June 10, 2021 8 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you may have tried to launch a product or service without a well-defined plan. You may have tried throwing every marketing strategy at your customer base, hoping something would stick. When your audience doesn’t buy as you anticipated, you recoil. You don’t follow through; no sales come in, you pretend it never happened. A few months later, another idea will strike, and you try again with similar results.
So, what makes successful launches different?
First, successful launchers build their audience around their expertise. They don’t jump from topic to topic at the whim of their audience. Rather, they take a stand for something. Second, they engage their audience before they launch around their expertise. Finally, they follow a formula during their launch, and they always see it through.
After observing and analyzing a number of successful launches, I developed and tested a series of practices in my own business. The results of this experiment were outstanding. I re-launched an existing product to an engaged audience and went from a previous $3,000 launch to an $8,000 launch in four months.
Unlike other frameworks, mine is broken down into six steps that can position you as the expert in your industry, create demand for your offer and give you a proven launch system that produces consistent results.
Energetic alignment
I have learned that no strategy will work if you’re not energetically aligned with your offer. I see online entrepreneurs popping up all the time, branding themselves as a marketing expert or some other vague title. One day, they’re an Instagram expert; the next they’re something else. They have no true area of expertise because they create whatever their audience requests. Since they follow their audience instead of leading them, they often find themselves serving a customer base they aren’t passionate about in a niche where they aren’t experts. This is why energetic alignment comes first. When someone believes in what they are selling, they will attract their ideal customers.
Your messaging platform
The phrase “magnetic messaging” is thrown around because it sounds interesting, but it doesn’t mean much without having a fundamental understanding of the way magnets actually work. Magnets, by nature, have two poles. They can only attract with the same force they repel. Your messaging is the same way. To attract your ideal clients, you need to repel those who are not. One of the strongest ways to do this is by taking a stand on outdated industry norms.
Audience alignment
Your messaging will attract your audience, but there are two other pieces to this step. Once you attract your ideal audience, you need to connect with them and then qualify them as potential buyers. This step takes people from followers to qualified leads by moving them through your content in three ways.
The first is to build a connection by sharing your stories through common identities. The next is to build authority and rapport. People buy from people they like and trust and see as an authority. By creating content that teaches and educates, they will see you as an authority figure. The final step is to introduce people to how you operate. When you illustrate how your way of doing things is different and highlight what other approaches are missing, your audience will be one step closer to buying.
It’s also important to qualify your audience as potential clients for your launch. An effective way to do this is with a free offer that will whittle down your list into qualified leads. Your free offer should relate directly to the program you’re leading them to so you can say, “If they download this free offer, they are an ideal client for my paid service.”
By narrowing your audience, you will have a warmer list of people who see you as an authority, have knowledge of or desire for your offer and have indicated that they have the problem your offer solves.
Related: 3 Effective Strategies to Reach Your Online Target Audience This Year
Offer alignment
One of the biggest mistakes online marketers make is trying to sell their course or digital product without providing a benefit to the prospective buyer. No one wants to buy a course or digital product. They want what your course gets them. Your course is the mechanism for that outcome, and your offer is what will create desire and demand for your course. An offer contains a few key ingredients that create demand, remove objections, and build desire for the outcome your course provides.
The first is positioning. Your offer should position you as the expert in the area you are teaching and present yours as the most obvious solution to your client’s problem. Positioning is how you create desire and demand for your offer versus the alternatives and how you sell before you offer anything at all.
The next piece is an outcome-focused program. Such a program is the mechanism for the results your ideal client desires. Your ideal client wants the outcome your course gets them, not an overly complicated system to reach their goal.
A high converting offer that most people overlook is the package. An effective package contains everything wrapped around your program that is designed to remove objections. The old-school marketing advice of “stuff your offer with bonuses to jack up the perceived value” turns off more people than it attracts. Your ideal clients are smart, and they know you aren’t selling that workbook for $500, so why are you marking that as the value? Your bonuses should either answer an objection, save customers time or deepen their learning about your subject.
Related: Why Positioning Is More Important Than Ever
Pricing alignment
When people say, “price your worth,” they’re misguided. Your worth is inherent and not monetary, so trying to assign a monetary value to it is impossible. Your price is not just about you; pricing is a relationship between you and your client. It sets the expectation and creates a container for their growth. Only considering one side of that relationship will result in misaligned expectations.
Your pricing should contain the right price for you proportionate to the commitment it takes to achieve the desired outcome and the right price for your client. When you price arbitrarily or based on what someone else is charging, you might be unknowingly choosing a price that is out of alignment.
Pricing is more than just picking a number. If your offer isn’t converting, it may be because you’re subconsciously repelling people from buying because you’re not in alignment with the price. You may think your price is too much, and you’re struggling to reconcile what it means to receive that much money for your work. Or you may think it’s not enough. Either way, you may be pushing people away.
Finally, your price has to be the right price for your type of client. If your business is selling to consumers, B2C, and you try to charge B2B pricing, you might find yourself frustrated by your lack of clients. In B2B, your clients see a return on their investment. If you are a B2C business, your ideal client does not have a tangible ROI. They do not make decisions from the same place. They ask, “What is this costing me?” They start to compare your service to other expenses in their life and ask things like, “Is this outcome worth a car payment to me?” You can see how that quickly can result in lower conversions.
Related: 8 Pricing Strategies for Your Digital Product
Launching as a science/analyzing your results
Launching is not an art; it’s a science. Any launch should be six weeks from start to finish. This includes two weeks spent qualifying your audience, two weeks inviting your audience to launch and two weeks executing the launch.
One of the most overlooked pieces of launching is the analysis. After completing your launch, there are three areas you can analyze to create a plan for your next promotion: numbers, strategy, and energy. All three of these are at play when you launch your offer. Looking at each independently will help you identify your weaknesses and opportunities for growth.
Before you plan your next launch, conduct the right research, build authority in your niche, and qualify your audience. Take time to build your offers and price your program accordingly. Keep in mind, your next launch won’t be perfect. There will always be room for improvement, which is the key to refining your launch strategy approach.
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