668: Behind the Scenes of Our Biggest Launch EVER

0:01Today's episode is sponsored in part by Revolve and Spectrum. Revolve is my all time favorite place to shop for my dream wardrobe. Head to revolve.com forward slash gold digger to shop my favorites and get 15 % off your first order with the code gold digger. Spectrum business keeps your business connected with reliable service you can count on. Visit spectrum.com forward slash free for life to learn how you can get business internet free forever. As always, you can find all of our amazing deals in the show notes. Now let's get into it. okay I have been on this ruthless pursuit to purge any clothes that I'm not actually wearing like if I haven't reached for it in months it's gotta go I am trying to be really intentional about what I bring into my closet right now which means I am only buying pieces that I know I will actually wear and use revolve just gets it though I'm literally wearing my brown autry sneakers from there right now and my new suede purse it fits my laptop in it so it's basically a fancy shoulder bag that works for everything.

1:02I love finding pieces like that. Things that look good, but also work hard for my actual life. Their holiday shop is live right now with all the good stuff. Sparkly party dresses, cozy sets, cute gifts, everything you need for whatever is on your calendar. And it's all in one place, which makes shopping feel way less overwhelming. Whether it's a weekend away, a big night out, or a holiday party, your dream wardrobe is just one click away. Head to revolve.com forward slash gold digger shop my edit and take 15 % off your first order with the code gold digger fast two-day shipping easy returns it's literally the only place you need to shop from that's revolve.com forward slash gold digger to shop my favorites and get 15 % off your first order with the code gold digger offer available for a limited time so happy shopping so what we did is we sent out an email or two to our full email list and just kind of started priming the audience, talking about Pinterest strategy, talking about the topic of Pinterest, and talking about this idea that we need traffic in order to sell our offers.

2:08Hey, my name is Jenna Kutcher and I am obsessed with all things business, marketing numbers, and helping you to navigate both the messy and the magical seasons of this thing called life. I'm a small town mama who took a$300 camera, grew a successful photo biz, and now I work from home and run a seven-figure online business. I teach you the tried and true secrets to building a career you adore. Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money, hardship, growth, loss, and marketing are all topics we discuss here. Think of this as your one-stop shop for happy hour with a gal pal mixed with business school.

2:40Pull up a seat, make sure you're cozy, and get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn. This is the Gold Digger Podcast. if I shared one of my guilty pleasures, it would be this. I love hearing creators break down the inspiration, the why behind their creations, whether it is a digital launch or a brand new product or the inspiration behind their book or why they decided to make a decision that they did. I just love when people reverse engineer things. It's like one of my favorite things to listen to. And that is exactly what I'm about to do today. So I hope that you are someone just like me.

3:17We recently launched my signature program, the Pinterest Lab. It is a course that teaches students how to leverage the platform that is Pinterest and use it to drive traffic and eyeballs to their hard work. I am obsessed with this program. It is a program that has changed so many entrepreneurs' lives. And the coolest thing was, is it was the best launch we have ever done in the history of ever. It was our best launch financially, best launch numbers wise, best launch energetically. It was incredible. And I honestly loved every minute of it. I'm sure you can hear the love in my voice. And so today we are going to reverse engineer what worked and break it all down.

4:00Are you ready to dive in? Here we go. If you love Gold Digger, then you'll love the Side Hustle Pro podcast hosted by Nikala Matthews-Okome, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Side Hustle Pro showcases diverse entrepreneurs who have scaled from a humble side hustle to a full-blown profitable business. Every week, you'll learn actionable strategies to start small and get going wherever and whoever you are. In Nikala's recent episode titled, How to Make Content for your business in less than one hour a week. I learned so much about how to optimize recording sessions to get content done quicker, as well as new content creation tech and tools.

4:43You have to tune in. Listen to Side Hustle Pro wherever you get your podcasts. So before we dive in, I wanted to kind of talk about the history of launching and just some of the trends that I've seen in my own life and business. So it's been really interesting. In the last few years, I actually haven't done a very big live launch. I've done a lot of quieter, smaller launches. And I honestly feel like since I became a mom, my energetic bandwidth to do a very big live launch just didn't really feel there. And I feel like there's a few different reasons why this time I was like, let's go. Let's go big.

5:22And I'll talk about those in just a minute. But I wanted to say that oftentimes when people talk about launching, they talk about how how grueling and intense it is. I remember when I learned launching years ago, I learned it from a woman who had this energy that was frenetic and anxious. And it made me think like, oh my gosh, launching is like preparing for battle. Why does anyone do this? Yes, the financial reward is amazing, but this is so intense. And I just don't subscribe to that. It doesn't work with me. It doesn't resonate with me. It doesn't motivate me. And if you are someone who you're like, I want this to be fun.

5:56I just want you to know it can be. I thoroughly enjoyed this launch so much. And my team loved it. It was just this beautiful energy. And I just want to bring that out. And I also want to bring it into the world of launching a new creation. That it doesn't have to be this super intense things. Yes, things break. Things go wrong. You maybe forgot something. That happens to all of us. But it's that energy that you bring into it. I think that people feel that, especially your team, but also your dream clients. They feel that too. So in the last few years, I've done more quieter and condensed launches.

6:33And there's a few reasons why. One, I didn't have an office space. So in our last home, I would do my webinars from a very crowded closet. And it was just tricky. We'd always be trying to figure it out. Will the kids be sleeping? Is everyone going to be quiet? It was more stressful in that sense. And now that I have an office, I just have so much more freedom. Even recording this podcast episode, I used to have to really coordinate when the house would be quiet and would it be quiet so that I could record. And having a designated office space has just made it feel like a lot more inviting in my life to do things like live webinars and not be super anxious about if it's going to work with the context of my family.

7:14I also have done quieter launches in the past where I'm still emailing my list and promoting them slightly. But the bigger goal of those launches was to get a really solid product for Evergreen, which is automation. And so I was doing those launches in this effort to update everything, get everything current, and then just have a really strong recording that could run for the rest of the year. But there was a few reasons why I was really excited about doing a live launch and seeing what we're capable of. And it's interesting because in the past few years, I've done some bigger launches like monetarily and energetically, but they've been more affiliate launches.

7:54And I feel like since 2020 and there was the iOS update, there's been all of these different things. There might've been a part of me that was like questioning, like, does this still work? Can this still work for me? Do the things that used to work, do they still work when you put them into action? And I think that there was this little seed of doubt within myself. I watched these affiliate launches do really well, but someone else was selling their product. And this launch was the biggest motivator and rejuvenator for myself, my business, and my offers. It just reignited something within me. So there are so many moving parts to a live launch, specifically a live launch of a digital course.

8:38So if you're listening to this and you don't have your own digital course, I want for you to just think about the things that I'm about to talk about in the context of whatever it is that your offer is. Whether you have a new service that you're going to promote, or you have a new offer, or a new business, or a new side hustle, or whatever that looks like. All of this can be translated. It's just your job to be the translator of taking what I'm about to talk about and asking yourself, how does this work for me? Or how does this make sense for me? So when we talk about a live launch, there are so many different moving parts.

9:10There is the pre-launch, the launch itself, and the post-launch. In the pre-launch phase, we did a lot of updating. And I will say that when I think about all these phases, specifically in the timing of this promotion, from beginning to end, it took about, gosh, probably 2 months total. So it's not just, you make all this money in one week and then you're done. The whole prep and launch and even the post-launch period that I am still finding myself in, it's about 2-3 months. So it's not this quick hit. While the launch itself is quick, the planning, prep, and execution of it take a little bit longer.

9:52So in the pre-launch phase, what we did is we updated the course. And this is something that's really important to me as a creator, specifically as a creator of marketing content. I want my courses to be up to date. I want them to be current. I want them to follow best practices. And so we went through the course from top to bottom and updated it. So we removed any references that didn't make sense. For example, Pinterest used to have hashtags on the platform. They no longer. So we removed all of those references from the program to keep it really clear and simple. I re-recorded parts. We also went through and really updated the offer.

10:29I'm going to share about what was super helpful in that. But I wanted to re-evaluate what is this offer? Who does it help? How does it help them? And what is inside that will help anyone who might get stuck or who might doubt that this could work for them? And so we actually updated the entire offer. The course itself stayed relatively the same just with new content that was relevant to the year that we find ourselves in. But the offer did change a bit. We also went through and did a full copy refresh. So we had been utilizing copy that had been written for about maybe like four years ago. And we did a huge overhaul on all of the pieces of copy.

11:11So we're talking sales page, webinar registration page, thank you page, email copy, ad copy, captions for social media, all of the copy was touched. And then we also updated all of the pages that the copy lived on. So again, the sales page, the webinar page, the thank you page, the replay page. So we went through and kind of rebranded and updated all of those pages. We also updated the webinar, updated the ads, the photos, the copy, the videos. And we basically overhauled everything. And so one thing that I love is what is incredible about digital courses is that if you can create them with this evergreen or this long-term vision in mind, when you go to do updates, it shouldn't be these massive overhauls, though it could be.

12:02We didn't start from scratch. We started with what we had and we updated it. But we also really did a massive update in terms of all of the marketing. And this is really crucial. Even when we did these more micro quieter launches, that was a part of the process. Because I feel like, especially if you have something in automation, meaning it is just running and helping you get sales every day, you want to make sure that there is a time on your calendar where you are looking at how you can update all of these parts to really optimize the campaign. And so every single year, we do an update like this to each of our programs so that our students are getting the latest and greatest info.

12:42and so that we have the fresh marketing angles, the fresh marketing copy, and the fresh marketing pages. So there was a lot of prep and work that went into this. And there was a lot of people involved here. So we had one team member who was reviewing the course and suggesting the changes. We actually outsourced a lot of our copy needs. And so we had a team of copywriters working on that. We had a web designer helping us with the pages. I took on the brunt of the webinar. We had our graphic designer helping with the ads and we had our copywriter helping with the copy. So like you can see like there were a lot of moving parts for us.

13:18But I also want to remind you that when I used to launch before I had a team of this size or the resources that I have, I was the one doing all of these things. And so if you are preparing for a launch coming up and you are thinking like, oh, you know, I'll get around to this or do this, like start early and anticipate as much as you possibly can so that when you get into that launch phase, you're not having that anxious, frenetic energy, you feel ready and equipped. So we did a ton of prep in advance, which was super helpful. And at this stage of the game, we've done so many launches that we kind of know what we need to anticipate and how we can prepare in advance.

14:00I think one of the reasons why our team energetically enjoys the work that we do even in busier times like launching is because we are so good at anticipating what our needs are going to be and preparing them before we get into the crazy. So that was a lot of the stuff that we were doing in terms of updating. Again, I'll review. We updated the course. We updated the offer. We updated the copy. We updated the webpages. we updated the webinar and we updated the ads. So again, a ton of work went into this before we even got in to the launch itself. So here's what worked for this launch. So here's the timing of what it looked like.

14:44So one week we do pre-webinars where we are just inviting people to show up to our training. So we have one week of webinar invites, then we have webinar week, and that is when the cart opens. So that's when the course is for sale. That usually happens when the first webinar happens. So our cart opened on a Tuesday, and then it closed the following Tuesday. So you can kind of see that the main launch period is about 14 days in length, one whole week dedicated to inviting people to the webinar, the other whole week dedicated to selling the program. So I'll break this down into the three phases.

15:20So we have the pre-launch, the launch, and then the post-launch. So in our pre-launch phase, we were really focusing on these new additions and re-recording the program. We also decided to up the price of our program by$100. So previously, the program was$197, which is very affordable. And we updated it and we added so much value in our updates that I was super confident and clear that we needed to raise the price. So we raised the price by$100. And what I wanted to do is I recognized since this program had been in automation, there were people who were likely either on the fence of buying it or maybe didn't buy it yet, but needed a reason to.

16:03And so we actually offered the old price to anyone who is in the funnel recently. And we said, Hey, we are making these amazing updates to the program. You're going to get the brand new program. We are raising the price by$100. So if you want to lock in before we do the price raise. You can lock in right now. And we did that. And we did a good amount of sales. It wasn't as much as I anticipated, but we had segmented it down to a very small audience. So we basically said, anyone who has been in this funnel in the last 90 days, we'll give them this offer so that they can jump in before the price goes up.

16:37And so it did give us some financial resources before we actually got into the launch. And I liked that just because I'm like, these people recently heard the price. And now if they watch our live launch and they see that updated price, they might be kicking themselves. And so we wanted to give them that chance to opt in. It's something that I wasn't crazy about, but I would probably do again if we do another price raise in a different program. We also always love to use a pre-launch phase as a way of priming our audience. And I will be honest and say that we did a decent job on this, but I think that we could do even better in the future.

17:12I think that the pre-launch period is super, super critical. When we break down the pre-launch period, we really want to think about content that is going to help people understand the what. The what here is like Pinterest is a search engine that can allow your work to be found. And the why, the why is you need people to have their eyes on your content and your work and your offers in order to become consumers or clients of yours. And so we focused our pre-launch content on the what and the why. And then our launch itself was the how. Here's how you do this. And so it's really, really important that you don't just dive into a launch cold.

17:54So what we did is we sent out an email or two to our full email list and just started priming the audience, talking about Pinterest strategy, talking about the topic of Pinterest, and talking about this idea that we need traffic in order to sell our offers. And so it was kind of again, focused on the what and the why. And then the launch itself was focused on the how. Another thing that we did in the pre-launch period that I'm absolutely going to do for any of my future launches, and I highly recommend it, is that we really looked at what is the offer and how do we paint the destination and not get lost in the process.

18:32A lot of times when we are pitching or selling our own things, we get so obsessed with the features and the process of how do you get to this place? And we forget to paint the destination. In fact, I heard this story from a man named Colin Boyd. And I'll tell you how he helped me with this launch. But he was talking about if I were to tell you, hey, let's go to Mexico. Okay. So in order to go to Mexico, we have to book really expensive flights. And then we have to take a taxi or an Uber to the airport really early in the morning. You have to go through TSA. You have to take your shoes off. You have to wait for the plane.

19:08Maybe the plane is going to be late. You have to unload your suitcase. You have to get... We talk about that when we sell instead of saying, Hey, do you want to go to Mexico? And we could sit on a cabana and we could drink a delicious drink and we could look out at the ocean. Wouldn't that be amazing? And a lot of times as marketers, we get so caught up in teaching the process and talking about the process that we forget to paint a beautiful picture of the destination that gets people excited. And so when I was in this pre-launch phase, I was really looking at like, what is the destination? How does this matter?

19:43The destination is getting traffic to your hard work. You, my friend, are on this content creation hamster wheel. And you're creating all this content, but no one's actually seeing it. And because no one's seeing it, you're just thinking that your content sucks. But that's not actually the thing. You need to use a tool to drive traffic to that content so that you can convert that traffic and get real results. That's the destination. Imagine with me. Here's the destination. Imagine with me. You have this system that takes you under one hour a week that drives traffic to your hard work and that traffic converts into real results.

20:18And you know, without a doubt that you can turn on and set and forget this system every single week so that it can run while you rest. That's the destination. That is the Mexico cabana. Not saying, okay, here's what you need to do in order to get this. So I thought a lot about this in the pre-launch phase. Two things that were very helpful for me. So there is this guy who I mentioned named Colin Boyd. I was listening to my girl, Amy Porterfield's podcast the week before my launch happened. And Colin was on Amy's podcast talking about different storytelling strategies. and he was telling that story about like how to focus more on the destination and not the process and I was literally taking notes I remember I was on a plane I listened to this podcast two times it was that good and I asked Amy I texted Amy and I said would you put me in touch with Colin I have a few questions for him and I'm just curious if you'd be willing to help me I was in the phase of creating my webinar and the techniques that he had for storytelling were just so compelling to me And so Colin kind of flew in like a knight in shining armor in this pre-launch phase when I was preparing my webinar and I was second guessing everything.

21:24And he helped me solidify these conversion stories that I told on the webinar. If you want to learn more about Colin, he actually did an interview with me, episode 665. It was a recent episode that we aired. It was so good. Or you can go to jennacutcher.com slash story and you can learn more about how he helped me tell better stories on my webinar. So that was super helpful. The other super helpful thing in the pre-launch phase was Alex Tremose's book, 100 Million Offer. It is such a good book. I have recommended it to so many people. And in his book, he talks about how to create an irresistible offer.

22:01And I actually use a lot of his frameworks in repositioning my offer, in thinking through what are the possible objections that someone's going to have? How can I help them overcome those objections? And what is the offer itself. And so both Colin and Alex were really, really helpful in the critical phase of creating my offer that we were going to share during the launch. The other thing that I really thought about in this pre-launch phase was just thinking about different angles. So a lot of times when we create, at least for myself, I create with this SMART goal. So I always love to think about my courses and saying like, when you take this program, you will learn how to drive traffic to your offers in under one hour a week.

22:46That's a really great marketing angle. But that's just one angle. And so I had to think about like, what other angles does Pinterest help with? And how can I share that with people? So I thought about Pinterest gives your content a longer shelf life. It really elongates the longevity of your content. So you can create less, but generate more results with it in a long-term way. Pinterest can also save you a ton of time. Again, my strategy takes under an hour a week. Whereas the average small business owner is spending 8 hours a week on marketing. If they could just spend 1 hour a week giving their content a longer shelf life and driving more traffic, they would see a much greater ROI for their time spent on marketing.

23:27So I was thinking about more angles because in the past, I think I just drove really hard on one angle. And I was trying to think of like, well, that angle might not make sense for someone, but what are angles that would connect with somebody regardless of where they're at in their business or what that looks like. And so I really spent a lot of time on the offer itself, the presentation of the offer and the angle of the offer. And this was all during the pre-launch phase. So really the pre-launch phase was like prep. And then it was also priming my audience. And so starting to talk about the topic of Pinterest more on social media to our email list and just getting people to start thinking about the what and the why and buying into that so that when we got to the how, they were ready to dive in.

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26:09Can you believe that we're already wrapping up 2025? This year was packed with travel and so many new memories. One of my favorite moments was our team retreat in Arizona with the incredible women who help me keep this business running. I also recently took the kids to Nashville during fall break and somewhere in between I squeezed in a trip to Puerto Rico with friends. We booked some of our most memorable stays this year on Airbnb. There's something special about finding a place that doesn't just look great in the photos but actually feels welcoming the moment you walk in. That this feels right kind of feeling.