Do you have a pre-launch marketing strategy? Erica recently asked if I spelled out my pre-launch marketing workflow step by step, what would it look like?
Well, here’s the big secret: there’s no silver bullet to a launch.
What I’ve learned is you’ve gotta be willing to put in the time and try different strategies with your audience and see how they respond. How to have a successful launch starts with a successful pre-launch strategy specific to your audience. As you prepare your pre-launch process, figuring out what pre-launch strategies fit your audience, may feel a like science. However, with my launch workflow that I’m talking through today, you’ll craft irresistible pre-launch marketing strategies for your audience.
The pre-launch marketing strategies I’m walking through today have worked SO well for my students that have successfully used them inside my Primed to Launch™ method to craft a pre-launch plan and then actually slide into that launch itself—I’m excited to talk about them with you too.
Let’s jump in!
No. 1| Craft Your Plan and Offer
You need a defined offer and a plan, that’s step one of the pre-launch workflow. That offer has got to be irresistible.
I think this is something that a lot of people don’t think about when they’re headed into their launch itself. You spend a lot of time on the marketing of it all and you built a good offer—BUT—you’ve got to think about HOW to put it out there and communicate it in a way that is irresistible to your audience.
Now, I know when we say launch and pre-launch, we think of different things. When I say “launch”, it’s basically just a sexy word for a marketing campaign… you could be launching different things. You may have a new website launch, a product launch, and I absolutely believe that you should be launching your one-on-one services.
No matter what your launch/promo campaign is around, you can’t do it without a clear and a defined packaged offer.
As I get into this, I wanted to mention a tool that you can use—it’s wonderful. It’s from Offer Cure created by Julie and Kathy, over at Funnel Gorgeous. It can help take you through breaking out your offer and splitting it into different pieces so you can communicate that with your audience. Look into that if you’ve struggled with defining your offer.
Once you do have that clearly defined offer in place, then we need to come up with the pre-launch & launch marketing plan and the vehicle to actually get that out there.
Now, for an in-depth talk on actually crafting that marketing calendar with your 4 Quarterly Champagne Campaigns, I want you to watch this video that I have next.
But for now, let’s talk about how to mark up your launch calendar. I go more in depth inside Primed to Launch™, but let’s talk about a few ket things I want you to keep in mind.
It’s going to have a defined period of the launch push itself, and that’s gonna be a 10-day window or less. No more than 10.
You never want your launch window to be more days than you actually have messages to put out.
We’ve had clients come and say we’re doing a 14-day open cart window. And I say, why? I mean, you may have truly a reason to have it open that long but usually I would say nine times out of 10, you don’t. That 5-10 day window can be great for your launch push because you should have at least five messages that you need to push out there. Five different hooks and angles and ways that you can start to talk to people about what that offer is.
<< Related: 3 Tips to Launch a Website, Product, or Service>>
This is why I like the Quarterly Champagne Campaign system that I have of just FOUR *big* launches a year because I can do 5-10 day windows 4 times a year. I can go all in and get my energy up and rallied for that. Buttttt I can’t do it for just extended lengths of time, never stopping…I like to nap. 😉
Next, the calendar has what I call a hype piece.This essentially is the vehicle that you’re going to use to actually pitch and mention the product, the service that you have(I’ll talk more about that in step #4).
Finally, this calendar is going to include us counting back 6-8 weeks from that launch date so we can start to stack different messages during pre-launch marketing.
(Pssst—this is the calendar that I *looove* using for planning my Quarterly Champagne Campaign.)
No. 2| Story Mining for Content Ideas
Once you have your offer in that plan defined, then you need to think about the objections that people will have to purchase from you, working with you one-on-one, whatever it is.
I love this part when we’re working with our one-on-one clients in the agency side of my business because it’s so fun to sit there and come up with all the different things you’ve heard in the past about why people didn’t buy that or they thought they were above the offer. They didn’t really need it or they thought they were in no way ready for it when you knew that they would be a great fit for it.
For example, one yesterday on a project call said “they’ll say they know it all, even if they still need the support” so boom, we discussed the idea of putting out pre-launch content that tells the audience why they need to purchase.
My favorite exercise to get all of this out there, when I’m crafting my pre-launch strategy, is a 60-in-60 content ideas brainstorm session. Using things like magazine mining, newsjacking, podcast & pinterest mad-libbing, and of course, listening to what your audience is ACTUALLY asking for in surveys can fill up your queue with ideas to overcome those objections.
TAny time you’re coming up with these content ideas or going through perhaps that 60-in-60 minutes exercise—I want you to think of these TWO things:
- Is this content going to be interesting to my people?
- Does it show your value?
<< Related:How to Portray Your Value with 3 Copy Hacks (Even If You’re Just Starting Out) >>
No. 3| An Editorial Calendar for Pre-launch and Launch
Okay, so you’ve got this massive list of all the different content ideas that you could put out there, the things your people want to hear from you, the objections that you need to overcome. How in the world do you organize all of this content during your pre-launch planning? The next part of the pre-launch workflow is coming up with an editorial calendar that you can use to disseminate these messages you collected from step #2.
The best visual I have for this is I want you to picture 6-8 dominos (however many weeks you want be in pre-launch) that are all setting up, and what do you have to knock over one by one so they fall and they form this clear path to you, your offer, your product, your service.
<< Related: My 3 Step Marketing Content Plan Process >>
Now go back to that list that you created and I want you to circle, highlight, whatever, the top 6-8 objections that you’re gonna hear all the time. You’re gonna address each one of those in one piece of weekly pillar piece hero content. This is gonna be coupled with your audience list-building strategy—I talked about that in last week’s video. watch it after reading this post— because you built your whole annual marketing calendar to focus on just one thing every single quarter, all your hero content for that quarter is driving towards that one thing you’re launching.
This means you don’t have to be all the places—all you need to do is put the investment of your time and energy into crafting those 6-8weeks worth of pillar content that will knock over the dominoes one by one. And what you’re going to do is repurpose that one piece of hero content and you’re splintering that piece into 15 more pieces of content—disseminating that one piece and repurposing it.
Here’s the kicker— no matter what is going on in your life and in your business, as you are prepping for that launch, focus on getting that hero piece of content out.
I know when I’m going into a launch mode, other things can be falling to the wayside. I may not get to all of the different marketing ideas or dreamy ideas that I have, but I know I am getting that hero piece every week to overcome the objections leading up to the launch, and that matters.
I’ve done a video about repurposing your content before that may support you here as well—you can watch that here.
Okay, moving along this launch workflow that you’ve started to craft here>>>
- You’ve come up with that absolutely irresistible offer and the plan to get it out via your launch calendar
- You picked out those top 6-8 objections
—>Now you’re going to craft one piece of hero content for those 6-8 weeks of pre-launch.
That brings us to the next piece of the workflow: coming up with and executing a hype piece to actually communicate the offer.
No. 4| A Hype Piece to Introduce the Offer
Even if you hate video, you cannot skip this. 😉 There HAS to be some sort of vehicle where you’re able to look (even if it’s over the internet) your audience in the eye and tell them what it is that you’re putting out there and why they need it.
There are sooo many different ideas that you could incorporate in your pre-launch strategy, I include a whole list of different ideas inside Primed to Launch™, but this could look like a virtual launch party that you’re doing, a webinar, a challenge, or a video series. There are tons of things out there and vehicles to communicate this to your audience.
I’d highly recommend having a video component. I think the most successful ones that I’ve ever seen with our clients and in my own business, have a video component.
The digital marketing space is saturated with webinars, and a lot of them, unfortunately, follow the same templates and formulas, and scripts that are already out there.
Webinars still work though. I see the statistics and the conversion rates all the time, but here’s the thing, they still work if they’re good. If you’re gonna make a webinar then go all-in on making it juicy.
<< Related: 5 Underrated Pre-Launch Strategies to Build Buzz in 2020 >>
We also saw this past year that short-form content became a way that we love to consume things, TikTok, reels—think outside the box and be crafty. Figure out how you can take your hype piece message that you’re trying to disseminate, and don’t just have a long-form version but can you break it up over days or do you need to come up with different ways to get a short form iteration of it out there?
I’m brainstorming on this too. I don’t have all the answers to it right now, I just think it is something for us to watch for.
No. 5| Pre-Launch and Launch Pieces & Messaging
And last but not least, the actual launch pieces and the messaging that goes into that.
Here I’m talking about everything from the emails that you’re using to promote and invite people to your hype piece, the sales, email sequence themselves, the checkout pages, the landing pages—allllll the pages.
I have all of this broken down into a launch, copy and content checklist—you can download that here. It is free & ready for you! You can grab that here. I’ve also done tons of videos about these specific pieces and how to write them, you can find those here.
But part of this process is also setting good expectations, data-driven expectations. That way your launch doesn’t end and you say something like, it just wasn’t what I expected. Well, what did you expect? And was that based on actual data? Be sure to check out the video I have right here where I talked to you about how to run a launch moratorium.
I know that was a whole lot, even for me, and I love launches, but it goes to show when you’re creating your launch workflow, you can’t just focus on the launch week in vehicle itself, you’ve got to back up.
You need to be priming your audience weeks in advance by overcoming their objections and knocking down those dominoes. And along the way, you need to be seeding in the idea that you have an offer or a service that is coming and you’re going be able to support them with it.
<<Related: My WINNING Idea Validation Workflow for Pre-Launch Marketing>>
Alright, that wraps up my 5 step pre-launch strategy workflow. If you’re feeling inspired about how you can prime your audience well for the different launches that you have planned, you’re ready to start crafting your pre-launch strategy—then I think you’ll ~love~ Primed to Launch™.
Primed to Launch™ is my answer to how to craft a content strategy that doesn’t just rotate through content buckets. Instead, it’s building a calendar of pre-launch content that primes your audience for that offer that you are about to put in front of them.
I’d invite you to check out the link below, that way you can get your hands on my Primed to Launch™ playbook. You will see my content marketing and pre-launch marketing campaign planner, 3 styles of weekly content planning templates, three simple launch calendar timelines, a metrics and goals tracker pack, a launch checklist and more. Click here or down below to check out Primed to Launch™ today.
Now you know what you need for a successful launch, but what about priming your audience in advance? Be sure to watch the next video I’ve got teed up for you where I’m taking you through five ways that you can push out your lead magnet and build your email list.
Here’s to working from a place of more rest, less hustle.
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Reading Time: 10 MinutesReading time: 10 min. Do you have a pre-launch marketing strategy? Erica recently asked if I spelled out my pre-launch marketing workflow step by step, what would it look like? Well, here’s the big secret: there’s no silver bullet to a launch. What I’ve learned is you’ve gotta be willing to put in the time […]
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