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From Strategy to Results: Analyzing a Client’s Recent Launch
Have you ever wondered what the behind the scenes of a launch looks like? The exact pieces of a strategy, the timeline, the numbers? If so, you’re in the right place because today I’m bringing you behind the scenes of a recent client launch.
In this episode I’ll be sharing the details and strategy behind the launch plans we put in place, as well as the results achieved from said strategy. Then, I’ll close by sharing what we learned and took away from this launch, and potential improvements we could make for future launches.
Launch management is something that I offer for my 1:1 clients alongside their content strategy, but I want to encourage you that you can absolutely pull this off yourself as well. I hope that this episode is empowering, and that it leaves you feeling inspired for your next launch.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Really quickly, before we dive into this episode – I just HAVE to share something I’m really excited about with you. My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion. But without that Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or background in business, they find marketing overwhelming and frustrating. Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity-focused journey to improve your content marketing and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing, so that you can fit your marketing into your business, without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your copy, and even potentially get on the launch team head over to amandawarfield.com/book/ See you there!
- This week’s episode is brought to you by the Chasing Simple Content Planner and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/planner/
- Episode 123: Course Marketing – Launching vs Evergreen: Which is Right For Your Course?
- This week’s action step: Want my guide to emails to send to your waitlist to warm them up before a launch? Head to amandawarfield.com/guide/ to grab my free guide
- This week’s book recommendation: See You Yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon
- 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
Have you ever wondered what the behind the scenes of a launch looks like? The exact pieces of a strategy, the timeline, the numbers. If so, you’re in the right place because today I’m bringing you behind the scenes of a recent client launch. In this episode, I’ll be sharing the details and strategy behind the launch plans that we put in place, as well as the results that we achieved from said strategy.
Then I’ll close by sharing what we learned and took away from this launch and potential improvements we could make for future launches. Launch management is something that I offer for my one to one clients alongside their content strategy, but I want to encourage you that you can absolutely pull this off yourself as well.
I hope that this episode is empowering and that it leaves you feeling inspired for your next launch. You’re listening to episode 177 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.
How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?
Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.
I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.
When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell.
Reading in our hammock, watching GameCock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me. If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing…
is the thing that they started their business to do, which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly before we dive into this episode, I just Have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.
My book, chasing simple marketing is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that masters of business administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing. Overwhelming and frustrating throughout these pages.
I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing. And you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amandawarfield. com / book. I’ll see you there.
In order to keep this anonymous for my client, I’m not going to be sharing any details about the offer itself, and I’m not going to be sharing any Revenue numbers, but we will talk about the launch details. So we’ll talk all about all of those different details. We’re going to talk about what the launch strategy was, what the goals were, how things turned out and what we learned from this launch.
So first things first launch details. There are so many different ways that you can put together a launch strategy. There are so many different options out there, and it really depends on a lot of different things, which I know is not helpful, but I say all of that so that you know that there is no one right way.
To launch something this is the way that we chose for this client and this client’s business in particular But that doesn’t mean that this is exactly what you need to be doing with your launch. So Use it as inspiration, but not an exact roadmap So for this launch, this was a live launch, meaning that we had doors opening and we had expiration and it was a period of time where we were pushing this offer constantly.
That was the only thing we were talking about for that launch week. We were going all in versus an evergreen launch would be something that you are more so doing behind the scenes. That you’re setting up so that it’s running in a funnel versus live emails being sent out at a specific time. An evergreen funnel’s timing is more dependent on when someone joins your funnel versus a set date that you put in stone with a live launch.
Back in episode 123, I talk all about live launching versus evergreen and which is right for you. So that would definitely be an episode that if you’re interested in diving more into the differences between the two, I would highly recommend that you go check out episode 123. So we’ve established this was a live launch.
This also was not the first ever launch of this offer It had been a while since this offer had been launched But it was not the very first round, the very first time that it was launched. The doors had been closed Like I said, it had been a while since it had been launched and it was not set up on Evergreen So doors had been closed for a long time, very long time and This client wants to turn this offer evergreen, so we decided that the doors would stay open at the end of the launch, but There were going to be some live calls So you had to purchase by a specific date in order to get those so there was a bonus That would expire even though the doors weren’t closing a lot of times We use doors open doors close especially with live launch models To encourage people to sign up during that launch time frame because we weren’t going to close doors We had to come up with something else that would help entice people to make that decision, right?
It’s not necessarily about forcing someone into your offer But it’s to encourage them to actually make a decision instead of I’ll think about this later and putting it off So we had that bookmark to really okay doors are opening but then this expires We also chose live calls specifically to help really build relationships.
That is something that, and this is a side tangent, but that’s something that’s missing in a lot of the education in our industry is that personal touch. And obviously when you’re selling one to many, you cannot. It’s not feasible to do one to one for everyone, but these live calls were a way to, to really build that in and help encourage people to actually use the offer versus just buying it and letting it sit there and get dusty, right?
So that’s why we chose that specifically. Now, as far as the plans for the launch, we had a variety of different groups that we were trying to speak to. So we had the. Waitlist that we were sending people to in the pre launch phase when they would talk about their offer They would say join the waitlist so that you know when doors open again and that way we have people who are hot leads Which means that they are people that said yes, I specifically am interested in this offer we also had a free video training that we set up to lead people directly into a This offer was very specifically created so that it would bring in warm leads for people that were interested in that topic.
So we had that section that we were talking to as well. Then we had our visibility booster, which is the thing you do right before your launch. Your live launch in particular to really get eyes on you. Typically it’s something free. In this case, we did an email challenge and it’s something that you build a lot of attention towards.
You get people to sign up because it’s free. It is geared specifically to be the step before whatever your offer is. And the goal is to warm up your leads even more. So they may not be hot leads yet because they haven’t said, yes, I want this offer, but they’re warm leads. And the goal is to. Um, and them really warm and work them towards hot so that when your offer is available, they’re interested in buying it.
So we had that as our visibility booster. And then we also had former purchasers that we were going to have a special offer for as well, as far as a timeline goes for this launch, we had doors open mid June. And the day before doors opened, we had doors open for the waitlists, and for former students, like I mentioned, they both got special offers, which is something that I always recommend if you’re going to do a waitlist.
I will link my Free guide to the emails to send your waitlist in the show notes But if you head to amandawarfield. com guide you can download that but basically if you’re going to have a waitlist you need to reward people for being on the waitlist and I think that you should always have a waitlist because it’s The best way to build hype and momentum before the door is even technically open to everybody It’s really nice to have those sales coming in immediately from people who are very interested and it kind of shifts the model of typically most of your sales come at the end of the launch to most of your sales are happening at the Beginning and it just takes so much the launch That’s a whole other episodes topic, but I will link to that in the show notes and again, you go to amandawarfield. com / guide and snag that outline of the emails that you should be sending to your waitlist If you want to implement that as a strategy in your launch, but the waitlist and former students got in a day early and the week before doors opened, we had that visibility booster, which in this case, again, was that email challenge, but whatever your visibility booster is.
You would do it right before doors open and you want the ending of that visibility booster to coincide and overlap a bit with doors opening the challenge. The visibility booster was announced about 2 weeks before. It actually happened and took place. So they were about two weeks where we were encouraging people to get in and sign up and do this free thing with us.
And then the free training that I mentioned earlier that we were using to gather warm leads. That was announced about two months before the launch. I. I, in reality, wish that we had launched that earlier, but that’s just how the timing worked out in this, so this is your friendly reminder to get your free opt ins where you’re going to be gathering worm leads for specific offers.
Get them out as soon as you can because you can never have enough time, realistically, for gathering those leads. So, that was what the timeline looked like for our launch. We got things really kicked off and started, uh, roughly in April with the announcement of that. Free training, although we were working behind the scenes for longer than that and then the doors opened in mid June So live launch not the first time this has been offered before doors opened, but they weren’t going to be closing.
So we had that bonus of live calls if you bought before a certain date and we had Um, and a few different parts of our list that we were building and talking to in order to really build up those warm and hot leads. Now that can be part of a launch that we forget about. And it’s a big reason why it’s so important to have a 12 week pre launch, which I know a lot of people don’t love.
They don’t like that they need to have that. And it is overwhelming, but you really have to be intentional about building up your leads, because if you’re not building up your leads. Each time you launch something you’re just launching to the same people over and over again and your launches are going to get worse instead of better So let’s talk about goals when I have a client that I am helping with their launches when I’m helping manage the launch I always have them.
Tell me what their goals are and This is not a me thing many people do a good better best goal But I have them set good better and best goals so that we kind of have an idea of what we’re reaching for now I I gave this client the assignment to give me those goals without any kind of context. The good goal was to have 10 people from the waitlist and 25% of past purchasers to repurchase.
That was the good goal. The better goal was 15 from the waitlist and 33% of past purchasers. Purchasers, and then best was 20 waitlist and 50% of former purchasers. Again, I’m not sharing revenue numbers, which is really where these came from. They gave a revenue number and then we broke that down into what that would look like, but I’m not going to share revenue numbers on this because they’re not mine to share.
So we broke that down. Good, better, best. Then I went in and we had a conversation about, okay, but what can we expect as far as conversion rates in this case, even though this had been launched before, we did not have.
And so we had A lot of what we were doing for this live launch wasn’t done previously. And so we just didn’t have those numbers. So we went off of industry averages as our expectation marks. And that meant for the. Overall newsletter, regular email lists, we could typically expect 1 to 2% to convert for the freebie list.
That free training that we had been pushing for a few months. We could expect 1 to 2% to convert for the waitlist 5 to 10% for the challenge 2 to 5% and those prior purchasers. We were guessing 5 to 10%. I actually did not have a number for this. Um, and so I just. Um, and then I just went along with, okay, well, they are warm, hot leads because they’ve purchased before if they’re interested in purchasing again, they’re hot leads.
So let’s go with the waitlist number. So those are kind of the expected industry averages. Had we had previous numbers for this client, we would have used those. The goal is always to improve on what you’ve done previously. So we would have used those. We didn’t have them. So those were the expected, which meant that while we obviously hoped to exceed expectations, we had to look at what their numbers were in order to determine if those good, better, best goals were actually realistic.
So in early May, remember, we were going to start announcing things and launching things. You know, end of May, early June for that challenge for that visibility booster, and then mid June for the offer itself. So when we looked at their early May numbers, what we were expecting sales wise, based on those conversion rates, we were expecting about six to 13 purchases from the regular newsletter list, one to three from the freebie list.
One to two from the wait list, which left us with an expectation of somewhere between eight to 18 sales before we even got into challengers and. Past purchasers because at this point early may we didn’t have anyone signed up for the challenge We hadn’t announced it yet. And we again just weren’t really sure what was going to happen with those former purchasers So I wasn’t including them in those numbers with those numbers 8 to 18 sales is the realistic expectation based on average conversion rates And then their good, better, and best goals, well, we had a roughly 10 people from the wait list, 15 people, 20 people.
Then the hope was, you know, 25, 33, and 50% of former purchasers. So if you’re looking at those numbers, it was clear that yes, the goals that they had set were a tad high, but they weren’t outrageously so. So it was something that we could work with. So keeping those numbers in mind and trying to work towards these goals that may be a tad high, but aren’t too outside of the realm of reality.
We didn’t change them. We just kept them as is and we continue to Really lean into that pre launch strategy and the launch strategies that we had set out so that we could make sure that we were putting out this content that was leading people to the right things. So, over those, however many weeks, those few months during that pre launch strategy, we were really pushing that freebie and the challenge once it opened.
So, I’ve already kind of shared what those numbers were in early May, or at least, What we were expecting sales wise based on those numbers, but the actual launch week numbers between early May and launch week. The free training grew from 129 people to 143. The wait list grew from 18 to 103. The challenge grew from nothing to 398, and then former purchasers were at 1 51.
That number didn’t change. So the expected numbers based off of those launch week numbers, as far as sales, we were expecting six to 13 sales from the regular, just newsletter, email list, people who were not on any of these others, the freebie list, we were expecting one to three sales, the waitlist we’re expecting five to 10, the challenge we’re expecting eight to 20 and prior purchasers we’re expecting seven to 15 for a total of 27 to 61 sales.
All of those numbers are based off of those launch week numbers and those expected industry average conversion rates. So originally, before we had really made sure to focus on that promotion during that lead up for that last six weeks to really, really hone in on, okay, here’s what we need to push. We were expecting roughly eight to 18 sales.
Based on the new launch week numbers, we’re expecting 27 to 61. So that just shows how important it is to really stick to the plan when it comes to your pre launch strategy. So as far as actual sales go, the final numbers, the regular list did not convert how we expected at all. That saw zero sales. So a 0% conversion rate when we were expecting 1 to 2%.
The freebie list also did not convert as we expected, so we were expecting 1 2% and we had zero sales again there. The waitlist converted much higher than we anticipated. We were anticipating somewhere between 5 10% for the waitlist and it actually converted at 17. 5%. So that alone brought in 18 purchasers.
The challenge was lower than we expected, not by a whole lot, but we were expecting 2 5% and we had a 1. 5% conversion rate. So that brought in 6 sales and then prior students We again, weren’t really sure what to expect, but we hypothesized somewhere between 5 and 10% and it actually converted at 13. 9% for 21 sales.
So there were a total of 45 sales of this offer and based on those launch week numbers and the averages we had expected, we were Anticipating 27 to 61. So we were right smack dab in the middle there. They did again, I’m not sharing revenue numbers, but they hit somewhere between that good and better goal, which is about what we were expecting, knowing that those numbers were a tad high.
So overall, this launch did really, really well. And we were really excited about these results. But with every single launch, there are things that you can improve on. Obviously, with every launch, we will try to improve on those conversion rate numbers that we now have. We now have a baseline for, okay, instead of using industry average, we can look at regular and freebie as a 0%.
A wait list is 17. 5. Challenge is 1. 5 and prior students, 13. 9%. Next time we live launch this. Our goal will be just to increase each of those by half a percent or 1% so that we can see more sales. But there are also other things that this live launch in particular told us. So, one, we know that we can step up our game when it comes to priming that full list and that freebie list.
Both within funnels and in content leading up to the launch itself, so we can do a better job about talking to the people that are just on our regular newsletter and getting them through that customer journey and making them aware of the problem that this offer solves. We can do that within a welcome sequence.
We can do that within just the priming content that we create leading up to the launch. We can also look at that freebie and. Maybe decide that it’s not the right freebie for this offer. It may not lead our audience to where we want it to go. So those are some things that we’re going to have to go back and look at and decide, do we try to change the freebie or do we decide to do a better job priming?
We don’t want to change both because we just want to change one thing at a time, but that’ll be something that we’ll consider moving forward for the next launch. It also tells us that our challenge might need some tweaks. Again, it didn’t convert too much lower than we thought it would, but we definitely would like to see it converting higher, especially because there were some live components to that challenge.
And so we want to see what we can do to improve that and improve the. The gap between the challenge and the offer. The goal is to make it a no brainer. So we sent out an email asking those that were part of the challenge, but didn’t purchase why, why was it not a no brainer? What could we have done to make it a no brainer?
And so we’ll have to use that feedback and go in and review the challenge to see what changes can be made. Maybe it’s to the curriculum. Maybe it’s to the way it’s set up. Maybe we’ll have to figure that out. The third thing that it tells us is that, like I said, we’ve now got a baseline to judge future changes against when it comes to those conversion rates.
So when we look at the freebie and we decide whether we’re going to try to do better with priming, or we’re going to try to change the freebie, we can then choose one. That’s our one change for that. And then we can say, okay, here was this baseline number. How does this change compare in the next launch?
Or probably a better example would be the challenge because. We can it’s possible for that number to go down. It’s not possible for zero to go down But with the challenge we can look at that and make a change and maybe we decide that it needs to be formatted differently And so we change the format and see did that improve or make it worse and so we can look at those numbers We have that baseline to then make improvements to continually try to increase those conversion rates Because the higher the conversion rates, the less people you need to bring in, right?
So those are three big things that we will be looking at for this client’s launch in particular. Like I mentioned, we hit between her original good and better revenue goals. And overall, the launch was a huge success. We intentionally built in plenty of ways to mine her audience for copy for messaging moving forward.
That way we can make it even more clear who the offer is for and what the problem solves. Thanks for watching! Along with talking about it in a way that really speaks to her audience. If hearing about the different ways that we built in message mining is something that you’d like to hear about in a future episode, send me a DM or an email and let me know because I think it would be really fun to talk about.
But I want to make sure it’s something that you want to hear because to me, it’s very copywriter, I know that I get really excited about things like that and other people may not. So if you’re interested in hearing how we have intentionally built that in so that we can continue to improve this offer, let me know.
Now your action step for today is to go download that guide that I mentioned earlier, that that guide to emails to send to your waitlist to warm them up before your launch had domain to warfield. com slash guide to go ahead and grab that. And this week’s book recommendation is See You Yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon.
I know that I’ve mentioned Rachel’s books before in the past. I love them. They’re based in Seattle. It just makes me feel like, like I’m home. I love this, the references that she makes about Seattle and the weather and all of the things, but she also is just so well written. And this one in particular had a very interesting premise.
It’s about this girl who goes to college. It’s her first day of classes, and she does them, and then she wakes up the next morning and it’s the first day all over again. And she is essentially living this Groundhog Day over and over again, but the twist is that there is another guy that she meets in one of her classes that is also stuck in this time loop.
And it’s really well done because it’s It’s kind of sci fi y, but it’s not. It’s, it’s a, an easy, quick, beach read almost. And yet it has this sci fi aspect to it that, yeah, Rachel just does such a good job, like, weaving that in without it being… Heavy or overly complicated or anything like that. So see you yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon.
And now my friend I hope that you will go out and uncomplicate your marketing a business
Thank you so much for joining me here today friend You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing over at amandawarfield. com If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.
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