What is a launch anyway (and why should you care)?

IMPORTANT: THIS TRANSCRIPT IS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED. WE GIVE IT A QUICK CHECK THROUGH BUT WE DON’T CORRECT EVERYTHING AS IT’S INTENDED TO HELP YOU FIND PARTS YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO AGAIN - NOT AS AN EXACT TRANSCRIPT. SO THERE MIGHT BE A FEW QUIRKY WORDS/PHRASES HERE!

:: 00:02

Something's been bugging me for a while and I think struggling to articulate exactly what it is, but doing the promo for my courageous launch content kit recently helped me identify the problem because female business owners have been telling me that my courageous launch content sounds useful, but they don't do launches. That launches are things well-known online coaches do the type of people who are getting all over the world,

:: 00:29

making squillions of pounds and pasting glam beach photos on Instagram. And my sense is that they feel like they don't have the right to launch until they've reached a certain income level, which is absolute rubbish. I'm Janet Murray, I'm a content and online business strategist. And in this episode of the courageous content podcast, I want to bust a few myths about launching and remind you that not only do you have the right to launch,

:: 00:59

you should be launching everything in your business. It's not just for squillionaire online business coaches. If you've done any of the following things puts a new product or service on sale, started an email newsletter, a tech stock account, or any new social media account, a podcast, a YouTube channel. If you created an email lead magnet, congratulations, you already had a launch.

:: 01:33

In fact, you've probably already had dozens of launches because launching isn't some magical thing that you can only do. If you're having 10 K months, it's simply about good business practice. It's about having a plan, a strategy, and knowing what kind of content to create so you can maximize sales. And what makes me mad about this is that far from empowering women to grow successful online businesses,

:: 01:58

this whole girl, lady, boss culture, the whole six and seven-figure business owners launching from the beach with a cocktail in hand, that whole online thing, culture, whatever you want to call it, it's doing a pretty good job of keeping women in their place, all that talk of 10 K months and six and seven-figure businesses not only gives women unrealistic expectations about what can be achieved.

:: 02:24

And I don't mean what can be achieved full stop, but within the time and resources they have available at that time, it can also make them feel rubbish about what they are achieving. And as if they're not worthy of doing something, that's basically just good business practice. And if you think this is the wrong time to raise this issue, and for context,

:: 02:45

I'm recording this in March, 2022 at a time when unfortunately Russia has recently invaded Ukraine. I actually think the timing couldn't be more right, because this is about a small group of very rich people exercising their power over a large group of people who don't share that wealth. So for example, female online influencers have the power right now to reassure their followers. It's possible to be compassionate about the awful situation in Ukraine without stopping their marketing activities for what could be a lengthy and unpredictable period,

:: 03:21

and also guide them through how to continue to do business with sensitivity. And if that's something that's been worrying you, I do have a podcast episode on it, which she has called how to manage your social media with sensitivity during a global crisis. And I'll link to that in the show notes. What I'm saying in stats is many of these female online influencers calling other influences out for being insensitive,

:: 03:44

being outraged by what other people are posting, which she's kind of easy to do. If you are stinking rich, and you're not worrying about whether you can pay your household bills or whether you can pay your staff this month, meanwhile, their followers who don't necessarily have their wealth or crucially their confidence. And there is a certain amount of confidence that comes with being visible online over a period of time and navigating other challenging world events.

:: 04:14

Well, their followers are looking at what they're saying, and they're terrified to post anything online because they're afraid of being judged or criticized. And the very people that they look up to, they look to you for guidance are slating other people in the space, being outraged about what other people are posting, which is never helpful. And I think if the events of the last few years have taught us nothing else,

:: 04:36

it's that we have to keep going until we can't. There's a story that often comes to mind for me about a former client of mine who got so scared at the start of the pandemic. When she saw what people were posting online, she saw businesses being criticized for continuing to do business. She closed her business down. She posted on her social media channels that she felt it was insensitive to do business.

:: 05:00

During the pandemic. She actually had a business. She could run completely from home, had very minimal contact with other people. The only thing she needed to do was to drop her products off at the post office, but she made the decision to shut that business down. It's stories like that. That make me think that online influencers and experts can sometimes have a lot to answer for.

:: 05:25

So I want to leave you with a few thoughts about launching that I hope will be helpful. Number one, you do not need to be making tons of money to have a launch or any money at all. You don't need a fancy sales funnel, or even to know what one is to have a launch. If you've ever done anything like a boot sale or a yard sale,

:: 05:47

or even sold something on eBay or Depop or any of those other sites, that's the funnel you thought about that journey from someone not being a customer to being a customer. And you thought about a heck of a lot more. And finally, you don't actually need an email list to have a launch or any fancy email software, which if you've been following my content for a while,

:: 06:11

might come as a surprise to hear me say it. But let me explain. Obviously I am a big fan of email lists. If you're building your audience solely on social media, that could be taken away from you at any time, if you've ever had the experience of having one of your social media accounts shut down for inexplicable reasons, or because you sent too many direct messages in one day or something,

:: 06:32

I think that's what tends to happen on Facebook. Then you probably know that first hand, and it's also very difficult to make predictable sales on social media. Whereas if you have an email list and you're using email marketing software, you can do fancy things like track. How many people have opened your email and how many of those people have clicked on the links in your email.

:: 06:54

You can specifically target those people. Who've clicked your links. There's a lot of more strategic things you can do there. But I see people holding off from launching digital products or even small coaching programs because they don't have an email list. Or even if they have a list, they don't have the fancy email software or know how to use it, which breaks my heart actually,

:: 07:17

because often they're at a point where they're dealing in such small numbers that they could manually send out their emails. They could literally make some templates in Google docs or words and cut and paste and manually send each and every one of those emails, they could run a launch without the fancy software and save themselves some money too. Because email marketing is really about the strategy.

:: 07:43

It's really about the frequency with which you stay in touch with people. What you say to them, how you say it, whether you follow people up, how often you follow them up, how you nurture that relationship with your audience via emails. And I think it's so easy to get stuck on the tech part of it and not remember that it's all about strategy.

:: 08:05

So yes, email automation can make your life echo a lot easier, but you don't need it. And finally you can and should be launching all the time. It really isn't this magical mythical thing that only internet squillion airs do. You don't need a team. You don't need any fancy software and you need to launch everything once a ones, small group programs,

:: 08:26

email lead, magnets, podcasts, blogs. If you want people to take action on anything you're doing in your business, you need to launch it. And that doesn't mean having a big multi funnel, internet squeeze, and doing loads of Facebook ads or even tons of social media posts. It's just about having a plan. What is it I want to achieve with this new product or service or this new lead magnet or book or whatever it is that I am putting out there in the world.

:: 08:56

And how am I going to ensure that I get the best possible results. I get people to take the action that I want to take. One of the biggest barriers to building email lists for example, is people create a lead magnet. They suss out all of their email automation, and then they promote it on social media. A couple of times put it on their website and somehow expect that people will find it.

:: 09:19

If you want to get people to sign up to your lead magnet, you need to launch it. And by the way, if you don't know what a lead magnet is, it's basically a free resource that you give people to attract your ideal customers or clients, teacher, and your email list more coming up on that in future episodes. So if you take nothing else from this episode,

:: 09:36

remember you have every right to launch, regardless of how much money you're making, how long you've been in business, and whether you're selling one to one coaching done for you services done with you services, whatever it is it has to be launched, or certainly it does. If you want to maximize your sales and you need to keep launching. I've shared on this podcast.

:: 09:58

Before that, I have made more than a million pounds of sales selling digital products on line. I've sold everything from one-to-one to group programs, to big online events, big offline events. I have to launch every single time and I've had to launch so many times to get to the place where I am today. My first launches did not achieve the kind of sales that I achieve now.

:: 10:21

And I still have launches that don't go as well as I hoped some go better than I hoped, but I continue to work hard at it because I have to, you need to, if you run a business, if you're looking for advice on how to launch, I've got a couple of podcasts episodes that might help you. It's all about the content when it comes to launching.

:: 10:40

So I've got five sides of content you need to create for a course launch and three types of content that will boost sales of your course launch. And as ever, I do love hearing from me. So if you enjoyed this episode or if it's sparks any questions, or you'd love to hear an episode on a specific topic, then do get in touch.

:: 11:03

It's a couple of ways that you can do that. So one way is you could head over to apple podcasts and leave me a review. I will be so grateful in that review. You could share your thoughts on this podcast and any follow-up questions that you have, and if you do so, I'll share it in a future podcast. Another way of course is to connect with me on social media.

:: 11:23

I'm at Jan Murray UK on most platforms.