SHOWNOTES
In this podcast, I really try to demystify the whole process known as a launch, including the pre-launch phase, by peeling back the curtain and telling you what did - and didn’t - work for me. You’ll hear about:
✔️Why I recommend starting a pop-up Facebook Group prior to your launch (hint: think list building), and when you should open it. (Follow this link to learn about the cool software we use that helps us automatically add people’s info to our database.)
✔️ How I used a graphic calendar and assigned “homework” to ramp up engagement and get my group excited about what was coming next.
✔️The importance of creating a video series as part of your launch strategy. I use a method created by Jeff Walker called the Product Launch Formula. Here’s a link to his book so you can learn all about it.
✔️I also break down for you what I spent on Facebook ads and how I used them to drive traffic to my sales page - successfully - even coming in under my ad budget.
✔️And, you’ll hear about 3 NEW STRATEGIES we used this time around that we have never used before -- one of which involved sharing my personal phone number -- that really, really paid off.
✔️I’ll tell you what I plan to do differently next time. This part alone is worth your time, because I have some great ideas in here (as well as one cool idea that didn’t quite pan out, but I think is worth trying again.)
✔️Last, but not least, I shared a personal story about a road trip with my son that brought everything home to me about why I do what I do. It gets kind of meta, but sticks stick with me. It’s worth the journey.
So, sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and let me take you behind the curtain of my latest launch. I guarantee you will come away with some inspiration and great ideas you can use.
P.S. You can definitely do a launch without a team, but it’s going to be a lot more work. There is a better way. And If you want to get on the waiting list for my course, Front-Row CEO, so you can learn more about it, you can go to frontrowceo.com and when we run the program again you will be the first to know about it.
P.P.S. If you are interested in working closely with me and my team right away, just go to 90dayaccelerator.net and fill out the application.
If you have any questions about this episode, head over to instagram and comment under our latest post, which should be a post about this episode. My instagram handle is jen_lehner
RESOURCES
Jen’s FREE Online Classroom “The Front Row”
Our Launch Calendar
June 29 - Pre-Launch Ads
July 24 - We updated our relevant blog and podcasts pages with the link to sign up for the Video Series
Aug 12 - We opened our Facebook pop-up group
Aug 27 - Carts Open
Aug 31 - Webinar about the course
Aug 31 - We announced our mic-drop bonus
Sep 1 - Carts closed
Our Video Series Calendar
TRANSCRIPT
(00:03): Hey guys, it's Gary Vaynerchuck, and you're listening to the Front Row Entrepreneur podcast with our girl Jen.
(00:13): I want to share with you the results of our debrief meeting from our recent six figure launch, specifically $123,841 of our Front Row CEO program. But before I start, I want to just define a few terms for you so that we're on the same page. I know that when I first started an online business, I would hear people talk about pre-prelaunch prelaunch launch, open cart, closed cart, and all these things that were really confusing to me. So what is a pre-prelaunch? So a pre-prelaunch is when you start setting the table and to the outside world, it may not be obvious that you're about to head into a launch, but you are most certainly being very deliberate about all of the content that you're putting out in the world. Now, you always want to be deliberate about all the content that you're putting out into the world, but when you know that a launch is coming up, then, you know, you need to start getting people to be thinking a certain kind of way.
Read more...
(01:13): So the course that I just launched is called Front Row CEO. And the promise of this course is that by the end of the program, you will have already hired, trained and onboarded your perfect match, affordable virtual assistant. And I go one step further and say that this virtual assistant is not just a contractor, but the kind of virtual assistant who is going to be with you for years and years, not just weeks or months, this is somebody who's going to grow with you inside of your business. So as you might imagine with a topic like this, I really kind of have to move people a pretty big distance. Now there's a small percentage of people who know they need a virtual assistant and they've been looking for a program like this. So when they see it, they're ready to jump on board right away.
(01:58): They can't wait for the cart open. And I really don't have to do a lot of work with those people. But what is more often the case is that there are a lot of people who have thought about hiring a virtual assistant or suspect that they probably need to go ahead and hire a virtual assistant, but there's so much resistance because there is so much fear, doubt, uncertainty, previous bad experiences, so much baggage. And so it's not enough for me to just offer this product and then talk about it for a few days and then open the cart up and be like, okay, come and get it. What I have to do is gradually start to introduce them to all that is possible once you hire a virtual assistant. Why you can't afford not to hire a virtual assistant, why it's so much easier than you think it is.
(02:43): And I have to share other people's success stories so they can imagine themselves in the other person's shoes. There are so many objections that really need to be overcome, and I need the runway to do that. So in this pre-prelaunch phase, I'm just to make sure that all of my podcasts episodes and any content that I put out there, however, loosely is tied into the idea of building a team, creating systems and scaling our businesses. During this pre-prelaunch phase, we were also very deliberate in our list building. And this is really a crucial part of success with a launch or at least it was a crucial part of our success with this launch. The bottom line is this. When you have an offer, any offers, statistically, you are obviously going to sell more. If you're able to present the offer to more people. Now you've heard me talk a lot about how we don't need a giant list to be successful.
(03:41): And this is true for sure. I work with entrepreneurs in my very small group program, the 90 day accelerator, where many of our participants have very small lists and very big launches, but that's another kind of launch. Those launches tend to be more internal and require more personal one-to-one outreach. And a significant part of my own revenue is based on a similar model, but for the launch of a course or a membership site, we need volume. And that's because a course or a membership site is going to be a lower price point than one of your more exclusive smaller programs. So we started six weeks prior to our cart open day with our list building, we used a simple PDF. It was a checklist with the title 160 plus things to delegate to your virtual assistant. And we started running these ads about a month, or like I said, six weeks prior to our cart open date, but I had actually planned on starting two months prior.
(04:39): I was just having trouble getting myself together. I was very distracted by all the drama with whether or not the kids were going to go back to school virtually or in real life or hybrid. And I had to squeeze in a very long road trip to see my mom in South Carolina, who has been unwell and another long road trip to take my son back to college, which was basically a week long road trip. And we're going to get back to that in a minute because it is important. So these PDF ads did really, really well. We were getting leads for 75 cents on average per lead. And by the time we were done, we had added about 8,000 names to our email list. After people opted in for this PDF, our thank you page invited them to a pop up Facebook group. I really, really recommend creating a popup Facebook group to coincide with your launch.
(05:33): The reason is that once you have people in the group, you can really engage with them. You can really shine. You can give them massive value. You can create community. It's really a wonderful thing. You could create a lot of excitement and you can really get a sense of how your launch is going based on the activity level in the popup group. Now, even though we were driving people to the popup group, our intention was not to start any activity in that popup group until mid-August. The purpose of our pop-up group was to be a space where people could discuss the videos in our four-part video series. And we weren't planning on starting the video series until mid-August. And the other really great thing about a Facebook group, as you probably already know, is you can ask each person up to three questions before you admit them into the group.
(06:22): So we asked each person for their email address, even though we probably already had it from them, opting in. We asked again, we also ask them what they hope to get out of the video training series. And to tell us a little bit about their business. This is pure gold. You can capture this information manually. If you have a VA, a virtual assistant helping you, they can easily take the information and just copy and paste it onto a spreadsheet. We use a software that allows us to literally just click a button and it adds all of that information to a spreadsheet. And I'll put a link to that software in the show notes.
(06:56): Now, once we let them in the group, we tag each person under neat, the welcome video. This makes sure that they see the welcome video. And in the welcome video, we're letting them know like welcome to the group. Things are going to kick off on whatever the date was, August the whatever, and make sure you check out the calendar of events. And, you know, we just, all the things that you want to say. The other thing that we did was post a graphic calendar of all the things that would be happening in the group once things kicked off. So we created it in Canva. I'll put a link to the graphic in the show notes. So you could see that as well. And on the calendar we scheduled things like group surprise. That's what it says on the calendar group surprise and group training, and basically everything that we would have going on in the group. We put it on that calendar. We wanted it to get them really excited, and we also tagged them underneath this calendar.
(07:49): Then we opened the group up for activity just before video one was published. There were four videos in total. So every day after a video published, I would go live using my favorite live streaming software called Streamyard. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So Streamyard allows you to go live across multiple platforms at one time. It really is so amazing. So the people in the group were watching the video in the group and I would actually be broadcasting it everywhere. And then I would say on the live stream, if you're watching this video from outside the group, you want to make sure in join our groups so you can get this worksheet or the PDF or whatever I was offering that day. So basically our mission was to just keep driving people into that group. We also encourage people to leave their homework underneath the video, or to comment underneath the videos because we did regular drawings in the group for some really cool prizes.
(08:45): And we drew from the names of the people who were engaging. So once they glued into this, I mean, we told them, we're like, Hey, this is, you know, we're getting ready to draw this prize. And we're getting these names from the people who are participating and engaging. So once we saw that they were doing this, they really started to ramp up their engagement. So now at this point we were running all sorts of Facebook ads. We're running Facebook ads to the videos themselves, or we did these little trailers of the videos. We were running retargeting ads. We were running ads to videos of me, inviting them into the training series, like videos of me like walking and talking outside, inviting them to the series. We were just running a lot of Facebook ads and I was prepared to spend between $12 and $15,000 in Facebook ads because I knew the return was there.
(09:33): I know that if you've never really invested in Facebook ads, that might sound like a scary number, but if you're targeting the right people and everything else is in place, meaning you have a solid offer and the pricing is right, good audiences, all the things, then the odds are good that you're going to get a great return on your investment. Plus, I had launched this course twice before the first time we launched it as a beta at 497. And we did a five day challenge, not a video series for that launch. And then the second time we launched it, we raised the price to 997. And that's when we did the video series. And we were also able to test that PDF that I told you about the 160 things to delegate to your VA with Facebook ads during that launch. And we knew that it would do well this very last time that we launched this most recent launch.
(10:26): We raised the price of the course to $1297. And of course we repeated that very same video series. The video series method of launching was created by Jeff Walker. It's something he calls product launch formula, and I'll just link to his book in the show notes. So you can learn all about it. He has a course, but truthfully, you can learn everything you need to know about PLF in his book. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Also want to say that I am a regular content creator. I have a regular video show called the Front Row Friday show, and I have a regular podcast and a flash briefing. I'm very active on social media. So all of those things also of course helped me in this launch. So I don't want anybody to think that you could just show up six weeks prior to your launch and have the same sort of success.
(11:16): I mean, you could, I'm not saying you can, it's not impossible, but I would say that it's going to be unusual. And I just want to make sure that I'm being really super transparent about this whole thing. So when our cart opened on August the 27th, we started running ads directly to our sales page. And whenever we would add a bonus, we would run an ad to the bonus. We ran ads to announce that the cart was closing. So again, lots and lots of ads were running. And we actually ended up coming in under our budget or right at our budget spending about $12,000 overall. So here's some solid numbers for you. So we were launching to a list size of 16 and a half thousand, but we really thought it was more valuable to look at what our launch list size was. So by launch list, what I mean is, is the people who are actually engaged in the launch.
(12:11): It's, it's a much smaller number. So we consider the people in our pop-up group as our launch list. And there were only 1,457 people in that popup group. Now, there were people who are watching the videos who didn't join the group. And we had those people tagged in our email service provider accordingly, but we really looked at our launch list size as the 1400 people who were in the Facebook group, if you've ever launched before now, you know, that that first day and that last day are really when all the action happens in terms of sales. And if you've never launched before, let me tell you that now all of your sales are going to come in the first and the last day. And every day in between is pure agony. And you just think, Oh my gosh, this is not going to happen.
(12:58): This is going to be a total failure. And that was very true for this launch. Even though I had been through this a number of times, it's just gut wrenching. So in this launch, our total revenue on cart open day was $28,237, which was 22% of our total units sold. And then every day in between was pretty slow and lousy. And I was biting my nails, but then on cart closed day, our revenue was $49,989, which was almost 40% of our total units sold. The other thing that we did this time that we had never done before is before we even started running ads, we reached out to the members of our Front Row VIP membership group. And again, shout out to Akasha for this great idea. We reached out to the members of my private membership and we extended a special early bird offer to them.
(13:55): And we basically said, if you purchase CEO early, you'll get it at the old price. Cause remember we raised the price this time. And so you'll get it at the old price before the price goes up. And we also offered a special pre-sale to the audience of one of our affiliates. So I did a special webinar for one of my affiliates. So before we ever opened our cart, we had already earned $16,690. This meant that all of our Facebook ads and pretty much most of our expenses for the launch were covered a really, really good feeling to have that meant that every dollar earned from cart open day and beyond would be total profit. So what worked especially well for us in this launch
(14:42): Episode is brought to you by the front row accelerator. This 90 day implementation and accountability program is all about crushing a major business goal, working one on one with Jen and a small group. This might be a revenue goal, or it might be to finally build your audience or launch a membership site course or podcast get started today at 90dayaccelerator.net.
(15:08): Well, one thing I did this time that I've done before, but never at this scale is that I shared my phone number publicly with Facebook ads and via email and via live stream. I really encouraged people to call me if they had questions. And surprisingly, there weren't that many people who called me in that I wasn't swamped with phone calls. It was manageable, but I would say that every single person that I spoke with on the phone ended up converting into a sale, not to mention the fact that it was really so much fun. And I really enjoy getting to talk to people from all over the world and learning about their businesses and their struggles. And it just helped me to stay so on message and to stay relevant in all my messaging throughout the launch. And the other thing is when you look at all those new leads that my Facebook traffic was bringing in, right, what did I say?
(15:57): 8,000 new leads were coming into my list. These are people who were not familiar with me at all. So, so much can happen on a phone call so much faster than any other way. You know, so now as we just forget about the old fashion phone, but it's awesome. Also our timing was really, really good on this, in that we weren't competing with Amy Porterfield or Marie Forleo or James Wedmore with our Facebook ads. Last time when we launched in February, we had really good conversions. Like we were getting 75, 85, 95 cents per lead on the PDF, the same PDF in the beginning. And it was like the minute Marie Forleo's started launching our ads doubled. And so this time we didn't have to compete with her or anybody else. And, you know, we did look to see when everybody was launching it wasn't a happy coincidence sometimes, you know, they can surprise you in like launch earlier or something.
(16:57): But we were really happy about that also because this was our third launch. We really had our systems in place. We had been through two debriefs, already have two launches. So we already had so much in place. We had our emails in place and of course you're always adding new emails and editing them and so forth. But we had our main emails in place. We had our videos. So all that was a really big help. Another thing that we did this time that we'd never done before is that we took all of our testimonial videos and we really do have quite a large library of fantastic testimonial videos. And we turned those into audio grams, which those are those little graphics that you see typically for podcasts. And it has the audio wave bar that goes across the graphic with a soundbite attached to it, usually about a minute long.
(17:44): Well, we did those and we put them everywhere. We ran them every single day, several times a day in the Facebook group, all over Facebook on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, everywhere. We really were not shy about it. They were so good and we really wanted everybody to see them. And by the way, the way that we're able to get these fantastic testimonial videos is we make it a point of trying to do an exit interview with every single person in our programs. Not only does this give us a great testimonial video, but it obviously helps to make our program better because in the exit interview, we also ask them, Hey, what can we do to make the program better? And they tell us, and then we make those changes and we make the program better. We were also really active in our Instagram and our Facebook stories through this launch and really just trying to stay current with all the activities we had going on in the Facebook group.
(18:36): We hosted a coffee day. We purchased a Starbucks gift card and we loaded a certain amount of money on that. And then we invited everybody in the Facebook group to go to their local Starbucks with this gift card and purchase a coffee on us. And we asked them to share a picture of their coffee with the hashtag Front Row CEO and post it to the group and on their social media and another big shout out to a concha on our team who had this great idea. So this was really fun and we think everybody enjoyed it. And we will definitely be doing that again next time. Now, you know, earlier when I was talking about those three questions that you ask in your Facebook group and how those can be gold. Well, they really, really are. One thing that we did was we printed the lists and we highlighted all of the questions or the people who we wanted to focus on.
(19:28): And then I sent direct messages using Facebook messenger to certain people. And I would say something like, Hey Claire, I'm so glad that you joined the training series. And I see that you have a pet food store, and I really have a lot of great ideas for you on how you can really leverage a virtual assistant in your business. Oh, and I also see you live in Montana and I love Montana. I was just there last summer. You're so lucky to live there. Well, anyway, you know where I am, if you need me and looking forward to learning more about you and your business, not even that long, actually, right. Just hello, welcome. Glad you're here. The other thing that we did was we took the questions that they had and the struggles that they mentioned by answering these questions. And I did a whole podcast episode of Rapid Fire Q & A, where I literally answered all of those questions on a podcast and not dimension.
(20:17): It really told me exactly what they wanted. So then I could go into the popup group and I could live stream and answer these questions very explicitly either by addressing the question directly and saying, Hey, we had a question about this, or just not even giving that introduction, just launching in with content that I knew would answer that question. I knew that what I was talking about was going to land and shout out to my VA Neeca for that idea, that was completely unique, her idea. And we'll definitely be doing that again. Now, what would we do differently next time? Well, I would start earlier on those private audio messages that I sent via Facebook messenger. They're so super powerful, but I had 1500 people in the group while that's not a ton of people. That's a ton of messages, right? Like descend. So I still don't think I would be able to reach all those people, even if I, you know, started way in advance.
(21:11): But I think next time I will start at the very beginning and give myself a quota of like 10 or 15 a day. I also think I'm going to create a launch concierge team and maybe divide all of those pop-up group members, alphabetically into groups and do something where each of these concierges will reach out to each member of the popup group, you know, in that alphabet section that they're in charge of and welcome them and ask them if they have any questions and so forth. The key to success with these popup groups is to keep people engaged because you know how it is, you join a Facebook group. Sounds like a good idea, and you never go back in there ever again. I'm also going to use the launch team to tag every single person in the group every single time we live stream.
(21:56): And I think next time when we launch, I'm going to include our front row CEO content creation system. It's this really luxurious planner for every person who purchases this time around. We made it a fast action bonus, but I really think it would be nice to include it with every purchase next time. But don't hold me to that. Cause I'm not certain that we're going to do that. It's just a maybe because we ran Facebook ads to call me, I did get phone calls, but we weren't sure if those phone calls were coming from the ad or from the emails or all the other places where I was telling people to call me. So next time, what we're going to do is run ads to a Google voice phone number. And then all the other phone numbers that I advertise will be to my regular phone number.
(22:41): And that way, every time I get a Google voice number I'll know that the ad was working or it wasn't working. So we have a lot of messenger bot subscribers, and it wasn't until the last minute that we decided to deploy our bot and we created this really cool funnel, but because you have to launch it as a Facebook ad, it took forever to get approved. And in fact, it really didn't get shown to many people at all. So next time, you know, assuming that we still have access to, you know, because so much is changing with many chat and messenger ads, assuming we can still access it. We're going to start running that a lot sooner. And finally, I did something that seemed really cool at the time and I might do it again, but maybe a little differently, cause it didn't exactly work.
(23:25): But what we did was we started saying, if you have any questions, click here and join our live conference room. And so basically they would click the link and we had a, like a custom URL forward as well. I don't remember what it was, but you know, click the link and we will be there in the live conference room. And when they click the button, it would take them to a room. And we had on the screen, a graphic that said, take a seat. We'll be right with you. And we had our cameras turned off, but we had the doorbell turned on. And so, because my team is in the Philippines, that meant that we could pretty much be there day or night if somebody came into the live conference room and of course we could be working on our other work. And just when we hear the doorbell pop over into that room.
(24:07): So again, we thought about it a little late in the game and we only had a few people who came in to the live conference room, but I still think it's a cool idea. And I'm going to try it again next time, but I'm just going to think it through a little more now here's where things get kind of meta. So you know how earlier I mentioned that I was in the middle of a lot of stressful things and we got started on our list building like a month later than we had actually intended. Well, all of that is a hundred percent true. In fact, I was just thinking, well, I'll just do what I can do in this launch. And if we just end up, you know, maybe somewhere around 50 K, I'll be more than happy, which is what we did the last launch a little more than 50 K.
(24:45): And I thought, you know, if that's the best we could do, because I'm not really able to be fully present for this launch, then I'll be happy with that. But I knew one thing for certain and that was, I was not going to rush my kid off to college and not enjoy what could be a really special time with him. Like so many kids his age right now are having to make really tough decisions about whether or not to go back to college virtually or do a hybrid model or to take a leave of absence. My son had to do all of that as well. And his school Tulane university was offering the opportunity to go back in person. And after a lot of soul searching and research and back and forth, my son decided that he did want to give it a shot and go back in person, but I was not comfortable getting on a plane.
(25:31): And I just propose that we make this a long road trip. And fortunately he agreed with that. So instead of getting in the car and rushing down there on this 15 hour road trip, I decided that I wanted to make this something really fun and special. I wanted to take our time. So we turned it into a three day road trip on the way down. And we got to new Orleans several days early and were able to hang out there for a few days and really just have some nice time together. Meanwhile, I had this launch hanging over my head, but what I also had was an amazing team who had my back. So that's where it gets mad at it's because this whole program that I'm launching is all about how you can have a thriving business and enjoy your life and your family and your passions.
(26:14): If you have a team to back you up. If you could step away from your business and know that things are still going to hum along nicely, and that you don't have to be behind every important decision and every move that gets made you're winning. So I really kind of loved the fact that while I was launching and doing live streams from hotel rooms and having phone calls on the road with people who had questions about the program, I really loved walking the talk in real time, they were seeing me launch and they were seeing me enjoy it and enjoy the process and I'll really was. Talking to people on the phone in live streaming is what I love. Setting up deadline funnels and scheduling emails and answering customer service issues and running Facebook ads is not what I wanted to be doing. And my son was helping me.
(27:02): We were having so much fun. He would read some of the questions off the list or tell me he was reading that print out. I was telling you about that. People would put their questions and a little bit about their business and the group. And it led to so many great conversations with my son. It was just, it was just really amazing. Now you can have a six figure launch without a team. You totally can. I've seen people do it, but it is a lot of work and you're going to have to give up a lot as well. So there is a better way. So if you want to get on the waiting list for Front Row CEO and learn how to hire your perfect match, virtual assistant, just go to frontrowceo.com. And when we run the program again, you'll be the first to know about it.
(27:45): So I hope you found this debrief of our recent launch, helpful, you know, um, I'm currently working with the members of our VIP accelerator 90 day program, very closely to have six figure launches of their own. And we're already accepting applications for our next accelerator, which will launch early in the beginning of 2021. So if you're interested in working closely with me and my team, just go to 90dayaccelerator.net and fill out the application. And if you have any questions at all about this episode, head over to Instagram and comment under our latest posts, which should be a post about this episode, like the graph, it will say whatever the title is, the launch debrief. And my Instagram handle is Jen_lehner, have a great day. And I'll see you next time.
