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A Recap of My Latest Online Course Launch
Today on Chasing Simple, I’m pulling back the curtain and sharing all of the details about my most recent online course launch. I’m sharing all about what my goals were, whether or not I hit them, how this launch was different from past launches, what did not go so well, what did, and what I’ll do differently in the future. And yes, I’m sharing EXACT numbers with you – not just vague ideas about how the launch went.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Watch the Basics of Content Marketing Lesson
- This week’s action step: Grab my A Year in Preview workshop to start planning out the rest of 2022 today and make strides towards a strong content marketing strategy!
- This week’s book recommendation: Educated by Tara Westover
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!
Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate.
Today on Chasing Simple, I’m pulling back the curtain and sharing all of the details about my most recent launch. I’m sharing all about what my goals were, whether or not I hit them, how this launch was different from past launches. What did not go so well? What did, and what I’ll do differently in the future?
Yes, I am sharing exact numbers with you. Not just vague ideas about how the launch went. So you’re listening to Chasing Simple episode 117. And I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. Let’s dive in.
Despite the name of this episode, the summit, The Chasing Simple Summit was not actually what I was launching. I was launching Club Content Batching, and the summit was just my visibility booster piece of the launch itself. So I say Chasing Simple Summit Launch Recap, but realistically, that was just the visibility booster piece of my launch.
So my intentions and goals for this launch, let’s start there now. I want to make sure that you have listened to episode 101 of the podcast it’s are your launch numbers normal and. The whole episode is about just this idea of what your launch numbers should be. What’s realistic, what you should be looking for, because so often we see these launch experts, these marketing experts, these gurus, and they’re telling you what could be there telling you what you could see, best case scenario, what kind of numbers and launch goals you want to shoot for.
But. That doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily realistic goals. Right? And so episode 1 0 1 is all about what your realistic numbers should look like, what you should actually be trying to hit. And you know, that’s not to say that you may not hit those crazy, amazing launch goals, but I have learned that I feel better about launches mentally and afterwards, if I have realistic launch goals, if I have numbers that honestly, I think are a little low even, and I know that so many people will not agree with that. So many people are like shoot for the stars, wish for the best, manifest it and that’s all great and good. But for me, I would rather take care of my mental health surrounding the launch, then have better numbers and better sales.
If that makes sense. that’s a realistic look. My goals for this launch, my good goal was one, one sale. My better goal was five and my best was 10. And then I also always set like this crazy incredible. If I hit this number, I’m taking myself to Disney for a week kind of goal. And that was 20. Now I kept my numbers low for a few reasons.
And we already talked about the mindset piece again, that. Honestly, the biggest part of it is I just always want to feel like the launch went incredible. Right. And I, I don’t say that in a way that, oh, I just want to boost my numbers and I want to say, oh, I hit my goals. Cause like I’m being very realistic with you.
These were low numbers. Right. But launching is very hard. Mentally, and I have to make sure that I put up strong, realistic boundaries and strong, realistic goals in order to take care of my mental health. It’s just better all the way around for me. So that’s one reason I set my numbers really low for this launch.
The second is that frankly, my email system has gotten way too complicated on the backend. I. I let it get way too complicated. And it’s not simple in any way, which you know, that is not me. And because it’s gotten so complicated, things are falling through the cracks and people are not getting nurtured in the way that I would have liked them to meaning that I don’t think, and I didn’t feel like I had really prepared my email list.
Well enough as well as I could have for this upcoming launch, because of it. Something was going wrong, where people weren’t being put into my newsletter sequence, my newsletter not sequence my newsletter group. And so out of a thousand people on my email list only about three, 400 were actually getting my newsletters week after week.
And I didn’t realize this until right before the launch. My email system has gotten way too complicated. And I knew that I had not really prepared my audience well for this launch. And the third reason that I kept these goal numbers so low is because this is the high ticket offer club content matching is a very high ticket offer.
It’s a high touch, it’s a luxury group coaching membership for sure, but it is still a high ticket offer at 1 27 a month. At this at the time of this launch, it was $97 a month. And $97 a month with a year commitment upfront, that’s a little over a thousand dollars and yes, the $97 a month makes it so much more affordable and accessible, but it’s still a commitment.
And I recognize that. So with a high ticket offer, I know that I need to be looking at the lower end of those realistic launch numbers and the realistic lunch goals. So those are my goals, my intentions for the launch and. Oh, I’ll get to where I landed in a moment, but that’s kind of where I started with all of this.
now I want to talk about how this launch differed from past launches, because this is not the first time I’ve launched Club Content Batching. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve launched it at this point, but it’s been quite a few.
Now, the first way that it differed from past launches is that I was upping the price, the club content batching. Again, in past, I think the past two launches, I didn’t raise the price at all. Yeah. I think the last two, definitely the last one, but I think the last two, I did not raise the price at all. So this time I was raising the price.
again. The second way that it differed from past launches is that last time I launched with the summit again, I ran the summit and October 20, 21 for the first time. And then I ran it again in April, 2022, April 20, 22 is the most recent one that this launch recap is about.
When I launched it the first time in October, when I launched Club Content Batching through the summit, I only launched a summit attendees. So I only sent summit attendees through the launch sequence. And I did that because that was what was recommended from the person that I was learning about summits from.
But I didn’t get a single sale after that last summit, not a single one. And I know that That is not indicative of the offer. Right. I know that I have launched this so many times. Every time I put out a launch or a sale to my email list, I get sales it’s I knew that that was not indicative and that, that needed to change this time around.
And so this time I launched to. Everyone my entire email list. I had two different launch sequences going out. So I had one sequence that was going out just to, I mean, I guess realistically I had three because I had one going out to the waitlist, one, going out to the rest of my newsletter group and then one going out to summit attendees.
So I had three different launch sequences going out, which again is very complicated, but. I launched it to everyone this time. And that went actually technically I had four, which we went to in a moment. So it was very complicated. This go round. But because I’ve done this so many times, I’ve added on each time.
Do not start there if you have never launched anything, but as you go, it makes it so much easier because you’re just tweaking things. I launched everyone. I still did not get any sales from summit people with. I’ll get to in a moment, but I did make sales, which again, we’ll get to in a moment from the rest of the launch.
So that’s how that differed though. We’ll get into what happened and all of that in a moment. But last time I only launched some it people and it did not go well this time I launched everyone out with so much better And the third way that this launch differed from past launches is that I was offering a brand new VIP tier of Club Content Batching.
this new VIP tier is something that is only available to those that have been inside of Club Content Batching for an entire year already. So when you sign up for Club Content Batching, you automatically get access to the entire membership community. That course itself, all of the past trainings, everything you automatic, you can dive in.
As soon as you sign up, once you have been in for a year and it is a year long commitment because that’s the value of the membership itself, right? So year long commitment, once you’ve hit that year, mark, you can choose to leave. Or you can choose to stay. And if you stay, you are welcomed into the VIP tier, your price doesn’t increase.
It’s just a matter of, Hey, you’ve been here for a year and you’re ready to take the next step essentially. And this VIP tier gives you a lot more access to me. You get a quarterly one-on-one call. You get, the ability to submit content for review different things like that. Those are the two big ones, but there are some parks with the VIP tier.
Now. I’m going to talk about this in a future episode, coming up about beta testing. But when I launched Club Content Batching, the first three times, I essentially launched it beta for three different launches. And I raised the price with each one, but it was essentially a beta launch all three times before I actually created the course that then created the membership.
So those beta members as. Reward, essentially for trusting in me before I had testimonials. And before I had social proof before I had completed the membership portal and all of that as a reward for, for being there and for trusting in me, they got lifetime access to. The membership itself, they were grandfathered in from what they paid initially to the membership itself.
And so something I did, because I’m just now hitting that one year mark with, members inside of Club Content Batching that have been members for a year now. This is when I first initiated the VIP tier with this launch. And so I also launched the VIP tier to those that were grandfathered in and they were able to say, yes, I want more from you.
or they were able to say, no, I’m good with where I’m at. I don’t want to, I just want to keep the level that I’m at. So that was something I did different with this launch as well. That was the fourth group that I launched you. But that one was a little different because I was launching the VIP tier to them.
So that was the final thing that was different about this launch than I had done in path launches. So what did not go well? Cause there’s always things that don’t go well. Right. Well, first summits are just not for me personally. I. think they can be great for some people.
I don’t think that they’re for me, I would much rather host an in-person conference or event. the virtual is fine, but it doesn’t build community. Like I would like it to, and it just feels. Lonely, especially because I don’t have team members, I’m doing this all on my own and I’m the only person working on this huge project, which can be really satisfying on one hand.
But on the other hand, it is kind of lonely, especially because when you’re speaking for a summit, it’s, there’s just kind of a disconnect. So they are not for me personally. like I mentioned earlier, had zero summit attendees. Actually by club content batching after the summit. And I think I suspect the Club Content Batching just maybe to high ticket, have an offer for that.
And it’s more of a. Long-term strategy. There were people who attended the first summit that have gone on to buy into Club Content Batching, but they didn’t right away. And so it just doesn’t make sense for the type of lunch that I do for a summit necessarily to be the big visibility booster. And that, again, it’s not just one specific reason.
There are a lot of reasons for that, that I’ve already kind of gone over. But for me, the summit is a. Ton of work with not a huge payoff. If I had a team, it would be different. If I had a team, I could keep launching to summit over and over and over again, especially because I have all the groundwork laid, but it’s a lot of work for one person.
So for me, when the first time it happened, I was like, Hmm, I don’t think I liked that. But. I’ve invested in a program. That’ll teach me how to do it. I’ve invested a ton of time. I’m not going to ever do something once. Say it didn’t work and not try again. So I tweaked things I, you know, looked at, okay, where were the problems with the summit?
How do I make it better? I tweaked those things and got pretty much the same results the second time around. So all that being said, that was something that I don’t even want to say. It didn’t go well, but that was something where I went insane. I’m going to try summit again, maybe it wasn’t for me now, I am going to have the summit as an evergreen option for people that is something that I’m going to be offering by the time this launches it’ll probably be out.
I don’t want to promise that, but that will be something that, okay, I’ve done the work I’m going to make it evergreen. So I will continue to have the summit as an option for people because. Again, there was so much work and so much work on my part and on the speaker’s part. So that’ll be something that I’ll continue to offer, but I don’t think I will be doing new summits in the future.
The second thing that did not go well, Instagram marketing. So if you’ve listened to episodes, 111 or 112, you know that I have been doing a lot of experimenting with Tik Tok and. I am very firmly of the opinion at this point, that Instagram is dying. Um, I don’t think that means that everyone’s going to abandon ship, but I think it is slowly becoming the new Facebook.
Essentially people are going to be getting on it less and less. I already see it. I’m not getting on it as much anymore. It’s no longer entertaining to me. It’s no longer fun there. The engagement that people are getting on Instagram is so low for me. It’s just no longer, really effective as a marketing tool. Again, how many times have I launched Club Content Batching? It’s always done really, really well through Instagram, martketing
yeah, nothing happened through Instagram, this go round. So that is something that, you know, I will not be doing huge pushes for future launches on Instagram, going foreward and then the third thing that did not go super well is that I decided to launch the VIP tier at the very last second. And I wish I had done that earlier.
So I had been playing around in the back of my mind with the idea of launching a VIP tier already, because again, I knew that people were coming up on that one year mark of the membership, and I wanted to offer them the next step more and better ways to work with me and to interact with this membership.
I knew that it was something I was wanting to do, but I hadn’t fully sketched anything out yet. And frankly, I was like, I’ll handle it after the summit. Like I’ll launch it in May to those people. Well, right. As the summit ended and the launch started, I realized, you know what, I’m upping the price of Club Content Batching, I should offer it now at this lower price to them. And so that was a very, very last second decision. And I really wished that I had made that decision earlier so that I could have better prepared that group for that long, that launch essentially. They were not prepared in any way. I dropped it on him. I was like, Hey, you got a couple days to decide.
And I just don’t like that. I’m glad I did it on one hand because again, those that knew they were ready, were able to jump in and get that VIP tier at the lower price. my goal with any launch is really to have helped my people, my audience decide before the launch even begins, whether or not they’re going to purchase.
And I did not do that for this, so that didn’t go super well. Don’t love the way that, that turned out as far as just on my end of things, but what went well, lots of things went well. So from back to my goals, I’ll just remind you of him real quick. My good goal was one. My better goal was five. My best goal was 10.
And my incredible taking myself to Disney world was 20. I had four total sales. So right. Almost at that better goal, which is great. I had three brand new students and I had one person upgrade to that VIP student tier. Roughly it brought in $4,600 in revenue for Club Content Batching for this launch, the summit revenue that was about $900.
So here’s the thing about launches? Yes, the summit was a visibility thing, but it also brought in a bonus way of bringing in some revenue. So the summit did bring in about $900 in revenue. So total revenue for the entire launch was around $5,500. Expenses for the summit. We’re about $215 for affiliate payouts and $400 for the software.
Everything up that I needed for the summit I already had from the first summit or already was paying for a different reason in the business. So my expenses for this summit were really, really low for the first summit. They were much, much higher. Total expenses. So total was about $250. All in all the profit from the launch will be roughly $5,250.
Again, I say roughly because with a membership that can change, but that’s projected for the launch. So roughly $5,000, which I’m really happy with that is a huge boost in the overall revenue and profit for the year. Almost hit that better goal. So I’m really, really excited about those numbers, other things that went well, this VIP tier I’m really glad, even though that I wish I had flushed it out sooner, I’m really glad that I was able to get that launched.
And it really, it took me no time to actually say, okay, here’s what I want to offer. Here’s what’s going to look like and sketch that out. And it just took one more thing off my to-do list that I thought I wasn’t going to get to until later this year. The other thing that went well is that I do have the ability, like I mentioned before to turn the summit evergreen now and let people have that content for months, years, however long I decide to offer it to come.
So that’s really exciting. It’s another way to serve people really, really well. And to help them use their content marketing, to prepare their audience for their upcoming course launch. And then. I really, I could keep going on and on and on. But one last final thing I’ll share that went really well is that my mental health was so much better at this launch.
Again, this is something that I love launching, but launching can be addictive. As far as every time you get a sale or you get someone that messaged you and is interested in asking questions, you get these little dopamine hits, right? When you’re not getting those dopamine hits, so you get a dopamine hit and then you don’t hear anything for a few hours.
Your brain says I need more of a dopamine. And so it, it can spiral you really easily into this, state of anxiety. This state of, well, I’m not good enough. Launching can be really hazardous to your mental health. And I definitely had moments. I’m not going to say I didn’t. I definitely had moments during the launch where I was like, why am I doing this?
This is worthless. Like nobody cares. I can’t nobody. What, you know, the spiral, definitely a moments like that. But overall, my mental cycle was so much better this time around because I had those realistic launch goals. Because I was able to. Really take a step back during launch week because I had, created pretty much all of my content ahead of time.
Again, that VIP launch tier I had not planned on launching or that VIP tier I had not planned on launching. And so I did create that in the last second, but having all that scheduled out like I always do is super helpful, but I also made sure that I had other things to keep me. Quote, unquote distracted.
I had other work tests to work on. I had things I wanted to do around the house. All of that helped me to kind of even keel and not focus so much on those dopamine hits. So what will I do differently next time? Well, first I’m going to do a different type of visibility boost. I probably am not going to do a summit again, I’m not exactly sure what that visibility booster will be at this point.
But I, probably won’t do another summit as far as hosting with myself. Another thing that I’ll probably do differently is Tik Tok marketing. Instead of focusing so much on Instagram again, go and listen to episodes 111 and 112 if you want some of my insights on what’s working, how I would get started in a simplified way and all of that, but I’m not sure what launching will look like on Tik TOK yet.
But we’re going to find out. And then the third thing that I’ll do differently and I’m not sure if I will do differently. I just, I’m not sure how I move forward with the VIP tier offer. Because again, I didn’t prepare those that it was being offered to well enough to help them make a strong decision whether or not they wanted it.
But I’m just not, I’m not sure how continue to market that in the future, because it’s kind of complicated since they were grandfathered in. So I don’t really know that one will be interesting. I don’t have any firm I’ll do this differently. I just know that these are all things that I want to look at and tweak for next time.
I plan to do a launch series later this year. And I would love to make sure that I’m answering the questions that you have about launching. So I want you to send me an email, DM me on Instagram or on Tik Tok whatever, but let me know. What is your most burning launch question? I want to make sure that I can answer your question.
So shoot me that question. And you might just see it as a podcast episode Also, if you want more on launching episode number 74 is my August, 2021 launch recap. And then episode number 1 0 3 is preparing your strategy for your next course launch. Now this week’s book recommendation is educated by Tara Westover.
And I’m definitely late to the party on this one. This is one that I’ve seen people talking about and sharing about for probably years at this point. And I didn’t read it. It was one of those that was on my library list, my to read list, but I never actually checked it out. And then we were visiting some of my husband’s family earlier this year and his cousin was talking about how incredible it was.
So I was like, okay, okay. I got to read it. I got to read it. It was so good. And it’s all about Tara. It’s a memoir Tara grew up in essentially was, I don’t want to say brainwash necessarily. That feels like a really strong word, but essentially her family was. Very fearful of government intervention in any single way.
And they weren’t going to school as kids. And then she ends up, you know, going to school. I think she has a graduate degree, really just a totally different life than the one she was raised in. It’s a really great read. If you haven’t, it’s an easy read. It is, quick to work through, but also really, really interesting, so educated by Tara Westover, highly recommend.
And until next time, my friend, I hope that you will go out and Uncomplicate your life and biz .
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