122 - What You Need to Know in Launching a Coaching Program

 

Launching a program may seem a bit daunting, but it really doesn’t have to be. 

In this episode, Business Success + Life Coach, Debbie Shadid, is going to share everything that you need to know about launching. From planning your pre-launch, to nailing down your marketing plan, she has it all covered.

If you're a coach who is launching your private coaching, a new group coaching program, or maybe you are launching your coaching business altogether, you can definitely follow these steps to have a successful launch. 

Join us for this episode and start mapping out a simple and straightforward launch!


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Transcript

Doesn't matter how good your launch is. If your offer is not irresistible. And if your niche is not the right niche for that. You guys, it's not gonna work. So before you do the pre-launch, the pre-launch, you better make sure that your niche is nailed down and that your offer is good.


Hello. I'm Debbie Shadid the host of the life coach business building podcast. If you are ready. More clients in your life coach business than you're in the right spot each week. I'm gonna teach you super simple strategies to grow your business without feeling overwhelmed and without spending money on paid ads.


Now that sounds interesting. Stick around, and let's get started.


Welcome to the life coach business building podcast. I'm glad you guys are here. I'm your host, Debbie Shadid, today. We're gonna be talking about a launch, whether that would be launching your private coaching, whether that's launching a new group coaching program, or maybe you are launching your coaching business together. You also, by the way, could be like launching a new website.


Lots of things you could launch. Let me talk to you just about what a launch actually is. Kind of an overview, and then I'm gonna give you lots of details. I'll talk about a schedule for emails, everything you need to know, to be able to understand the big picture and understand some details that you don't wanna miss when you do a launch.


All right. A launch is a funnel. So a funnel is simple. You guys, it's just literally what you imagine a funnel looks like up at the top. Everybody is introduced to your offer everybody in your world, and whether that be on social media, on your email list, or through ads, however you do it. All the marketing that happens where everybody gets exposed to it as they are receiving emails and information and learning from you about what you have to offer.


And they are taking a journey down the funnel downstream. You actually want them to eliminate themselves. So the people who are not the right people for you, you want them to move out of the way. So you have a clearer picture of who is left, right? Who's left in your audience that are the right people that are going to end up at the bottom of the funnel.


As you start to see, depending on how big your audience is, that audience gets smaller and smaller. You. Make changes in maybe the way you were gonna market. You could add a popup workshop; you can do things differently when your audience gets a little bit smaller. Honestly, you guys and a smaller audience should convert higher than a very big audience.


When you have a big audience. A lot of those leads are cold leads. If you've grown them through paid ads and some other bigger marketing pieces, you're gonna have fewer people. You know, if it's a thousand people, you won't end up with a thousand at the bottom. If you start an email list, if you have a funnel that starts with a few hundred people, you actually will end up with quite a few of that, a hundred at the bottom because your list is smaller.


The a hundred people are probably people that actually know more about you that you maybe have talked to and interacted with. All right, let's talk about the three stages of a launch and that is the prelaunch, warming them up the launch and the postlaunch. I am not gonna be talking about the postlaunch today, but I do not want you to skip this step.


The postlaunch actually will set you up for the fastest success for the next launch. Because you'll go through and you want to really document everything that worked, what worked, what didn't work and what you're gonna do differently in that post launch period. So that, you know, the next time, the idea of a launch is that we're gonna just continue to use the same marketing materials over and over.


That is how you begin to make things more simple in your business. All right, let's talk about the prelaunch. The first thing that I wanna say is that you have to create an irresistible offer. Doesn't matter how good your launch is. If your offer is not irresistible. And if your niche is not the right niche for that offer, you guys is not gonna work.


So before you do the prelaunch, the pre prelaunch, you better make sure that your niche is nailed down and that your offer is good. And that you've really created something that's irresistible. So the pre-launch period. A period of time and maybe it's 90 days, maybe it's 60 days, 30 days, maybe it's all the time that you are continuing to create buzz about what you do for me.


It's the business building boutique. I love to talk about that. I create buzz around that all the time. Maybe you're planting seeds. You know, you're talking about your offer by name. So you guys are familiar with the business building boutique and you tackle objections upfront. So you're setting the stage for people to be ready to buy from.


You find ways that you can get people engaged, whether it would be surveys or quizzes, like to show them the gap in why they need you, like what they're missing and why they need you. You also wanna set your own personal expectations about the launch before you get started. What is your sales goal? And look, I wanna encourage you to have a goal that is kind of impossible, but I also wanna say, I want it to be within the realm of possibility, because I think when we make a goal that is so big, you know, we just pick some crazy number and we think we're gonna manifest it.


I think sometimes like our primitive brain, our bratty brain, you guys hear me talk about that is almost not believing that. And then you don't take the same kind of action from that place of like, Really excitement and determination and belief that it's gonna work. So my recommendation is, is that you pick a goal that feels difficult to meet, but that is somewhere like, you know, this could possibly go, instead of, you know, I'm gonna make a million dollars on this launch, pick something that's like, Hmm.


I think if everything works out to just the way I want it to, it could really possibly happen for me. Also, we wanna think about. Brand awareness. What are your expectations during the launch about what people are gonna know about your brand? How do you want people engaging in each part of your marketing?


What if you decided that your goal was to get X open rate on all your emails? That would be very interesting to be able to decide. Hey, this is what I'm shooting for. And the objective would be every time, like how can I tweak that subject line? Cuz that's the most important part to be able to get more interactions, then you wanna be thinking about lead generation during the launch still, where are new people coming into your funnel?


Look. Lead generation is all the time. Never, never stop building your email list. Here is the launch details that I wanna talk about in beta launch reference. Okay. You don't have to use the word beta. You can use whatever you want, but beta just means like you're starting something. Okay. When you are starting something, you have a new program, a new offer beta launching could be private coaching.


Anything could be private coaching, just like private or group. Alright, but the beta testers, they're gonna be your ambassadors. They're gonna actually be your future sales people. They're gonna be the people that will give you the best success. They're going to be your number one supporters, and you guys for them, they're gonna get all kinds of marketing about them.


It's actually really a win for you and a win for them. So who do you want your beta testers to be? You wanna make a list of prospects? I would recommend that you try to think of people that, you know, personally, that you know, are committed to work, that you know, will give you positive, truthful feedback that you know, would be, maybe they're connected in a certain way that their audience is bigger.


If you wanna contact 'em personally and you wanna give 'em all the details. So you have to have the details worked out. Like we start this day and it's, these are the hours of the coaching. This is how it's gonna work. This is what's gonna be required for you. You can also of course get beta testers through email, through referrals, you know, on LinkedIn, anywhere on social media, all.


But I would start with people that, you know, first that's the. You could require your beta testers to apply. Like we wanna set the stage that what you have to offer them is gold. You want to make them committed and you wanna make sure that they really are committed, that they're gonna come do the work because you're beta testers.


You want them to go through the whole process and you want 'em to get a good outcome at the end. So you're gonna be considering that as you go. So the more you talk about, like, this is an application. And not, everybody's gonna get a spot. The more that you are getting the person who's gonna go through your program.


And by the way, let me stop right here and say, beta does not have to be free. You could do a beta program, at full price. You can do it at any price you want to, or you can do it for free. All right. So let me get back to it. Now you wanna invite them to participate and know that your goal is for them to be successful, and that they're gonna be required to give feedback.


Along the way, truthfully, they're gonna get better support than anybody else that ever works with you in your program. Why? Because you're gonna be in contact with them. You're gonna do a popup group. If you need to, or an extra session, if you need to, to make sure that they have clarity on what they're doing, this is the key to a beta program is for you to get the details worked out.


And for them, the people in it to get the best result. If you're not in a launch, you are in a pre-launch. It is happening all the time. Do not forget that guys. You want to be thinking about keeping again, leads coming into your business all of the time. Let's talk about planning for your launch planning for your beta launch, whatever launch you're having.


It could be your regular group coaching program. You might have rolling enrollment for your program, which means. Open all the time and you can still have launches because maybe there's like four times a year that you actually want to bring groups of people in, like somebody can start next week, but they could also bring a big group of people in all at one time, let's say four times a year, you know, on a quarterly basis.


So you're gonna set up a workflow for this. You're gonna decide what the dates are gonna be. You're gonna pick the cart closed date, and you're gonna work backwards with your emails. I have a general guide of emails, obviously. You're not gonna get that on the podcast today, but I'll kind of give you some information about how that works.


But just know, you know, if your start date is the 20th and your cart closes on the 19th, you work backwards with your emails. From there, you wanna decide what is gonna be your biggest pitch. Where are people going to be invited to something, to all get excited? Is that gonna be going live on some platform and talking about it?


Are you gonna do it in a workshop? Are you gonna have a webinar? What are you gonna do? That's gonna create excitement about this really phenomenal opportunity that they. Creating a landing page, which is just a page on your website that provides all the information about what you're doing is also another step.


That's good because when somebody decides that they want to work with you, maybe you send them the payment link. It would be better if it was actually on a landing page where they come again, right before they're gonna pay. And they see again, the value in what you offer, maybe some of the details.


Spelled out in print, but they see it all right there. So they're very clear, can be very excited. This is a place where you can add more testimonials where you can do FAQs, answer questions, that kind of stuff. So you'll want to create a sales page. You wanna have a marketing plan in place? List all the places you wanna market.


Remember you guys, I believe you can reach a hundred thousand dollars in your business through organic marketing, but you might have to go live. You might have to send lots of emails again, the popup workshops, maybe open coaching round table discussions. It depends on your industry, but you want to do all of those things.


Maybe you wanna go behind the scenes and let people know about the work that you're creating, you know, for your program. Whether it be private coaching or group coaching. I want you to be thinking about the feeling that you want your marketing to create. How are people going to feel connected to you?


What do you want them to think through your marketing? It's going to depend on the kind of coaching that you offer. Let's say you do anxiety coaching. Then you want people to feel at ease when they're reading it, right. You don't want somebody to feel. Anxious like this is gonna be a big commitment. You want 'em to feel like comfortable as they go through your marketing funnel that like this lady's really got me.


Right. You wanna feel potentially hopeful if you're selling to somebody who's overeating over drinking overspending, all the over things. I want people to feel confident and inspir. Like, I'm gonna be able to show 'em the way, and they're excited to do it. So decide what you want that to be. And then when you write your emails, you think about how are you gonna create that feeling consistently over and over that your person needs to feel?


My people need to feel inspired and they need to feel confident that I'm gonna give them what they need to grow their business. How do I continue to create that for them? Is the question. You also wanna make sure that your client feels your commitment. Do they believe that you believe that you're making a difference in the world?


Do you guys believe that? I know what I have to offer really is the best. I say, there's no other coach that is offering what I'm offering. I fill the gap that other coaches aren't. I totally believe that. So do you believe that. What you're offering. And can your audience sense that let's talk about pre emails?


You guys will hear the term runway. When you talk about funnels, you'll hear runway and it's exactly what we're talking about, which is the plane needs lots of room to pick up speed. The more room the plane has to pick up speed. Guess what? The more successful your launch will probably be. Let me just say in the real world, when we're not doing huge launches in the real world, maybe your launch is only three weeks or two weeks and that's perfectly okay.


All right. I'm giving you the overview of what this whole thing really looks like. Big picture. Let's talk about your offer. As I already said, the best launch is no good if your offer isn't right for the people in your world. So in your community, do you have people and I mean, in the community of people like you in your niche, Do you know, people really in your niche, that's where we're gonna have the most success.


If you are, you know, a human resources leader, if you are a human resources, leadership coach, I'm working with somebody right now that does that. She needs to make sure she's got lots of human resource people that are at the same level as hers. If you are, you know, a weight loss coach for women that are of this age, you better have those women in your world.


All of that is niche based. Right. And probably it's gonna be an extension of you because most of us come to coaching and we coach on the things that we have experienced. So make sure that you are launching something that fits with people that you know well and that you could sell to you understand them.


You know, their pains, you know, what's happening. All right. Let's talk about sharing something during the launch that you could show people what it looks like to be taught by you, how you share your expertise, what you can give them a value. How can you let people have a glimpse? Into like, this is what it's like to work with me.


This is the way that I serve you. How can you let people have a glimpse at what it would be like to work with you? Workshops are a great deal. You do a workshop, you can repurpose that and you can send out an email and say, Hey, I wanted you to have this. Here's a little bit about what it would look like to work with me.


Share you guys, share your stuff. I promise you, you could basically give out your program and you've heard this before. It's not new, but you could give out your program and people still hire you because they still want personal support. They could Google and find everything. They could go on YouTube and watch every video, but they still want personal support.


So be really generous to people as you're going through the launch period. All right, schedule again, I talked about pick your. The cart closed day and work backwards. I do have a suggested guide for emails. You guys can Google those and find those. What I wanna say about that is the timing of your launch and your emails is best for you.


You figure out just like everything else. I say, take the general information that I'm teaching you. And then let's figure out a launch time, a series of emails, how long that really works for you. All right. And then we figure out the emails that need to go in there and. Gonna work. The biggest piece is that you wanna make the timeline because I want you to complete all the emails and schedule, schedule, schedule, schedule every email before you send out the first one.


And why is that important? Because your bratty brain is going to tell you to stop sending emails. You're gonna be thinking like I'm sending two emails. Two, you're gonna be thinking I'm sending too many emails. Like, you know, you're gonna be reminded of somebody that sent you a lot of emails and you're gonna think like, I couldn't stand that.


You know, you're gonna not wanna talk about it on social media again, cuz you're gonna be convinced that everybody is looking at your social media posts and remembering what you're saying. And that just is not true. You guys, we need to cast a very wide net to get the people that we want. The market is flooded with sound and.


About opportunities of coaching and programs and all that. You wanna make sure that you're out there with all those people. It's not hard. It's just part of what you do in your planning. All right. Let's talk very briefly about the emails. I'm not, again, gonna be able to show you the schedule. If we were working together, we would actually create your schedule.


And I would give you feedback on that. But in general, when you start launching, you know, you're official. Time to start. You wanna start with an announcement like here's what's happened. Here's what we're doing. You know, here's what's gonna be included. Your job is to keep everybody excited. All right.


Then you maybe wanna talk about some early signing bonuses, really something that will incentivize 'em to take action. Now immediately, then you're gonna go through a series of emails where you talk about their pain. What is it costing them to not get to solve pointing out to them? Really what the problem is pointing out to them, that they haven't had the solution themselves.


And you do have the solution. Then you wanna go through a series of testimonials. You can share transformations that you have created for clients. Just repeating to them the value that they get from selecting you as their coach. You wanna talk about results. If you have results that are hard, number results, you know, if you're a weight loss coach and you can say X amount of people that I work with meet their goal, that would be fantastic.


Sometimes results are transformations, mindset transformations, sometimes it's money goals, whatever that is. If you have results. Specific do that. Otherwise, keep sharing testimonials, tell client stories, tell your own vision, your own view of what's happened with a client. Then you wanna start with buy now emails.


Now's the time to buy. Why? Because it's getting close to the last chance. Doors are closing. Soon bonuses are expiring. You wanna do some emails that answer every doubt. This is so important. We could go through the entire calendar year, and there are times to doubt about, gosh, it's the wrong time? Cuz it's summer.


Gosh, it's the wrong time because it's the holidays. Gosh, it's the wrong time because, you know, whatever, all ye,ar long people can come up with an excuse. So whatever your niche is and whatever your. You answer the problems. If it's summer, you tell 'em why this is the perfect time. Even if they're going on vacation to work with you, then we come down to the join.


Now, we're getting down to the countdown of time at join now. And then we sort of have those last chance emails. These you guys are going to be the emails. In the last 24 hours, 48 hours that everybody joins on. I'm just gonna tell you, this is why you've got to have those done early. You're gonna be sending an email.


Look, I just received the other day as example, somebody who was closing their cart, a very successful coach who sent me three emails in 20 minutes in the morning at 6:00 AM. And she wasn't closing until that night. So I don't know how many other emails had just happened to be that I was sitting on my phone and I saw three emails.


In 20 minutes. Now, this person makes millions. I know this. And so it's obviously not a problem to send a lot of emails you want to send on the last day results testimonials, why they have to do this. You wanna paint the vision of the possibility of what's gonna happen for them. You wanna have emails that are all filled with calls to actions.


If they're gonna. Schedule a call. Let people text you. If you're comfortable with that, Voxer me your questions. We can get on a quick 15 minute chat or join me for my workshop to get, um, or join me for open coaching to get your last questions answered. Do a little group coaching session. You wanna send morning midday, seven o'clock cart's closing in one hour.


All of those you guys, you cannot go wrong on those. All right. That is kind of the anatomy of a launch. Overview of what happens when you launch either your private coaching or your group coaching, you can do both private coaching is just the same and you want to build anticipation. You want to tell everybody the same set of emails, why it's so critical that they start working with you, incentivize them and bring in a group of people into your private coaching business all at one time.


Why not? All right. You guys, I hope this was helpful. Thank you for being here and cannot wait. I would love to hear from you guys. Tell me what's happening with your launch. Tell me what you have launched. Tell me what questions you have. Let me know how things are going. All right. I'll talk to you next week.


Have an amazing week. Bye.


Okay, ladies, that is it for today. Before we go, I want to invite you to head over to debbieshadid.com I have this incredible Canva training specifically designed for life coaches, where I'm gonna teach you how to use Canva to create beautiful graphics to market your life coaching business. All right.


Have an amazing week. I'll talk to you very soon. Bye-bye.