I talk a lot about launching and why I love teaching online courses but this episode is going to get super technical and break down the behind the scenes of our course launch of The Photo Lab! Now, this wasn’t our biggest course launch ever monetarily BUT it was by far the smoothest course launch we have ever led and for me, that’s the biggest win. I have cracked the code to a smooth, successful launch and I’m ready to share it with you!

Trust me, I have lived through bad launches– the kind where it sort of feels like you are in “fight or flight” mode for a week straight? Yup, I’ve been there. But with minor tweaks along the way, our team has designed a fool-proof way to slow down, systemize our process, *and* still move the bottom line.

Are you ready to up your launch game or are just looking where to start? Here is my step-by-step formula to a happy, relaxed, (and profitable!) launch! Let’s do this!

What worked:

Since there were so many little details we fine-tuned this time around, I decided to give them to you in a concise, bullet-point format for ease! I cannot tell you how much of a difference each one of the bullet points made. It may seem brief and small, but it truly changed the entire launch process! If you are left wondering about any bullet point, tune in to hear this episode– you’ll find all of the nitty gritty launch details of everything below!

• We ran ads to freebie about 6 weeks before the launch to get a cold audience warm. We generally run ads to 3 different freebies that target the audience we will be speaking to and then make sure we have a welcome sequence running so that by the time we launch they know who I am, what my story is, where my expertise lies, and then they are ready to tune into the webinar.
• We segmented our email list well ahead of time and sorted them by interest.
• We led 5 different webinars between Tuesday-Thursday. I love doing the live webinars and while it’s a lot to speak for over an hour to a screen, I LOVE the energy of live training and the ability to connect with people in real time.
  
• We had 12,682 people (total) register for the webinar and our show up rate was 28% meaning 3,576 showed up and tuned in live to our training “How I Doubled My Photography Income While Working Less”
• We were going to split test 2 versions of the webinar but instead, I created a new training based on the same topic and our conversion % doubled so we stuck to that training for the 5 and then picked the highest converting one to go into the replay.
• Alllll of the email copy was prepared well in advance (like 8 weeks early) so that we could have the whole campaign built out and tested before we even went into launch. It helped us see if there were any gaps and really reduced the stress around the launch itself so that beyond the live training, we didn’t have any immediate needs.
• We invested in advertisement! In this episode, I tell you exactly how much we spent and how that converted to sales!  Once we had them registered, we then did specific ads targeted to watching the training and then them ultimately joining the course.
• The webinars focused on the 3 main objections photographers were having and feeling and then helping shift their mindset to understand that their limiting beliefs were limiting their potential for success as a photographer.
• We had a messenger bot for reminders on the training. (AKA we sent facebook messages to encourage people to show up live to the training and to help remind them of when we are going live!)
• I jumped onto social media and did a Facebook and IG LIVE simultaneously on cart close day and delivered a portion of the teaching that I led in the training and then shared about the course and answered any questions! This was super helpful and generated a few sales while also freely teaching people who may have missed the full webinars.

It takes a village

Probably the biggest thing that made this launch so incredibly smooth was having clear, concise roles for everyone on the team. Here is how we divided out the work!

• Stephanie: Hung out in the support inbox helping people with any webinar questions and then answering any course questions using Q+A templates we had created in advance.
• Caitlyn: Was in webinar support and chat support. She would be on the training live answering questions while I was teaching and then in our chat module so that when people were on the sales page, she could answer questions there!
• Kate: Manned the chatbot and helping with social media support including answering questions, sending webinar links, etc.
• Danielle: Was the all-around launch guru and project manager so she helped lead team meetings, ensure that everyone had what they needed, she was on every live training and then worked one on one with me to implement the strategy behind it. She also had the most work up front creating the full email campaign.
• Kerry: Manned the Facebook ads and helped us optimize the ads that were going out. We split test images/copy for every single ad to find out what’s performing the best and the make sure our budget goes into the best converting ads. There you have it, our secret recipe for a smooth (and profitable!) launch! I cannot say how different our launches look these days compared to years prior– it is relaxed, organized, and moves the bottom line like crazy! I want to make sure that you can make your next launch, your best launch so feel free to grab our personalized launch timeline freebie below!

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