Welcome to episode 435. Today is, of course, three things you need to know. This month is February 2019, also known as my birthday month. Woohoo. I want to talk a lot about launches today because we’re going into launch season for sure. Honestly, we’re kind of in launch season. A lot of people launch in January and there’s launches happening in February and March. Really, January to April ish seems to be a popular time for us to launch programs or memberships or things like that.
I wanted to talk about three things you need to know when it comes to marketing your launch and specifically prepping because I think too often we start thinking about our launch in terms of cart open and cart close. In reality, there’s a lot of work we can do, need to do, and that will just be really helpful before we get anywhere near cart open.
I’m not talking so much about prep, like writing your copy, although that stuff should also be done well before our launch date or cart open date. I mean specifically with our audience and that’s what we’re going to dig into today, some things we can do with our audience pre-launch to make the most of that time. We’re going to talk about a couple of ads things and we’re also going to talk about some email stuff. I know. It’s crazy. This is three things I want you to know this month.
Number one, start building custom audiences right now.
I’m hearing a lot from people that traditional … I don’t want to say traditional. The launch models of the last three to five years are just every … Probably of the last 12 to 14 months, are just not working. The launch that they did last year did not see the results that they wanted it to this year because they’re following the same strategy because it worked before and that’s what we’re supposed to do but we’re not putting it in context of the fact that the internet is changing.
No longer are we at a point in time where the same kind of scarcity works. We have to, and honestly, we should err on value over it’s going to go away and if you miss out you’re going to die, which is some of the tactics of the last couple of years with internet marketers. I instead have been talking a lot with my clients, our one on one clients, our agency clients, that we work with at Uncommonly More about value and upfront value.
Here’s where that upfront value, though, is valuable to us and that’s custom audiences. When we start building custom audiences early we start lowering our overall ads cost because we’re targeting just the people who are going to buy. I want you to be looking at, starting right now, where can I be building really solid custom audiences? If you’re doing a regular Facebook Live show and you’re getting a good amount of views and you’re getting a good amount of engagement those should be building custom audiences.
If you’re engaging with your community regularly on your Facebook page that should be building custom audiences. If you have people visiting specific episodes or blog posts or videos or whatever on your site where the content is really in line with what you’re going to talk about in the program or the membership or the whatever, the mastermind, whatever the thing is, then you should be building custom audiences.
How do you do that? On your website, it’s going to be a pixel. Now if you don’t have the pixel setup set it up. There’s a video inside a Backstage on how to do that. It’s really simple. Facebook walks you through it. If you’re completely phobic about dealing with code or anything like that? Great. Pay somebody to do it. It’s not a huge deal. If you need referrals, let me know. I’m happy to send somebody your way.
Get the pixel setup on your site.
That’s got to be step number one because it’s the foundational key. Now here’s the other thing, though, is custom audiences aren’t just about your website. It’s also on Facebook. Guess what? All of the information you need to build a custom audience is already on Facebook.
You go into your audience area of your ads manager, create an audience, based on Facebook page engagement or video views, choose your option there, website visitors, whatever, and follow the steps. It’ll hold your hand through the process.
Again, if this is something that you don’t feel comfortable doing or you don’t want to do there are professionals who will do this for you. Hire them. If you’re not in a place where you can hire out your ads? Fine. Find somebody who is a consultant who will walk you through it on a call. Look for sites like Backstage that walk you through some of this stuff and training videos.
Get whatever support you can fit into your business right now and get that help because avoiding custom audiences or skipping custom audiences is going to leave a ton of impact and money on the table. I don’t want to see that happening. These custom audiences are critical.
Now the reason we talk about these before we talk about anything else is because the other things we’re going to do are going to feed this, are going to feed from this. We are building an audience of people who already give a crap, who already know who we are and have seen our name, have seen our picture, have engaged with us, have invested some amount of time in us being around.
That is the easiest person to get to buy into a program. It’s the person who you’re going to have the quickest path to getting them further down that road from problem to solution because they have already shown up on the road and said, “Hey, I have this problem and I like talking to you about it.” Whether that’s, “I need a lamp” or, “I need to fix my marriage” or, “I need to fix my business” or, “I need to fix my health” or whatever the thing is. They’re already showing up for you. Custom audiences, dig into this, please.
The next piece of this is retargeting.
Too many people are going, “Okay, I flipped on these cold ads” meaning ads that spoke to people who had never heard of me before from my last launch, “And dumped them all in a webinar and then sold 100 programs on that webinar.”
Cool. Except you missed the most important step. Retargeting. You can bring your ROI way up and your ads cost way down when you think about the audience you already got. This is something that really drives me crazy with phone companies and cable companies is they’re always talking about the new customer special.
“Join us now”, “Switch now”, “Come see us now and we’ll give you everything.” We completely ignore, they completely ignore, the people who are already like, “Hey, I’m your customer. Maybe I want a better package, maybe I want more channels, maybe I want a better data plan.” I don’t know. Whatever the thing is.
However, if T-Mobile or Verizon or whatever said, “Hey, you know what? You’ve been a customer for a long time. What do you say we add on this extra thing at this special promo?” Or honestly, if we just said, “Hey, you want to add this on?”
That’s going to be a much easier yes because, again, like we talked about with custom audiences, these people are already on the road with you from problem to solution. Why are we not retargeting the people who are already with us?
Now, this doesn’t just mean customers, previous customers … Although, yeah, if you’re selling a mastermind start with the people who bought your $97 program or your $2000 DIY program. If you have people who have already invested with you that’s the audience we start with when we’re talking about a next level, air quotes, “next level” offering, right?
The same is true of your audience. If we’ve already invested in you don’t forget to tell us about the thing. Even if the thing is the webinar. Part of this retargeting is taking those custom audiences and driving ads to them about the webinar. Then you’ll see your webinar conversions go up. Because are you ready? They already knew who you were. You didn’t have to spend 20 of the 40 minutes you were on the training telling them who you were, convincing them that you knew what you were talking about because they’ve already been around. Our ROI goes up, the cost of our ads go down. This is critical.
Retargeting comes in a lot of ways, though. Yes, those custom audiences but also let’s say we ran ads to a cold audience for this webinar. They signed up, they attended, but they didn’t buy on the webinar. Retarget those webinar signups with a, “Hey, the doors are open now.” Or, “Hey, here’s another piece of value.”
Then retarget the people who go to that piece of value. “Hey, the doors are open now.” Test both and see which one converts better. Don’t forget those ads, though, after you get them on your email list. After you get them to say yes to something, whether that’s watching a video, whether that’s signing up for something, whether that’s paying you for something else. Retarget them. Use the ads to make sure you get in front of them.
The cool thing about retargeting ads is we can customize our copy then specifically to them. “Love seeing you on the webinar. Can’t wait to have you join us backstage. Doors are open right now to join us.” It can be as simple as that. Or, “We had a great time in the Instagram boot camp. Let’s take it a step further with our Instagram mastermind.”
Do you see how I was able to customize that and then I can target that to just the people who went to that Instagram boot camp? Because they’re going to be the easiest people for me to get into the mastermind. They’re the people who are going to have the biggest impact in their business from being in the mastermind because they already did the work of the boot camp.
By the way, the Instagram boot camp and the Instagram mastermind are something I just totally made up. I offer neither one of those things. Just as a heads up. This is not my way of seeding an offer for later. Neither one of those things exist as of now. Do you see how we’re shifting that gear?
The third thing I want to talk about, though, is email.
Too often we’re afraid we are going to bother them and so we decide to way pull back on emails before we go into launch because we know that during the launch we are going to force ourselves to send them like 19 emails in 27 days.
We go, “You know what? I’m going to give them a little break from me.” No. No. No. Get them excited. Get them ready. Also, get them clicking. Too often I see people putting their entire piece of content in their email. Now, yes, you need to give me a reason to open the email. I like to have some sort of thing that’s just for the emails. That’s why in most of my emails I also have a little note of what’s going on, what’s happening, sneak preview of something, the first to know something, and then there’s a link to the episode. Part of that is I am getting my readers in the habit of clicking.
Now you’ll also see that before I go into a launch period the amount of places you can click … Notice I said the amount of places you can click? Not the amount of things you can click to. Just the amount of places you can click goes up. I still only like to two or maybe three things per email because more than that and it’s overwhelming. It’s like it’s all the things. No.
I will have links to click through in more places because I want you to get in the habit of clicking. Because then when I send you a sales page or an opt-in or an offer or whatever you’re already in the habit of clicking. You know in my emails you click to see what’s next. Make sure we are building good habits with our emails with our customers. That means giving them something worth opening and that means giving them something worth clicking to.
Now I’m not just adding clicks that go to crap but I’m saying, “Hey, we are opening up this three-day challenge to the public next week. If you want to grab it now click here. You won’t even have to opt-in.” Because I have it up an active campaign that when you click a tag it’s added and now you’re automatically in the campaign or the automation rather. Okay?
Give them something worth opening, give them something worth reading, give them something worth clicking and that has to start before the launch. Now ideally, that happens all the time but you really got to make sure it’s on point pre-launch. Pre-launch is getting earlier and earlier. It used to be that you could open the cart on February 1st and go into pre-launch January 15th. Now four, six, eight weeks pre-launch is not crazy.
Now how we pre-launch is different. It used to be pre-launch was like a coming soon starting two weeks out. Now we’re in pre-launch before they realize there’s something coming because we’re doing things like building these custom audiences, we’re doing things like training our audience to click, we’re doing things that are putting them in the mindset that there’s a next step for them to take. All right? That’s what I want you to start paying attention to this month is how are you getting ready for any spring launches you want to run?
Or if you’re creating your summer strategies now what do you need to add to that ahead of fall launches? I just flipped that if you’re on the other side of the equator. I know you guys are changing seasons in the other direction. You know what I’m trying to say here. Okay? Make sure you plan for this stuff and get this stuff ready. Sound good? All right.
That’s what I’ve got. Those are the three things I want you to pay attention to and know this month, February 2019. This week, although the cart is closed, tomorrow in fact if you listen to this the day it goes up, we are hosting our first Backstage Live. Don’t worry, though. If you missed out on tickets we’ve got another one March 6th here in LA, California. Los Angeles, California. Actually, Santa Monica.
I’d love to have you. If you’re on the West Coast come join me. I’m actually driving a couple hours north of where I actually live, which is in Orange County, California, but I’m really excited to do a West Coast event. It’s going to be a good time. All right?
If you have questions head on over to Instagram, send me a DM, and let me know. Or head over to the Facebook page and let me know. The best place to get questions answered, though, is Backstage because they get first priority really. That’s why. All right. Have a great rest of your week. I will talk to you soon. Happy February.
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