Discover the Secrets Behind Remarkable Launches with Amber Miller

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like A Billion Dollar Moves. Today, we'll discover the secrets behind remarkable launches. To drop these value bombs, I am brought to Amber Miller and to EO Fire Studios. Amber, aka The Delegation Diva, is a product launch manager and advisor for online entrepreneurs running six and seven figure businesses. And today, we'll be talking about a mistake that so many people make when it comes to launches. We'll talk about how to make your launch a success.

0:37We'll talk about how to have a backup plan for if something goes wrong. And also the five metrics we should be tracking daily during our launch and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Amber and our sponsors. The Gold Digger Podcast hosted by Jenna Kuchar is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger Podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. One of my favorite recent episodes is titled, How I've Built an Unmatched Team Culture, an insanely important topic for all business owners to dive into.

1:14Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Wondering how to leverage a virtual assistant to save you time and money all while growing your business? Get Belay's ultimate guide to working with a virtual assistant today. Just text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, to 55123 to get started. Amber, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, what's up, Fire Nation? So excited to be here. Yeah, so you know, I'm going to say that letting go and getting support is probably one of the things that many don't agree with, but I have seen it time and time again, that it's the best way to grow and scale your business.

2:02Thinking that others can't do things as well as you can, that may be true. They just might do it in a different way. Fire Nation, we started off with a bang because we are discovering the secrets behind remarkable launches. And when it comes to a launch plan, Amber, most entrepreneurs, and believe me, I've talked to them. They've created these incredibly detailed plans that are pages and pages long. I mean, sometimes they're like written in a secret code so nobody else can steal their ideas. And the reality is this, you think that this is a mistake. So share how we can avoid this costly mistake and what we should do instead.

2:45When we think in terms of a detailed plan or a plan at all, we go right into overwhelm and that's too hard. That's too much. I don't need that. But the bottom line is that this is actually the most overlooked part of launch planning and it's where it can take you from calm to chaotic in seconds. So if we are not all on the same page, right, we being your launch team, you know, those who are helping you and if we're just flying by the seat of our pants, there are going to be things that are going to be missed and dropped because, hey, we're all human, right? We can't keep track of all of this in our head.

3:23So maybe it doesn't need to be, like you said, pages and pages, but it really does need to encompass all of the pieces of what needs to be done to kick off and run a successful and remarkable launch. Fire Nation, again, kiss. Keep it super simple. And we're going to be getting into some reasons why this is so important. I want to pull a little bit from my military experience as well. But the reality is this, Amber, we all want to be successful with our launch. So I want to hear it straight from the delegation diva herself. What are your most successful and valuable tips to make our launch everything we want it to be?

4:05Yeah. And some of these may sound simple, but you'd be surprised how many people don't incorporate them in their launch. The first one that we have seen that has easily increased sales by 15 % is adding a card abandoned follow-up sequence. And even if it's just one email that goes out maybe 30 minutes to an hour after somebody has visited a sales page and not purchased, just that alone has made a significant difference in the bottom line of sales. Another thing that we have seen that works so well and is so simple is adding another offer on your thanks page. Don't put it on your main sales page to where we're going to confuse the buyer.

4:45Let's get them to raise their hand and enter their credit card info. But once they hit that thanks page, you now have a buyer and we know that buyers buy more, right? So let's offer them something else. What else do you have that you can now upsell them into and keep them into your sales cycle? And then the last thing that we've seen here recently that just amazes me at our bottom line on cart close day is adding a few more emails towards the end of the day just to those who visited the sales page. Just adding two, maybe three more emails that afternoon into the evening reminding them, hey, we know that you had interest.

5:30Let's get you to sign up. Just doing that alone has also added another 5 % to 10 % to sales. Fire Nation, these little things add up to big results when you do them correctly and you do them consistently. And I did mention I'm going to chat a little military. I was in the Army for eight years and we actually had this saying. It was called the Audie Murphy Law. And that's anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Like literally that was our expectation going in. so that we tried to account for those things and we made sure that nothing could go wrong. Because if anything could go wrong, it would go wrong.

6:07So when something goes wrong, how can we shift quickly, Amber, and pivot to avoid disaster? And you're absolutely right. Plan on something going wrong. I don't think I've ever worked on a launch where there is not something that hasn't gone wrong. So first, I love that you pointed this out, just expect for there to be something to go wrong. Second, the best way to be able to quickly pivot during a launch is to have actually thought this out ahead of time and be doing some split testing, right? So right from the get-go, be split testing your lead magnet, your opt-in pages with a different headline, something as simple as a different color on your shirt, surprisingly.

6:55If you're doing video, different clothes colors, lighter colors seem to convert better. I don't know why. Changing out some of the words on the page, adding testimonials, not adding testimonials. But the more you can get actual data and see where you're converting better and how you can shift, it's going to be easier for you to pivot if you find that things aren't working the way you want or expect, and you'll actually have concrete things to move forward with. Fire Nation, again, these are the things that are important. This overly detailed plan that lines out everything after it that's going to happen, and it has happened in this specific order, and then one thing goes wrong, and then your entire plan is out the window.

7:40That's not what you want to be creating. You want to be creating an understanding that, hey, we're going to do these things that work. We're going to have a plan that can be agile, that can adjust on the fly if and when things go wrong. And we're going to make things happen so that we can avoid that disaster that we've heard about with other launches. And we have a lot of things to talk about in this topic and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. I'm all about lifestyle freedom. I want to be able to do what I want, when I want. And there's no better time to kick your feet up poolside than the summertime.

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9:56Just text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, to 55123 to get started. Amber, we're back and And let's be honest with our listeners. We should be having our finger on the pulse of our own personal launches at all times. Not just sometimes, but at all times. This is if we want to be as successful as it can be. So that being said, you have five metrics that we should be tracking and reviewing daily during our launch. What are those five metrics? Yes. So the first three are going to relate to your leads. We want to be looking at our leads for each specific lead magnet or ebook or webinar. We want to see how each one is converting and if we're hitting our goal, right?

10:45Then also want to be looking at how many total opt-ins for each, for all of our lead magnets, ebooks, webinars, whatever our pre-launch content is. And that's what's called our launch bucket. So those are all the people that have come in just from this launch. And then we want to look at how many unique leads have been added to our CRM or to our account, right? How much has our list grown so that we can start comparing when we get sales, right? Once cart opens, not only are we going to be wanting to track sales daily, and that also is going to be telling us, do we need to pivot, right? Are sales not going the way we want?

11:24We may need to pivot. And then number five is we need to be measuring our sales conversion. and I like to do that from our bucket, from our leads, how many of those who've come into this launch have now converted into sales? Because that's the whole point of doing a launch, right? So it sounds simple, but you need to keep your pulse and on these numbers daily. I actually recommend twice a day, I would be looking at these in the morning and the afternoon because they're gonna really determine the flow of your launch moving forward. And what are your favorite platforms or softwares to use to do this?

12:01You know what? I love just a good old Google spreadsheet. Good old Google spreadsheet. It's easy to share with others on the team. You can put in your calculations and rinse and repeat for each launch by cloning it. Super simple. Fire Nation, leads, opt-ins, your launch bucket, the unique leads to your CRM, measuring sales conversions. These are things you need to know on a daily basis, multiple times per day if possible. Now, if things really go wrong, and sometimes they do, we need a backup plan in place. What strategy should we have for this backup plan, Amber? Well, I love how Claire Cook said, if plan A doesn't work, the alphabet has 25 more letters.

12:45And that is so true. So for me, I'm a big believer in having a plan A, B, C, D, E, and sometimes F. And when I talk about a backup strategy, there's a few things that we don't think about. And the best time to think about them is before your launch, because when stuff hits the fan right in the middle of a launch, it's critical that you can pivot with your backup strategy. So the first one would be your CRM. I've actually had clients ready to launch and not naming any names, but a CRM system shut them down for deliverability issues. Bam, we went from being able to launch in a few hours to, you know, needing to pivot to another software to keep this launch going.

13:31So be thinking, you know, maybe you already have that set up. If it's a big launch where it's you're launching once a year, and this is mission critical, it is worth your while to have a backup CRM set up and ready to go. I've had to use it before. Another one we don't think about is our merchant account. We're collecting money. Sometimes some of these merchant accounts will hold your money. They'll end up holding funds for 30 to 60 days. They get nervous, seeing all of this money come in in a quick, fast way. So having a backup merchant account where you can flip between Stripe and Authorize.net or just having those options that if you can quickly pivot to moving a different way for that money to flow in, that's super important for you to keep your launch going.

14:26And the third one's pretty obvious. Well, hopefully to most, and that's your sales page. Having that sales page up on another domain on a different hosting company sounds like a lot of work. It is, but it has saved us. And so many times when traffic or whatever it might be has taken down a sales page, we can easily get back up by redirecting and going to our backup sales site and we're not missing sales. It's a quick pivot. One of my favorite things that a lot of people do not do, but I have definitely found that it helps. And this is specifically when you're sending emails out and you say, click here.

15:06and when you click there, that of course is meant to forward you to the sales page. Well, sometimes things happen and whenever you click there, it was entered in wrong or there's some kind of issue and it's opening up in a new page or it's doing this or it's doing that and it's just not working for people. So whenever I do say, you know, click here to learn more or to go to the sales page, I also paste the exact URL below. So when people do that, they get an error. They actually go back very often and they just will copy and paste the URL that's written out into a different browser or into just a new window.

15:41And that will oftentimes save a lot of things. So - Love it. Huge opportunity right there. I've had some people that have just been like, oh, my LinkedIn and work on my email. And I'm like, oh, if you would have just done that, it would have like saved so much. So a lot of things you can learn from talking with people who have been there and done that. And Amber, we've been talking about a lot of brilliant things today when it comes to launches. What is the one thing you really want Fire Nation to understand from our conversation? I think launching has a bad rap. I talk to so many entrepreneurs who really love what they do.

16:14They really want to launch more, but there's this overwhelming fear of there's so much to do. It's exhausting. It's tiring. And it really doesn't have to be that way. If we follow a plan, our detailed plan, and if we have things set in advance, it really doesn't have to be that daunting. And like you mentioned earlier, the same thing with your plan, you know, KISS, your launch can be that way. You don't have to have, you know, you can do whatever you want. That's the beauty of it. This is your launch. So incorporate the parts that you like that others are doing and take out what you think is too much and just kind of go with what feels good to you.

16:58But don't let it stop you from putting out your product or program. Amber, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, get in touch with you, what is your call to action for our listeners? Yeah, so we've got a great guide that will walk you through launches as well as kind of this cheat sheet on all of the tasks that you should be kind of monitoring at remarkablelaunches.com and you can go grab that for free. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with AM and JLD today, so keep up the heat. Links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Amber in the search bar.

17:34The show notes page will pop right up. And Amber, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you so much.

18:15for business professionals. The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. One of my favorite recent episodes is titled How I've Built an Unmatched Team Culture, an insanely important topic for all business owners to dive into. Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Wondering how to leverage a virtual assistant to save you time and money all while growing your business? Get Belay's ultimate guide to working with a virtual assistant today. Just text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, to 55123 to get started.