Episode #091: Our "Non-Live" Launch Results & Stats
Our "Non-Live" Launch Results & Stats
In this episode, I'm breaking down exactly how I ran a successful "non-live live-launch" that generated nearly $7,000 in revenue without the exhaustion of showing up for live events or trainings.
I'll share my honest journey of creating a simplified automated webinar funnel when I was too tired to run a traditional launch.
See the five specific "rules of the game" I created to make this launch work for my energy levels and goals
Learn how I built a simple funnel using a pre-recorded webinar, thank you page sales hybrid, and deadline funnel
Discover the exact numbers: the registrants, the conversion rate, and the return on ad spend
Find out why "imperfect action" (including my robotic-sounding webinar recording!) still produced results
Understand the power of adaptation versus blindly following marketing blueprints
If you've ever felt too burned out to run a live launch but still need to generate revenue, this episode shows you a practical, replicable approach that prioritizes simplicity over perfection.
Listen now to see how you can adapt marketing principles to work with your energy, not against it!
Links Mentioned:
Full Transcript:
[00:00:00]:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 91. And in this episode, we are talking about our non-live launch. How we were able to promote our course, generate sales, and do it as a launch without ever going live. So if it sounds appealing, this episode is for you, so stay tuned. Hey. Hey. Hey. Not so average marketer.
[00:00:24]:
Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Now I am really excited for today's episode because I wanna talk to you about how I was able to do kind of, like, what I'm calling a not-live live-launch. And, basically, what we did is, you know, I looked at my March 2025, and I kinda realized, like, I was a little overwhelmed, to be honest. I just had a really busy February. We had done a $100k month in January, and so I was kind of, like, delivering on some of that work, catching up on some of that work, delivering content to the people in our membership. And I was like, I know that I want to have a promotion in March. Like, I want to generate some extra revenue because we have our Facebook & Instagram Ads Bootcamp coming up in April/May. And I always like to do some sort of really simple promotion, to generate some revenue that I can put right into advertising for our boot camps.
[00:01:22]:
But the reality was I was just tired. Like, I wish I had a better, more fun, reason, but I I was tired. And I was like, I don't have it in me to do, like, a big live promotion. And I started to kind of ask myself, like, how can I do a launch without doing, like, a launch? Right? And so I started kinda thinking about, like, maybe I automate or maybe I do, like, an automated webinar, but then I kind of, like, launch it to my audience, you know, via email, via advertising. And that's kinda what we landed on because I thought how cool would it be to not only do do a launch, but also have a repurposable end product. Right? So when I was done, I kind of was like, I don't wanna just do this, and it's like, I know, an evergreen kind of strategy will never perform as well as a full blown live-launch. And I didn't wanna get to the end of the live promotion and be like, oh, well, you know, or the not-live promotion, I should say, and be like, well, that was fun, but now I have, you know, nothing to reuse. I did it.
[00:02:24]:
It's done. It didn't generate as much revenue as a live promotion, and I have no assets from it. So I kind of created what I called the rules of the game. And so, basically, I kinda started to say, like, what do I want to achieve? Right? I kinda, like, reverse engineered where I wanted to go. And so I had a number of things that I wanted to achieve as I started creating our non-live live-launch. And I'll get more into what that means. But, essentially, number one, it had to be reusable. I was like, if I do this, if I create something that works kind of like semi live, I want it to be reusable.
[00:03:02]:
Number two, it couldn't be energy intensive, meaning I had to show up live. Right? I I didn't wanna have to, like, show up for it. Number three, it had to be easy to promote it to my audience. Number four, the goal was $5-10,000 in revenue. I wanted to create $5-10k in extra revenue that I could put right into advertising. And the last rule was that I didn't want a bunch of crazy software. So I didn't wanna have to, like, go into Evergreen Webinar software and then have specialty upsell software. I wanted to really be able to do it with stuff I already had.
[00:03:37]:
I was willing to do, like, one quote-unquote, extra piece of software for the promotion. So reusable, non energy intensive, easy to promote, not a ton of crazy software, and $5-10k in revenue. So knowing that, I kinda said, okay. What am I gonna do? And I did land on an automated webinar, but I'm gonna talk about how ours is a little bit different than what you might traditionally see. But because it had to be non energy intensive, I took a previously working live webinar, and I rerecorded it. So, admittedly, I did rerecord a webinar, which you could argue is a little time intensive, but I kinda just did it when I had the energy, and it was about a forty-five minute recording. And so we landed on an evergreen webinar because I can launch it to my audience. And, again, I'll get more into that.
[00:04:29]:
And what we did that I thought was so cool, I think it's cool, is you know, traditionally, you go to a webinar page and it has a little pop up and it's like, watch the on demand replay or sign up for a future time. And to me, I don't know. I just don't like that. Right? It adds a layer of complexity from tracking to software to cost. And I was like, how can I keep this so stinking simple? And so if you go to thechallengelaunchengine.com, you can see this. But at thechallengelaunchengine.com, we created an opt in page. You type in your name and email, and you're spit right out to a video that's just embedded on a page that is the on-demand class. Right? And I did this because I've worked with a few clients over the years who always say, like, my webinar software doesn't work or my webinar software is complicated.
[00:05:17]:
And I've tested this with a couple of clients where I just say, like, hey. I totally get it. Let's just put the video on the thank you page. And we don't gate the recording, meaning you can pause, fast forward, rewind, rewatch. You don't have to watch it in real time. There's no fake chat. It's just literally an embedded video on a thank you page. And I went a little deeper than this.
[00:05:38]:
I was like, okay. So I know everyone's gonna see this. And let's be honest. In the online marketing space, it's no secret. It's just not that when you sign up for a training, you're eventually gonna get made an offer. Right? And so I said, well, what if I just put the replay right on the page that is the sales page? So when you opted in to watch my on demand training, number one, you could watch it instantly as a video. Number two, right under that video was the full sales page with the offer. And so we did find a lot of people.
[00:06:12]:
I need to dig into the stats a little more to be honest, but we found that a lot of people, like, clicked right through to the offer versus watching the full replay, like, something to think about. But I still feel like the funnel converted really well, and I'll I'll dig into that a little more in a minute too. But what I did was I put this page right on the the thank you page. I put the video right on the thank you page. I made the thank you page of the replay and sales page hybrid. And then I treated it, like it still was gonna be a live launch by using Deadline Funnel. So like I said, the rule was I didn't want a ton of complicated software, but I knew if I created a deadline, then I was gonna get more revenue, basically. But what always or I shouldn't say always.
[00:07:00]:
What didn't feel aligned for me was doing a deadline, but then, like, oh, it's, like, save x amount of dollars if you buy within twenty minutes. I didn't wanna do that. So I just created a five-day window, and I said, hey. If you join The Challenge Launch Engine, you know, before day five of your registration, you'll get this extra bonus. And so rather than discounting or doing, like, a special offer, I just said, we'll throw in this bonus that we normally sell as an upsell. Right? So, normally, we have when you buy our program, which is The Challenge Launch Engine, which is how to launch your program with a five-day challenge, we upsell for a hundred dollars, like, how to evergreen your challenge after it's live. Well, we said, hey. If you join through the automated webinar, you know, quote-unquote automated webinar, in the first five days from your registration, we'll give you that hundred dollar upsell at no cost so you don't have to pay for it separately.
[00:07:56]:
Comes with the cost of your program. And that works really well. The other thing I liked about it is that after the deadline, people could still buy the program. The price was still the same. And we actually ended up getting sales after the deadline, which I thought was really interesting because I feel like sometimes when you do the, like, save $12 for twelve minutes kind of thing, the people who don't save $12, they're not gonna come back and buy. And then you kind of have to, like, create these open loops in your sequence, and it starts to get, again, complicated, which I always said I wanted to not be energy intensive, and I didn't want a ton of crazy software. Right? So super quick recap. We basically said, here's an opt in page.
[00:08:37]:
On the thank you page is a prerecorded webinar that we hooked up to a deadline funnel sitting on a sales page for the full offer with a limited time bonus. Now one thing I wanna clarify because I just kinda jumped into it is, like, what is Deadline Funnel? So Deadline Funnel is a software that basically makes it so that when someone signs up on Monday, they'll get a unique deadline for a bonus on Friday. And so it is a little bit of a techie software, but I already pay for it. I already use it for some of our other stuff. And so I can set it up so that people have unique and dynamic deadlines. Right? Then I took the emails from our live launch when we had done this back in October, and I just repurposed them and changed the dates. And Deadline Funnel will actually dynamically input, like, timers and dates into emails for you. It's pretty cool through Kit, our software.
[00:09:30]:
So now somebody could register on Monday. They'd watch the replay instantly. And then for about four and a half days, they just get an email every day, couple emails on the last couple days, telling them, hey. Lock in your bonus before the timer expires. That simple. And what I then did was I basically treated this as if I was going to do a live webinar on March 24. So I started promo on March 10, and I said, I'm just gonna email my list every day or two and invite them to this webinar. Right? I'm not gonna say it's live.
[00:10:03]:
I'm not pretending it's live. I wanna be really clear about that. I never said it was live. I never pretended it was live, but I acted as if I was doing a live promo, and I just emailed my list, and it worked so stinking well. Like, it worked really well. I was very excited with how well this worked. So for context, I'm recording this podcast on Wednesday, March 26 because I wanted it to be as close to the day that I drop the episode, so that I could have as much data as possible. But, basically, we set it up so that everybody who registered for the training would go through.
[00:10:42]:
We ended up having, as of today, 455 people have signed up for the webinar, and about 411 of them have finished the entire sequence. Right? So it we ended up getting about 400 and, you know, 450 people into the webinar. And like I said, we emailed our list every day. I posted on social media a couple times. I also ran Facebook ads. So I did end up running Facebook ads because Facebook ads are my jam. Why would I not run them? We did focus mostly on our warm audience, but what was really cool is we didn't have to spend, like, a crazy amount of money, you know. And I know it's all subjective.
[00:11:25]:
I always say that noting, like, yes, it's subjective. Some people think it's a lot, some people don't. But we ended up spending around $2700ish dollars. I'm sorry. That doesn't count retargeting. We ended up spending $3035 on ads directly to the webinar. In terms of cash collected, we ended up collecting $6878. So I'll run through some of these stats.
[00:11:51]:
But essentially, we ended up doubling our ad spend, because everybody who bought, except for two people, actually ended up hitting a retargeting ad or were an ad registration. And so I was really happy with those numbers. Like, basically, reporting an ads manager was over a 2x. I basically doubled my ad spend money. And the price of the product, I should mention, was $397 or two payments of $237. We had one person take the payment plan, but they got in, realized it wasn't a good fit for them. We have a no questions asked refund policy, for fourteen days on all purchases. And so they asked for a refund.
[00:12:32]:
We absolutely honored that because, like I said, we have that policy for that reason, but everybody else paid in full. So that was the other really cool thing, that was awesome to see. Like, we got a really good pay in full rate. So the basic concept was rather than going live, rather than doing all this stuff, I just emailed my list every couple of days for two weeks. I ran ads to get people to register. And when people were in the funnel, I ran a retargeting ad to remind them to buy The Challenge Launch Engine program for $397, and it just worked gangbusters. So if you're anything like me, you're a nosy nelly, and there's no judgment. We're all nosy here, and you wanna know the numbers.
[00:13:13]:
So I've I've rattled off a couple along the way, but I want to give you specific numbers through the funnel. So in total, we had 450 sign ups tracked via ConvertKit that entered their name and email and went into the funnel. As of this recording, we had 411 people complete the funnel. So we only have about 10% of people that still have to go through. We've had 18 sales of the program, not including refunds. We had one refund. So 19 sales, one refund. We had a 4% conversion rate.
[00:13:49]:
So that means 4% of people that entered their name and email bought the program. According to Ads Manager, we actually tracked a 2.5x return on ad spend, and that's because some people, registered for the webinar and then were, like, oh, I'm not ready for this and actually joined our membership. We had a few membership sales, including an annual membership sale. But the actual overall return on ad spend from this offer was about 2.27. So our ad spend was $3035, and we collected $680 let's try that one more time. $6878 cash. So 2.27 on this offer. I do wanna note that that's high because a mass majority of our sales were hit by a retargeting ad and clicked on it.
[00:14:33]:
And so our retargeting ads really were the unsung heroes of this this launch, and so a lot of the sales are a direct result of people interacting with retargeting that then reports the sale to ads even if the the lead came from email. So, that was that was I was pretty happy with. We had 14 sales happen within our deadline funnel. So before the deadline funnel, expired before their deadline expired, and four people bought after the deadline, which I thought was really intriguing too. And I kind of am happy that I decided not to do, like, a limited time discount because people wanted a few extra days to think about it. So, so so in total, like, the really key numbers are, we generated just under $7000 in revenue right in our goal range. We spent about $3000 on ads. We had over a 2% conversion sorry, return on ad spend, a 4% conversion rate, and a refund rate of about 5%.
[00:15:30]:
Not bad at all. Some things that I think are worth noting are, number one, we need to rerecord the webinar. So I recorded the webinar. I was having issues with my laptop. I ended up having to get a new laptop, and every recording that I made for the webinar was like, and had, like, that reverb-y robotic voice. And I recorded that webinar once, super robotic. I recorded it again. I thought I fixed it.
[00:15:59]:
Still robotic. And if you recall, one of my rules was, like, it had to not be energy intensive. I was, like, I do not have it in me to record this freaking webinar a third time. I just didn't mentally. And so what I ended up doing was putting it into a software that, like, removed some of the reverb. I ended up doing, like, some audio processing, which is, like, already breaking one of my rules of needing extra software. I got a trial of an audio processing software and spent, like, an hour, trying to, like, fix that, because you might be like, Zach, why didn't you just rerecord it? You that hour could have just been rerecorded. I agree.
[00:16:36]:
But I ended up finding out not only was my laptop part of the issue, my microphone, my good microphone was broken. So I recorded it once on my computer, then once with my backup microphone, which is broken, and then my primary microphone that I'm recording on this episode that sounds really clean, I ended up having to replace certain pieces of it. It was I was not thrilled about it, but I share that with you because we realized it didn't have to be perfect. People were more sold on the content of that webinar than they were sold on it needing to be, like, perfect. Right? And then I also think the ads could have used some more focus. So when I looked at the advertising that we did, it wasn't bad, and we ended up getting a decent cost per lead. And, obviously, you know, I was happy with doubling the ad spend, right back to our pocket, but I didn't put a lot of energy and effort into them. And I know that one of my rules was, like, it has to be simple and easy and not take a ton of energy, but I really could have stood to sat down for an hour and wrote some Facebook ads and made some images.
[00:17:36]:
Because what I ended up doing was going into Canva, looking at ads that I previously run, copy and pasting old copy, and just reusing it. Again, I share that with you not because I'm encouraging you to, like, cop out on your copy and creative. But, again, I think sometimes whether it's the robotic recording or the ads, we get so hung up that it has to be perfectly perfect. And we basically were just like, let's get it out. You know? Anyone who's been in my ads bootcamps knows my mantra is, like, just get B- content out the door. Because if I had, like, sat on this and been, like, I'll rerecord the webinar a third time, and I'll sit down and do the ads, it probably wouldn't have got out when it did, and we wouldn't have generated an extra $7k that I can now spend on ads for one of our biggest launches of the year. Right? It's like it doesn't have to be perfect. The other thing that I think was really cool is realizing, like, this doesn't have to be complicated.
[00:18:31]:
Right? And, like, you could argue, like, look, Deadline Funnel, I know it's not the most user friendly software in the world, but the reality is, like, that was the complicated piece. I chose one complicated piece. It's an opt in to a thank you page, which is a preexisting sales page where I embedded a video, Watch it now. Buy your thing. And then we set up four days in of emails, of emails that I'd already written. I think I wrote, like, one or two new emails to address the bonus specifically. But it's like, you don't need for your funnels. Like, I think so many times I see people buy funnel trainings or funnel programs or automation softwares or automation systems, and then they're like, I've gotta get this all perfect before I can test it.
[00:19:14]:
But, like, in reality, you're gonna get it off the ground. You're gonna test it, and it's not gonna work perfectly. Like, I think this works so well because I had so many tested things along the way. Like, if you didn't catch me say this, I really wanna reiterate this. It's a webinar we've already done that we knew converted. It's emails we've already sent that we knew converted. It's ads we've already run that we knew work. So when I automated it, I was tapping into something that already works, but I've done that webinar multiple times to get it working.
[00:19:41]:
I've done those emails have been revised and adjusted multiple times. I've met with a sales consultant to improve our pitch and figure out our bonus. Right? But the actual setup of your automation and your processes, it does not have to be complicated. I did the whole thing in about three or four days with stuff I already had. So if you're like, I'm trying to go evergreen and you've already done a live promotion, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can take what you're already doing and just amplify it, and it will work, generally speaking, pretty well. Now did it convert as high as live? No. But a 4% conversion on an evergreen funnel I put together in three or four days, I'm not mad about it.
[00:20:22]:
Okay? So if I could distill this down in three key takeaways, it would be number one, use existing assets when you wanna go evergreen or you wanna do something asynchronous or you wanna do something where you don't have to show up live. Number two, perfection is overrated. If I had let that robotic recording that I still don't love not go live, we would not have $7000 right now. Right? And number three, just put it up. Just put it up. You don't need the special evergreen webinar software. You don't need the special this, that, and the other. With what you have, create something that fulfills the principles.
[00:21:03]:
I recently sent out an email and, to my email list, and I kinda said, like, I think the biggest issue I'm seeing in marketing right now is we get mixed up with, process, principle, and adaptation. And, basically, like, there's a process. Right? People need to sign up for something, engage with some sort of automation, and then be made an offer. Like, that's the process. Right? I can't change that if I wanna do something evergreen. But then there's the principle. Right? It's like deadlines, urgency, scarcity, limited time offers, the way the webinar is structured. Right? There's the principles of marketing that I need to instill.
[00:21:37]:
Most people, they blindly follow a blueprint, and it's no judgment. I've done it too. You you blindly follow something, but we skipped what I think is the most important piece of marketing, which is adaptation. Adapt things to work for you. I was like, I, at the very beginning of this episode, said I created the rules of my game. It had to be reusable. It couldn't be energy intensive. It had to be easy to promote.
[00:21:59]:
I wanted $5-10k, and I wasn't using a whole bunch of crazy softwares. I adapted it to fit my needs. And so I just want to encourage you if you're listening to this episode, the takeaway is not go set up an automated webinar. It's adapt the thing that you want to do or adapt the thing that you've learned to what you want to do because it doesn't have to look exactly like everybody else's systems, process, and principles. Yes. The process is important. Yes. The principles are important.
[00:22:25]:
But when you adapt something to work for your goals, your business, and your outcomes, you are gonna be way happier in the long run. So I really hope you enjoyed this episode. If you do wanna watch that on demand webinar, again, it's all about how to run a five-day challenge to launch your digital course or program. You can head over to thechallengelaunchengine.com, and you can watch it instantly, kinda see how that funnel works. Feel free to, like, funnel scope me out and see what you think, if you're interested in challenges. And then as always, we will have the show notes over at heartsoulhustle.com/nyap091. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap091 for Not Your Average Podcast, episode number 91. I really hope you enjoyed this one.
[00:23:14]:
I had a blast recording it, testing it, trialing it. And, again, I just wanna encourage you. You don't have to do things the way the other people are doing it. You know? It's like people told me you can't let people pause, fast forward, rewind an automated webinar or it won't convert. You can't put the webinar right on the sales page or you won't get sales. And y'all, it worked great because I adapted it to what felt good, aligned for me, my audience, and my goals. And so I just wanna give you one more encouragement, adapt things to work for you. You don't have to blindly follow a system.
[00:23:45]:
You can learn why a system works and make it work for you. I hope you have an incredible rest of your day, week, month, or year. And until next time, stay not so average.
