Pre-Launch List Building Strategy WITHOUT Social Media
Pre-Launch Email List Growth Strategy
Once you’ve settled on your sales event model for your launch, the next piece of your launch puzzle to work out is your launch runway. A launch runway is a period of 4-6 weeks before your launch where you build launch hype by nurturing your community to prepare them for your course.
As you prepare to launch, you need to remind your community why you’re the trusted guide they need to help them achieve their desired results.
There are two key pieces of the launch puzzle you want to address as you develop your Runway strategy and action plan to see it through:
- Magnetic Content Planning
- Visibility Strategy
As you’re creating your launch plan, you should put a strategy in place around each of these elements to ensure you’ve nurtured your community enough so that they feel comfortable investing in your course.
Create a magnetic content strategy to build your email list
Leading up to your launch, you want to be pushing out your best and brightest content (related to your course content) to your community. This helps your community understand all of the value in your product and why it’s EXACTLY what they need. If they’re already receiving aha’s, education, and good vibes from your corner of the internet, they’ll be far more ready to take action on open cart day to secure a spot to work with you.
If you are already pushing out content regularly via newsletter, podcasts, blog posts, or YouTubes videos, you will want to shift your content topics to those related to your launch offer.
Here are some ideas for additional lead-up content that you might want to add to your launch calendar so that you can pique the interest of your potential students:
- Create a specific free resource related to your course.
- How can you help people take the first step(s) toward their desired result without asking for a penny in return?
- If you host a podcast be sure to live ad read for your course and free resource
- Consider hosting a live training or webinar. (All in one platform like Kajabi makes this super simple to set up without using social media.)
- Showing up on video (or audio if you like to record podcasts) gives your audience the opportunity for a more personal and human connection beyond the written word.
- Share fly on the wall or behind the scenes content of you creating your course & the resources.
- Get your community involved and invested in creating your program by asking them questions that they have related to your topic.
These tactics allow your audience to know precisely what you’re selling, why, and why they need it. By planning it out in advance, you’re keeping yourself committed to a successfully proven marketing strategy. You’re not scrambling to remember going live at the last minute begging people to buy. Instead, you’re as cool and calm as a cucumber 😎
DEVELOP A SIMPLE VISIBILITY STRATEGY TO GROW YOUR LAUNCH EMAIL LIST
Now that we’ve got our content planned less to address the next big piece of your launch: Visibility.
REAL TALK: If no one has eyes on you, then you’ve got no buyers.
When we think about visibility, social media usually comes to mind first. However, if you are anything like me, you have a love-hate relationship with Instagram, and while I've seen clients have successful launches using social, it's not the ONLY way.
Did you know that you can have a WILDY successful launch without focusing on social media?!?
Yes, my friend, I’ve seen it done. But this feat does take intentional planning. When you take the time to plan your launch, you have the time to partner with your network to flex your genius. 💪🏼
Here are some ideas on how you can skip social media & focus on sharing on other platforms instead:
- Be a guest speaker on a podcast related to your launch topic
- Get featured in someone else’s newsletter that has a complimentary audience
- Write an expanded guest blog post for a related business
- Speak at Live events, seminars, or expos related to your course
- Trade lead magnets with an adjacent business
- Do an IG Story takeover on a related business account. (Ok, so this last one involves social media, but my point here is to encourage your to diversify your visibility strategy and make it your own.)
Being featured by another business truly helps to amplify your trust factor. If that person trusts you, their community feels like they can trust you enough to follow you, learn from you, watch your Live stream, and possibly invest in your next course on launch day.
An intentional runway is a KEY to preparing your audience for your new program and one of our most potent tools for a wildly successful launch. Planning your launch can seem daunting (some would even say it’s “unnecessary”), but if you want to set yourself up to have your best launch ever, an aligned Launch Runway is one of the game-changers to get you there.
No Email List Yet? No Worries...
Here are my recommendations on pick an email platform that is right for you:
Are you an email newbie?
Then I definitely recommend a service like FloDesk, basically because it’s super intuitive to use & allows you to easily create beautiful landing pages & emails.
<<You can get a 30-day free trial & 50% off an annual membership by clicking this link.>>
Are you a coach, course creator, or online educator?
Then I totally recommend using the ESP in Kajabi. Kajabi is an all-in-one platform for knowledge-based business owners. It is designed so that everything you need to grow your business online is all in one place which includes a native email service provider that lets you quickly create and send gorgeous messages that integrate video, countdown timers, automation, and more... building strong audience relationships.
<<Get a 30-day free trial of Kajabi here. >>
Does your business require a lot of automation?
Then I recommend something more robust like Active Campaign, it makes it easy to segment and tag audience members based on actions they take & also I’ve found their automation to be the most user friendly. They also have a beyond amazing analytics dashboard.
My recommendation for all of these is don’t let yourself get too caught up in trying to decide this portion of your business. Switch ESP is fairly easy-breezy & usually just involves downloading your current list via a CSV file and uploading it to the new platform.
<<You can sign up with active campaign here for just $9/month.>>
