How To Build Your Product Launch & Promotion Calendar

First, let’s talk about the overall strategy of promoting an online business.

Whether you have an online course, membership, or group program the best way of building your strategy is to break your year down into 4 cycles of 90 days each with each cycle ending in a promotion.

Now that might not be a primary promotion and as your business grows you probably will not run 4 promotions for your primary program a year. You may have 2 primary and 2 secondary.

Your secondary promotions could be for a smaller product or front-end membership, event, or even a JV promotion that you are going to go all-in-one.

One of the things I love most about this approach puts very defined timelines on your marketing focus and attention.

It gives you time and space to build your list between promotions, not just that but build a relationship and connect with them making sure that they understand who you are, how you can help them, and what makes you the perfect person to help them achieve their deepest dreams, goals, and ambitions.

Ok, so now that we have dialed in on a 90 Day cycle I want to break down the 5 phases or steps and bring you through the key components of each and what you need to do to maximize your results in each. 

Phase 1 – The Build Phase – Lead Generation & Engagement Strategies

List building into a launch is the best strategy except for JV traffic

Time to engage, build trust, and build relationships with engagement sequence (3-10 emails)

• Share personal insights – build a connection
• Share the best content
• Raise and eliminate big objections
• Share your dreams and your plan for them
• Demonstrate your unique mechanism
• Prove to them why and how you are different.

How You Show up here dictates the success of your launch. What do people need to believe to purchase your offer? You need to provide evidence. Think of it like a court case. What questions are holding people back and how can I get them to start taking action.

Phase 2 – The Awareness Phase – Preparing Your Email List For Launch

2 Weeks before you enter your pre-launch.

Share very focused stories of how ordinary people achieve remarkable results using your methods.

Build awareness of the problems your program solves and how it solves them through the results that your previous students have achieved

Call out the big objections and answer them in advance

No mention of your product but start building excitement for your Pre-Launch

Culminates in the Shot across the bow survey

Phase 3 – The Pre-Launch Phase – Promoting Your Launch Masterclass

Principle-based marketing

Registration for free Masterclass / Workshop

Build excitement, anticipation, energy and momentum

Deliver huge value – content density – strategies rather that tactics – big mistake people getting bogged down

Psychological triggers – Reciprocity, authority, proof, social proof, community, conversation

This has evolved and lots of people have built onto this model

Seed Launch

Traditional pre-recorded 3 module course

Live launches

Challenges

Coaching week

Opportunity

Transformation

Ownership

Phase 4 – The Launch Phase – Making Your Offer and Selling Your Online Course

3-6 day period

Increase the dream outcome, increase the likelihood of success, decrease the time delay and decrease the effort required

Bonuses

Destroy objections

Help people get the result they desire faster

Day 1 release sales video and offer page

Daily emails

We’re open

Transformation

Bonuses

Case Studies

FAQ’s

Deadline

But remember you don’t have to stop providing value.

Weave in livestreams and webinars

One of the key reasons why launches work is because of the deadline

Phase 5 – The Post-Launch Phase – The Secret To Making Money Online

Your success will be directly related to the success you help your clients achieve. The start is essential.

When someone purchases you pull them out of the offer campaign and you need to have daily emails until your first deliverable.

Remember some people are going to get all emails so save essential info until after close cart.

Put as much effort into this experience as you do into your launch.

And remember this is the perfect opportunity for a down-sell. Lots of people are all reved up. Not ready to step up to your primary product but they want to buy something.

Offer them something that is going to get them results and prepare them to step up to your signature program the next time you launch.

How To Launch An Online Product Overview

Now at the start of the post, I promised a bonus session on how you can add an additional 10-15% launch revenue guaranteed with hardly any additional work, and if you stay tuned I will get right to that but first let’s do a quick recap on what we have covered today.

Phase 1 – Build – all about lead generation and all about positioning our list for the launch

Phase 2 – Awareness – Building awareness of the opportunities and the successes others have had while overcoming the most common objectives

Phase 3 – Pre-Launch – Promotion and delivery of our Masterclass or workshop

Phase 4 – Launch – where we offer our signature program or memberships

Phase 5 – Onboarding – lay the foundations of success for our new members

Bonus Session – How To Add An Additional 10% – 15% Launch Revenue

Ok so let’s look at a way that you can add an additional 10—15% guaranteed to your launch revenue.

So you have whipped your audience into a frenzy. You build huge reciprocity, excitement, and momentum. You make your offer and a certain % of people sign up.

Now for every person who signed up, there is another person who was on the fence. Who wanted to buy but either didn’t have a bad enough need at that time or who couldn’t justify the value proposition. But they would love to spend some money with you.

Well, let’s give these people something to buy.

Now if you have a low ticket course or membership that is aligned with your primary offer then you can run a down-sell starting a day or two after you close cart for your primary offer.

This will be a lower dollar offer and based on the momentum you have built will, as long as it is a solid offer in its own right convert like crazy after all the heavy lifting you have done during your launch.

I have seen some crazy figures with these down-sells, especially with bigger lists but no matter what you can definitely add an additional 10-15% of launch revenue with a down-sell.

Ok so now that you know the phases of a launch you are probably going to want to take a deeper dive into Lead Generation.

So make sure you check out some of my other posts for lots more on how to get started with lead generation and how to design landing pages that convert.