How long should my launch runway be?

So you’ve got an idea for your next offer or service. You’re excited to get it out there and start helping your audience further but you’ve heard that a good launch can take up to 12 weeks to do but you’re wondering if that is really the case? Couldn’t you just put this out there tomorrow and get sales?

The truth is that it totally depends on your starting point.

IF you’re a total rockstar already when it comes to nurturing your community then you can start to throw offers out with very little notice. I have one client who has a very popular podcast and she spends a lot of time all year round nurturing her audience, chatting to them and engaging with them daily and for her we can put new offers out with very little notice and get amazing results.

If you are brand new to launching online offers and have a cold audience or little to no audience of your ideal client then to get the results that you dream of you need to take a step back and create a longer launch runway for yourself.

Before we even begin to map out your launch timeline I want to take a step back and talk about the buyer journey and the stages that we need to take our audience through before they’re ready to buy.

What is the buyer journey?

The goal of a launch is to take your audience through the journey of not knowing you exist all the way through to making a purchase.

To do this we use a range of laucnh tactics over a period of time to maximise the amount of sales that we can make during the launch. The truth is that your audience are all going to be at different stages of this journey and so the launch roadmap is really there to give them as many chances as possible to buy.

The 3 key stages of a successful launch

All successful launches can be broken down into 3 main stages.

Stage 1: Growth

The focus here should be all about becoming visible to our target market and growing our audience. We want to start building awareness in our audience of who we are and start getting them interested in how we can help them. It is crucial at this stage to be super clear on who your target audience is and what your offer is about so you can start to create content around that topic. Creating a lead magnet will help you start to build that email list of dream clients.

Stage 2: Nurture

This is the time to focus on creating hype and excitement for your upcoming offer, we want to plant the seed that it’s coming and get your audience ready. If your audience doesn’t know it’s coming then they’re not going to be ready to make that purchase. This is where we are going to present our offer as the solution to their problems/ desires.

We are continuing to build the interest in our business and what we help with which then helps to build the desire in our audience to buy from us/ work with us. A great way to do this is through a waitlist strategy which can help you to test the interest for the course and offer an incentive for early purchases.

Stage 3: Convert

This is where you are holding your launch event, whether that’s a masterclass, challenge etc - this is all about building authority, trust and selling your course during the open cart period. The focus here needs to be on communicating the value of the offer in a way that resonates with your audience and taps into that desire to work with you.

Your launch should also contain strategies and elements to serve all the different buyer personalities.

Once you understand the buyer journey and the different stages of a launch this is when you can start to make a launch plan and set out a timeline.

Building your launch roadmap

With this in mind your launch roadmap should take your audience through this 3 stage journey every time that you put out a new offer. However as I mentioned above, the starting point of where you are with your audience will determine the length of time you actually spend in each stage.

Typically we would suggest 12 weeks to go from start to finish through this cycle.

This is perfect for you if you don’t have a warm audience, you don’t have enough of your target audience in your audience or you have a large course to build (it’s often a good idea to coincide your launch time line with your course build so that you’re not delaying getting offers out there too much and also so you don’t build something that actually no one wants to buy!)

3 different launch timelines for different scenarios:

PRO TIP: Once you found the timeline that works best for you another top tip is to map everything out into your Google Calendar and add dates to all of the major milestones so that you can start to give yourself deadlines to work to.

Want help mapping out your launch runway? Click here to book a call with us and see how we can help you!