5 Tips to a $5k Launch

5 Tips to a $5k Launch

I’ve had a lot of messages come through my Instagram after our Daily Mail’s feature about our  blue light glasses selling out so fast and our $5k launch. I got ALOT of messages about this so thought I would share a few key things that I did and how you could do them too.

 

Set your launch date

Let me say, by not setting a launch date you are setting yourself up for failure. You give yourself permission to procrastinate and permission to quit at the first sight of a hurdle. But by setting a date, you are putting a stake in the ground, you are committing to showing up no matter what.

 

I gave myself about five weeks and set a date for 1st September 2019 for launch. I must note that dependant on your product this may not be enough time. Sometimes products can take several months for a sample to be made and you may need to go back and forth to get the sample right.

 

What I did which I do not recommend LOL is winging it. I had received a lot of shit quality samples, I received one really great quality sample from a manufacturer so I order several hundred units of different styles that I had never seen before. Like I said, I DO NOT RECOMMEND doing this as it was a huge risk and financial outlay if they were bad.

 

Once I decided on a date, I made an Instagram page and had “Launching September” in the bio and I started building a website through Shopify. I added an app to the website called ‘Countdown Timer’ which allowed people to visit my website with a coloured background and the words “Glamour Glasses launching in x amount of days, hours, seconds”. I also allowed people to add their email to notify them of when we launched. This allowed me to send them an email at the time of launch.

 

 

Put out content ASAP

Don’t be like everyone else and wait to launch before putting out any posts or sharing any stories. You lose valuable time to gain momentum pre launch if you do this. Start posting relevant information to let your audience know what is coming. Let them know about what you are planning on doing and stay consistent.

 

We had five weeks of posting every 3-4 days and showing up on stories daily. I don’t believe you need to be posting several times a day, this is what used to work well on Instagram but, I don’t believe, so much anymore. Think about how much time you spend scrolling vs watching stories- I would bet that you spend the majority of your time watching stories instead.

 

 

Share the process

People that don’t share the pre-launch process are missing out on sharing some of the most exciting content with their followers. Pre-launch is where the best highs and lows are found and if you can get over the initial fear of ‘people will know I’m just starting out’ then you’re sitting on a great opportunity.

 

As mentioned, I showed up on Instagram stories daily. I shared the unboxing experience- videos of myself opening the stock before I had even seen it (these are still on Instagram Highlights section ‘BTS’). I shared when things were going well but more importantly I shared when things were going wrong and OMG there were more of those.

 

There were so many days I was in tears and I thought why the fuck would I go on Insta and show my face and be negative?? Believe it or not, I got the most interaction from these type of posts. People crave real, it makes them feel normal because it totally is, the problem is that people don’t share the negatives. They care about what people think of them (which BTW, no shit, the internet can be a very nasty place), they have imposter syndrome (who am I to come on here and talk like I’m somebody?), they’re private and a whole lot of other reasons I’m sure, but if you can overcome that initial fear (because, believe me, once you do it you will realise it’s not that bad and it totally gets easier), your followers will not only relate but appreciate you. I now have followers asking me for content, asking me to start a podcast or simply thanking me for making them not feel so alone.

 

 

Find your audience

If you do all the above but no one knows, you’re fucked. Besides finding the right audience (this is a long post for another day), find a similar page to yours and start following or simply liking and commenting on their followers pages. For Glamour Glasses it was pages like ‘Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine’ and “Business Chicks”. Women who are ambitious like those types of pages and are also my audience so when they clicked on my page and saw what I was sharing they were interested to learn what it was I was doing.

 

I also sponsored a local womens empowerment event where I gave every attendee a pair of blue light glasses and while it cost me a lot, it was great brand exposure for Glamour Glasses.

 

 

Influencers

In a nutshell, I sent out free pairs of blue light glasses to micro-influencers who then posted photos that I could then use (user generated content) for my social media posts. I also gave them a discount code to give their followers 10% off which allowed me to track their conversion rate to see if I could scale any of them. For eg. If I had used an influencer that got me 10 sales I would then arrange with them to do more posts or perhaps even a paid partnership to see how we could continue those sales over time.

 

Unfortunately we haven’t had great success through micro-influencers however when starting out, the need for user generated content is really valuable as it is a form of social proof for your brand.

 

Our strategy for 2020 is to scale our influencer strategy so I will keep you informed on how that goes! For a new brand though, micro influencers are great as you don’t normally pay; it’s simply exchanging product for photos and sometimes a testimonial- make this clear though that you would like an honest review if they’re happy and ensure you are very clear on when they should post. Unfortunately I posted out free product two months ago and am still waiting on a few influencers to post!

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