My Best & Worst Launches
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One of my favourite ways to mentor my clients is helping them in the ideation, planning, execution and scaling of their launches so they get the best results. I love this so much because ‘I’ve been there and got the t-shirt’ when it comes to live launching and have hundreds of different ideas under my belt to help them optimise their launch at each stage.
I’ve personally had some great launches in the past few years of building my business and so in this weeks’ episode of The Magnetic Woman podcast, I’m taking you behind the scenes of some of my best and worst launches.
From my first ever Intuitive Eating & Living course to the original The Magnetic Woman launch, through to my most recent launch of the Mastermind, I’m sharing (and getting really honest with you) what worked and what didn’t.
Listen to this episode to hear:
How I started with just 5 people in my first ever launch.
The challenges I faced with my first Live Launches and the lessons I learned along the way
How lots of sales does not necessarily equal lots of profit (yes, I share my success hangover story!)
How making changes in your launch strategy can make all the difference to your business
As always if you have enjoyed this podcast please hit SUBSCRIBE and leave a REVIEW so together we can ensure more and more visionary women create impact in the world.
Resources:
Join the waitlist for my NEW Live Launch Method HERE
Download your How to Scale at Every Stage of Business handbook HERE
Check out my free resources to support your business growth HERE
Join my Masterminds for Every Stage of Business HERE
Find me on Instagram @pandorapaloma_
Transcript
Hello, and welcome. So I'm gonna be talking you through my behind the scenes, some of my best and some of my worst launches. Now note that I don't say successful and failed.
I absolutely do not believe in failure.
I think there are some great experiences that we have in business, and there are some not so great experiences that we have. However, it's all part of the learning and the journey that we get to take as entrepreneurs.
So context - I am sharing this one with you because I have had three consecutive 6 figure launches, and it didn't start there. And since I have been launching, there have been many ways that have stopped working, many new things that have started working, and many things in between.
So I have had some successful, and not so successful launches, and I thought I would share with you why I think they could have been better, why they flopped, and what I've done in the past 2 years specifically to get to the consistent results in my my live launches.
Also further context, this year we will be launching the Masterminds twice, once in April, once in October, and I foresee that we will move more into a multi six figure launch. I will save all of the juice and the how and what I'm thinking and how I'm planning that for another episode. Just to give you the context there.
I know now that I can run a 6 figure launch. I've done it three times in a row. What does that look like next, how do I get to expand myself and my business to be able to support more humans - which is ultimately what this is always about for me - how much more impact can I have? How many more women can I support in their businesses to create multidimensional wealth?
My first ever launch was an intuitive eating and living programme.
It was 12 weeks. I had five people join. Second time I launched, I had two people join. I didn't leave hardly any time between launching the first and launching the second. I hadn't done any pre-launch nurturing with my audience. I considered myself quite scatty in my content back then. But over the last four years, like I said, I've had four 6 figure launches in total, three in the past 18 months.
So, I'm sharing this with you because I started somewhere. I started with five people.
And then, you know, over the course, I've had many good good and bad launches. So that's what we're gonna be sharing today.
I think also really important to bring the context of my business model. My Mastermind model works. 80% of my revenue comes from my Masterminds. It means that I launch twice a year. Obviously, then if I decide to launch any other trainings or courses or, you know, anything else, that's all more in the business. But the bulk of our revenue, 80% comes from my Masterminds. It's what I'm known for, and I will continue to scale them because they are epic, and, you know, the client retention rate tells me so.
Retention rate is something I will share. My clients do stay with me for long periods of time, which makes launching a lot easier.
If you want more revenue, I would say there's two things to consider.
One is be really, really good at what you do, and you will naturally make sales from clients who want to continue working with you. It's a bit of a no-brainer, and they will also shout about you from the rooftops. Also a no brainer. Simple strategy. Works every time.
Number two, have a really smart lifetime value sales road map for your clients. If there's no next steps, you could be leaving money on the table. So back in 2019, launching was so easy. I remember launching The Magnetic Woman. It was when online courses were having a real moment. 2018 - 2019. I didn't really work so much in 2018 because, you know, I had a human. I gave birth to my daughter, and, you know, I wasn't really prioritising very much other than, eat, sleep, repeat, and writing my book at that time.
So 2019, I sort of came back into work full time and launched, the Magnetic Woman. I think the beta price was £111, which went up to, like, £333, and I sold 65 spaces purely from content alone. We didn't do a conversion event. It was pure content, and the content was our access point.
So what worked? It was funny thinking about this. Like, what worked about that launch? Because that was, like, my best launch ever.
I'm gonna say it was alignment.
I was so aligned to this body of work, to this this teaching because it came from a break-up with my baby daddy, and I was really living - you know, I speak a lot about being the living embodiment of your work - I was really living it.
I was really, really living the content of The Magnetic Woman.
It was all about decluttering your life, moving through your beliefs, stepping into your vision. I can't even remember what the 4th module was, but it was all very much exactly what I was living in. What I will say is that, a question I always ask when I'm launching something new or when I'm going into launch is, how much in my truth am I being with this offer? You may always be - I don't really like using the word tested, but we'll go with it for this context. Tested.
I have this a lot with my clients. Right? So they'll be launching a course on flow, and suddenly their life just becomes really chaotic because there's a lesson in them being able to teach flow and get themselves back into flow from the chaos in order to be able to teach it to others. You catch my drift.
That's why I say, you being the living embodiment of your work is the most magnetic sales tool that you can have, because resonance cannot lie.
A lot of the time, the more aligned we are to our work, the better the result is going to be. I'm sure you many of you listening to this are like, yeah. I know that. I know that.
And listen, I have had, launches that haven't done as well, and it's beautiful in hindsight to see that, yeah, you know what? I wasn't I wasn't fully in that, or I thought I was in it because I was really inspired by what someone else was doing, and, actually, when I think about it now I wasn't deeply connected to it. We get to learn.
So that's what worked. It felt really aligned. I was really living what I was teaching, and I really primed my audience. So, interestingly, Magnetic Woman is very much how this podcast was born, but it was what I was known for post-intuitive eating and living (which is what I was coaching before). And that really naturally started to lead me into business coaching, which came in at the end of 2019. So, I started to piece together my way of doing business coaching, which was that strategy meets spirituality, but so much of that came from the body of work that I taught in the Magnetic Woman.
So, that's what worked.
What didn't? I mean, the price could have been so much higher.
Interestingly, when we went to launch again, I think in hindsight, I should have created a waitlist, because it became my signature course and what I became known for at that time - before I then very much moved into business coaching fully in 2020.
So, if I were to do it again, I would create a waitlist for anything is a signature body of work for you - a signature container, course or training. Make sure that you have that space where you can guide people to in between launches, because it's obviously gonna make your live launch a lot easier because you've got a pool of people to start selling to, who you know are interested.
Okay. So, what's next? 2021 - the launch of The Expansion Accelerator.
It was my first 6 figure launch - just shy of a 6 figure launch. So what worked here? I used Facebook ads for the first time, which really helped. So, if you know me well enough, if you've done any my masterclasses, as you know, I talk a lot about the marketing funnel.
And the awareness stage is the first stage, which is where you are funneling people into your world. And then you obviously educate them. You create these conversion events, which is when you create trust with them and build that connection, and then you sell to them, and then there is the final stage, which is making the sale. And what a lot of us can skip, or not nurture enough, is that awareness phase. So, how are we bringing new people into our world throughout the year, not just at launch?
Now, what did really work is that I used Facebook ads for the first time, so it meant that there was many fresh new faces, let's say, in my conversion event.
So, I could really feel and ride the energy of these new faces, people who haven't known me before that were coming in - “Oh my god, this is making so much sense. I'm really loving your content. I've listened to your podcast”
- and suddenly it was like, woah. Okay. I'm really riding the the the wave of this new energy.
So it felt really, really good. I did a five day challenge, which, again, meant that those new faces from the ads had a really good few days to get to know me, and that really, really worked. I think if it had been a masterclass, it would have maybe looked different. Obviously, they had five days with me over the course of a week, so, really, really nurturing your audience, which was as important back then as it is now. I'd say it's increasingly important as the industry changes.
I planted extras. So what that means is that I was quite playful with my conversion events. Obviously I had the five days, and then I decided to do a spontaneous Q&A on the Saturday, and that actually converted another two people into the ten that joined. What also worked, I think, is that it was cart open/cart closed, and there was a set number of of spaces, which we still have within the Masterminds, but we can now have multiple cohorts because of the way that it's grown.
And I know a big part of what really worked there in that launch was I really went all in. I was really in an all in energy at that time.
I do have to say my my launches are so much easier now because of how I've built the strategies, and I've been there, done that, got the T shirt - so I know my own rhythms and patterns, and there's not a huge amount that scares me anymore. And I know back then, it was like this really big thing - “I'm doing this big launch and, oh my god, we're doing ads”, you know? But,I turned a lot of that fear into excitement. So that's what worked.
And then, what didn't?
Again, I'm gonna say this was a lesson that I could only see now in hindsight. I brought in co-coaches for the launch of that first mastermind, and I really didn't need to at that point. It wasn't stretchy enough in that I didn't have the evidence at that time that I could fill those 10 spaces. But, of course, in bringing in co-coaches, (a co coach, a marketing coach, a social media coach, money coach), it meant my outgoings were huge.
So whilst that launch was a great launch (first near 6 figure launch, 10 women - In fact, it was a 6 figure launch because it was £11,000, 10 women), I wasn't at a stage where I needed co-coaches at that point. I really wasn't there. If we had two cohorts of 10 people, that's possibly where I would consider bringing in some support. But what it meant is that whilst I had a really, really good launch, there were so many expenses.
2021 was my best year in business (in terms of cash received, not total sales), but it was also the year that I had a massive success hangover because I really didn't have anything to show for it at the end of the year. And that is because, so much of the potential profit was being spent on things like ads and co-coaches.
The other thing that didn't work - and and I'm sharing this with you because I think transparency is so vital in this space -
I signed a 12 month retainer for an ads manager, which cost me £30,000.
Yeah, £30,000.
That's without ad spend. I really wasn't advised correctly. And and it's funny now, now that I understand ads and have been using ads and we have taken all of this in-house, I think that there's a way that I could have been advised, which is, like, “all very well when you're in launch, but can we have a look at you the entirety of your launch schedule to see whether this retainer is gonna be worthwhile for you?”
Because what was happening is that in-between those bigger launches, I really didn't have anything to sell. There was no online courses that we could set up on in evergreen funnel. There there wasn't any other kind of higher ticket offers. They were all quite small offers, which basically meant we were out pocket.
So we invested so much in ads, but we didn't really make that money back in the way that I would have liked to. So, like I said, I call this my Success Hangover, which is why I teach in a really different way to do ads now. I certainly wanna make sure that you're not paying a retainer all year round. You maybe work project by project, and we use a different way of doing ads now, which is much more, let's say, affordable, much more easy to manage, which is the Dynamic Creative Method. I will be sharing all of this in a new training that I have coming up called The Magnetic Live Launch Method. But for now, just really, really wanted to share that. I think sometimes we're like, “well, I'll launch this thing and I'll get these co-coaches and I'll pay for ads”.
Think about the leap, but don't leap before you can jump.
And I think that that's definitely what happened to me that year. I really lept, but we just didn't have the foundation in place to be able to support that, and I made some decisions that I wouldn't make again if I were doing it a second time.
So, this leads me to a not-so-great launch - TEA round two. We secured only four people that second time around.
What worked? I mean, I called in the best humans, and of those humans, I think two of them stayed with me for another two rounds and the other ones stayed for another round. So, we halved what the ideal number was to convert, but they were the best humans. And for me, it's not about the numbers, you know? It's about the support that I get to give to the humans that have invested.
So, what was interesting, you know, what came up for me in that process, like, “are they gonna think that I'm not good at my job? Are they gonna think this? Are they gonna think that?
It's like, hold it. Own it.
There are four women in this group. You are gonna serve four women for the next six months, that’s what you're gonna do. And it was a really beautiful lesson for me to really kind of get out of my own way and move my ego to the side, and also understand how shame can come up in our businesses and and in the results that we get - and we get to dissolve that.
We really get to just dissolve any shame of “I haven't done enough” or, “I'm not good enough”, because it's simply not true. There are gonna be wins, and there are gonna losses, it's just part and part of the journey.
There was so much other stuff going on at that time. My head wasn't particularly in it. I know I was going through a break-up during that launch, and that's not to say I've not had great success whilst also holding difficult things in my personal life - I absolutely have - but on this occasion, that's what happened.
Another thing that worked here was I really learned a lot. I didn't use ads for the second round, but I did the same messaging challenge. So, technically, I know that had we have used ads, could we have reached 8 - 10? Most likely. But, what really worked was that I learned a lot. And, actually, I think that there's so much of a gift that we get to give ourselves when we're in that reflection of, you know, “what did I learn in this?" What did I learn throughout this process?”
So, what didn't work? Well, like I said, still paying the co-coaches, which meant no profit from the launch - that felt pretty tough. Because of this, what I found was that I got myself into a cycle of feeling like I had to do another live launch. You know? Gotta gotta make that revenue somewhere.
And I have to be honest, this was definitely the turning point of realising that live launching got to be different, which is why I'm, this year, creating The Live Launch Method.
I felt like I was always chasing the results of the next launch, because I didn't get the results I wanted to see, and yet, I hadn't gone all in like I had before. I hadn't used ads. I hadn't really built that live launch to be the best that it could be, didn't then get the results, and then felt like I had to launch again.
So, what I teach now, I'm so aligned now with how I Live Launch. My motto is, do it once and do it well.
We don't need to be launching something every month. You could be launching twice a year like I do, core launches, and have two 6 figure launches, or multi 6 figure launches. If you then want to do a launch in two other quarters of that year, then great, but everything else gets to be more, right?
So, I think this is where having a container that's open all year round - at least one - is really smart for your overall business model and the results that you get to have.
Now, that said, open all year round containers do need incentives. What I'm seeing is that those personal touch points as incentives are doing really, really well. But what I know now, with hindsight, and having built out my business model with the two additional masterminds, with two of them being open all year round, it means means that we are converting people all of the time. There's always a space that people can come into, whether that's my builder offer or two of the masterminds (I'll share more about the builder offer in a moment). It just means that there is opportunities to convert people and start serving them, and obviously build your revenue in between your launches.
So, there's there's a really different way that I see Live Launching, which is very much what you're doing online and what you're doing offline. And for me, that's where you hit that really sweet spot.
So let me speak to about another that did well. The most recent launch of the Mastermind, so that would have been September last year.
What worked?
I would say, one of the core things that we very strategically put into the launch plan was doing my Magnetic Visibility (which is ultimately my signature builder offer) in line with the dates that the Mastermind was going to launch. What that meant is that we converted 20% of people from Magnetic Visibility Into the Mastermind.
So, it's a really easy win. It's why I guide my clients to plan out their years. I do it because of this. So, if you're like, “I'm launching this, I'm launching this”, but then you've got these builder offers that actually act and serve as the platform for you to sell in your core offer, make sure the dates align because it's an absolute no-brainer. You know? It's what I shared earlier, that sales road map for your clients. The long term - what's that next step? Our signature builder offers are really supportive to help do that.
So what worked?
60 to 70% retention rate. So in TEA (The Expansion Accelerator), we only had three spaces to fill, because 60 - 70% of my clients were staying for another round. It also felt really good knowing, across the board, across all of our Masterminds, we were 60% full. And, of course, this got to then become part of the core message, which meant that more people were like, “I wanna be in”. So, it was really easy for us to fill those spaces.
What also worked this time around is that - I do a lot of nurturing in between my launches. I often will have at least one, two, sometimes three people who've paid their deposits for the next round because of the nurturing, conversion events, and just the value events that I put on in-between my launches. What really works for me is that I'm nurturing my audience all of the time. The Podcast being one of them.
Pre-prelaunch. So, we created a really smart lead magnet, How To Scale At Every Stage. It's been our most downloaded lead magnet. This year, we will be optimising it because, obviously, the data is showing us that, it's the valuable lead magnet that you guys wanted the most in the last year.
That lead magnet served again as a really good platform for me to be having conversations with people.
I cannot tell you how many messages I've had to say “it's the most valuable lead magnet I've ever downloaded. I feel like I've got so much out of that, you know, more than I got out of, like, a six month course”.
So, you know, I feel really, really good about the How To Scale At Every Stage handbook. I will link it in the show notes if you haven't downloaded it and you would like to. There's one for every stage of business, in line with the three masterminds that I have for every stage of business. That was a really smart lead magnet to launch because it was a real beautiful primer, to nurture people, give them value, and then create that conversation should they want to come into the Masterminds.
We've taken ads in-house. So, for that particular launch, I did Get Visible Get Booked, which is a signature Masterclass of mine. I've just upgraded it for the launch of Magnetic Visibility this month, to get the data before we go evergreen. So, that worked really, really well.
An average conversion rate on a landing page of a webinar is 40 to 50%, and ours is currently running at 60% conversion.
In taking our ads in-house and working with the Dynamic Creative Method - normally, a good ad spend per result is anything under £8, under £5 being really good. Ours is coming in between £1.49 and £2.30. So I'm really, like, “pat on the back” at the moment, because I'm just loving the data, and what the data is showing me.
So, they were the things that really worked for that launch.
What didn't?
Okay. So the first thing I would say here is data. We've only recently set up our Google Analytics, which has been such a huge game changer, and I'm bowing down to my OBM who supported me in this process - Phelia, I love you.
We really tackled it together, and we were looking at data before. We've always looked at data. Open rates of emails, who's clicking, how many people are landing on the page versus how many people are buying. We look at our podcast stats. We look at our lead magnet downloads. You know, we've always looked at data, but we've gone, like, data on cacao this year (or let's say 2023).
It's just been really, really brilliant. I'm gonna include a whole training on data in the Magnetic Live Launch Method, which I'm gonna keep just chiming in because it's gonna be such an amazing launch (we launch next month. Link is in the show notes to sign-up to the waitlist guys!) But it's so important with Live Launches to have your data.
One of my clients has said to me, you just don't wanna be in the drama, you just wanna be in the data. We don't want drama - we want data.
So that didn't work, but it's working very well for us now.
Another thing is testimonials. What I will say is that when people stay with you for another round, it's really easy to forget to get the testimonials because there's no off-boarding, and all of our testimonial information comes from the off-boarding. We just didn't gather as many testimonials. So, at the end of last year, I sort of just chimed in to the Slack channel “guys, if anyone wants to give me a testimonial please, heres’s the form.” And that helps us keep the sales page fresh for the next launch.
I thought I would round up with a few key considerations.
What to do and what not to do for your launches in 2024.
So the first - I would plan your overall launch calendar for the year. You wanna see how each element can feed into the next so that any builder offer, any lead magnet, anything that you’re creating is supporting the results that you're going to see in that next launch. It's just gonna make the launch of anything a lot easier when you're thinking big, broad, seeing the overall picture.
Add personal touch points and incentives. So, something that we used in 2023 that worked really well for us was, The Visibility Audit, which was me personally doing an audit of, someone's bio, core message, and their website. And I think, of the 10- 15 calls that we had, I think our conversion rate was maybe 20% into any of the offers that we were offering. So, again, those personal touch points are really, really important.
Don't forget your pre-prelaunch phase through your messaging. Something I've been talking a lot about, and doing as a training in my Mastermind has been message mining. We really want to understand our clients and the tangible outcomes of our offers more than ever before. Don't forget the core elements of a pre-prelaunch where you're starting to, first, understand the key message that is going to work in converting people into your space, but also, the content that you get to create to start nurturing them, with the theme of whatever it is that you're launching.
Give yourself a long window. Buyers' behaviours have changed. I've said this so many times, but do you give yourself more time for your launches now? I personally find that I like to build my launch, set up what I can, automate what I can, and leave room for other elements to the launch if and when I need them.
I might not need them - we might hit the numbers. Lovely.
But I do have ideas stored as part of my Live Launch, and I create space in case I need to use them. So, I think that giving yourself a really long window is important.
So, what not to do?
Don't think content only is a launch plan. It's not.
If you're like, “well, I've posted eight times about this launch and no one's buying”. Content only is not a launch plan. So, you get to think wider, more creatively, to how you're gonna nurture people. That longer window is your pre-prelaunch, your prelaunch, launch, post-launch, and what you're doing in-between your launches to nurture your audience as well.
Don't think that a lead magnet is enough as a conversion event. I would always say, if you are gonna use some form of lead magnet, have this as part of your live launch, as your pre-prelaunch. I would have your lead magnet that leads to your conversion event, which is part of your prelaunch. So pre-prelaunch, lead magnet, prelaunch, conversion event.
What not to do - Use ads before you're ready. It's honestly a science, and you need to learn the science. Like I said, the way that we use it now, it's so much easier. We're using the Dynamic Creative Method I'm teaching to my clients in Masterminds. It is what will be a bonus for the Magnetic Live Launch Method it will be an upsell for those who do want to use ads. It's a complex science. It's not something that we go in and just put a bit of ad spend behind and suddenly see results.
Don't put a course on evergreen if you haven't tested that it works live. This something else I see quite a lot. “I've launched this online course, and I'm just gonna go put it on an evergreen funnel”. There's so much that you have to test. If if a webinar doesn't convert live (and the average conversion is 5% is is good, 10% is better).
If it's not converting live, it will not convert on an evergreen, i.e. recorded. It just won't.
Anything you're doing, make sure that you're testing it, looking at the data first before you replicate it into anything evergreen passive.
The next thing is, don't use a webinar, and then not give value in it. The greatest conversion rates that we are seeing in webinars/Masterclasses/challenges is the ones that give a whole load of value, and I think it can be really easy to think “I'm just gonna pull together this masterclass”. Again, it's a science. There's a science to highly converting masterclasses. I think just really important to share that, normalise it. It can be so easy to hear someone go, “I created this masterclass, and then now I'm a millionaire”. There was a lot more work involved in that. There are many masterclasses that do not convert. There are many that do, but, again, it's a science.
Okay, should we round it up with some stats? Why not?
So thinking about Live Launches, I'm gonna say it again because I'm so excited - If you know that you want to join me, you want to scale your live launches this year, please do get yourself on the waitlist for The Magnetic Live Launch Method, where I'm gonna be helping you to plan, execute, and scale your Live Launches. I'm so very excited. And the reason why I've just become so, so, so excited by Live Launching is because, I mean, that's what I do. It's what I know. My unique method is very much what you're doing online and offline and merging those two worlds to get the best results. The more that I have tapped into the averages of things and realising that so many of my clients - and myself - are seeing results above average, and I know it's because of the launch plans that we put in place.
So some stats.
Approximately 50 to 75% will opt in for a lead generator once they're on the page. So, that's like a lead magnet - a download, a playbook, a report, a resource. 50 to 75% is industry standard for opting in.
If you are hosting webinar/masterclass/challenge, you will expect around a 40 to 50% conversion rate, in terms of landing on page to converting. You should see around 50% of registrants showing up live, and about 5% of attendees will convert your offer. So, if you're wanting to play with numbers, that's a really good starting point.
A really strong sales page rate is 10%, although it changes across industries - it tends to fall more to about 5 to 6%, especially in e-commerce. An average open rate of an email is 20%, an average click through rate is 2%. This does vary.
A strong engagement rate on social medias between 1-5%.
And this is the good bit.
Okay?
So addressing buyer's fears on a landing page (so your sales pages, your landing pages) can increase conversion rates by 80%.
Again, comes back to the messaging - so important - and (this is what I'm very excited about, because if you have heard me talk about marketing trends of 2024, I have said that video is one of them) 38.6% of marketers say video is the number one landing page element that impacts conversion.
I will leave you with that food for thought for your live launch plans for 2024. If you would like more information on the Magnetic Live Launch Method, please do pop yourself into the show notes, get on the waitlist, and I will personally be in touch. We're starting mid Feb.
Thank you so much for listening today. I hope it's been helpful. I like to bring the truth and insight, into the realities of running a coaching business and working with digital marketing. If you have any questions, please do come and find me @pandorapaloma_ on Instagram. I would love to hear from you.
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