34: Confessions of a "failed" launch (Part 1)
Ready for some transparency?
In this episode of ill communication, I’m pulling back the curtain on an affiliate promotion I did for B-School, Marie Forleo’s premium business course.
I’m breaking down what worked for me and what didn't work for me in the hopes you can find some insights that you can take with you into your business or your next promotion or launch.
The name of this episode is a little cheeky because while these numbers may look like a flop to some, I don’t consider it a “failure” at all. I'm actually super proud of how I managed to pull together an affiliate promotion for such a huge program in a very short amount of time.
This is part one of a two-part series where I share a behind-the-scenes look at this promotion. In part one, I’ll tell you what worked in this launch. Next week, you’ll learn what didn’t work and what I plan to do differently next time.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Why I chose to become an affiliate for this program
Why I decided to have a low-key, lazy launch
How I leveraged ads, email marketing, and podcast promotions
The most successful thing I did in this launch
My final results
How to use these strategies for your own launch
If you’re thinking about testing out a new offer, trying a new launch, or just looking for new ways to promote yourself or your business, consider these low-key launch strategies.
Curious about B-School? Visit www.kimkiel.com/bschool or listen to episode 28.
You can learn more about running ads during your promotion with Claire Pelletreau's Absolute FB Ads Course. If you want to learn more about my podcast platform, check out Buzzsprout here.
If you’re enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss a single episode!
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Welcome to Ill Communication, Copywriting, Tips and sales strategies for small Business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started. Hello, my sweet friend, and welcome to episode 34 of the Ill Communication podcast. Today I'm getting real and being transparent with you. I'm pulling back the curtain on a recent affiliate promotion I did for B-school, which is Marie Forleo's Premier Online business course, and I've titled today's episode Confessions of a Failed Promotion. Honestly, to be a little cheeky because I do not think my results were quote unquote a failure. But when you compare my numbers and results with all of the big launches or promos we hear about in the online world, my results might look like a total flop. But despite this, I'm super proud of how I managed to pull together an affiliate promotion for such a huge program in a very short amount of time. And I'm absolutely delighted by the women who heard my message and signed up for B-school using my affiliate link. So I want to break down for you what worked for me and what didn't work for me in the hopes you can find some insights that you can take with you into your business or your next promotion or launch.
In today's episode, you'll get part one. What worked in this launch? And next week you'll hear part two about what didn't work and what I do differently. So as a B-school alumni, I know that every February, Marie Forleo launches her B-school promo, and in the past, her affiliates have included some very big names. Amy Porterfield, Laura Belgrade and East Duffield Thomas. Chris Carr, Danielle Laporte, Kate Northrup and Tarzan Kay, who isn't such a huge name, but that was the affiliate whom I signed up with. Now, why do I mention this? Because these people who are typically involved in affiliate launches like this have huge email lists and tremendous followings. I am an absolute nobody compared to these players. My email list is nowhere even near a thousand subscribers, and I have probably maybe between 1500 and 2000 engaged followers on my different social media channels. So right off the start I doubted whether I could even qualify to be an affiliate for B-school. I doubted it so much that I procrastinated even applying. I think I started an application in November 2022, but I honestly never completed it. And yet I kept getting an intuitive nudge to do it. So sometime in late December, like it might have been the last week of December, I applied to be an affiliate and I was notified January 3rd that I was accepted.
I was totally shocked, terrified and excited all at the same time. And then I looked at the dates of the promotion and saw the pre-launch for B-school was starting just a couple of weeks later on January 25th. Knowing I'd only have a couple of weeks to plan, prep and promote, I actually considered just forgetting the whole thing. I wouldn't have time to grow my email list with the right buyers. I wouldn't have time to host a launch event. I don't have sophisticated tech systems in place to handle running ads to a landing page and tracking and tagging leads. I wouldn't have time to create blog posts and social content and run conversion ads and do all the things I see all the other affiliate promoters doing. But then I stopped and I asked myself, What would it look like if I did a low key, lazy launch? Like, what would a minimum viable launch look like for me? I figured I was probably already doing some things that I could leverage. And look at this B-school affiliate launch as a bit of an experiment for me, and as I thought more about it, I realized what a great asset this podcast is. You see, I already have to create content for the podcast, so I figured I could create a mini series of episodes dedicated to entrepreneurship, starting a business and talking about B-school. The podcast platform I use, which is Buzzsprout, has a feature called Dynamic Content, which allows you to create ads or little bits of content that can be added to all your episodes at the same time.
It's essentially a built in advertising platform, so I knew I could write little promotions about B-school that could run before every single episode. And the best part? Those ads are free for me. So anyone who tunes in to any episode during that time would hear a B-school promo, even if it had nothing to do with B-school. In the end, I recorded five episodes that had some messaging about B-school in January. A couple of ill communication episodes dropped that just casually mentioned Marie Forleo and B-school that I transitioned into talking pretty heavily about Gen Xers and entrepreneurship, and I had one episode dedicated specifically to B-school. Now, if you're interested, you can go back and listen to episodes 25 through 29 if you like. And in addition to these five episodes that I would have had to record anyway, I ran two different dynamic ads during the promotion phase one to promote Marie Forleo's Free Bootcamp experience and one to promote B-school itself. I could have created some different ads with different angles, but again, I was aiming for simplicity and ease. And let me tell you, the results were actually pretty amazing. The episodes I created about Gen Xers and entrepreneurship became the most downloaded episodes I have created so far. They still are the top, most listened to episodes, and I had so many people sharing these episodes on social media or reaching out to me to say how much they appreciated the content.
So without a doubt, leveraging my podcast was a great strategy for me and my low key launch. Now, the other business asset I have is my newsletter. I have a lovely, intimate and engaged email list, although remember it is very, very small. I send an email on Wednesdays to promote the podcast and occasionally send another email on the weekend. So typically I'll send 1 to 2 emails a week. For context, when you're in a launch moment, you will typically send 10 to 20 emails over a 2 to 3 week period promoting and selling hard. So just keep that context in mind. But during the B-school launch and the pre-launch phase, I just kept my normal email schedule. I only sent about 6 to 8 emails. I just didn't have the bandwidth to do all of that email promotion. And I also thought B-school probably wasn't the right offer for the majority of my email subscribers, many of whom have been in business for a few years already. So between January 25th and February 22nd, essentially a month, I just sent my six regular emails and only two extra emails outside of my normal schedule. Some of these emails were structured as a pretty typical sales email, and some of them just had B-school casually mentioned in the piece. On all of those emails, I had a link to allow anyone who didn't want to hear about B-school to unsubscribe, and I was so shocked that only two people said they didn't want to hear about B-school.
From my back end analytics, I could see which emails got people clicking links and then signing up for Morrie's free trainings. I think overall about 25 people signed up for Murray's free events from my emails. The third thing I experimented with in this promotion was running ads, but I didn't run traditional conversion or list building ads. Instead, I ran podcast engagement ads. This is an approach I learned from Claire Pelletreau in her absolute FB ads course. Now, remember, I don't have the team or the tech in place to run conversion ads and campaigns, so running typical conversion ads wasn't going to work for me. Plus, they are very, very expensive. So instead I decided to focus on bringing listeners to the podcast. I set up ad campaigns to get people to listen to some of the most popular past podcast episodes that had nothing to do with B-school. But I knew that when those people were listening to those episodes, they'd hear the dynamic ads I mentioned earlier that would be running just before each episode. And I ran an ad campaign specific to two of the B-school related episodes, and in total I spent $716 on podcast promotions during this period. I definitely saw and continue to see growth in my listenership, and I think these podcast ads are one of the reasons why those Gen X business episodes ended up being so popular.
Which leads me to the final element of what worked in my low key B-school promo. I chose a laser focused niche. Gen X women. If you've been listening for a while, you know entrepreneurship has given me incredible flexibility and financial freedom in this season of life, and I'm really passionate about helping other Gen X women have successful businesses. These are the business owners I like to work with. But before the B-school promo, I never really articulated that. I didn't ever really say out loud that I work specifically with Gen Xers. So the B-school promo was an opportunity for me to test that niche and the marketing around it. And this was my biggest success and my biggest win. The feedback I received from my community was tremendous. I had dozens of women reaching out to say the messaging was really resonating with them. It validated a messaging sweet spot for me and my audience. Women who'd already taken B-school were inspired by my messaging to sign up for Marie's launch events like her webinar and boot camp. In fact, about half of the 25 people who signed up for Marie's promo events were already B schoolers. And it was super gratifying to me when a woman who's a very seasoned business owner and a business coach who's been in the online space for a long time and has seen the B-school promo come and go year after year. She reached out to me this week to tell me this was the first time she ever even considered joining B-school.
She thought the emails and messaging were spot on. Ultimately, B-school wasn't the right offer for her, but the messaging was clear and compelling. So I'm super inspired to go all in on this niche. I'm in the process of updating my website, my offers and my core messaging to really niche into serving Gen X women in business. And in fact, as I'm re going through the B-school materials with the women who signed up for B-school, I'm keeping this new audience and some new offers in mind. So those were the four things I did to have a low key launch. I leveraged my podcast. I leveraged my email list. Two things I was already doing in my business. I paid for some cheaper engagement ads to get listeners to my podcast, and I really focused on a specific niche in my marketing. So you're probably wondering how many women I invited into the program. Now, going into this, I had pretty modest and very realistic goals on the low end. I wanted just one sale and my super ambitious stretch goal was ten sales and in the end there were drumroll, please. Four sales. I'm so excited to work with four smart, creative women to start and grow their businesses using B-school and the additional bonuses and coaching I'm providing for humans might not sound like a lot to you, but given I have a small audience and just three weeks to prepare, I'm totally delighted. And besides, I think aiming for small growth is actually a little more sustainable than really hustling and working for massive growth, and I'll share more about that in the next episode.
So to close out today's episode, if you're thinking about testing a new offer, trying your hand at a launch, or just looking for easy ways to promote yourself and your business, consider these low key launch strategies. Ask yourself these questions. What am I already doing that I could leverage to promote my new offer service? Do you write emails? Blogs? Do you do weekly live videos or do you have a podcast? Leverage what you're already doing and let that be the anchor for your lazy launch. The second thing you can do is ask yourself, How can I get more eyeballs or ears on the content I'm already creating? Can you use cheaper engagement ads to drive more traffic to your existing content? Can you add different calls to action or mini ads into your own content? And the third thing have you narrowed your niche? The tighter your niche, the more effective your marketing and the easier it will be to make sales. So, my friend, that's a quick summary of what worked in my low key, modest launch of B-school, which by any outsider might be called a failure. There are definitely a few things that didn't work and things I would do differently if I was to attempt this again. And I'm going to share a few more of those insights in next week's Part two of Confessions of a Failed Launch, and have a little bit more to say about why playing small is actually a more sustainable business strategy than going for massive growth.
So make sure you're subscribed and following the podcast so you get the next episode as soon as it's released. But I'm curious if you were listening to the podcast during the B-school promotion, what did you think about it? I'd love to hear your thoughts, so please feel free to email me or connect with me on social. Thank you so much for listening today. I'll be back next week with part two of Confessions of a Failed Launch right here on the Ill Communication podcast. See you then. Hey, thanks for tuning in to today's episode, but before you go, tell me if this sounds familiar. You've just written or had someone else write your website or course or mastermind sales page, or maybe you've had the copy up and running for a while, but it's just not performing as well as you'd hoped. Wouldn't you love to have an expert sales and brand voice copywriter review your copy to flag any concerns that might be creating friction for your ideal client? Wouldn't you love to get a custom list of changes and recommended copy upgrades to immediately increase your signups and sales without having to pay thousands of dollars or wait weeks to get your copy optimized? If that sounds like you, you might be interested in my no BS copy audit. When you book a no BS copy audit, you'll get a deep dive review of your copy, a video review, a detailed checklist report and some copy punch ups you can use immediately, all delivered within ten business days.
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Resources Mentioned
Check out Claire Pelletreau’s Absolute FB Ads Course
Use Buzzsprout for your podcast
Additional Resources
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