The adrenaline rush of a successful launch feels so good! You dance, sing out loud, and pump your fist to the sky in gratitude! “We did it” is your new mantra! You are floored by the number of responses you’ve received and your inbox is filled with positive comments you’ll need to respond to. Life feels good! 🙂
On the other hand, when things don’t go well thoughts like: “Will anyone even see my offer? Will people want to buy this product from me? … Am I even cut out for this?” consume your mind.
My name is Stephanie and I’ve had 2 poor launches in the past and although they felt crappy at the time – like most things in life; it was those “failures” that set me up for success in my 3rd attempt! If you need help understanding the launch process online, how to craft effective timelines (without losing your sanity), and how to avoid living at your laptop during your launch then keep reading!
With any launch, it starts with a solid and confident choice~ “I’m ready to share my gifts.”
In early 2017, My business partner and I launched our Kickstarter Campaign for a Premium Meditation Cushion by our business Sittin’ Pretty Still. The campaign was immediately successful – we funded our initial goal of $10,000 in 62 hours! By the end, we had successfully crowdsourced $27,123 in just 31 days – Woohoo! So at this point I’ll tell you a secret… our success on Kickstarter was all due to the fact that we stayed consistent & prepped before we pressed the launch button. Like a sous chef prepping and cutting all the food prior to the meal or an athlete getting ready for a big game there’s always a ton of hard work and practice leading up to the big event.
The magic lies in staying consistent and prepping.
Prepping for a successful launch campaign: Our goal was to give our ideal customers what they wanted but we had to spend some time uncovering exactly what that was. A critical step to take before you spend time, money, and energy on launching a project of your own is spending some time in market research mode to help figure out what to offer your ideal client and how you can help them. Get specific on the pain-point that you’re relieving for them by taking time to talk with or interview your ideal client. Their input is invaluable so listen carefully to what they say, take notes, and you will begin to see patterns emerge.
“You must first identify what challenge, problem, or pain point you are solving for your ideal customer”
Sittin’ Pretty Still Meditation Cushion Example:
Ideal Client: Yoga Loving Meditator~
External Problem: Uncomfortable when meditating.
Internal Problem: Wants to connect to self for inner peace, lessen stress, handle life, etc.
Offer: Meditation Cushion~
External Solutions: Beautiful and supportive meditation cushion for a comfortable practice.
Internal Solution: Connection with inner wisdom, feels lighter, happier and more joyful.
Listed below are the steps we took to craft a successful launch campaign:
Step 1: Pre Pre-Launch
- Establish Your Why
We asked ourselves the question “Why do we want to launch this Kickstarter campaign?” over and over again, like a broken record. Author Simon Sinek, states in his famous TED talk and book that you always need to- “Start with why?” Because when things get tough (and they will get tough) if your WHY is strong enough it will pull you out of your problem(s) and have you start focusing on the solutions.
2. Do Your Homework
Doing your homework to prepare for a successful campaign can take on many forms such as books, podcasts, webinars, Youtube videos and the like. Udemy was the main resource that we utilized by taking courses together to get familiar with what we needed to know to help us accomplish our goal. NOTE: Don’t get too consumed with studying because I’ve seen many entrepreneurs talk themselves out their project altogether! I recommend setting a date to STOP studying and START DOING to avoid over-consumption and begin to take action!
3. Ask for the Sale
During our ‘Homework’ phase we also watched a ton of videos on the Kickstarter Library on successful and unsuccessful launches. The unsuccessful videos gave us ideas of what NOT to do and we took note of what mistakes were made. One of the biggest mistakes we found through our research was relating to the final step of having a ‘Call to Action’ (CTA). Nearly all of the unsuccessful campaigns failed to ASK for the pledge. Some simple CTA’s can be as easy as ~ “Support us now” “Click to pledge” or “Please pledge now” at the end of the campaign video. If you’re lucky enough to get someone to actually watch your launch video, that’s incredible but you need to tell people what to do afterwards – guide them to the next step with an effective Call to Action and ASK for the sale!
4. Set A Launch Deadline
It’s been said that goals are dreams with a deadline. Without a launch deadline you will risk procrastination or pushing off due dates that could lead you to never clicking that launch button. Set a date and try your best to stick to it by formulating accountability with deadlines. In addition, telling others about what you’re doing can add in healthy peer pressure and that can be a big motivator to get your project done on time!
Step 2: Pre-Launch
- Map It Out & Use a Project Management Platform
I’m a bit old fashioned because I like to roadmap my big goals and launches on paper but if you have a team you’ll need to do it digitally. Project management systems like Trello & Asana will help you stay in touch with your team members and keep everyone on task! If you’re riding solo: Write the goal down on a blank piece of paper accompanied with the smaller tasks you need to take on to complete them. This will help get and keep you focused on what’s important.
- Create & Share Valuable Content
Now that you know what you’re offering, its time to create quality content that relates to your offer though high value videos, blog posts, and sharing information on social platforms! NOTE: When the launch begins you’ll want all your content set up ahead of time so you can focus on sales and customer connections.
Here are some example of quality content creation:
- Create an email sequence or blog post series that shares your story
- Detailed description of what you offer for use on multiple platforms
- Videos telling people about your product or offer
- Scheduled Social Media Posts
- Schedule a few Facebook lives with helpful content about your product, offer, or story.
- The Magic is in the list
To build our email list we created a contest to give a meditation cushion away. This attracted the right type of customers and we inspired them to share the contest because it doubled their chances to win ultimately growing out list by 660 new potential customers! Finding simple ways to engage your ideal clients and build your email list through contests, lead magnets, and freebies is a simple way to grow your list and gain quality emails!
- Notify your audience
For our launch we decided to try out the Jeff Walker Product Launch Formula (PLF) which suggests releasing 3-4 videos with valuable content letting your customer know that something exciting is about to happen! This helps keep your audience in the loop and enables them to feel part of the excitement of the brand or offer. In addition every week we shared a guided meditation, story, or some other valuable content with our small but intimate email list. We also started a Facebook group for Sittin’ Pretty Still composed of our launch team of 15 raving fans who functioned as promoters; sharing our campaign and supporting in other strategic ways in exchange for some awesome freebies!
Step 3: Launch Day!
This is the day you’ve been waiting but before you press LAUNCH make sure you have the following 4 items ready to go:
- Set up your content on your website or landing page
Make sure everything looks put together, branded, and this is the time to ask a few friends to test run and take a look in order to offer any feedback. You’ll be glad you took the time to write out all your content prior and additional eyes to help spot spelling errors, grammatical errors, or broken links before launching are key! A website is great but time-consuming to develop so I would recommend trying out a landing page platform like lead pages, click funnel, 22social, or using your Facebook business page for the launch.
- Test Your Tech
Make sure everything is talking to each other; making certain that all of your promotional images, emails, and updates are ready to go! Again, friends are a great tool to use so be sure to ask a few close ones to go through your items and ask for their honest feedback so you can make any necessary adjustments in advance.
- Push Launch
Hooray! The day has arrived and the launch jitters are for real. Embrace them, act a bit loopy and avoid the caffeine~ haha. I was a bit crazy on launch day but I think people liked it when I was on FB live and my excitement shined though!
- Announce via Email & Social Media
Create all your promotional images well before launch day so you’re not forced to be creative and risk losing quality. Have it all planned out ahead of time with images, text, and copy. You’ll be so focused on other things when you launch that having this all planned will make you feel so much lighter and more prepared.
Don’t forget to send out the “WE ARE LIVE” email to your list!
Step 4: Spread Your Message
Once a few days or maybe a week has gone {and hopefully you’ve already reached or surpassed your initial goal!} it’s time to get external referrals to your offer or campaign. This is where the campaign gets interesting, slightly intense, and you’ll need to access your creativity! By now you’ve exhausted your whole email list, social media following, and friends, so this is the time to get people that don’t know you to see your offer
1. Send updates to your email list
Keep in communication with your audience, and consider creating a special Facebook group you can invite them to so they can get updates regularly on the campaign status! This will also allow you to encourage them to invite friends to the group that share the same values and believe in your product or offer to expand your reach!
2. Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads are one of the cheapest and most targeted ways to reach your ideal audience! Simply set a budget, create some content, catchy copywriting and stimulating images or videos and also be sure to test run a few ads before you invest a lot of money.
3. Rest – Burn out is real
Allow yourself to rest. Pat yourself on the back because launching anything is no joke. Perhaps go to the beach or take a day to just unwind.
4. Celebrate & Collect Feedback
You did it! You launched a campaign and learned a ton in the process. Make sure to celebrate with a glass of champagne or a deep tissue massage ~or heck BOTH! Write out everything that worked along the way and also pay special attention to the things that didn’t work. Each launch will get exceedingly better if you allow yourself to recap everything and learn from both your successes and failures!
Thanks for reading and good luck with your future launch and/or Kickstarter campaign and let me know if you have any questions on your next launch – I am happy to help!
Tools We Used
- 22Social Apps
- Gadget Flow – Paid $238 for a spot on their page
- Facebook Ads – $300
- Pinterest Ad for testing $180
- Get Response email marketing autoresponder
- Facebook Live
- FB groups
- Udemy for Kickstarter courses
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