How do you successfully launch a new product, service, or anything in between? In Episode 39 of the Business & Life Conversations Podcast, Steph Taylor, a Business Positioning Expert, from Steph Taylor Co, joins us as we talk about the six steps for successfully launching a new product service or anything in between and having a clear strategy before you launch.
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Prefer to read 6 Steps for Successfully Launching a New Product, Sevice or Anything in Between? Here’s the transcript:
ANGELA
You are listening to the Business and Life Conversations Podcast with Angela Henderson, Episode 39
ANGELA
Hey there, you’re listening to the Business and Life Conversations Podcast. My name is Angela Henderson and on this show we talk about improving your business, life or both by having amazing and rich conversations with brilliant guests who will inspire you and he will give you tips and tricks to help you grow both in life and in business.
Well hey there and welcome back to another episode of the business and life conversations podcast. I’m your host Angela Henderson from Angela Henderson Consulting and as always, thank you so much for tuning in today. Launching, launching, launching, launching. It is a buzzword at the moment on different social media platforms, podcasts, events, networking, you get it. But yet there are so many marketers leading businesses astray and giving a lot of wrong advice around launching. So I wanted to bring on the podcast, a good friend of mine who not only I trust, but has an enormous amount of credibility to be able to talk with you listeners about launching. That amazing human is Steph Taylor from Steph Taylor Co. In today’s episode we’re going to be talking about the six steps for successfully launching a new product, service or anything in between. So sit back, make yourself, a mojito and enjoy the episode.
But before we get started talking about the six steps for successfully launching a new product, service, or anything in between, I’d like to share with you that this episode is sponsored by my four day, three night exclusive Women in Business retreat where I will be focusing on helping women have the chance to connect, refocus, learn, and grow in order for that women have the ability to grow both in business and in life. My particular exclusive event will be held from October 24th through October 27th at the Gold Coast here in Queens in Australia. And it’s an exclusive event with only 50 tickets being sold. To learn more about this event, had to AngelaHenderson.com.au and simply click on retreat.
Now let’s get into Episode 39 with Steph. Hello, hello, Miss Steph, welcome to the Business and Life Conversations Podcast. It is awesome to have you here today.
STEPH
Thank you so much for having me. Ange.
ANGELA
We just caught up yesterday with the Anita from Word Betty and I have to say it was so awesome being able to see you face to face. Something I think most businesses don’t value as much as they should. So, thank you so much. Yesterday was awesome being able to give you a hug and to catch up.
STEPH
Yes, it makes such a difference catching up in person compared to through a screen or Instagram DM or emails. So nice to actually have that human face to face contact.
ANGELA
That’s like I’m actually making like real conversation. I have to actually look people in the eyes. It’s all very different.
STEPH
You have to get out of the pajamas.
ANGELA
I have to get out of my house. How is this happening? It was so fun catching up with you yesterday and equally as fun as you are going to be a speaker at my four day, three night women in business retreat. It’s going to be amazing because I had the opportunity to spend almost the same amount of time, and maybe even longer at We Are Podcast when we were there and it would have been October also I think last year with Ronsley. And that’s how you and I first met. We had some good times. So I’m excited to bring you on as a speaker and have some equally good times for those people who are coming to the event.
STEPH
Yeah, it’s amazing. How many days did we hang out with each other over We Are Podcast? But I feel like we became really good friends really quickly. So that’s like the benefit of those kinds of retreats. There’s nothing else like it.
ANGELA
There’s nothing else like it. And it’s not just about what happens at the retreat or the podcasts, event, or whatever it is that you’re there live. But it’s what happens post the event. We stayed in contact, we catch up for lunch in Brisbane when we can, we message each other on Facebook just to touch base. So there’s something magical about those human elements. But we’re not here to talk about the retreat today. I’ll stop that. But you’re here though to talk about some exciting things about launching. But before we dive into one thing, there’s two things. The first thing is, because I always like to get to know you a little bit more than who you are as a business owner. So, I want to know you love to travel. Tell the audience obviously a little bit about Steph Taylor, but then tell us a little bit about your favorite place to travel.
STEPH
I used to work in a corporate job like I’m sure so many business owners can relate to. I sort of got distracted by the shiny, sparkly squirrel that was business life. And I know and I just decided, okay, well I’m going to start this health food ecommerce business. And this was now probably about three or four years ago. So not that long ago. And I started working on that, started hustling. And while I was doing that, I was still working in my massive corporate finance jobs. Working big hours there, starting a side hustle and I burnt out really quickly. That landed me in hospital for a week, where I was really sick. From there, I sort of realized that, business is about doing things smarter, not harder. And that’s one of the things that I’m really passionate about and I will touch on that a bit more when we dive into the launching.
STEPH
These days I run Steph Taylor Co. which is basically where I simplify marketing for small business owners through courses, e-books, my membership site and my podcast. And it’s starting that business that has given me the freedom that I really wanted to spend more time traveling outside of the constraints of the four weeks of annual leave and having a product based business where I needed to be around to ship things out. So last year I spent pretty much the whole year out of Australia traveling around. I think my favorite place was Greece.
ANGELA
What was it about Greece?
STEPH
Oh, it’s just the slow pace. Like everyone is just so relaxed and the food is just amazing and the the coastlines are beautiful. I feel a bit bad for saying that because my family is actually Italian and they’d probably kill me for saying that I preferred Greece to Italy.
ANGELA
Your secret is safe here. Your secret is safe. I had the opportunity to travel to Greece when I was (I just turned 40) 22, 23 I think it was. The people the are just delightful. And like you said, the food, like the Esther’s Greek Food in Australia around the world, but just like Chinese food when you go to China. The food it’s a different level and it is just amazing. So yes, so I do love me a good Greek Holiday myself.
STEPH
You can’t beat a good gyros for two euros or three euros or whatever it is the cost. It’s so good.
ANGELA
It’s so delicious. Now, listen, I brought you on board today because there’s a lot of different marketers out there at the moment. You’ve got to launch this, and you got to do this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s who do you trust, who do you not trust? And I’ve known you now for a little while, I’ve seen what you do and I know that there’s that trustability and the credibility and you’ve got the authority. So I wanted to bring you on today to really talk about the six steps for successfully launching. And when I say launching, it could be launching a product, it could be launching a service, it could really be launching anything. But I wanted your expertise around those six key steps to successfully launching. But before we jump into actually the six steps of launching whatever it is you want to launch successfully, I want you to, if you’re able to talk a little bit about what are the benefits of having a clear strategy before you jumped into that launch phase?
STEPH
Yeah, definitely. So I always compare launching to going shopping at Ikea or going grocery shopping. If you go to Ikea without a list, you’re going to end up spending hours there. You’re going to walk out of there with 10 cushions that you don’t need, some beautiful lights, shoe organizers, all of the stuff that you don’t need and you’re going to get out the other end and you’re going to be like, “okay, that was hell,” A; and B, you’re going to realize that you’ve actually forgotten to get the one thing that you came there to get. So it’s like you think about how Ikea is basically a maze, right? Having a strategy behind your launch gives you that clear path, the quickest path through there. So you can get to your goals as quickly as possible rather than going all over the place, chasing sparkly squirrels and not necessarily reaching your goal as quickly as you’d like to.
ANGELA
And through that, I can only imagine that the other benefits come by having that clear strategy and that clear path, you’re able to probably execute whatever the launch is quicker. You’re potentially able to increase your sales quicker, sticking to the plan versus going through Ikea without a list.
STEPH
And you get better results for the time and the energy that you’re putting in because you know that you’re only investing time and energy and money into the things that will actually get you results. And that’s, I guess, where the whole not-burning-yourself-out element comes into it because, yes, you could try and do everything, but your going to just exhaust yourself. You might end up sick like I was because you’re burning the candle at both ends and it’s just not worth it. Like it’s so much more powerful to have that strategy that gets you from point a to point b with the least amount of time, money, energy possible, and also, that you can replicate again and again. So if you have a successful launch, then you know that strategy works. You can go back and you can repeat that strategy again.
ANGELA
Again and again. And then you could probably scale it too if you choose..
STEPH
Exactly.
ANGELA
Or anything like that. All right. Totally makes sense because I always want to make sure that there’s a benefit. What are those benefits? So that those in the audience that might be sitting there going, “yes, I want to launch a podcast” or “yes, I want to launch a product” or “yes, I want to launch a service.” There are real benefits to it. So, again, with your analogy about Ikea, anyone who’s never been to Ikea, I don’t know. And he’d go without any list and you’re going to come out with something and forget the other thing. So now let’s jump right into the six steps for successfully launching.
STEPH
Yeah.
ANGELA
Can you walk us through what those six steps are.
ANGELA
Yeah. So step one is people. Step two is position. I’ll dive a bit more into detail into each of these steps shortly. Step three is prepare. Step four is promote. Step five is push. And step six is postlaunch. So do you want me to dive a little bit deeper? So people, that’s basically identifying who you’re launching to. Defining who your ideal customer or client is. Starting to build that tribe of those people, that community, so that when you launch, you’re not launching to crickets and then starting to create a bit of a connection with them so that when it’s time to launch, they actually know who you are. They kind of like you, they trust you and they’re actually prepared to, I don’t know, hand over their money or subscribe to your podcast or whatever it is that you’re launching. They’re prepared to take action.
ANGELA
What’d you say when you hear people say something like this though, “I want to, I want to serve everyone.” Do you hear this often?
STEPH
I get that a lot.
ANGELA
I won’t go off on my bandwagon. So it’s always good when my guests can go off on their bandwagon. So for the listener out there that’s gone, “Ange and staff, they’re a bit crazy today. I can launch to everyone. I don’t need to go through my ideal client.” What do you say to the listener out there who might be thinking that right now
STEPH
If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to no one. It sounds like a cliche but it is actually so true. What sounds more compelling, right? Coffee for everyone or coffee for stressed out business owners who have no idea what tasks they need to do next. Like if you’re stressed out business owner who has no idea what task they need to do next. The second option is going to be a lot more compelling for you. Whereas the first one is a bit wishy washy, doesn’t really sell to anyone, doesn’t really carve out that unique spot for you. It’s all about resonating with the one particular person.
ANGELA
And then again, I would also say that you get lost because you don’t have a unique selling proposition. You’re just, you’re just another person in the sea of things trying to do what everyone else is doing. It’s kind of like Seth Godins book, the Purple Cow, I think it’s called. Is that right?
STEPH
Yes, yes.
ANGELA
And what he talks about is, is everyone in business at the moment is like a black cow and white color, brown cow. You go to a field, everyone kind of looks same-same even though those colors are all slightly different. But what he says is, is you need to start being the purple cow. You need a stand out. You need to be different. Through that comes what you’re talking about is nailing your ideal client and then being able to capitalize on that. Because if you’re just like the brown, white and black cow, you’re never going to really scale or grow or be super successful because you’re doing this what everyone else is doing.
STEPH
Exactly. And that leads very nicely into the second one, which is position. The second “P”. That’s all about crafting your messaging and bundling it together as an author. So communicating why your tribe need what you’re launching and why they should choose you over your competitors. Honing in on that unique selling point, honing in your messaging and then validating it because you could have the best idea out there, but if nobody wants it, then you’re wasting your time.
ANGELA
Yes. And it is so true. I know when I’m speaking with Chris Ducker and my own business coach James Schramko when I was looking at launching my own eight week coaching program, but one of the things both of them had said was, “Ange, pro sales page up and see whether or not you’ve got something viable.” Do you remember those like infrared commercials – is that what you guys call them over here? There’s ones that are on at 11 o’clock and midnight and they’ll be like, “for the first 50 people that sign up, we’re going to get x, y, and z.” Well, all of those commercials, but a lot of people don’t know about it, they didn’t actually have the product ready for dispatch. That’s why in the fineprint it says, your product would be dispatched within six to 12 weeks. Because what they did was they sold all those products as a presale or first to see demand was there. And from that what they did is they then as soon as they got the numbers, they then would turn it to production and then dispatch. So when you’d also talking about positioning, there are also elements that you look at like how to test what would be viable as a product or you would say go through an entire launch. Like what are your thoughts about that?
STEPH
Oh, 100% I think. And going back to the pre-selling, I think that is like the biggest way to test whether something’s viable. Obviously it’s not feasible for everything that you could be launching.
Yes, you can create a waiting list, you should sit down with people who are like your ideal customer and client and chat with them and find out if it’s something that actually they want, something they need, something they willing to pay for. Because there’s a big difference between somebody saying something’s a great idea and them actually wanting to pay money for it.
ANGELA
Yes, until they give you that credit card, especially people who like you and don’t want to hurt your feelings. Everyone will say yes, but once you get a credit card, it starts to validate. If you don’t want to spend an enormous amount of money on whatever the launch is that you’re doing that then all of a sudden you’ve got 20 people validating. It also can help with cashflow and it can also help jumpstart you to go, “I got to do this is. People actually want this. Let’s rock and roll.”
STEPH
Yes, you have no option but to deliver it. Yes.
ANGELA
Exactly.
STEPH
The one thing I do try to say to people is never ask your family and friends for feedback on the line.
ANGELA
Never.
STEPH
Never, ever do it because they will get, they will tell you what they think you want to hear, which is, “yes, that’s a great idea.” Even when what you really need to hear is, “no, that’s a terrible idea. You need to go back to the drawing board and scrap it and start again.”
ANGELA
Yes, 100%. They’re just being kind, but again, they’re not business people either. They’re not thinking that way. They’re just like, “oh this is my baby girl” or “oh this is my best friend. She’ll kill me if I tell her it sucks.” So people just keep it nice. But what you really need is you need someone to tell you to keep it real and be realistic with yourself.
STEPH
Yeah. Even if them telling you it’s a terrible idea is actually the kind of thing to do because they’re saving you all of that heartache in developing a product or launching a service that nobody wants.
ANGELA
Yes. And I know a lot of times even when clients come to me and they’ll want to do some VIP coaching, I’ll say, “Listen, I’m not 100% sure about this idea you’re giving me. But what I will do is we can start to validate the idea. But if we get to month three, because my VIP is six months, and we can’t validate this, I will tell you straight to your face and this is not going to valid. You can get out of your contract for good to go. But there are certain things that we’ve got to do to validate that the product might be worthwhile, like serving audiences, etcetera. But so many times people don’t do that. They just drop 20 to 30 grand on a product and then wonder why it doesn’t sell. You know? So I guess that could can also then, so we’ve got people first. Two, we’ve got positioning. Three then prepares. Is that, right?
STEPH
Yes. So preparing is all about preparing for your launch. So you’re setting your launch goals because if you don’t know what you want to achieve, then you can’t really set out to achieve something if you don’t know what you want to achieve. We also look at preparing your launch assets. So getting everything ready to go before your launch so you’re not scrambling to suddenly create sales pages, email sequences and Instagram posts in the middle of your launch, because that is hands down the most stressful time. So if you can have everything ready, good to go so that all you’re focusing on during your launch is the actual launch, then that will save you a lot of stress.
ANGELA
Yup. Perfect. And then that leads us into promoting, because obviously if you spend the time preparing all of those Instagram posts, Facebook posts, etcetera, I’m assuming that’s where you’ve got to start dishing the promoting.
Yes. So there’s three elements to promoting your launch and it’s promoting your content, promoting your opt in and promoting your launch event. So your content is obviously the, your blog content, your podcast content, everything that you’re putting out there, that’s free value-adding, connection-building content. So you’ve got to promote all of that regularly and consistently. And I mean that’s typically where people will tend to social media. They’ll stop running paid ads to that. Next you want to be promoting your optin, so your lead magnet, whatever you want to call it, but your free Ebook, your free cheat sheet, something where somebody has to hand over their email address in order to get it. So you can actually get them onto your email list and start building that audience ahead of your launch.
STEPH
And then the last element of promoting is promoting your launch event. The type of launch event that you run will depend on yes, what you’re launching. But it might be something like a webinar. It might be a live event, like an in-person media launch. It’s basically the event that triggers the entire launch or the entire launch process. If you’re running a webinar might be a webinar that announces that doors are open or it might be a Facebook live that announces your website is open for business and for the next seven days people get free shipping or something that triggers it all because you want to be promoting that. You want to start building up hype for that launch event before you even get to the, in the prelaunch phase essentially.
ANGELA
Yes.
STEPH
Because the more people that you can get to that launch event in person, the better the results are going to be.
ANGELA
Yes. Which makes sense. More bums on seats, higher chance of conversion, less bums on seats, maybe not so much.
STEPH
Exactly. And when people are there live in your launch event, you’re going to try and have some element of urgency. So it might be that you’ve got 48 hours to buy and get a discount or it might be that you get a free gift if you’re one of the first 50 people to buy. So because of that urgency, if people are there live, they’re much more likely to hit go just because they’re afraid of missing out.
ANGELA
Yes. Again, it’s that fear factor, isn’t it? Really?
STEPH
Exactly.
ANGELA
It’s like, “no, I just, one more thing.” So once you’ve done the promoting and then there’s those three components underneath it, the content, the opt-in and how you’re going to do it live, what is the push mean then?
STEPH
So the push is like the big, to put this into like your terms because you are very familiar with all the online courses and the cart open, cart closed, if you were launching an online course, this would be the time between cart open and cart close. If you have just announced that you’ve launched your online store, it might be the week that you’re offering free shipping or the week that you’re offering free gift with purchase. It’s like that big week where you’re trying to really build as much buzz around the launch, try and get as many people into becoming new customers. For me, I think that’s the most fun time. For most people it’s probably the most stressful time.
ANGELA
And would you say with the push for those people that don’t know, can you talk a little bit about more about what cart open, cart closed mean. You and I know that, but some of the listeners out there might not know that.
STEPH
Yes. So you tend to see this most commonly with digital products, so online courses and I guess masterminds and those sorts of things. But it’s the window of time between when somebody can buy so the cart will open and then people are able to sign up for the course or the mastermind or whatever it is. And then they have until when the cart closes and then once that cart closes, they can’t sign up until the next time it opens. So you’ll typically find with those things that the majority of people will sign up in the last like three hours. So you might think like, “oh my launch is going so badly, nobody’s signing up, nobody’s signing up.” And then you send out that last email with three hours to go and suddenly everyone signs up because they don’t want to miss out.
ANGELA
Would you agree that depending on the cost of a product or the cost of that launch, whatever it is that people are buying,will also depend on how you’ve got to warm them up?
STEPH
Oh, for sure. I mean, it’s going to take a lot more trust building to get somebody to hand over $10,000 for something than it would to get them to hand over a hundred dollars.
ANGELA
Yes. I’m assuming then when you’re looking at that promoting stage and things like that, you’re looking at those kind of cold, warm and hot audiences to kind of see like what we need to do to really speed up that process.
STEPH
Yes. So the way that I look at it is when you’re promoting your content that’s more to the cold audiences, promoting your opt in is to cold and warmer audiences, and then promoting your launch event to those warm and hot audiences. Who attends your launch event is a pretty hot..
ANGELA
Pretty, we’re ready to go the credit card out. They just need to put the numbers in.
STEPH
Exactly. Yes.
ANGELA
So with the, the six steps for successfully launching stuff, are there people out there, cause I always get asked, “this sounds great, it might work for me, it would probably work for me, but are there people that this wouldn’t work for?”
STEPH
Yes. So the the one business type that I think this wouldn’t work for and it might be exceptions, but I can see most it wouldn’t work for would be large B2B businesses. So if they’re reaching out to big corporations or they’re really in a space where businesses aren’t based on networks. So based on who you know, not really like thought leadership and content and all of that. It’s rather just like referrals, those sorts of businesses that wouldn’t work for.
ANGELA
Yes. And now you mentioned about in your story about the burnout and launches can be quite stressful for people.
STEPH
Yes.
ANGELA
Once you launch, would you suggest that people would keep launching? Or would you suggest that eventually people are going to launch, test, launch, test and then potentially evergreen that so that it’s a lot less stressful. What are your thoughts about that?
STEPH
It depends so much on what it is that they’re launching and also on whether you enjoy launching.
ANGELA
Yes.
STEPH
So if you’re launching something like a digital product then yet definitely you can evergreen that. If you’re launching something like a new service offering, you’re not going to keep launching that service offering again and again and again. You do ultimately want to start putting it to place a funnel that will lead people into working with you on that service offering. I guess that is evergreening it in a way but you’re not going to keep launching that over and over, but when you do launch another new service offering, you want to launch that live.
ANGELA
Yes. That totally makes sense. And for those people out there, you and I know evergreen. Do you want to explain to them what Evergreen mean is?
STEPH
Yes, it’s basically automated. Anyone can sign up at any time. It’s not like your holding that launch event live, that launch event is prerecorded. Somebody attends that launch event and then that triggers all of the things that happened after that launch event, the emails, the ads, whatever it is that tries to get you into buying.
ANGELA
For those people who are scaling their businesses, evergreen is great. There’s lots of greatness about it and there’s obviously pros and cons but that will probably be another whole entire podcast. So we won’t go too much into that. For those people out there that are, “Okay. Great stuff. This sounds great. I’ve got a podcast I’m about to launch. I’ve got a new product I’m about to launch.” Is there a particular budget that you think people need in order to be able to launch successfully?
STEPH
It depends on what they’re launching, which is probably not the answer you wanted. It does depend on what you’re launching and what your goals are as well. Because you can launch with a small budget, but you just have to realistically adjust your goals. You have to know that maybe with a thousand dollar budget you’re not going to sell a thousand units of your product in your launch and you accept that.
ANGELA
Yes. I know when I launched my eight week program last year, I had my bottom end, “Woohoo this would be great!”. I had my middle end KPI. And then I had my like big hairy ass goal at the end. This is what I needed. And then we had a worksheet that we worked around like how much we’d have to spend for ad spend, how many leads we would have on our current list, somebody leaves we would need to get and so forth and so forth. Yeah. But I think again, one of the things that I took away is, is whenever you’re launching a new product to your either warm or hot audience, it doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily going to buy it very quickly. Because the thing is you’re introducing something new to them. For example, I’ve been doing VIP coaching this entire time with women in business and now I’m watching an eight week program. So even though we did have a slight success, it wasn’t as successful as I thought, but I was glad that a friend of mine had told me that they said, “Ange, just know that first launch might not be your bells and whistles that you want it to be because it’s something completely new and your audience has to get to no longer just seeing you as a one-to-one coach, but also as an eight week coaching program. That was super helpful for me. What are your thoughts about that?
STEPH
Yeah, and I think it can also be really difficult – the first launch, when you don’t have those testimonials, you don’t have that social proof. If it’s a product you don’t have like the user generated content – the photos that people have taken of your product and upload it to Instagram or the before and after photos or any of that, you don’t have any of that social proof when you’re launching. So you’re really relying on your existing audience, trusting you enough and trusting that you can deliver whatever you’re launching.
ANGELA
But also though, I can’t emphasize enough that for those that are like, “oh well I’ll just roll with it and just test something” and I’m like, “no, you actually need to follow these six steps for successfully having a launch.” Because so many people would go, “oh well I’ll just test it. Oh let’s do it.” But again, people don’t actually know what they don’t know. So I see many time people just throwing random fricking launches up there and then moaning and groaning about it later. But I’m like, “but where is your strategy?” And I can’t emphasize enough about these six steps for successfully launching.
STEPH
We haven’t, we haven’t dived into steps..
ANGELA
Yes, which is, the post part of it. We’ve gotten to the part where they’ve come up with it, they found the ideal client, they’ve crafted their message, they’ve looked at their goals, they’ve looked at their assets, they’ve looked at how they’re promoting, they’ve pushed it open. We’ve gotten now that assessment phase is what, I’m assuming, post is. You’re looking post event to see what worked and what didn’t work. Is that right?
STEPH
Yes. So you’ll, you’re looking at, you’re looking at what worked, what didn’t work and then what insights you can take from that into future launches because it’s all well and good saying like, “okay. Yay, I’ve launched. The launch is done.” You might’ve made massive mistakes. You might’ve had bits in the launch where people were dropping off like crazy and you lost out on a lot of people and you don’t want to make those mistakes again. So while you might not want to look at your launch, you might finish it and be like, “okay, done, dusted. Do not want to deal with that again.” It’s so important that you actually do go back and look at it.
ANGELA
It was the most important element when we launched last term because we, again in mind, since I outsourced as we just talked about on your podcast. Actually I outsource a lot. So in that particular instance, and not always share my numbers, I invested about $40,000. For those of you out there going, “I don’t have $40,000” please don’t freak out. You don’t need $40,000 to launch. Okay, let’s make that very clear.
STEPH
You do not.
ANGELA
What I did find though is that our biggest problem was is that we hired a Facebook team of people who actually didn’t know what they were doing. We had to pull them mid-launch. So what I’m saying is is when we were able to dissect that posts, your step six of your steps for success launching, it was so powerful to go, “okay, what do we actually need to do three or four months before we launched next versus being dependent on just the launch” kind of strategy to warm those clients. It was probably my favorite part of launch, to be honest, because it gave so much data points about what to do next time, what worked, what didn’t work. It was super, super crucial but equally insightful.
STEPH
Yes, I think that’s it. It’s the most important part of 100% and it is quite enjoyable as well because you, in a way, it’s almost like you’re reflecting on your wins.
ANGELA
Totally. And like, “okay. yeah! Fist bump, we did this,” or “oh no.” And some things that you’ve missed, like you don’t even actually realize that it was something that was crucial. I’m trying to think of an example. “One of our registration pages on one of the links wasn’t working.” Right? And feel like, even though we had tested it from like our other registration pages were working, but because we were in the middle of launch, we had tested previously but something happened mid launch. But then afterwards when we went back to why did these other registration pages do so well and this one didn’t. That was the problem. There was something wrong with whatever, however we had hooked up or whatever when it was eventually was a lot. So it was hugely insightful to go, “okay, next time we launch we’re going to make sure that we’re testing this every single day to make sure that we don’t have any problems throughout that open card and all that type of stuff. So yeah.
ANGELA
Yeah. And even if you were testing different messaging and ads, that’s a really good way to see what kind of messaging people resonate with best. And then if people are resonating with message A more than they are with message B or message C, you want to tailor all of the copy throughout all your pages, everything so that it’s at message A.
ANGELA
Because you need to know where they resonate with, what is it that resonates most with them? Because again, if you fall in that one key messaging, then it’s a lot easier to get them over the line.
STEPH Oh yes. And we feel like that’s everything in selling to somebody as well.
ANGELA
It’s also like that match. Does your message and our product matched to your audience? And so many times there’s not a match. You know, it’s like incongruent. People aren’t getting it. And so important to go back again to what I talked about, a lot of those foundational stuff and that inclusive of in a launch, go back to those foundational frameworks, those basics and build on that because it will be a lot more successful than it is going to be trying to be all fancy.
STEPH
Oh, a hundred percent, a hundred percent.
ANGELA
You’re six steps for successfully launching. You and I know that you can launch a product, you can launch a service, you can launch a podcast. What are other things that people potentially could be launching. So if they’re out there going, “oh, I don’t know if this fits for me.”
STEPH
Yes. They could be launching a new blog, a youtube channel, a completely new business, new service offering, new online courses, new membership sites. Literally anything you could be launching follows the same structure. It might not be the exact same steps within that structure because obviously like launching an online course is a bit more intensive than, say, launching a podcast or launching a blog, but it’s the exact same framework.
ANGELA
Yes. That you would follow these six steps to have that successful launch.
STEPH
Yes.
ANGELA
Yes, perfect. If those people out there, they’re like, “okay, great. I’m in launch mode or launching this new product or launching this new service is on my cards for this particular calendar year”, or it’s one of their goals. Where can they find out more about how you can help them through their launch strategy?
STEPH
Yes, sure. I will be launching a course about launching. So just in case that wasn’t confusing, I’d be watching that mid-year around June, 2019. In the meantime, they can head to Steph Taylor.co launch to download my complete roadmap for a killer launch. Dives a bit more in depth into some of the points that we’ve spoken about today and they can also head to my podcast which you can find by searching Socialette in any of the major podcast apps.
ANGELA
Which is amazing because I think was it just last week you hit 200,000 downloads in your podcast, which is super fun.
STEPH
I know that was unexpected.
ANGELA
But how exciting is it. How long have you had the podcast out for?
STEPH
Since May 2018 so that’s nine months, I think.
ANGELA
It’s like crazy talk. Amazing.
STEPH
Yes. I’m pretty, I’m pretty stoked with that. It’s probably the best.. actually, no, it’s been hands down the best thing I’ve done for my business.
ANGELA
We could talk about that for, that’s a whole other day, but..
STEPH
Don’t even get us started.
ANGELA
Also are thinking about, you know, could have podcast be part of this six steps framework that stuff talks about? Absolutely. If you are looking at podcasting,I would strongly suggest that this is something that you would team up with stuff to help you in a launching because watching her this last year and meeting her at We Are Podcast, she definitely knows a thing or two about launching a successful podcast, other launches also, but her podcast knowledge is, yeah.. if you’re sitting on that podcast idea and that’s what you want to launch this year then you need to be joining her when she goes to these six steps for running a successful launch because it will be epic.
STEPH
Thanks, Ange.
ANGELA
Yes. Now listen, where else they can find you obviously your website, what are your social handles if they want to follow you on social?
STEPH
Yeah, so I’m Steph Taylor Co. on Instagram and on Facebook as well.
ANGELA
All right. Too easy. Now for the rest of you that are wondering how you can get access to these show notes that will be done by my team and posted at angelahenderson.com.au
ANGELA
And for the rest of you, I’d love for you to join my Facebook group on Facebook platform called the Australian Business Collaborative, where we’ve got close to 5,000 members in there. It’s an amazing group filled with awesome women and men from around the world. I’d love for you to join us over there. But if not, for the rest of you, have an awesome day no matter where you are in the world. And thank you so much, Steph, for joining us today are asking much
STEPH
Thanks for having me.
ANGELA
Thanks for that.
STEPH
Thank you.
ANGELA
Thanks for listening to the Business And Life Conversations Podcast with Angela Henderson, Steps for Successfully Launching a New Product or Service. www.angelahenderson.com.au
