Amanda McVicker (00:00)
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the OBM Educator. I'm excited for today's episode because we are gonna be doing something a little bit different and that is going to be a skills breakdown. So part of being an OBM is obviously the work that we do. And so there are skills and tasks that you would be doing as an OBM that you don't necessarily do as a VA.
Or even if you're coming from like corporate where maybe you have the transferable skills of management, project management, team management, et cetera. Maybe you don't have the specific skills that are going to serve you say in like the online space when you're working with business coaches or creatives or things, people like that. So today we are going to get into a skills breakdown of launches. Launching is something thatyou are probably going to do as an OPM because the clients that you have have products and they want to get those products out to their clients, to their customers. And so they're going to be looking to you to support them with bringing that to life. And that includes the lead up to the selling of it. So that's the launch, the lead up to when
things go on sale and then throughout the entire process of it being on sale. So grab a notepad, grab your favorite beverage because we are diving in. Welcome to the OBM Educator. I'm your host, Amanda McVicker, a veteran OBM who serves six and seven figure entrepreneurs.
as well as educates new OBMs with the skills and confidence they need to start and grow their own successful online business management business. Follow along as I share valuable insights, behind the scenes sneak peeks, and proven strategies to help you build a better OBM business. Let's go. The most common things that get launched when we're talking about the online space is going to be something like a course.
a mastermind or group program, or even a one -to -one service. So the putting together of the actual course or the actual program is completely separate. I can talk about that another time. That's not going to be included in what I talk about with the launch. So we are assuming that we have a ready to go product and we want to get it out
to the world. So first, a breakdown of evergreen versus launching. So if a product is evergreen, that means that someone can purchase it whenever. It is always enrolling. It is always available if there are open spots. So with this, you wouldn't necessarily do a launch event because people can always join. You can have bonus events
you can do conversion events with a bonus or, know, maybe you do a discount at certain points, but an evergreen product is always going to be enrolling. What we're going to talk about with launching is products or programs that have a open cart and a closed cart
and you can only join the program during those times. And so we have the lead up to the open cart and then the actual launch to the closed cart. So there are three different types of launches that I'm gonna talk about today. There are others. These are gonna be the more common ones that you see in the online space. So they are a waitlist launch,
a webinar or a master class launch or a challenge launch. So let's get into waitlist first. So waitlist is exactly what it sounds like. There is a waitlist. During the time that the cart is closed, that it's not enrolling, people who have interest in joining the program or getting the product can sign up for a waitlist to be alerted when it is open
for enrollment. Usually a waitlist will have some type of discount to those who sign up for the waitlist. So the setup of a waitlist launch is actually pretty simple in theory. So it's a mostly email launch because you are launching to your waitlist. So someone is going to join the waitlist, you will send them a confirmation.
Depending on when they join, you might send specific nurture emails to just the waitlist. So say you open your waitlist a month before the actual launch. From when they join the waitlist to the actual launch, you would send out a few emails to nurture them, to keep your name, your product top of mind.
to kind of tease why it is that they need that. And then when it comes time for the wait list launch to open, this is where it's just going to be cart open for those on the wait list. They will have a certain amount of time to enroll or purchase to get a discount and then the cart will close for them. Now you could end it there
and have it be just for those who are on the wait list get access to the launch, or you could then have a public launch after that. And that's where you could introduce one of the other two things that I'm gonna be talking about. Or if you've been talking about your wait list long enough on social media or in your email marketing to where you have been talking about your course, you could just jump straight into the launch.
And so as a side note, why I'm kind of, you know, giving a behind the scenes on like what emails are you going to send? What, when are you going to be nurturing versus selling all of that is because as an OBM, especially if you're working on a smaller team, you might be the one who is writing the emails or at least outlining the emails. And so having an idea of what
gets sent out when is going to be really helpful for you. So again, waitlist launch can be done on its own or it can be done in conjunction with webinar masterclass or challenge. And so if it was to be in conjunction with, after the webinar launch is when you would do a masterclass or a webinar or a challenge.
So let's get into Webinar Masterclass first. So this is gonna be probably like a 60 minute training that has to do. So this is gonna be about a 60 to 90 minute training that has to do with the product or program you are selling. It's something that you want to create a gap in their knowledge so you make them realize that they need
whatever it is that you're selling. And then at the end of it, they are going to be given an opportunity to enroll with your product, which is the solution to what their problem is. So the way that you would do a webinar or a master class launch is starting about three, depending on how long you want your regular launch to be, three to four weeks before your final close date
of final CART close date, you are going to announce your master class or your webinar. And so people are going to enroll. Usually you have a landing page. There's an automation once you enroll to get a confirmation. And then some nurturing emails between when they sign up and the date of the webinar master class. So people will sign up for that about two weeks
get to the day of the webinar or the master class, you would host it. People would come usually on Zoom, have maybe like a Q &A portion with it. And then at the end of it, you would present the offer. And usually for people who sign up for a master class, there will be some type of bonus. Sometimes it's money off, sometimes it's maybe a one -to -one call or some other type of bonus. Sometimes it's all,
all of them, right? So then they would have a limited amount of time to take advantage of that offer. So some people do, you know, a super special bonus if you sign up while you're on the webinar. Some people do the bonuses till the end of that day. Some people do 48 hours. So that's kind of up to you or your client what it is that you want to do. But there would be a specific cart close date for those bonuses.
And then it would lead into the regular launch. And we'll talk about regular launching in just a second. These are kind of, you know, the pre -launch events. So that is a webinar slash master class. A challenge, it's kind of basically the same thing, except challenges are usually multiple days. So it would be the same lead up that about two weeks before the challenge starts, you would open registration for the challenge. That's what you would promote.
Then you would hold the challenge usually around three days. Sometimes it goes five days. you know, attention spans are shorter and sometimes you could lose people beyond three days. So if you have a really engaging topic, five days would work. but usually three days is kind of the sweet spot. And then at the end of the challenge, again, you would have a bonus
for those who participated in the challenge to then enroll in your program or purchase your product. With a challenge, you do have the added ability or benefit to gamify it, to create incentives for people to follow through. Whether that is giving away a one -to -one call for the top participant
or depending on the pricing of your offer, giving away a spot in your program or a free product. So that's a way to gamify it and to get people involved, because the more likely that people are involved in your challenge or your webinar or reading and clicking your emails, the more likely they are to
purchase. So now that we've talked about the pre launch events, getting into the actual launch and what that looks like is going to be a lot of marketing, of course. So this is going to look like maybe you have early bird pricing. So that would be if you have say a two week launch. The first week is early bird pricing.
And then the second week is regular pricing. Or if you're doing a one week launch, maybe the first two days are early bird pricing. The rest is regular pricing. Or maybe you throw in some other bonuses here and there. You're gonna wanna show up on social media. You're gonna wanna be posting regularly. You're gonna wanna be sending out emails. You want to be talking about the launch and putting it out there for
people to purchase. think it was originally said someone needed to see something seven times before making a decision, but I've seen it recently that research is showing more like 20 times. And I will put in here, I've been saying a lot of you doing things. As a reminder, as an OBM, you're doing this, if you were launching for a client,
A lot of this of the showing up during the launch is going to be on them. You can have everything prepped beautifully in the backend. You could have your emails all scheduled, ready to send. You could have the process of getting someone onboarded perfected. But if your client doesn't show up, people aren't going to sign up. And so I want you to remember as the OBM that that is not your responsibility.
You are the one doing the backend setup. That is your job. Your client's job is to show up and sell it. And then on the flip side, if you were doing this for your own business, that is on you to show up. So in the email marketing that you might do to market your program or your product, you would do an announcement email. You would probably do something with testimonials.
You would do some objection handling. So think of the types of objections that someone would have to joining your program or purchasing your product and address them in the email to, you know, nip it in the bud before they even have a chance to have the objection. You would do some aspiration emails, the wouldn't it be nice type emails to get them thinking about what
this product or program could do for them. You would wanna do some FAQs to answer any questions that you've been getting or just common facts about the program. And then as you get closer to the cart close date, you want to start giving countdowns, have timers, 48 hours left, 24 hours left, six hours left, right?
That last day, you'll probably send two to three emails just to get people who are still making up their mind on if they wanna join. Now, as an OVM, something that you can be doing for your client during this time is tracking analytics. So you can be tracking who is clicking, who's opening the emails and who is clicking the emails.
For those who are clicking the emails, make a list. I've had clients who take the list of clicked emails and send them bonjoros, which is like a video that gets sent to your email. Or you can do loom videos or something like that. Or check in with them on social media. Hey, I see that you clicked on this a few times. Are there any questions that I can answer for you
Another email that you might want to send in the middle of the launch would be to just those who have clicked and say, hey, you know, I'm able to see who has clicked and it looks like you've checked out the sales page a few times. Is there anything I can answer for you? And then drive a bit deeper into what are the outcomes? Like what can they expect in this program?
What is gonna be the transformation. And then a super important thing that you wanna do after the launch is to gather all the information from the launch. Have all of your emails and your social media, what was the signup analytics, track all of that, put it together in a report so that you're able to kind of see how the launch went
and what can be improved for next time. Because a lot of times people will launch something multiple times. And while we can reuse launch materials, we like being able to see what worked, what didn't. That email didn't really get a lot of people, but that email, a lot of people clicked. Why was that? How can we incorporate that into other emails? And just as a final note, I know that launching
can be intimidating, especially running a launch when maybe you've never launched anything before. But there are so many resources out there for you to learn about what type of launch is best, what makes the most sense for your client, what are the logistics that go into that type of launch. You can learn while you are doing it and still produce an effective launch. As an OBM, it's okay that you don't know things,but you need to be able to research them and be willing to find out. So hopefully this was helpful in giving you a little bit of an inside look at to what launching looks like. If there are other skills that you would like to learn about to get a deeper dive into, let me know. Send me an email at hello at AmandaMcBicker .com and I'd love to include it in a future episode. So thank you for listening.
and I will see y'all next week. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the OBM Educator. I hope what you heard today is helpful for you on your OBM journey. If you loved today's episode, I would so appreciate you sharing it and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Want to be a guest on the OBM Educator? Fill out the form in the show notes and I'll be in touch. Join us next time on the OBM Educator.
