HSH 056: Behind the Scenes of Our Biggest (And Least Stressful) Launch Yet
In this episode, we are going to debrief my $170,000 launch of The 5-Figure Challenge. Not only do I share all the numbers from this one, but I also talk about how when you launch, you really need to find a way to feed your soul and support the life that you want to live!
This product was launched previously, and it featured a complete training program and set of templates, tools and more to show students how to structure their own 5-day challenges to generate a $10,000-plus launch.
It’s the exact same system that I’ve been using for my 5-Day Challenges, and I’ve seen results of anything from $10,000 to $170,000 in my own business (along with A LOT of student success stories too)!
The program was priced at $997 (or 6 payments of $197), and the cart was only open during the launch.
Total sales generated were about $173,000, and total cash paid already totaled $70,000. It’s important to note that you will have to account for some people falling off the payment plan, or requesting refunds.
We recently added PayPal to our payment options and it’s interesting to note that 30% of our projected sales were because of this.
With 6,000 people signed up for the launch and 153 total spots sold, our conversion rate was around 2.5%, and the total ad spend was $15,250.
One misstep made was a lack of team structure and systems, which falls directly on me as my team does an incredible job with what they have to work with! An example of one such gap in our systems was a pixel error in one of our Facebook ads, which resulted in a 10X increase in ad costs for the first few days of the promotion. Looking back, I realized that checking the pixels was something that I told my team that I was going to do.
What did work? Using affiliates and paying them 40% commission was so effective this time around and resulted in about one-third of our total sales. I really had to change the way that I thought about affiliates this time around; crunching the numbers I’m already paying $150 to $200 for each person that buys my program, so even if I don’t work with an affiliate, I’m still paying to acquire a customer. The affiliate is doing the upfront work for you, including advertising, and you’re just closing!
With affiliates, you have to remember that the 80/20 rule will come into play, and your top affiliates will make the most sales. You’ll need to encourage all of your affiliates and make it easy for them to promote your product, by providing timelines and materials such as swipe files. Finally, maintaining a leaderboard during the launch to promote healthy competition and providing incentives are extremely effective strategies when working with affiliates.
During this launch, I became less of a teacher and more of a coach. This realization was huge! As James Wedmore says, just giving people the answers is really robbing them of a breakthrough.
The last time we launched this product, I personally responded to every comment. This was very exhausting and made me a little resentful of my business. On the advice of my mentors and mastermind group, I backed off this time around and the results were amazing. I still showed up to the Facebook group and dropped answers, but I limited this activity to about an hour a day so it didn’t consume all of my time.
By creating a Facebook group and facilitating a community, rather than just giving the answers, I empowered my students and some rising stars definitely rose to the occasion. The support between members inside the group is so strong that I’m now comfortable taking days off and not worry that everything will fall apart. In a sense, I found a way to give myself freedom while giving more freedom to my audience at the same time!
I did notice a slight issue with false confidence in the community. By this I mean people using the free content, but not realizing that there are many more details within my system that contribute to a successful launch. Before we launch again, we’ll evaluate the content and see what is missing, but the key takeaway is that we still created a really dynamic experience for everyone that took part.
This launch also served to show me the true power of my team. From the person looking after Facebook ads to my right-hand person Danielle, I realized that I don’t have to be stressed about every little detail and that they’re more than capable of handling things and doing it very well. Other people are now relying on the results of our launches, but as this happens you also need to give your team partial responsibility for the results!
To be able to step away for a few days during this launch was incredible, and I’ve come to see that previously being a workaholic was affecting other people that I care about, including my family.
You don’t have to do everything I talk about in the episode on your first launch, but start where you are and just launch; even if it’s just with a small ad budget, no affiliates and one team member to start.
Looking at the numbers, our conversions and earnings per lead goals weren’t reached (we wanted $200,000 in sales), but we made a 6-figure profit! I discovered that it’s better to set a really big goal and miss it, because this turned out to be the biggest launch yet for the team. So stretch yourself, set big goals and go all in!
LINKS:
HSH 052: How To Launch Without Stressing To Death
HSH 050: How To Deal With A Failed Launch Step-By-Step
HSH 044: How To Successfully Launch From Disney World
HSH 011: How To Be A Top Affiliate Even Without A List with Tiffany AKA Coach Glitter