A few months ago… I made $96,924… in 7 days… from launching one product…
And in this blog, I’m going to break down the biggest lessons I learned.
What worked? What didn’t? And what I wish I would’ve done differently.
That way you can take these lessons and apply them to your next launch or promotion to see even better results.
Hey guys, what’s up? It’s Alex.
Today, I’m sharing some of the biggest lessons I learned from my LIVE Posse Eye Challenge I launched in the fall of last year.
After all was said and done, we ended up bringing in a little under 6 figures in revenue from this launch – which is actually a bit lower than we expected compared with our previous launches…
Which means… this launch taught us more than any of our previous launches ever have!
And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today!
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Alright now, let’s get into it with Lesson #1…
Lesson #1 – Prime Your Audience
Priming your audience is ESSENTIAL when launching something brand new, or outside your “typical” offer suite…
Never assume your audience knows the benefits of what you’re selling.
Usually, for every promotion and launch that we do, we run a subtle priming campaign to start seeding the new product and it’s benefits about 1-3 months before a launch.
So in this case, we sent out some emails in this priming window and started posting and educating a lot about the power and importance of branding.
We did this without ANY mention of an upcoming course or offer…
The goal here was to start educating our audience on the problem/solution and add value. And we didn’t overdo it, just sprinkling in brand voice and branding content very naturally – whenever it made sense.
We did the same for our Email Marketing Challenge in 2021…
And for our Sales Page Challenge in 2020…
And this “priming” approach worked super well for those challenges.
But with THIS challenge – the Brand Voice Guide Challenge…
The lesson I learned is that we could have “primed” a bit better with a bit more education prior to launch.
Of course, this is just a guess. After all, marketing is just one big experiment at the end of the day…
So I don’t REALLY know. But I have a guess…
This launch was for a brand new product on a brand new topic.
It was a branding course, which falls a bit outside the norm of what we typically sell, copywriting courses…
And our target market was a little different too.
For the last couple years, my audience has come to me for pretty much one thing only – copywriting tips…
And all my previous offers were very CLEARLY for copywriters.
With this launch, instead of selling to JUST copywriters, we wanted to create an offer business owners could benefit from too.
Which is why a longer priming campaign could have been beneficial.
But – at the end of the day, this launch was still a huge success because since offering this challenge, my audience has grown substantially – and now I have a great mix of both copywrtiers and business owners in the Posse…
Which paves the way for many more launches to come.
But the biggest lesson I want YOU to take from this is…
Whenever you’re launching something brand new that’s a bit OUTSIDE your typical sphere of content…
Take the time to really prime, educate and engage your audience to build awareness and anticipation before your launch date.
And most importantly, show them WHY THEY SHOULD CARE.
Remember to always, always, always make it relevant to them, where they are, and where they want to be.
Which brings me to my next big lesson…
Lesson #2 – Don’t Be Afraid To Pivot
The Posse Eye Challenge is by far MY favorite Posse Program that I’ve ever created…
I truly believe that branding is at the CORE of all great marketing.
And the brands who take the time to deeply understand who they are and what they stand for – and nail their brand voice – will outlast the rest and get amazing results.
And copywriters & marketers… having this information under your belt, and being able to offer your clients this transformation, is going to take your services to the next level.
And allow you to charge PREMIUM rates.
Now, I KNEW ALL OF THAT…
But some of my audience were still unable to grasp the impact this information could have on their businesses. So what did I do? I decided to pivot.
I decided to change up the messaging in the emails I was sending mid-launch.
Most of the emails I sent out in the first 3 days of the promotion (and the 3 days leading up to the promotion) were focused mostly on the benefits of the program…
Which is great – except I had a hunch that my audience didn’t feel like those benefits were relevant to them as copywriters.
So on Day 4, I switched it up and sent out this email.
THIS email is talking directly to the copywriters on my list about how taking this program will help them better serve their clients (and raise their rates!)
I even included a screenshot of an invoice I sent for a Brand Voice Guide I did for a past client…
And I made even more relevant by ending the email by talking about a student I had who used the challenge as a way to find more clients…
So this email was REALLY trying to communicate how relevant the challenge was to ALL of my audience – not just the business owners.
And this email performed better than the previous emails.
So the next day, I made the same changes…
In the next email, I told a true story about a copywriter friend of mine who started working with a brand that was struggling to maintain and engage its leads…
After doing a bunch of digging into their brand resources, they discovered that the brand had NO formalized brand voice, positioning or messaging strategy.
They were basically just replicating stuff they saw other people doing and hoping for the best.
Which is a big mistake – huge – and sadly pretty common…
So that email was another example of how to understand these branding assets as a COPYWRITER.
And in the next email, I did the same thing by addressing the common question: “Can I charge for this as a freelance copywriter?”
So even though all of these promotion emails were written weeks in advance…
I saw that a tweak in the messaging was needed…
And midway through the campaign, I decided to PIVOT and tweak the messaging slightly.
And I’m glad I did.
Lesson #3 – You Can’t Prepare For Everything
Sometimes, even with the best product and perfectly executed launch…
Things won’t go to plan.
As they say, timing is everything and this applies to launches too.
It was literally during this launch at the height of the A.I. hype.
Literally, EVERYONE was going off about ChatGPT.
It was all anyone was talking about.
Now A.I. has been a hot topic for years and years…
And of course, anyone who has played around with A.I. and actually writes copy knows that it’s simply a tool and does NOT replace the creativity, strategy and empathy that copywriters bring to the table…
But thanks to all the people looking to make a quick buck to sell their latest and greatest A.I. program…
And claiming that we were all doomed…
Understandably, people were scared. Especially new copywriters who hadn’t gotten started yet.
And while I did my best to combat these worries by posting on Instagram…
And emailing my list about my opinions on A.I…
And even interviewed the Marketing Director of Jasper.AI on YouTube about the future of AI….
And how it will DEFINITELY NOT REPLACE copywriters
It wasn’t enough to quiet the fear-mongering happening with every scroll.
And while I certainly don’t know for sure, I suspect that the timing of my launch coinciding with this “A.I. apocalypse” could be part of the reason why my launch didn’t perform as well as expected.
But hey, this is nothing new. Trends change, fads fade and public perception can shift on a dime…
Many businesses saw this same thing happen in 2020 – we all remember what happened then.
Some businesses flourished during the pandemic…
While other businesses were really struggling to sell anything at all.
And again – that’s not a reflection of the business or the products…
It’s a reflection of the market.
So the biggest lesson of all is to release expectations of perfection.
Because the truth is – you cannot prepare for everything.
Even if I could go back in time and re-do this launch following all these tips there is a chance that it STILL wouldn’t have performed as well as I thought it would.
There could be a global pandemic….
There could be a massive panic about A.I. takeover…
There could a social media blackout…
(Does anyone remember when that happened back in 2021? That happened a couple of weeks before my Email Marketing Challenge launched –And it was hugely beneficial for my launch because it showed people how easily communicating with your audience can be cut off if you don’t have an email list)…
There could be any number of other outside circumstances…
And sometimes these things might increase your sales…
And other times that might hinder your sales…
So yes – plan, prepare, and pivot but know that you can’t prepare for everything.
And that’s why I teach timeless marketing and business principles that’ll never go out of style.
So you can focus on building your business based on marketing TRUTHS, not just marketing TRENDS, and truly stand the test of time and whatever else the world throws at you.
Alright, I hope got some juicy nuggets from this blog to help you for your next launch. If you want to see more content like this, make sure to comment below and let me know!
Until next time, I’m Alex. Ciao for now!
