6. Your 9-Step Launch Runway

Launching an offer or course can be an exciting endeavor, but it can also feel overwhelming with the multitude of variables involved. However, there is a proven strategy that can help guide you through the process and ensure your work reaches the people who need it the most.  In today’s podcast episode, we will delve into the concept of a Launch Runway and explore how it can be applied to effectively launch a digital course or any kind of offer. Launching a product or course successfully requires careful planning and execution. It’s not simply a matter of creating the content and expecting people to flock to it. A well-thought-out launch strategy is essential to generate buzz, build anticipation, and ultimately drive sales or enrollment. The concept of a Launch Runway provides a structured approach to launching your offer. Think of it as a roadmap that takes you from the initial planning stages to the actual launch day. This strategy involves several key steps that need to be implemented strategically to maximize your chances of success. Launching your offer or course may seem like a daunting task, but by following a Launch Runway guide, you can navigate the process with confidence.  By the end of this episode, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge and tools necessary to launch your offer or course with impact and reach the people who need it most. We’ll cover:

• • The Blueprint of a Launch Runway 
  • The 9-Step Launch Runway
  • Applying a framework to your offer or course launch

What is a Launch Runway?

A Launch Runway is a plan that you follow to ensure the success of your launch.  

Before this plan, a pre-launch plan should be set in place. It is a scheduled promotion where you should consider what your offer looks like. What does that look like? Social media can deliver little kind of intended bites about your offer. Blog posts on your website can also help create buzz and or show sneak peeks into what your offer is going to be all about. Part of promoting is also partnering, so I wanted to include this layer here as well. 

Next, you need to be specific about your content such as a high-value free resource, or create a short but eye-catching landing page for your opt-in.

Leverage novel tools to deliver your content through various social media channels. Offering high-value content through social media or tools like ManyChat can deliver your emails, prospects, and sales.

Collaborative events are the next step for reaching your ideal customer avatar in other people’s groups. And as part of those collaborative events, you can offer something high-value and build your email list.  

Another important part of this framework is having a beta course to test it out with a limited audience to get feedback before going deeper into the Launch Runway framework.

The 9-Step Launch Runway

Step one: The pre-launch plan starts with you needing to think about who your ideal customer avatar is. Who are they? What are their pain points? What are their concerns? What are their objections?  You can’t possibly sell a product to someone who you don’t know.  

Step two: The next step is needing to consistently build and grow your email list with potential buyers. You do not own your Instagram followers. You do not own the people who like your Facebook posts but you do own your email list. 

I have rarely seen success with people launching directly into social media without having an established email list in place, so don’t underestimate its value. Your email list represents warm clients or hot clients, so it’s much easier to launch a program or an offer to them than it would be to a cold audience on social media. And your email list does not have to be huge but it will be easier for you for the launch if you do have an established email list of some kind. 

Step three: Create an irresistible offer. I do not care how beautiful your website is. I do not care how passionate you are about what you do. If you do not have an irresistible offer,  it will be challenging to sell to your audience.  It is becoming more difficult to create these irresistible offers because people can now create content at lightning speed.

One of the best ways that you can do that is by adding value and adding more dynamic content,  like cooking videos and meal plans.  These will all come together to help create an irresistible offer. An irresistible offer is not always related to price. I will say the biggest value that you can add to your offer is to insert yourself. 

Step four: Aligning yourself with another interdisciplinary part practitioner or practitioners can be incredibly valuable to the success of your launch. What that means is a practitioner who shares your mission and kind of your objective. You would like to do it with a partner or practitioner who is in the same field but offers something different. It can be a really powerful driver of success for your launch.

Step five: Creating a special pre-sale offer around your course can be effective for driving sales especially.  Maybe you can offer a special price for those who sign up before a certain date. Having a set landing page and collecting revenue for four weeks is a good runway.  Even the best landing page isn’t going to sell it. But if you’re doing everything right and you’re following the formula, you will have a great highly converting landing page.

Step six: Your main offer should be considering hosting a webinar or a live Q&A  that has a slide deck that takes people through the framework of the blueprint, and the high-level view of how you are going to get them from where they are to where they want to be. With the webinar, all you’re doing is getting buy-in and confidence from your ideal customer that you are the person they want to work with. You want them to see you as the expert. You want them to see you as their person to help them get the transformation.  

Step seven: Post on social media and do promotions at least three times a week. You’re probably not ready to launch a course. You just need to take that content and make it speak to your ideal customer avatar and how this course will kind of help them get the transformation you’re promising.

Week one of the promotion is going to be about four weeks before your launch. Be mindful because what you don’t want to do is every single post sell your offer. People get tired of that messaging.   You can discreetly plug the course by sharing information that kind of connects with your potential clients, which will ultimately lead them to have confidence and buy from you.

Step eight: Get positive student testimonials where the audience can see the good experience they also can have in this course. Collect feedback from your clients as well. You want to give them the option to continue working with you.  But important is that you want to build an evaluation piece for your course so that you can evaluate how you did. It’s going to help you improve not only the content but also the delivery. 

Step nine: Review and analyze all the metrics. You’re going to have quantitative data and you’re going to have qualitative data. The quantitative data would be something like how many people signed up for your course. How did the social media promotion go?

You can track how many people opted into your freebie, and then from there, how many people converted to paid. Qualitative information is the feedback that you get like the user experience. You want to take both of these metrics and put them together and get a real picture of what you’re looking at and make changes. Things change, technology changes, and research changes. Editing and modifying your content and experience is ongoing. 

Content Cure for the Week 

Your content cure and goal for the week is to apply the Launch Runway framework to an offer in your practice, either an existing offer or one that you want to create.

>>CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR LAUNCH RUNWAY FRAMEWORK<<

Think about an offer that you want to create and run it through the Launch Runway framework. You can start by exploring the following questions That kind of feed into the framework: Does your offer target your ideal customer avatar and their problems? Can you offer an opt-in relevant to that offer that will support the growth of your email list?

Is it an irresistible offer and a solution that only you can provide? Do you have a vehicle in place to deliver your offer? Can you identify a small group of clients to run a beta? Have you identified potential partners? Is your offer appropriate for a presale period? And do you want to create a webinar or schedule a live event like for a q and a as part of your launch?

Start mapping out your Launch Runway with my guide, where I provide you with a sample calendar for a pre-launch period, launch week, and post-launch period. I want you to take a look at your calendar and pick a date for your launch. Remember, your launch is just when you make the offer for your program.

Key Takeaway

Your Launch Runway is not going to be linear. Unlike a real runway, the process of launching your offer is almost always dynamic. Rarely are you going to create a new offer, launch it, and then to never-ending success. That is just not reality. Give yourself the grace and the time to figure it out.  

Don’t be discouraged if you get this far and have to go right back to step one. That’s part of the process.  If you try to push through to the next steps of promotion and launch with an offer that didn’t do well in pre-launch, you won’t maximize your results, or worse, you’ll end up just wasting your time.