141: Simplify Your Marketing: The Guide to Launch Success with Amanda Warfield
Marketing strategist, Amanda Warfield, shares her expert tips on how to successfully launch your online course. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the five stages of the customer journey and tailoring your content to address your audience’s pain points. By doing research and building a waitlist, you can increase your chances of a successful launch and long-term success for your business. Tune in to discover how to simplify your marketing and prepare your audience for your course or membership launch.
Summary:
Many course creators try to jump right in to launch their course without taking the time to take their audience on the customer journey. This drives low sales and lack of interest from their audience. According to Amanda Warfield, a marketing strategist who helps entrepreneurs simplify their marketing, the problem often lies in not giving yourself enough time to prepare your audience for the launch.
Amanda emphasizes the importance of understanding the five stages of the customer journey: problem unaware, problem aware, solution aware, offer aware, and student. It's crucial to tailor your content to each stage and address the audience's pain points accordingly. For example, if you're teaching about evergreen funnels, your audience may be problem unaware and not even realize that inconsistent sales are a problem they need to solve. By creating content that leads them through the different stages, you can move them towards a purchase decision.
Before mapping out your content, it's important to know who your audience is, what problem you solve, the transformation your students will undergo, the problem before the problem, and the end result of your course or membership. By doing research and understanding their pain points, you can create content that resonates with them and positions yourself as the solution to their problem.
During the launch phase, it's crucial to focus on building a waitlist and offering incentives to those who join, such as early access or extra discounts. These are the hottest leads for the upcoming launch and should be a top priority for your business. Additionally, your content should be tailored to each phase of the customer journey, with specific pieces of content geared towards those who are problem unaware, problem aware, solution aware, and offer aware.
In conclusion, a successful course launch requires a deep understanding of your audience's pain points and the different stages of the customer journey. By creating content that leads them through each stage and focusing on building a waitlist, you can increase your chances of a successful launch and long-term success for your business.
Mentioned In This Episode
Where to find Amanda: Instagram and Website
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Transcript:
And my special guest today is Amanda Warfield. Amanda is a simplicity focus, content marketing and launch strategist. She's author of the book Chasing Simple Marketing and host of Chasing Simple, a podcast to help creative entrepreneurs uncomplicate their business and marketing. Amanda, I am so excited to jump into this topic with you today. And we're going to be talking about creating a launch copy that converts with intentional launch messaging. And this is such a powerful topic, and I know a lot of people who are listening to this. They have a launch planned either later on this year or maybe even coming up here shortly. And we're going to be talking about all about what they need to be covering in their launch copy. But before we get into all the questions I have for you, can you tell the good audience a little bit more about how you help people and how you got started in all this?
Yes, absolutely. Well, first, Destini, I'm so excited to be here. You know that I love chatting with you, and this is just such an honor to get to be on your podcast. So thank you for having me.
So excited.
Okay, so I help other entrepreneurs fit their marketing into their business without it taking over their business. And I do this in a couple of ways. One focus that I really have is just helping other entrepreneurs essentially be their own marketing strategist and doing that by simplifying what they're doing. A lot of the people that I work with in that capacity are solopreneurs or they have incredibly small teams, which is great. And if that's where they want to be, that's where they want to be. That's where I want to be. Personally, I like just having myself and my VA, and that's great. But that means you have to be your own marketing strategist, and that can be so incredibly time consuming. Most big businesses, when you look at them, they have whole marketing teams and departments, right? And then we're over here as solopreneurs or very small team owners, and we're having to do all of the marketing on our own. And so I have a large focus on just helping those entrepreneurs simplify their marketing so that they can fit it into their business without it taking up all of their time. And then I also help business owners who just want to hand off their marketing. They want to say, Someone else do it. You create the copy, you create the strategy, and you just tell me what to post and when. And so those are kind of the two different ways that I help others.
And I think a lot of people listening to this, me included, can relate to what you just described. I was in corporate marketing for many, many years, and I had a huge team. I had a lot of people working for me. And then when I went on my own and launched my own business. It's just me and I have two full time people that work for me. So that's helpful. But I didn't even have that in the beginning. So I think helping. I'm always looking for ways to kind of simplify my marketing. So I'm loving what you do. We're going to be talking about creating a launch copy that converts but also really focusing on that intentional messaging in that launch copy. So can you tell me, what do you see as one of the most common problems with launches and the copy that goes along with it?
Honestly, the biggest problem that I see is that business owners aren't giving themselves enough time to actually prepare their audience for their launch. And what that ends up looking like is you've got a business owner who decides they're going to launch something and they give themselves a month to prepare for it or even less sometimes. And they don't give their audience a chance to walk through the customer journey to get to a place to be ready to purchase. And so then when they launch, well, they're not getting the sales that they want to see because their people weren't ready for it. And the they take that and they think it's their offer that's the problem or it's them that's the problem. And that's almost never the case. It's just that we haven't prepared our audience well enough through our messaging to be ready to actually decide if this offer is for them or not.
So let's talk about that customer journey. What do you see as the stages there?
So there are five stages, I believe, maybe six. You've got problem unaware, problem aware, solution aware, offer aware, and then student in this case. So in the problem unaware phase, your audience member, they don't even realize that they have the problem that you're going to solve for them. So if you are going to be someone that teaches evergreen funnels, right, if you're going to teach your people evergreen funnels, well, your people in this case don't even know that they need an evergreen funnel. And so you have to show them that the problem that they have is the problem that they actually have. So if you are teaching someone that they need an evergreen funnel, what's the problem that they have? It's that they're not selling consistently, right? They're not seeing consistent sales. And they're only ever getting sales during a big launch, which isn't what any of us want. We want both those launches and those consistent sales. But you have to open the door, let's say, to show them, hey, there's a better way. They don't even realize that that's a problem that they're having.
And then the next one you said was solution aware, problem aware, okay?
Problem unaware, and then problem aware. And once they're in that problem aware phase, you're then working to move them into the solution aware phase. So you're saying, hey, you're not getting consistent sales. That's your problem. How do you get consistent sales? You start building out those evergreen funnels. And so then you start talking about evergreen funnels and how great they are for your audience members.
And I think what you're covering there kind of demonstrates, first of all, we need to understand where our audience is in all of these various stages and then start addressing that content in our launch copy. So given the fact that we got a lot of stuff to cover here before we even launch, what do you suggest? How long do we need? What is that launch runway?
If it's a brand new offer and you've never launched this course before, I suggest eight to twelve weeks. And I know that everyone just went, what? And it sounds like a lot, but you're not selling for eight to twelve weeks. You're merely starting to plant the seeds for the upcoming launch. For those eight to twelve weeks, you're only going to be selling for one to two weeks when you're doing a large live launch like this.
So eight to twelve weeks. So two to three months before you even do your launch, you're producing this content. Tell us a little bit more about what pieces of information you need and how are you producing this content? Is it just posting on social media? Are you doing Facebook lives? Are you doing educational webinars? Are you doing podcasts? Walk us through. What exactly does this look like for a course creator or somebody who's launching a membership, right?
So for your pre launch or your pre prelaunch those eight to twelve weeks before you're even really in launch mode, you're just simply using this information and these five key pieces of information that you're going to need to know, which I'll tell you in a minute. But knowing the information that you need to know, you're using that to walk people through that customer journey just within your typical content. So whatever your long form content is, whether you've got a blog or a podcast or you're on YouTube, your email newsletters, your social media, that's all you're doing. You're just making sure that you're focusing those key pieces each week or every other week or however often you are putting content out, you're making sure you're focusing them around that launch messaging versus just kind of pulling ideas out of thin air.
Okay, so how would we go about mapping this out? Let's say that we know that our audience is problem aware, so they know we can use the example that you gave us, right, with the evergreen funnel. I think that's something that a lot of people who are listening here can relate to. So they know they need an evergreen funnel, so they're problem aware. How do you go about figuring out what kind of content do you need to kind of help move the down to those other stages that you mentioned in that customer journey?
So if we back up before we even get to where they are in the customer journey. There are five things that you need to know before you can really start mapping this out. You need to have a really clear understanding of who your audience is and who you're speaking to. You need to understand what the end result of your course or membership is. What is the win that they get out of it. You need to be able to say that really clearly in one to two sentences. You also need to understand the transformation that your students will undergo during your offer. So they're starting at point A and they're going to end at point B, right? So they go from not having consistent sales to making consistent sales on autopilot and that's kind of the physical external transformation. But then what's the internal one as well? Maybe they're feeling frustrated by not seeing sales and wondering if this business thing is even right for the to confident and able to take the day off to spend time with their kids, right? There's that internal motivation as well. So you want to know both of those and then you have to know the problem that you solve. And the problem what I call the problem before the problem, which is the problem they think they have. So with every offer that you put out there, there's the problem that you actually solve but then there's also the problem that your audience thinks that they have.
So one of my main offers is a course all about how to batch out your content. And the problem that that offer solves is teaching you how to batch a month's worth of content in just one week. But my audience members, most of the time they don't know that that's their problem, right? They're in the phase of the customer journey where they're not even problem aware yet. The problem they think they have or the problem before the problem is that they don't have enough time to create their marketing and so they're showing up inconsistently. And so knowing what that problem before the problem is, is really going to help you when it comes time to map out where people are in the customer journey and how you're going to talk to them within that customer journey.
So let's say we've done our research, we have answered these questions. So we know what the who our audience is, we know what the end result that somebody's going to get from our course, that transformation moving from the A to B. How do we go about figuring out exactly what kind of content we know we need, I should say for this, say we're going to be doing a podcast episode or maybe even writing a blog post. How do we go about doing the research to actually help move them through the stages?
The beauty of it is that you don't have to figure out where your people are you just have to put the content out in that order of problem unaware, problem aware, solution aware offer aware, and lead them through those different phases into your offer. And so if you put out a podcast episode for, let's say you do weekly episodes, and for the beginning of your launch runway, those eight to twelve weeks, you've got two weeks where you are going to put out content geared specifically to those that are problem unaware, and you're trying to move them into problem aware, right? And so the people that resonate with that part of the customer journey, they're going to go, oh, I need to listen to this podcast episode. And then for two weeks or so, you do a few episodes around problem aware and people that are in that phase of the customer journey, and so those people are going to go, oh, that's exactly what I need to hear right now. They may not have listened to the episode before because they may have felt like, I don't really connect with that. But when they see you talking about that particular area that they do connect with within your email newsletters and your social media, because you always want to lead people back to your long form content when you're talking about that and sending people to that, they're going to go, oh, I connect with that. And then you'll spend a couple of weeks on the solution aware phase. Okay? So they know that their problem is that they don't have evergreen funnels set up. How do we set up evergreen funnels? Okay, so what do we need to do? How does that work? And then you'll spend a couple of weeks talking about, oh, the new offer is coming. And then you'll start really planting the seeds about three weeks out or so from the launch itself for this offer is coming, and it's going to help solve XYZ. And so people have already been hearing from you for weeks now about how they need what you're offering, what that thing can do for them, and then also how it's going to transform their life or business.
And they're already on board with the idea of what it is that you're selling. And you've also spent those last six or so weeks, six to eight weeks showcasing that you're an expert and that they can trust you to learn from you about this thing. And so all you've been doing is just talking about this thing you're already an expert in, in an intentional way to move them through this little runway, but you've been planting so many different seeds to help prepare them to be ready to actually purchase your course or membership.
And I love what you said about once. They're helping them move from that offer aware stage. So doing that about three weeks before your launch, would you also suggest at this point, starting a waitlist, or what do you typically recommend there when you're talking about the offer that's coming.
So I recommend starting your waitlist all the way back at the beginning of the twelve weeks. And at any point, if it happens to come up when you're creating your content, send people to it, really start pushing it about four weeks out, but have it available to start sending people to so that you can start creating that list of hot leads for your upcoming launch. Because a waitlist is those are the hottest leads that you're going to get for your launch. So you want to be intentionally sending people to that. And you can even say things like have it as your call to action at the end of your episode, right of I have this offer, it's not out yet, it won't be out for a while, but if you're interested, you can join the waitlist and you'll hear more about it later. You don't have to give them a ton of details. You don't have to sell. You just say, hey, this is coming, and if you want to hear more, join the waitlist. And you can do that twelve weeks out. You can do that all year long.
So after the offer Aware stage you're moving into, I think what you mentioned was kind of the student stage. What kind of content do you recommend at that stage? Because I think at that point, right, you're in the launch stage, you're signing people up.
So when they are solution aware, that is the launch stage, that is where you have said, hey, I've got this thing, or not solution, where I'm sorry, offer aware, that is launch phase. And moving them from Offer Aware into student, that comes down to your selling and just purely getting them to say, yes, I want to be a student, or yes, I want to be a member. Okay? And that is when you are in launch mode. You've got, like you mentioned earlier, maybe you're doing a live Facebook challenge, maybe you're doing a webinar, maybe you're doing a pop up podcast is really popular lately. That's when you're doing that launch mode that we all think about as typical launch. And you've done all of the work to make sure that the first time someone's hearing about your offer isn't during your launch, but they've been hearing about it, or at least subconsciously hearing about it for weeks and months now.
And I think that's one of the biggest messages here, right, is there's a lot that goes into that launch and you start it two to three months before you actually open up your cart. Amanda, any last minute tips for the audience related to launch copy that converts?
We vaguely, briefly touched on this, but I cannot recommend enough having a waitlist. Your waitlist is going to be the absolute hottest leads. Anyone who's interested in what you're talking about, those are going to be warm leads. Anyone who downloads a freebie, that's the same topic as your offer that's a warm lead. Pretty much anyone on your email list is going to be a warm lead unless you have vastly different sections of your email list. But people that say, yes, I'm interested not only in this topic and not only in learning from you, but in this specific offer. Those are your hottest leads. And I think a lot of times what can happen is we think, yeah, I've got to have a waitlist, and then we push it to the side. But that should be what you are really focused on getting people into. Hey, here's this waitlist. This offer is coming. Sign up if you want to learn more. And then as you get closer, hey, make sure you join the waitlist. They're going to get this special bonus. I personally, I always open the doors to my waitlist 24 hours early, and they get an extra discount or an extra bonus on top of whatever the launch incentive is for that week.
Whether it's a bonus or whether it's a discount, they get something extra special to really incentivize people who are interested in that offer to get on and enjoy that waitlist.
And I love that. Just give them just something little just to kind of encourage them to take action there. Amanda, can you let the audience know where they can find you? And I believe you also have a free gift for them.
I do have a free gift for them, which the link will be in the show notes, I believe. But I have a free guide that will walk you through the eight different emails to send your waitlist for your next launch. When you're preparing your waitlist for a launch, they actually get or they should get the sales emails before the launch even the doors even open, whereas anyone who's not on your waitlist, they're not getting the sales email until doors open. And so there are eight different emails that I always send my waitlist. And this guide will walk you through exactly what those eight emails are. So highly recommend that you go download that, but I would also love it if you would come find me over on Instagram. I'm at Mrs. Amanda Warfield over there. Or check out my podcast chasing simple.
And, Amanda, we'll make sure that all of those links are in the show notes so people can go there, click on them, and I definitely want them to download that free gift and kind of take advantage of that wait list that we talked about today. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us and sharing all of your knowledge about launch copy and just expanding upon the importance of doing this months before we actually open the heart for our course of membership.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Destini.