Tips For Launching A Course - Behind The Scenes Of A Launch

Launch an online course. It'll be easy, they say. It'll be fun. It will make you five figures in one week.

Not quite.

I want to bring you behind the scenes of my most recent launch for YouTube Boot Camp. I want to give you the best tips I have for launching a new program, my program, launch mistakes, and my step by step launch strategy by bringing you along that week in a vlog style video.

That's right.

I vlogged the entire week I was launching my course so you could see what launching actually looks like. So stay tuned. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Just the Tips with Trena 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, you're going to make sure you want to do so because today I'm going to share with you my launch strategy and next week I'm going to be sharing with you everything I did in my pre launch phase to make it as less stressful as possible. So you're going to want to make sure subscribed. And let's just jump right on into my launch vlog. So I actually started launching. I had an open cart after a five day challenge. I opened the cart to early bird pricing on June 2nd and I opened early bird pricing to my challenge takers and my email list. I gave them 48 hours to sign up and then I released it to the public. I also then had two live workshops or webinars or masterclasses, whatever you want to call them and launch to them at full price as well. I closed the door on my program on June 12, so it was basically open at full price for seven whole days. So let's see what my week looked like.

So it's Tuesday right now. Apologies, I got a messy house going on and I missed Monday. But I'll catch you up on Monday here in a minute. But right now I'm getting ready to make some lunch because I'm going live on my Facebook group at noon 1 and 2 and then live on my business page at 3. So I'm gonna grab some lunch here. I'm making a salad real quick and I'll bring you along for the ride and keep updating you on what I'm doing during this launch to try to make it as successful as possible. So if you're thinking about launching, maybe this can give you a little insight into how a launch happens and what you can do. And FYI, I'm pretty much A one woman team. I will share with you the two investments I made for this launch later on in this video. So keep watching. I just inhaled some lunch right before I'm going live the first time in.

My Facebook group to talk to one.

Of my students about how she finds time to do YouTube videos even though she has three kids and two businesses. And basically, this is my office, it's my bedroom because we're currently living in a temporary apartment. So I make it work. This is the background that people see on all of my live and I just deal with it. I'm going to flip the camera around and show you what my setup looks like here. This is how I go live. I have my camera set up in front of my desk. I'm in front of a window, so it gives me a lot of light. And I'm going to be using Belive TV to go live in my Facebook group today. I'm using Belive so that I can interview Kristin and we can have like two windows, like the split window, so we can talk back and forth and everybody can see the both of us. So I gotta get going because it starts in two minutes. Okay, one live, done. Three more to go. So I got on my Facebook group page and I talked with one of the students that took my course prior to this session. So I know a lot of people.

Struggles with video is how to do.

It, how to have the time. So I was really pushing Kristen to answer questions like, how do you find the time? How do you incorporate it being a mom, how do you film with kids to get people out of that mindset that they need all this time to do it so that they will buy the course, to learn all of my strategies. Right? And so that's what I was pushing with Kristen. And then in the next live, I have Rachel, who's on a bunch of social platforms, so Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, all of that. And with her, I want to really push the idea that she uses YouTube videos across all the platforms so how she can use them across all the platforms. So I'm going to be asking her.

Questions like, how are you going to repurpose your videos?

How do you distinguish what you share on your blog versus your YouTube channel to get those types of questions going in people's ideas as well. And so I want to show you why I decided to use BeLive TV by flipping this over real quick because you can do the split screen so people can hear us both talking and we can also see each other. So that's why I like to use Belive tv and it's super simple. If you need a tutorial on it, let me know down in the comments section. And I can totally do a quick tutorial on how I use Belive TV in my launch. So even though I'm launching it doesn't mean my clients don't need me. So now I got to publish a video for my client and get that video rolling for her so she can start getting views on that video. Alright, so I just finished pushing out my clients video. So what I do for clients is I pretty much do all the back end YouTube stuff, optimize it, fill out the description box and then I push it out everywhere, share it. And I also always embed my client's videos into my website because that signifies to YouTube that the video is valuable because it's embedded into a website. So I always embed my client's videos into my website and then push it on all social media platforms to help getting it ranked. And she's already ranking for three of her keywords. So success. So I got like 20 minutes before my next live in my Facebook group. I'm just kind of chowing on some chocolate, trying to get the brain rolling again. You might be thinking this is a lot of stuff that I do and it is. And the funny thing is I don't have any help other than my husband obviously, but I don't have anybody on my team. I do this all myself. So when people say they can't do a launch the way they want to because they don't have the money to invest in a team, you just have to be super organized. And when I mean super organized, you have to get a lot of the stuff done prior to your launch. So I would have liked to launch this program before June, but I needed to prep everything, I needed to have everything ready to go because I can't be doing a hundred things at once. So I already finished the course and had people go through it. And so I don't have to worry about creating the content. I have all of my social media already scheduled, so I'm not worrying about having to post on social media. And I have my plan of exactly what I want to do every single day. So I'm not thinking on the cusp of what I need to do. So I'm going to take you over to my calendar real quick to show you how I planned out this launch. So these are the calendars that I have that I used to plan this launch. And I'm also missing April because there was a lot of stuff that I did in April, but my daughter took it down and played with it. So you see the little red things are all the things that had to be done by that day. So I knew exactly what I needed to get done. I also had all my emails planned which emails needed to go when webinars that I did lives that I wanted to do those days. So I knew exactly what I was doing leading up to, I think this was when the cart opened and so then moving into June I had everything listed out. And so when bonus days were when people got to see certain things. When my master class was more lives and I actually decided to bump up this to here. So that's why there's some arrows. They do have a couple classes, I mean course videos I wanted to update based on new content that is out about YouTube. So YouTube Bootcamp is ever evolving. That's basically how I planned it all out on this calendar so they can go back and look at it. So then I also put a lot of the stuff in Trello. I'm a huge Trello user now thanks to Think Creative Collective. I took their course on Trello and it's really helped me stay organized and and stay on task to get things done. When I say I'm by myself, I'm.

By myself two days a week.

So the house is basically empty on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So there are kids here on Monday, Thursday and generally on Friday as well. So I'm basically going hardcore two days a week of like 10 hours of work. And on Mondays and Thursdays my mom comes here and watches the kids and I don't really get a lot done because I have a little baby who's five months and she pretty much watches the two year old. So I'm in charge of the five month old. So I don't get a lot done except on nap time. So the key to the story is be organized before you launch. Have as much done as possible before you get in and yeah. So let's get ready for the second live. So the first live I couldn't figure out how to turn my webcam on so so I had to use my computer camera and I hate using my computer camera because I have to look up with my webcam I can look directly in. So I'm gonna get ready for live number two. So I just got done my messy closet. I just got done with my four lives. Let me show you what I had to set up for my one live where I was talking about my post it wall Check this out. This is my professional wall video studio. So I didn't even realize that I couldn't go live on my phone through Belive tv which is what I was doing all day today. And so to be able to show the post it wall and not be on the computer, I had to drag the laptop over here on a chair on top of my box of shoes with the ring light like five minutes before I was supposed to go live. But in that live I just talked about how I broke down my entire course. And what was great about doing this live during my launch was I was able to break down everything that was in those sections so that they could hear what was all in my course. So I told them like exactly what the post its had on so that they heard what was in my course so that it not only did it teach them how to organize a course on their own, but it also was giving them the information on what was in my course. So that was a pretty cool strategy that I just came up randomly on the fly. I'm currently losing my voice so I think I'm gonna take a break the rest of the day. I may just hit up the bed and relax a minute because the kids will be home in about an hour. Alright, so it's the morning of the masterclass and as you can tell I'm still in bed. I've got breakfast and my coffee cup sitting over there. I'm just working on some last minute things. I went through the masterclass slides just to check for typos. I practice it, said it out loud, went through it, noticed a couple other things to really optimize the masterclass because I'm testing something new. I'm gonna let the masterclass be live on YouTube for anybody to join. And so if people are joining I still want to get them on my list. I have a worksheet for my masterclass. So what I did is I got a link to a lead box and so when anybody who joins wants that worksheet because they're not on my list, so they didn't get it prior to the course, prior to the master class, they would have to opt in to get that worksheet. So I created a lead box, got the link made, a bitly link, put it in the description box. So while I am teaching I can tell people that if they want the worksheet I'm referencing, make sure to click the description box below because you can grab it right now. So what that does is gets me more opt ins from people who are finding me live on YouTube and potentially retarget them with my post webinar, masterclass, whatever you want to call it, emails to join my program. So I just set that all up. I did set an automation in my convert kit so every time somebody opts in live on that lead box, I'm going to tag them as new opt ins from class just to see how many I get. And I'll keep you updated as far as what else I'm doing today. I set up a chat box on my website so if people go there, look at my program, they aren't sure if it's for them or not. They can chat me directly right there on the website. And I think that's about all I did so far. It's almost 10 o'. Clock. I was hoping to maybe get a run in just to get all this like anxiety and stress and all that out before, but if I don't have time, that's okay, no biggie. Oh, and I did put a timer on the master the Boot camp enrollment page so that people know I got an email last night saying they weren't sure when it closed because I didn't have the date. My mistake. So now I do have a timer and the timer that I use is Deadline Funnel. I believe I'll put all the links to all the programs that I'm using throughout this launch in the description box so that if I don't say it or you're curious and I didn't say it, everything will be in the description box. So this is what's happening on a Wednesday. And then what's really cool is tonight. Ashlyn Carter, she is my copywriter and she decided to enroll in YouTube Bootcamp. She's gonna come on live in my Facebook group to talk to my Facebook group about why she decided to enroll. So I'm really hoping that these one on one interviews in the Facebook group will really put people over the edge to actually join and get through any of those pain points that they're having, like not having the time and not having the resources and stuff like that. I'm hoping speaking to real life people will make them see, oh, I can do this too. So I'll keep you updated. Maybe the next time you see me, I'll be dressed. So you want to know what happens right before a masterclass where you're gonna pretty much pitch a product? You're sitting here adding some more slides to your presentation because you realized you needed to add something that you didn't. You're also fixing your sales page because you left out some information you needed to put. And yeah, that's pretty much where we're at right now. I'm just right now going through my slideshow, updating a few things, making sure the links are clickable. I'm dressed, showered, hair done, makeup, did everything ready to go, minus the tractor that is mowing a field outside my window. So hopefully that stops before the masterclass because it's pretty loud. Let me show you what I'm doing for this masterclass that I haven't done before that I want to test out. Okay, so what I'm doing is I created a live stream in YouTube and it is how to create a YouTube channel for your business. I'm going to just click on edit here. And I actually optimized this video the way I would any other video. That title is based on research I did. I have tags based on research and I filled out the description box with the tags. And then when I go live, it's going to be public so anybody can watch it. And I have a tweet to go live when I go live. And so what's different about this is I'm going to try to go live and to still capture people's emails while I'm live. I have an opt in link right.

Here to get the workbook that I'm.

Talking about in in the masterclass. So if somebody finds me on this video while I'm live or after I'm live and they want to get the workbook that I talk about in this class, they have to click here and opt into my email list to get the workbook. YouTube Live has comments over here to the side. Let me pull this down there. Has a live chat right here. And that's how I've been doing chats for most of my lives. So I've really been liking doing workshops and master classes like this on YouTube because I don't have to worry about embedding anywhere, paying for anything because YouTube is free and it also benefits my YouTube channel. So why not use it on my YouTube channel? So that's how I've pretty much been doing webinars. I've never bought a webinar platform prior to just doing it on my YouTube channel. I was embedding the video code into my website and having like a page for my website to host the webinar and then inserting code for a chatango chat box as well. But dude, that is too much work. I've just been using YouTube live and using it to help grow my Channel. Oh, yeah. One other thing I can show you while we're waiting is one thing I decided to do this launch is to get people more excited and to make some hype for it. So I've created a happy camper board. So every time somebody enrolls, I put their name up here on a post it and I document it on Instagram stories so that I tag them. People get excited that they were tagged, people watching and are like, oh, this is really cool. Maybe I want to be a part of this. So it's just been a way to create hype and get people excited for YouTube Bootcamp and also thank those that have signed up by shouting them out on Instagram. So that's been pretty cool. I actually stole that idea from Alex Beaden. She did it at the end of last year, 2016, with her signature program that she had opened at the end of the year. So I did steal that from her. I can't say that it's totally original, but I like the idea and so I did it. Alright, so now we're well into Thursday and I haven't vlogged in about 24 hours. Vlogged? So last I left you, I was having my master class. Had my master class. That went well, A lot of content. But just so I'm being real and open with you guys, they only had one person buy during the masterclass. So I don't want you to think and get discouraged if no one buys because I only had one. I had 185 people sign up and.

I could tell there were about 25.

People there consistently through the whole thing, even through the pitch and then replay. We're now at about 105 views and so far, one person bought live and three more people have bought since the replay has been up. So that's where we're at. So I was a little discouraged after, sorry, my daughter's out there playing and he's playing there. I was a little discouraged because I thought I had this amazing master class. And I know I'm not the only one that feels this way. Sometimes you put all of this work into a master class and you think it's like the best thing ever. And then nothing happens. Hold on. Last night I had Ashlynn Carter. I interviewed her in the Facebook group, she's a copywriter and asked, you know, why she wanted to join Facebook, YouTube Boot Camp and what really appealed to her with that program. Then this morning I had Shirley on interviewing her doing the same thing. Just so people who are on the fence about YouTube Bootcamp can hear why other people decided to buy, why they decided to take the next step. And then this afternoon I'm having a client on Facebook with me to share, you know, what she has seen since we've been on YouTube, since I've been helping her and doing her YouTube. And then I'm doing an encore of the masterclass tonight. And I have another student who signed up for the summer cycle that I asked if she would let me interview her on Saturday. So I'm trying out all these different strategies and techniques to see, you know, what sticks, what works. And I'll break it all down to you. So my battery is running low. I'm trying to eat some dinner here before it's nap time, lunch before it's nap time. And then I have two lives this afternoon and an encore of the masterclass tonight. Right. Good morning. It is now Friday morning. Pretty much just woke up like this. I'm not very good at this whole vlogging thing, so I'll catch you up on what happened yesterday. I think I last dropped off at lunchtime, but last night at 8pm I did a encore of my masterclass in my Facebook group and I haven't done a masterclass yet in my Facebook group, so. So I thought that would be a different way to reach people because I had been doing it on Facebook. And yesterday I did turn the video on Facebook to unlisted so the only people that could watch that video were the people with the replay links. And then I did the Facebook live. So now that the people in my Facebook group can now watch the masterclass until probably Saturday and then I'll turn that off because I don't want people to think that, you know, they can get that content all the time. So yeah, today I'm talking to one of my students who already took the course and interviewing her in my Facebook group. I'm also there's another student in my group that kind of taking the course, kind of didn't take the course, but she has the course material and so she's going to talk about the course material and how it's affected her YouTube channel today in my Facebook group, same Facebook a lot today. I also have an email going out with like fast action bonuses or like flash bonuses. So I'm sending out the option to get another channel audit from me, a master class flash bonus. If you sign up in the next two days, you get that master class, a channel audit and a camera shy model. Because I know a lot of people have confidence issues on camera. So I do have a camera shy model. People have 24 hours or 48 hours, I don't know. I'm losing it here to grab those bonuses as well. And then the doors are closing in three days. Got three days of launch left.

So you really got a good idea of what my marketing strategy for launching looked like and also how using video and your launch strategy can really be a game changer. Now I will tell you that I did wrap up my program launch that Monday and I had people signing up last minute.

So still I think I was still.

Talking to people like an hour out. By the time the door closed. I didn't reach my goal of 25 people, but I did get 23 and that is way more than any of my other programs that I have launched prior to this one and also more money than I made with my other programs. I did not reach a 5k launch. I was just under at around $8,000 but it was successful. I have an amazing group of women in this YouTube bootcamp cycle to really grow their channel, learn more about them and to support them in using YouTube for their business. Even though you may get promised these big returns and expect these amazing things with the launch, just be real with yourself.

That might not happen.

You may just have to adjust your goals and strategies and accept it. Don't let it get you down. Pivot and try something new. Try YouTube Live next time. Try Facebook Live. Try interviewing your clients on Facebook Live. Just try whatever you need to see what works for you. If you want to see a full breakdown of my launch, I wrote an entire in depth blog post over on my website trinalittle.com I have it linked in the description box and you can click right up here as well to check that out. And if you Want to use YouTube in your next launch strategy like I did very heavily during this launch strategy, make sure you grab my YouTube checklist. This checklist is going to break down everything that you need to make sure you have set up to have your YouTube channel be successful. So you can grab that again by clicking here or going down into the description box below. Now I want to hear from you. What have you struggled with when it comes to launching a program? Where do you get hung up? Let me know in the comments down below. Remember, if you like this content and you want to see next week's episode on everything I did in the pre launch, make sure you subscribe to my channel right now by clicking this button right here and check out my most recent video by clicking right here. Thank you guys so much for watching. I really appreciate the time that you take to watch this, and I will see you next week. Bye.