In case you’re new around here, I Show Life Coaches How To Get Seen, Heard & Paid Online With High-Profit Offers, Messaging & Social Ads.
I’ve been doing this since leaving my regular job way back in 2010, and helping coaches grow their businesses online for what feels like forever!
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And today, I’m sharing the big mistakes that I see many life coaches making when they launch their offer.
So what is a launch?
It’s one of those terms that’s often talked about in online marketing circles and you’ve probably seen a lot of offers out there that talk about strategies where you don’t have to launch.
Why is avoiding launching seen as so desirable?
It’s because it has so many elements that have to be created with a high level of skill so they have the best chance of working, and most coaches do not have all these skills (or the time to make them all happen).
But when it all comes down to it, launching is sharing your offer and creating buzz, excitement, and expectation around an offer during a set period of time.
So, when you are launching basically you are educating, connecting, and engaging with an audience about a certain offer and you are getting them excited and primed to buy your offer before a deadline.
When a launch is done well, it builds an audience with attention-getting value, curiosity, and some kind of event and then reveals a time-limited offer with some bonus to act on.
Launching is such an effective tool because of the level of attention you can create in a small period of time and that can drive the volume of your sales because urgency can be an amazing tool of persuasion. And we know persuasion leads to conversion.
One of the reasons many coaches get burnt launching is that there’s an enormous amount of work, time, and energy to maximize the buzz, awareness, engagement, visibility, and outreach in a short period of time and because you’re still running your business, servicing our clients, and doing the day to day can take a huge amount of time. So, when you add something that needs a certain level of insight, organization, and experience on top of that, you can see why it’s a bit of a recipe for burnout.
Launching can also lead to a lot of expectation and nervous tension because it can feel like there’s so much riding on this one opportunity. It’s kind of like putting all your eggs in one basket. And there can be a lot riding on that expected big income spike.
Maybe you’re comparing yourself to what you’ve seen out there in the coach marketing world or on social media, and don’t get me wrong, there are some really big numbers that can happen during a launch.
Launching is generally a math game. You can look at converting about 2% of your launch list to your offer. So you can use that percentage of the audience multiplied by your offer price and see what your potential revenue could be.
But make sure you don’t overlook the variables that can impact that equation.
Perhaps you can’t guarantee how many people in your audience will engage with your launch marketing, so the audience numbers you’re using to project your sales may be a shot in the dark.
You may not have a firm cost of what your ad spend will be to grow that audience, and that can vary depending on the copy, funnel, and promise. And if those have not been proven, you can see how results can start to vary wildly.
If you’re still relatively new, your audience may need time to trust you or to believe in your promise.
So the planning, systems, support, guidance, and resources need to come together with a realistic expectation of the traffic and conversion opportunities. Your level of experience, whether you’ve made the offer before, and most importantly, the quality of your offer will all impact your launch success.
After helping many coaches with their launches as well as running my own, I’ve taken note of the most common mistakes I see. And my aim in outlining them today is to help you avoid them.
Launch Mistake 1: The first mistake is expecting that launching always means sales.
And although launching is a powerful way to make an offer and convert clients, launching in itself is not a guarantee of a positive outcome.
Instead, the critical success factors for launching are these elements:
Audience: Size, Engagement & Understanding
Launch Leads: Numbers, Motivation, Cost Of Acquisition
Conversions: How well the funnel steps and events work to create engagement and the next step.
Those factors will impact the metrics of the launch, but the mistake of relying on a strategy instead of ensuring that your offer is rock-solid will also lead to some sad times.
Be careful that you’re not investing in marketing assets or services and expecting those to do the work for you, and the same goes for the coaching or formulas you’ve invested in.
Your coach’s results or promises can’t be relied upon to get results for your launch.
Even though you spent all that money on a sales page or that time writing copy you may not be hitting the right levers, and you might not be pushing the right messaging levers.
Launch Mistake 2. Forgetting The Art Of Pre-Launching
The second launch mistake many life coaches make is they haven’t been in regular communication and engagement with their existing audience until they decide to come out all guns blazing with their big launch.
They haven’t been actively and regularly and consistently, emailing their mailing list with valuable content that kind of opens the door to an offer or starts to build trust and respect around a certain message or value.
You want to have some kind of level of trust built up amongst your existing audience before you launch. And you want to work to create anticipation and awareness that something is coming by teasing out the big problem your offer solves.
Now you might say, “well, I don’t really I haven’t really launched anything before and I don’t really have a list. So what should I do then?”
Well, I’d say that you should steer clear of launching. You don’t need to launch. You can be regularly selling your courses, programs, and one on one coaching from the get-go without a launch using the beautiful strength of online client pipelines, using social media and email, and particularly Facebook and Instagram ads.
Invite them to a call and sell them into a $2000 to $5,000+ offer using super-targeted advertising and direct response marketing and also connect with personally engaging communication designed to offer value even before they pay you. So you really kind of don’t need to be launching or distracting yourself with those activities, because there’s a lot of stuff that can take you off track.
But that’s not to say that you can’t create list-building lead magnets and run ads to them so you can build your audience from the get-go. Creating email follow-up sequences and weekly minimum live email, and social media posts all around your message and building that connection.
Launch Mistake 3. Losing Faith Half Way Though The Launch
The other Launch Mistake number four launch mistake that life coaches make is making it a once-only opportunity and making any missed expectations mean something about themselves personally or their future success in business.
They’re putting so much pressure on themselves so that when they don’t see the sales rolling in as soon as the offer is open, or when it looks like it’s not going to sell to expectation, they question whether anyone ever wants to buy from them at all and whether they’ll ever make it in business, and they go through a dark night of the soul that takes a long time to recover from.
I’ve seen this many times in the clients I’ve helped over the years. I’ve done a lot of ads, email marketing, sales pages, lots of things and launches, and just generally marketing strategy coaching, too.
They start off like so excited halfway through they’re like freaking out thinking nobody’s gonna buy, lying on the floor in the fetal position. And they’re so exhausted at the end, even if last-minute sales do come in.
Launch Mistake 4: Lack Of Distinction
Without a clear enough concept, promise, or proposition to share that sets you apart from the competition, you’re going to squander much of your opportunity. Your message to market should be so exciting and blow your competition out of the water with massive value.
It must be distinctive, it must address a nig issue, challenge, or problem in the lives of your market and it must be a relatively difficult solution to find.
Your offer should be a “magic carpet ride” promise, where people can prove a shortcut, an opportunity for ket increase (or decrease of something they don’t want), or a chance to save money, time, relationships, or increase well-being. A shift in their identity and their perceived value or status can also get attention, but only if it is fresh and new and not seen before.
It must be client-centric, not delivery-descriptive. Although it can get a bit of attention what you’ve done – So this is how I did it. You want to do it, too. It’s a very simple marketing promise and that marketing message needs to go deeper to demonstrate true value and turn the desire into action that leads to a sale.
Don’t get so excited about your program, your offer, or your coaching that you’re going to do and all the things you’re going to create like that you lead with what they’re going to get instead of who they are going to be and how that will feel.
What is the unwanted cost of staying where they are, and how does your offer remove that? And why is it better? Why is it different and why now?
It’s very hard to separate yourself from the masses that way and really have to get a personal connection the more you’re talking about yourself and your stuff. The quicker it’s going to be for people to switch off unless you’ve got some high drama story or you’ve made millions and sure that stuff gets really engaging, but I’m sure if you’re here that’s less likely option.
The success of your launch hinges on the strength of your offer, and how you build value, connection, and engagement around that offer. That is the premise for how social media works and the premise really for how any kind of product or service gets momentum.
Don’t rely on the urgency, scarcity, or features of an offer to do the work for you in a launch.
Launch Mistake 5: Lack Of Meaningful Real-Time Analytics
When you live launch you must be able to quickly measure and track, adjust, and optimize throughout the launch, particularly if you haven’t used certain elements before.
Maybe there’s a change in software or a change in a system that can be a really common glitch.
I consider myself a conversion detective and because I’ve had many clients over the years, I can immediately see where an existing or launch funnel is falling down.
You should be prepared to adjust on the run. That’s why I always teach my clients how to use certain software. Because yes, there’s always a learning curve. Yes, it’s annoying. But once you’ve taught yourself that you can quickly jump in and understand what is going on without relying on someone who you know, maybe it’s going to their kid’s birthday barbecue and can’t quite dive in on a 7 pm on a Saturday night when everything’s going to crap!
I hope that by highlighting some of these life coach launch mistakes, I hope that you can align your own growth to the right offer creation and offer-making strategies that suit you and your stage of business.
There can be a lack of awareness out there about some of the marketing principles that apply no matter what strategy or tool you use, and a lot of distraction by big numbers that can blindside you about what’s possible.
There are some marketing fundamentals that become inconvenient truths to many success stories and so they don’t get talked about enough.
If you are considering live launching your offer, make sure you have a solid offer assessment and plan first as this will do so much of the heavy lifting for you.
The chance to invest time in more lasting assets for your business will also make all the difference and give you more than one way to skin a cat.
When you have an offer you can sell anytime you have a path to cash and value that you can call upon whether you want to launch or not.
If you want more success with your offer and message and you want to get seen and heard by more of the right people online, simply reach out and claim your free 30-minute marketing blueprint assessment to go over what you’ve got and what the next best steps are, what maybe you’re missing, where your messaging might be falling down, what is proving to be a block in your sales and how we can get you moving. So make sure you come and jump in for one of those and I will see you on the next episode.
So let me know your thoughts. Reach out to me on Instagram @iamvictoriagibson and let me know your launch and offer questions. If you want to ask whether you think an offer is ready to launch or you know kind of advice like that. I’m happy to answer any of those messages.
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