Product Launch Formula – Creating a successful program launch

Watch this video and learn about my coaching program launch plan that generated almost $100,000 for my own coaching business.

Make Your First Program Launch a Huge Success

When I launched my group coaching program for the first time, it was very confusing for me. I didn’t know what to do first and which order was going to be the best. I didn’t know how long to do my launch for and everything was kind of confusing. Now I have an exact launch calendar I give to my new coaches and they literally plug in their own dates and make their launches a huge success. Ready for the best thing about this plan?  You can execute this plan even if you’re on your own!  Even if you only have a VA or a copywriter or someone helping you out that’s okay because this launch will be effective and not overwhelming for you. It’s also really beneficial for new coaches because you don’t have to have a huge email list to make this launch a big success. Let’s dive in.

I Actually Don’t like Launches

I don’t think you should run your business based on program launches. Now don’t get me wrong, it works well for many people. Many coaches and service providers really enjoy it. They think it’s very effective. They think it’s the way to go and that is amazing for them. For me, however, launches are stressful, launches are very risky and I would rather have my business run evergreen, meaning my programs are available all the time and we enroll clients into my programs consistently every single month. That allows me to make up a bad month. So if one month is good, the next month is bad, guess what? It’s okay because I could increase my revenue again the following month. It allows me more consistency. It allows me to avoid high-stress launch strategy such as lots of webinars in a very short time or spending a lot of money on ads in a very short time.

Pros and Cons to Launches

Now there are pros and cons to launches and now is not the time to talk about those but I want to give you a launch plan you can use one time when you’re launching your programs for the very first time. Because I do think when you have a new program available and the market doesn’t know about it yet, you should be going through a launch to make the program known. To make you known.

Build awareness and fill your program with clients for the first time and then move your program into an evergreen business model.

I Will Walk You Through Your Launch Plan and Your Calendar Right Now

Go and download the program launch calendar. Please pull it up and start to plug in some of your own dates and maybe even take notes as I walk you through your launch plan and your calendar right now.

Two months before your anticipated launch you should be teasing your new program or your new product. In order to tease your program launch, I suggest you put the information literally everywhere.

You can send emails to your list. You can send emails to your friends and coworkers and colleagues and family. Everybody you know. You should be using your social media presence everywhere. Put a post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, literally everywhere. Put the information out there as much as you can. Just share with excitement.

Make sure you go on Facebook Live. You could even share with people behind the scenes as you build your modules, as you build your new website, as you do a photoshoot, as you go on location. Really bring them along this journey and let them in behind the scenes which will make them feel like they’re part of this launch. You’re letting them in. They’re on your side and guess what? They will be cheering you on as you get ready for your launch.

The next thing you should do, also at least two or even three months before your launch is shower people with value.

Literally shower them with value. Let it rain. And what I mean by that is go out there and share blog posts, do webinars, do little video trainings, go on Facebook Live, go speak somewhere, host workshops. Because what you want to do is lead with value. Before you launch your program and before you ask people to buy anything from you, you want to make sure they see you as an expert and they begin to appreciate you for giving and for your expertise and what you can actually do for them.

Do webinars for example. Two months before your launch host a series of webinars. Two, three, four webinars but don’t pitch anything. You want to be seen as someone who’s giving freely, who has something to say, who has the expertise, who has an opinion. So go out there, put on webinars and tell people how you can help them. How you can serve them and with this, you will build an amazing amount of goodwill and you will rally people behind you and also build your list with prospects that are then ready to buy your program when you’re launching it.

Now we’re getting closer to your actual launch date and here’s what you need to do.

Between day zero and day 10, I want you to build a waitlist. This is one more strategy for you to build some anticipation and to get people really ready and excited and pumped about your upcoming launch. So between day zero and day 10 we can do a couple of things. We can, first of all, run ads to a waitlist. You could run advertising to your warm market, to people that you target your Facebook ads for example and you can let them know, my program is coming and that I’ll have special bonuses and special pricing available when we’re launching but only for waitlist members.

In addition, sharing your waitlist with your audience straight up, you should also be planning to do a webinar to fill your waitlist. Between day zero and day 10 you want to be putting ads out there and emailing your list, letting people know about a webinar you will be hosting to train them on something. To teach them something that obviously has to do with your area of expertise. Like, show them five secrets to accomplish something they really want to do. Share with them three steps to do something they really need to be doing to get ahead depending on what it is that you’re offering. If you’re a health coach or a business coach or career coach, you know what your clients really want. So choose from one of those hot button items, those hot topics, build a webinar around it and at the end of the webinar, guess what? You will invite them to join your waitlist.

A couple of days after your webinar to fill the waitlist, usually it’s four to five days later, you announce your waitlist is now open.

This means you’re sending an email, a private email to only your waitlist members and you tell them, “Hey guess what? Now the waitlist is available so you can now go and purchase my program at a discounted waitlist only, VIP price with these special bonuses,” but only for 24 to 48 hours. You choose the timeframe.

What I recommend you do is actually send out three emails at least. You can send six or 10 emails or even more. So you want to tell people that the waitlist is now available. That’s your big announcement email. Then you also want to tell them what’s included. Why they should be joining. What they have to gain. What they have to lose which usually shouldn’t be that much. And you want to talk about all the objections that they may have and also all those big goals they have. You play with objections, you play with their goals, you play with where they’re stuck right now and the possibilities that are waiting for them in your program.

And then don’t forget to remind them, send them a reminder 12 hours before, six hours before, one hour before and maybe even a couple of minutes before the waitlist expires to make sure they have enough time and have enough reminders to go out there and take advantage of your waitlist offer.

One thing you should really do is put a timer on your waitlist checkout page. Or if you ask people to book a sales call with you, you should have a timer on your booking page. So there’s two option, you can either send them to a checkout page where they can buy the program of course or you could say, “You need to be booking a discovery call with me before Thursday at 6:00 PM,” let’s say, “and if you do that then you qualify for waitlist pricing and then we talk on the phone and we both decide this program is right for you. I will honor my waitlist offer.”

The next thing you’ll be planning for is your early bird webinar.

From day 10 to about day 18 or 19, you may want to run ads to your early bird webinar. You also want to send emails and you want to share this webinar invitation anywhere you can. Really maximize your signups. The purpose of this webinar is to tell the world that your program is now available at early bird prices. The waitlist is gone, people have already purchased the waitlist offer and now it’s time for everybody else to come on a webinar with you where you again share value. Teach them. You show them what’s possible for them and how they can solve some of their biggest problems and then you offer them the next step which is your program.

As you run ads and invite people to the webinar, make sure you maximize those seeds and that at the end of your early bird webinar, of course, you will be inviting people to join you in your program at early bird prices. This pricing is not as low as the waitlist pricing, it’s higher but it’s still at a discount and a reduction of the regular price. You can also add in some special bonuses and some special incentives and things for them to sign up, but the early bird offer should not be as good as your waitlist offer of course.

When you’re hosting your webinars for your waitlist, your early bird pricing and more webinars later on, of course, you will only have a certain number of people will come live. We usually have about 20% of your signups will actually show up on a live webinar. So you’re missing a lot of people and therefore you want to maximize signups post-webinar and you do that best with emails. So make sure you send them a reply and send them several other reminders and emails with a call to action to consider your program for several reasons.

You can use all types of different angles for those emails. You could talk about their biggest pain point right now, their biggest goals. You could talk about frequently asked questions. You could also talk about success stories. Maybe include some case studies. Include your own story. Make it a real straight up sales mailer and then give some reminders before early bird pricing actually goes away. So you could build a whole email series of six to 10 emails after your early bird webinar that entice people to take you up on your offer and actually go and either purchase your program or as we said before, go and book a discovery call with you to see if they qualify for the program and if it’s a good fit for them.

Now that early bird pricing is gone and you have even more people sign up for your program or booked into a discovery call, you want to move onto the full price. Between day 19 and 29, you might be running Facebook ads again for your last webinar in this launch. Right now you might be wondering, well there are three webinars, what am I supposed to talk about on those webinars? For me, I always start with my ideal client’s biggest pain point and what they really want to accomplish.

For webinar one and two you could teach something very specific. Drill into a very specific area of your coaching expertise. For webinar three you could then choose to do an overarching system overview where you say, “Today I’m going to give you the five steps to go from here to where you want to go without or even if something is bothering you right now. Or even if you have some insecurities around this.” Webinars one and two are specific, webinar three is your overarching system. This is a really nice way for you to structure your webinars and not present the same information ever. It’s all going to be unique. All three webinars will be completely unique for your market.

Then on day 30 approximately, that’s your last chance to get people signed up for your coaching program and get them booked in for discovery calls of course.

On around day 30 you’ll be hosting your last webinar then. And really make this fun. This is your last chance to get people interested, to get them signed up for the program, to get them booked into a discovery call with you so make this a good one. At the end of the webinar, of course, you will offer people the program at full price so early pricing went away, waitlist bonuses went away. Now they have a last chance, one more chance to book a sales call with you, a discovery call or go and buy the coaching program from your sales page, from your registration page.

Once your full-price webinar is over, then you can maximize any last signups with email, with retargeting ads on Facebook or Instagram for example and also through a social media post where you might tell people, “Guess what? In five days from now, in four days from now, in one day from now, the program is closing and the first group is already going to start working on their career. Working on their dream relationship. Working on their dream business.” Whatever your niche might be. So really leverage that door’s closing, count it down. Put on some pressure and really maximize those last few signups that you’ll be getting for your coaching program.

3 Special Tips

I want to give you some special tips I have used successfully and that you can use too to maximize your program launch.

1. Give surprise bonuses. I remember one time I launched my coaching program and I felt like I wasn’t getting enough signups and I thought, what can I do? And I had this idea of giving people a surprise bonus and that was an expert session. So I thought about bringing in an expert into my coaching program that was going to teach people more about sales. And I did that and I went out there and I said, “If you purchase a program before this date and this time, you will qualify for this expert session with this partner,” that I was going to bring into my coaching program. And that helped me, again, get some excitement going. Have something to talk about. Have something to email about and get more people signed up before the deadline was over.
2. Do a FAQ call on Zoom. This might be something you can do towards the end of your launch maybe even after the full price webinar is already done. There might be people out there who are on the fence. Who is thinking, should I do this? Is this for me? What about this? And what if this happens? They have all these questions in their mind. They need all the details to make an informed decision and they’re insecure. So what you could do is host a special surprise FAQ call on Zoom. Zoom is amazing because you can actually see them and they can see you which builds an instant connection, trust and a relationship between you and them which is going to make it much easier for them to say yes and actually go and sign up for your program. On their Q and A call, anything goes. You can invite them. They can ask you questions about the program and the results and how it works and what to expect and what they will experience and you can openly answer these questions. Show them that you’re the real deal. Build that relationship and that trust and then enroll more people into your coaching program.
3. Use Facebook Live to really support your activities throughout your launch. Facebook Lives are great because you can do them spontaneously. They can be casual. They can be fun and they don’t have to be very long. So you could do a 10, 15, maybe 20 minute Facebook Live to talk about your upcoming webinars. You can announce price increases. You can announce new surprise bonuses. You can talk about doors closing for your program. You can sprinkle in those Facebook Lives throughout your entire launch to support and maximize all of your activities.

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