for weeks one through eight. Now the most important part of any launch strategy is your pre launch strategy, the pre launch content that you're going to be dripping out starting on week eight leading up to your launch. This is critical for preparing your audience to want to buy what you're about to sell them. Because you just can't decide to launch and not really educate and lead your audience up to this launch. Because when you cart open you want people drooling and like ready to grab their credit card or ready to grab their checkbook to want to buy the offer that you have. And this pre launch content is going to prepare them for that. So there are four pieces of pre launch content that you need to be creating leading up to your launch. And we're also going to talk about the call to actions that are going to happen in this pre launch content. So where is this pre launch content being released? You want to drop this content wherever you are active. If you're active on Instagram, this is going to be your Instagram content for that week. If you have a podcast, this is where you're going to talk about these pre launch content pieces on your podcast, a YouTube video. Wherever you are publishing content each week, this is what you're going to be talking about as I break down what you're going to be saying, what the topic or theme is and then what the call to action is going to be. Again, we're building up and preparing your current audience to be ready to buy at the end of this. You're also, I forgot email. These are going to be emails you're sending out every single Week as well. Now, week one, pre launch content, like I said, is going to start about four weeks prior to your cart open. And the theme for this content is going to be why it matters or why your topic, your niche is important. So what you are doing here is taking people who are unaware that they have a problem. Okay. I use an example of a course I recently bought, COD Metabolism makeover. Now I knew I had a problem. I didn't know what she was mentions the problem is and metabolism makeover was the problem. So my current problem that I was unaware of is I was trying to lose weight. I felt like I was doing everything right. I'm working out three to four times a week. I'm walking, I'm not really eating that unhealthily. We're pretty healthy with our food. But I just could not lose the weight that I had been out for over a year no matter what I did. So I was unaware that my problem was not eating enough protein, which is what metabolism makeover really talks about, how you change your diet to eat more protein. I didn't know that was my problem. The problem that I had was losing weight. And so she dropped content, her pre launch content for week one, why you're exercising and eating right. And it just seems like you can't lose weight. If she would have dropped like a content around why you need to eat protein to lose weight, that wouldn't have attracted me because I'm not aware of that problem, assumed I was eating the right protein. I need to be introduced with the problem that I think I have first. So the problem I think I have is I can't lose weight even if I exercise and eat right. So in that pre launch content, you're going to be talking to what they think the problem is and you're really going to be introducing them to the actual problem that they have. And so in this metabolism makeover example, right, she's talking about, you know, you're working out, you're eating healthy, but the one thing that's probably not working in your way is your metabolism. And as you get older, right? Right. Your metabolism slows down and the best way to really ramp up your metabolism is to eat more protein. Okay, so now she's taken me from unaware of this problem that I have to now I am problem aware. That's really what you want to think about. This very first piece of content that you're going to drop wherever you're creating content, why your niche, why your offer, why what you do matters. So another example for me When I was getting started in YouTube and I had to create my first launch for YouTube, my YouTube course at the time, I needed to talk about why you need a YouTube channel for your business. Okay. People didn't know they needed a YouTube channel, right? So in that pre launch content I need to talk about all the benefits, like why you must start right now, why YouTube is the future and why you can't avoid this any longer. So they were unaware of the problem that they had after this pre launch content. Now they're aware of the problem, okay, which is now going to lead you in to pre launch content topic number two. But before we go into pre launch content number two, you're going to have a lead magnet in pre launch content number one. And this is how you're going to start building your list for your launch. Because people are going to hear you talking about this problem that they now have and you want to get them on your email list and start building it. So if you have a lead magnet, for example, the metabolism makeover challenge, five easy ways to add more protein to your diet. Or three protein heavy breakfast, lunch and meal recipes, right? That's going to. As soon as I know I have a problem, they're going to drop a solution already for me for YouTube, I had for my video on why your business needs a YouTube channel, I had the YouTube handbook, right? So that they could immediately start setting up their YouTube channel in preparation to getting their business on YouTube. So making a super simple lead magnet that is going to make sense for that audience to want next after they're like, oh crap, I have a problem right now. This lead magnet you're going to be talking about everywhere, right? It's going to be on your website, it's going to be in your emails, it's going to be on Instagram, you're going to be promoting this lead magnet and that entire week, which is week eight, haven't done the previous week, but pre launch content, week one, week eight of your whole planning process, everything is going to revolve around getting that lead magnet and talking about why this matters. All right, now we're into week two. Two, your audience now knows that they have a problem. They are problem aware. So you basically need to throw them a bone here and help them a little bit with their problem because not only is this going to keep them on this journey with you, but you're going to build some trust with them because guess what, you just told them they had a problem and you need to help them. So pre launch content is Some really valuable, meaty, value bomb type content. During this piece of content, you really want to take them through a process to have a quick win by the end of your video, end of your podcast, whatever you're doing for content. So like I said, kind of in that lead magnet, the recipes, something very similar. Maybe you can give them five easy tips to add protein in your daily life or, you know, five easy ways to eat more protein. Maybe it's something super simple. You gave them a recipe possibly for the lead magnet, which is also going to help in this pre launch content number two as well. Because if you're showing them simple ways to add protein to their diet, you can then say, make sure you get my recipes for three easy breakfasts, lunches and dinners. That's going to help you add more protein. See how you're really building up to this launch. Okay? They didn't realize that protein was a problem. They became problem aware. Now they're problem aware and you're giving them a solution right now. My second video in this process, when I'm pitching my video strategy academy course, you know how to to use YouTube. As a business owner, I may do something like the four videos you need on your business YouTube channel by next month and I can walk them through the four different videos they need and give them tips and tricks on how to do it right. And at the end of the video, remember, the call to action is still to that lead magnet, which makes sense for that YouTube handbook, because if they haven't set up their YouTube channel yet, they're going to need that handbook. So week two, call to action lead magnet, again, by pre launch content week number three, you've really got their wheels turning and they're thinking about, okay, how can I solve this problem? Right? I went from not knowing I had a problem to now I know I have a problem. What can I do to solve this? This is where you really want to feature your way of doing things. How is your way of doing things different? So you want to do a case study, hear or share your journey and how we're using the metabolism. Mika, for example, how you started eating more protein and how your way of eating and working out by just adding more protein really changed the way not only you look, but really how you felt. All right, so that's not necessarily a case study from a client. You can give your own case study. So we could do a piece of content, a YouTube video about how a client of ours started using YouTube, YouTube for their business and within 90 days, their webinar Signups doubled or we saw traffic increase to their website by 50% because YouTube was now sending them traffic as long as well as all their other ways that they were generating traffic to their offer. Right. So you're going to show them, here's the solution, this is how they did it. Because you can start adding in little breadcrumbs of your framework, your process. You don't want to give it all away yet, but you're going to drop little hints about, you know. So the first thing that we did to build her YouTube channel up to get more traffic was follow this approach. Right? I'm not going to talk about the fireworks strategy. I'm just going to say we use the fireworks strategy where we ensure we're making the YouTube algorithm happy, but also her business happy. Right. Because the firework approach is a framework specific to my video strategy academy. Right. So week three, you are showing them that you have a framework, you have a process that has garnered results. Results. Now this call to action is going to be to sign up to your webinar because this is where you're going to dive deeper into the secrets, the mistakes that most people make. So call to action, sign up for your webinar. One more last tip here for pre launch content number three. If you can really share a transformation story. So something like it wasn't just eating two more hard boiled eggs a day to get me more protein in my body. Here's where I started. Here's that will happen after eight weeks working this process. Right. And for me in the video strategy academy, pre launch content, I'm going to make sure people understand that it's not just any type of YouTube strategy that's going to work for business owners. It's a very specific type of YouTube strategy because most YouTube strategies are focusing on just growing a YouTube channel, getting as many views as possible. But for businesses, we want to get as many sales clients, leads as possible. So you really want to be dropping this type of information in that pre launch content number three. Three. All right, now we're at pre launch content number four and we've been building up weeks for this. You took them from unaware that they had a problem, now they know they have a problem. Now they can see there's a solution to their problem. But you need to convince them that your solution is the one that they need. Right. Because you're probably not the only person out there teaching dieting and exercising. I know I'm not the only person out there that was teaching YouTube. So by week four, I want to introduce why my tactics, my process works best for them. You just really want to iterate like nobody else out there is teaching it like this. Because your framework works for you and you know, your framework works for your audience. So that by the end of this piece of content, you can again roll into why they need to be at your free webinar. You're going to go into more detail about your specific process. You're going to give the three secrets. Why your process works or why the other people's process doesn't work work. You just really need to hook them here. You know, you've led them on this whole journey and you want to keep them going to get to your webinar to know, okay, what is it that she does that's so special? She introduced me to this problem that I have. I'm looking for a solution. She's saying her solution is it. How do I know it's it? And so that's the type of content you're going to create here on pre launch content number four. And your call to action again is to your, your webinar. Right? So you think that's it, right now we can launch. No, no, no, no, no. Listen, there's a lot more that leads up to this and by this point in time I just want you focusing on promoting your content, talking about your content and also promoting your webinar. Now we have all of this time to prep for that. So I actually created, like I said, an entire launch plan for my 10k on replay clients. I don't know what I was making making this plan. I wanted to list out all the assets that you need for a launch like this, even if it's a webinar launch. And I have it listed right here. So you need to have four pieces of pre launch content, 15 launch emails. So we haven't even talked about the emails that we'd be sending out during this time as well. You need to have four webinar registration emails. You need to have a webinar landing page, a webinar thank you page. You need to have a sales page, a checkout page, a thank you for purchasing page. You need to have an onboarding email. When people then buy your course, you need to have your course membership or your course site set up. You need to have about six to seven optional live stream topics. Remember, the more you can talk about these things, the more you're going to prepare your audience to buy it when you have it, as you're making them problem aware and you're making Them solution aware. When with these live stream topics, you're also going to need one webinar slide deck. You also need to have a KPI spreadsheet. Remember how I talked earlier in this video about the importance of data? This KPI metrics spreadsheet is the whole reason that you are doing this launch so you can look at the data. Is your conversion rates on par? Is your open rate? Is your sales page traffic on par? To get the sales that you want, you need this data and you need that spreadsheet. There are automations that you need to set up. You've also got to test not only your webinar funnel, your lead magnet funnel, but also your sales page funnel as well. You also need to create that lead magnet. You need to think about special bonuses that you're going to have during this cart open period. And you need to think about optimizing all of your sites for your lead magnet, for your webinar and then your sales page because that's all going to change, right? You're going to have on your link and bio in on your website, you know, get your free lead magnet. Then you're going to switch it when you're about 10 days out to register for your webinar. And then when cart is open, you're going to change all those links again to this is now open, right? Your offer is now open. So all of that stuff is now happening in the first two months. So this is why I said it was so important to create the end place first so you can start backing it up. So if we know our webinar is going to go live for registrants on week 10, week 11, we need to make sure that page is live and that we test it. So you want to make sure not only is the webinar landing page created, but the webinar thank you page as well as the confirmation email. And then you want to test that as well. Now we have the lead magnet, right? We need to make sure that is prepared as well. Well, okay, then you're also going to need to create your sales page. You're also going to create your webinar slide deck. Now I have all of these templated out and a very specific calendar created inside a 10k on replay. I'm actually going to be hosting an open house where you can come ask me your questions. See it for yourself. I'm going to bring you inside 10K replay, show you everything that you get when you join me inside. Go to trina little.com forward/open house to join us for that for free. No obligations, just your opportunity to check it out. Ask me any questions that you have, because this really starts to get nitty gritty. And like I said, I already have it completed, the entire schedule done inside of 10k on replay for you. And if you're starting to think, holy cow, how am I going to have the time to even do any of this? Check out the planning series that I just finished here on my channel, where I walked walk you through how I plan my month, week, day and quarter so I can ensure that I have the time to do these pieces of my launch. And I even did this when I was a team of one as well. So go ahead, click on that series on your screen right now.