Welcome to episode 363 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris.
It’s that time of year again. We’re mid to late August, and here’s the deal guys, launch season, it’s right around the corner. Once September hits, that like back to school vibe, a lot, a lot, a lot of people go into launch mode, and maybe, just maybe, there’s something that you would like to launch this fall. If there is, this episode is a good one to listen to, ’cause we’re going to talk about some of the ways you can start using social now to prep for that launch and some of the ways that you can support your launch through your social media efforts, both paid and organic. Cool? Cool.
So let’s first start talking about why is this important to think about now?
Oftentimes when you’re thinking about a launch or when you’re planning a launch, you get so caught up in the production of sales pages, and email copy, and maybe the actual creation of whatever it is you’re launching, the program, the video series, whatever, and sometimes we forget to think about the social media. In many cases, we’ll think about, “Oh, we’re going to create this ad campaign.” Or “I hired this person to do this ad campaign.” But there’s a lot of organic stuff that we can be doing during pre-launch to get the benefits going before the launch is ready. That can be everything from re-engaging your audience on social, just putting out really engagement focused content, running ads. That it’s purely about getting comments and shares versus getting clicks to a website. To putting out more of your content that is related to what it is you’re going to be launching so that you can Pixel those people and retarget them with ads.
Now if you don’t know what any of the words I just said meant, you need to be joining us inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, but basically what it does is when somebody visits your website, if you have a Facebook Pixel installed, you can then re-target them with ads by creating an audience based on the traffic from that Pixel. Again, if those words do not make sense, you need to be in Backstage, ’cause that’s the kind of stuff we talk about. But, it doesn’t even need to be that you’re running Facebook ads for this content.
Now, pre-launch, I do like to run Facebook ads to focus content for the sake of Pixeling those people and re-targeting them with launch sequence stuff, meaning let’s say I’m doing a launch and I’ve got this group program, and the focus of the group program is really rocking out Q4 this year. So it’s all about accountability, and business strategy, and marketing strategy, and it’s going to be just the most epic program ever. I’m totally making this up by the way. This is not something I’m offering. I’m sure someone offers a really great one. I do not. With that said, I can start creating content that speaks to that in let’s say August for before my September launch, and then run ads to a cold audience to that content. Meaning, I’m not running an opt-in to them, I’m not running sign-up and you’ll get this blog post or podcast or video or whatever it is. It’s purely a link to the podcast episode, or the blog post, or, again, whatever it is. From there, I can Pixel them. Again, if you don’t know that that is, Backstage. We can Pixel them, and then when we are ready to start running maybe ads for a webinar or for a video series, or depending on whatever your actual launch content is, we have an audience primed and ready for that kind of content. So we’re making our ask a little bit later.
So now, before the launch, is the time to start thinking about using social to sell, to build your customer base, especially for those of you who are going, “I really want to launch something, but I don’t have a very big following, and I don’t have a very big e-mail list, so how can I really hit some really great numbers financially if I don’t have very many people yet?” A big part of that is going to be engaging new people, and the earlier you can start building trust with them, the more likely it is that you’re going to be able to get them to say yes on a program opportunity, or a coaching opportunity, or whatever it is that you’re launching. Again, think about ways you can start providing value, building trust, and connecting with your audience, new and old before your official pre-launch content even goes out. All right?
The second thing I want to talk about, don’t forget that you don’t have to do this alone.
When you are in a launch space, there is a lot of stuff that needs your attention. There is a lot of stuff you’re doing, so now might be a really good time to get someone to help you with your social media. It doesn’t have to be that you hire somebody who does this for you all the time. Maybe it’s just somebody who helps you manage your social media through your launch period. That’s okay. You can hire people on whatever terms you need.
If you want to take that a step further, you might see, and I say might because there’s a ton of variables here, you might see more success with your Facebook ads if you hire somebody who does Facebook ads. One of the big differences we’ve seen with clients is when they hired somebody, whether it was us or we worked with another team, or just depending on the kind of client it was. Hire somebody who that was their bread and butter is Facebook ads geared toward selling XYZ, a program, a product. One team we worked with when I was partnered with a start-up, they wanted to do a Kickstarter for product, and we partnered with a Facebook ad company that that is all they did is they ran Facebook ads for Kickstarter kind of campaigns, that sort of funding kind of setup. That was all they did, and that was money well spent because that was all they did. They knew it inside and out. They had the depth of knowledge to really maximize the results that the client was seeing, because that’s where they live.
So bringing somebody in who, again, that’s where they live … Maybe you have your VA who’s already doing your social media, and if that’s the case, fantastic, wonderful, great. It might still be worth investing in somebody who can run your Facebook ad campaign for you, who can launch your Facebook ad campaign. It might be worth hiring your copywriter that did your sales page to write you a certain amount of ad copy, or a certain amount of organic posts, social media content that compliment and really speaks to your sales copy. Think about ways you can tap and use your team to support you through this, because launches are stressful. Launches are crazy. It’s the nature of the beast.
It can get easier, though, if we ask for help, if we allow for help, and if we spend our time doing what we do best, and not trying to do all of the things. I say that as someone who has made that mistake repeatedly, who continues from time to time to get sucked into that trap. I’m getting better about it, for sure, but just, I mean, full transparency, we all fall victim to it at least once, and I’m guessing that most people do it a lot more than one time. But remember, asking for help, building your support team, this is a good time to do that. Again, the people you hire during a launch don’t have to become people that are permanent, don’t have to people who you work with all the time. They can purely be working with you for a launch.
A great example that is another client we had several years ago now, she hired an extended VA staff, virtual assistant staff, to help with customer service during launch periods, because inevitably there would be text snafus or refunds to handle or things like that. This allowed her to deal with all of those things, and stay at the same level of customer service that she wanted to be providing. So for the, I think it ended up being like the eight weeks of the launch and the program, she kept these extended staff on. It was temporary. It’s kind of like the holidays. I mean, people expanding, physical stores, expanding their staff. I think we probably see that in the biggest way with like UPS and FedEx and the postal. They have seasonal employees. You can have seasonal launch time employees.
The final thing I want to talk about is don’t think of these pieces of your marketing, of your program development, or your program delivering as separate pieces, because really, all of these pieces need to be working together, especially on the marketing side of things.
I mentioned earlier, hiring your copywriter to build you some social content, maybe hiring them to help you write some e-mail copy. All of these things need to compliment each other. Our sales page, our e-mails, our social content, our blog content, our podcast interviews. All of these things need to be interwoven for the magic to happen, for us to continue building trust with potentially a very large amount of new audience.
I mean, ideally, when we talk about having big launches and having big success, a lot of that doesn’t come from suddenly my audience just all decides to buy something at the same time. No. A lot of that comes from audience growth, and for me that’s always one of the big benefits of doing a launch is my audience grows, my e-mail list grows. Even if they don’t buy that time, they’ll buy the next time, or they’ll buy a down sell opportunity that I have on the backend, or whatever that thing is, but that happens because there’s audience growth there. That means, it’s even more important that we have a consistency across these different pieces of our marketing channels, across the different pieces of the actual program delivery, and coaching experience, because we want to maintain that trust. We want to maintain the expectation of the experience they’re having.
So don’t think about these things as wholly independent things. Think about them in parallel. Think about them that they all kind of need to fit together, they all need to kind of work together to complete the puzzle that is your launch. All right?
That’s all I’ve got for you today. If you’ve got any questions, anytime, be sure to head over to the Facebook page, or even better, join us inside of HittheMicBackstage.com. As of recording this, we do have a couple of spots left inside of the new VIP upgrade for Backstage that I talked about last week. If you are interested in that, head over to HittheMicBackstage.com. All the way at the bottom you’ll see the three ways you can join, monthly, annually, or at the VIP level. The VIP level does include, once again, one-on-one calls with me each and every month and a private area in the VIP lounge, which is our private community. It’s awesome. I’m loving it. I’m having a really good time with it, so if you are interested in that, check that out. If there are not spots available at the time you’re listening to this, get on the wait list. There’ll be a list … a link there to a wait list if there is not a purchase opportunity there. All right? I will see you guys next Tuesday. Have a good week.
