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Matthew Bellows of Yesware

 Anne Samoilov

Founder of Anne Samoilov

Anne has helped some of the big industry leaders like Marie Forleo, Laura Roeder, Denise Duffield Thomas and Jonathan Fields to launch their products and services.

For the past 5 years she’s also been teaching a program called Fearless Launching with the main goal of helping entrepreneurs set up and execute their first launch, whether it’s a business, a blog, an event or a physical product..

Article

How I Map My Product Launch Timeline For Success

I’ve been launching projects my whole life. Even when I was a kid!

I would think of crazy projects I wanted to do, and then I’d break them all down in my head step by step with my plan to get them done.

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Anne ‘s success

Mapping a product launch timeline

Result if you follow the steps in Anne’s session

A launch that frees your communication plan from dates on the calendar and allows for you to have a more successful launch

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

The thing is, we do start with some dates. The first step that I always like to say is, “Okay, when is this going to happen?” You do have to map out, you take out your calendar and say, “Okay, I want to open on this day, I want to close on this day.”

And maybe you map out any other live or scheduled events like a webinar, like free calls, like Facebook Lives, whatever it is that you might know, like the known information. I do think that that’s a really great first step. So we start there.

Alright, great. So, in terms of like figuring out those dates, what do we need to think about when it comes to those dates in terms of like, length of time? Are we putting down the exact time of close? How detailed are we getting?

Well, I mean, I don’t think you need to get crazy detailed, but I do think you need to decide, okay, what date am I going to open? I generally like to open on some sort of date in the middle of the week, or I have seen a few launches that open on Monday, they closed on Friday.

And those are great too, if that’s your choice. But length of time open a couple of weeks, maybe two, maybe three weeks, that actually is stuff that we kind of have to figure out by looking at your audience and how they generally make decisions and maybe other buying decisions similar to what they’re looking at for you.

Like if you’re someone who sells, let’s say a planner or a product or something, you might want to look at other people products, similar to that, to see how long their promotions run and because it’s not like you’re copying or you’re trying to like, trying to look at what they’re doing as the be all end all, you’re looking at it like, no, the customer is used to that timeframe.

So just like when I said two weeks, when you look at online courses, for instance, like, right now I’m seeing anywhere between two and three weeks of open cart. Some people do are really, you know, really aggressive like to send an email every single day and do it Monday through Friday.

Most people don’t dare to get that direct with their audiences or don’t really feel comfortable doing it that way. I think, that’s a personal choice but between two and three weeks open.

And then I always like to suggest that if you’re going to have a live event of any kind, like a webinar or a Facebook Live, try to do that big. Try to do at least one of those on the day that you open.

So that’s it. I mean, the time, the timeline bit is a little bit. You kind of have to play around with that yourself. But two to three weeks for open, open with a live event.

All right, very cool.

So once you get that stuff out, and I hope you don’t mind I’m jumping right into like, what people are interested in getting into the tips.

Yeah, let’s.

Yeah, I mean, the dates, that stuff, you can kind of like futz around with a little bit. That’s just to give you some context of, kay, this is when I’m going to let people know we’re open and this is when we’re close. But that’s a whole other discussion.

So once you have that done, what I like to do then is step back from the schedule and really think through your launch from the first moment that you decide you’re going to tell people about it.

So list out every single mention or piece of communication, whether it’s an image, whether it’s a PS in your email, whether it’s a video, like a bumper at the bottom of your videos, or maybe you mentioned it on your podcast. So don’t worry so much about the format.

At first just say, okay, we’re going to start small, we’re going to list things, starting with that PS all the way to the open cart. Now, the list might, you might not know what to put on the list. And here’s my advice for that.

You start with like the little tiny mention, that’s why I said PS. And then you kind of slowly ramp it up, like you do a piece of music. So look at it kind of like you’re turning up the music as you’re getting closer to that open cart date.

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