From the Community Corner (Shared by Sophie Bee)
Hey Passionfighters,
Here’s the launch strategy we (my business bestie and I) used to attract 140 sign ups to a brand new program without sales calls…in the first 30 days!
So, I’m going to preface this strategy with a few things we had in place BEFORE we launched this program. The strategy wouldn’t have worked if we didn’t have these things, or at least not as well.
- We had warm audiences (We launched this mostly on our personal Facebook profiles)
- We had a cold-to-warm lead generation strategy
- We had a no-brainer offer
If you don’t already have those things, that’s okay! I’m going to explain how we got them first.
The warm audience
This one doesn’t take a ton of time, it takes intention and messaging. To grow an audience full of ideal clients, you need to know them well.
You need to know what they want and how to talk to them. Personally, I don’t poke my clients in the pain points. It’s not my jam and my clients don’t like it either. But it is a method that works, if that’s up your alley.
If, however, you want to attract clients without pain point-poking, then you can explore our method. We did it by creating content that leads with results, and helps our ideal clients overcome their most immediate challenges.
The faster you connect, build relationships, and help people get results – the faster your audience will convert to paying clients.
A cold to warm lead generation strategy
We like to ethically borrow other people’s audiences.
For this launch, we used a handful of Facebook groups that allow promotions. We posted content that invited our ideal clients to follow us. You can do this on any platform. The key to attracting clients from cold audiences is to meet them where they’re searching.
For example, if your ideal client is Googling “How to lose 10 lbs” or “How to run a marathon”, then share tips addressing these questions and lead them to your profile where you share more valuable information on the subject.
Remember that people are attracted to what they WANT, not what they need. So give them what they want first…then give them what they need to get what they really want (which is rarely something they’re searching for externally).
You can also draw in cold audiences by speaking on podcasts, at summits, or by getting featured on email lists, in blog articles or in magazines.
A no-brainer offer
We went against Passion.io’s grain here by offering the app as a BONUS, rather than the first product or service.
Most of the people who jumped into our latest program don’t even know an app is coming…we’re saving that surprise for later. The reason behind this is that we want to run through the program first to know how and where the app fits in as a true asset to our clients.
We’ve built and run enough programs to know that the best features are built by the people using them. So feedback is really important before we build the app.
For the offer itself – rather than a free or low ticket 6-week challenge that leads to a higher ticket program, we offered a high-value program for a low ticket price with no upsell (backwards, we know).
We are running the program off the app first, then inviting those inside the program to join the app as a supplement to the program.
I wouldn’t recommend a high-value, low-ticket program with no upsell as a stand alone business model, especially when starting out…before you have a solid, working lead generation and sales conversion strategy. You won’t get rich from this model alone. But if you do want to run a model like this, it works on volume and no-cost upfront opportunities for those who meet the criteria on the back-end.
We’ve done it this way for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, wanting to disrupt the high-ticket coaching industry and make high-ticket coaching more accessible. But an added bonus is that this model gets us around all of the App Store higher-ticket pricing issues without having to hide payment links.
A sales page with a payment link ready to go
We wouldn’t have needed a Sales Page if we had driven people straight to our app. Instead, our app will be sent out via email to those who signed up for the program when we’re ready to let them in. This might change for Round 2. But for this launch, we needed somewhere for people to sign up and pay, so we created a sales page.
This might seem like an obvious thing to mention, but I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve worked with who made it near impossible for clients to sign up and pay for their programs.
The easier it is for someone to buy, the faster they sign up and pay.
The Launch Strategy
Before we officially dropped the offer, we warmed up our audiences by posting content for 3 days. This content was primarily designed to tease, hype up, and create buzz so we had eyes on our offer BEFORE we dropped it.
The hype part isn’t a whole lot different from what Passion.io recommends. We just created our own content and posted for 3 days in a row.
When we dropped our offer, we already had people waiting for it. Around 30 people bought straight through our funnel within the first couple of hours. We then continued to post a lot of content, as 1-2x daily content…but not just ‘buy our program’ style content.
We kept the awareness of the program at the top of our dream client’s mind by posting a variety of content including:
- We posted testimonials from past and current clients in other programs
- We shared results we knew our clients wanted
- We publicly answered questions people were asking in our inboxes
- We shared stories of how we overcame challenges we know our clients are facing
- We asked questions that lead to sales conversations
- We shared our creation process and shared what we were doing every step of the way
- We offered value
- We asked people to join us
A handful of our first clients also jumped in and started sharing our offer for us as well. This helped expand our reach by putting us in front of new audiences with an added boost of social proof.
Between my business bestie and I, we’ve done a number of launches…each one with its own set of successes and challenges.
What was unique about this launch from others we’ve done, was the speed at which the first 100 clients signed up from our Facebook profiles alone (within 20 days). We then used the momentum of the clients who joined, to expand our reach into cold audiences which created interest (and probably a bit of FOMO).
We’re still launching this program so I’ll keep you posted as the story unfolds 🙂
But all that to say, this has been the easiest launch we’ve done because we’ve simply shared the process and taken people along for the ride…while offering a high-value, results driven program people wanted at a price they couldn’t say no to.