Top Launch Tips to keep you sane

Are you launching a new product or service over the coming weeks or months? 

Whether it’s your first big launch, or you’re a seasoned professional, I’ve put together my top tips – based on my own experiences of launches – to help you navigate your new launch effectively and keep your sanity intact!

Get planning! No last minute.com malarkey if you want to emerge from your launch without having aged 15 years… Planning is essential, from your sales funnel to your landing pages to your customer support to your social media schedules – not to mention carefully planning the actual product or service that you are launching! Take the time to think things through carefully and consider your options, its also a good idea to talk things through with a trusted peer or colleague who you know will give you honest feedback, make sure your plans are detailed, think about some of the ‘what if’ moments so that you know you’re on track and proper plans can make your life much easier! Admittedly, there’s always something that happens out of the ordinary, or something that doesn’t quite work as anticipated, but the more planning and testing that you can do, the lower the risk of something having a negative impact on your launch.

Get support! they say ‘No man is an island’, and when it comes to launches, I highly recommend that you seek out some support from talented and trusted professionals.  Whether they are creating eye-catching graphics, writing sales copy, manning the customer service desk or helping you with the mechanics of the launch, they are reducing the time that you need to spend doing the behind-the-scenes administrative stuff, increasing the amount of time you have to spend getting out there and using your knowledge and skills to really WOW your potential customers, increase sales and to develop the products/services that your customers really want.  If you can hand over jobs to others, you can focus on your own zone of genius and let them focus on theirs. It’s a win-win!

Be realistic! yes, 100,000 sales in 24 hours might be the dream, but is it realistic? I try to be SMART with my goals – making sure that they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely, so that I have an appropriate goal to work towards.  If I beat the goal, that’s great! If I don’t, I will carefully review the data generated by the launch and try to establish what caused the issue – either way, I’m learning and developing my launch plan (and skills) for next time round.

Integrate! I highly recommend that my customers use tools that integrate positively – and if possible, a tool that does multiple things so that you haven’t got multiple platforms to juggle, bear in mind though that as with anything you need to make sure it’s the right tool for the job. For example, if you’ve got a landing page, an email marketing system, a payment gateway and a product delivery platform (or an online learning platform, if you’re selling a course, for example), then it’s great if they can talk to each other! If someone signs up on your landing page then they should automatically be added to your email marketing (if they have agreed to this, don’t forget GDPR!), and if they have bought from you, they should automatically be given access to your product/service.  Without integration, you would have to manually move a potential customer/customer from process to process, taking valuable time out of your already busy day! Think about using integration platforms like Zapier, or choosing tools that have multi-functionality already built in, Infusionsoft by Keap, which allows you to build landing pages/forms, take payments, manage customers and send out tailored emails, is a great integrated platform that can save you a huge amount of time and effort!

The main thing to remember is that there’s no one-size-fits-all launch model – every launch is different – so it’s all about finding the best process for you. Take time to plan it and don’t forget to test, test, test!