Let’s talk about launch sequences.
Typically, we’d talk about launch sequences for products, but I’m not selling any products (yet), I’m selling productized services.
I think the same factors and formula can (and should!) be applied to productized services to ‘continually’ launch them to an audience. You’re selling something. People are interested in buying your something. Tell them about your something.
By creating an evergreen launch sequence for a productized service, you ensure that you’re exposing every prospect who joins your list to the right information, content, and calls to action about your productized services… at the right time.
And if they don’t buy, then they can be continually exposed to a slow, steady stream of educational information, positioning you as an expert and best choice the next time they’re ready to buy.
I was thinking about this and trying to plan it out for one of my products, the Website X-Ray. I’d go:
[Blog Post] → [Lead Magnet] → [Drip Sequence] → [Productized Service], but I kept getting lost along the way.
It was too easy for me to start a list of potential blog posts and think of dozens of lead magnets or content upgrades for that post. Likewise, for any lead magnet, I could think of a number of different drip sequences for that lead magnet.
But then I was stuck. I often found myself in a corner where I had followed a very logical and orderly progression that had led me to a place… quite far from the productized service I was planning on selling.
It was here that I realized, I was thinking about the entire process backward. I recalled Joanna Weibbe’s talk at MicroConf 2015 where she educated us on how each element on a web page or in an email had a specific job to be done.
Thinking through it this way, I realized that each and every element in an evergreen launch sequence for a productized service has a job to be done — and the job relates to the product you’re selling.
- Your [Drip Sequence] is written specifically to get people educated and ready to buy your [Productized Service]
- Your [Lead Magnet] is written specifically to get someone across the threshold and subscribed to your [Drip Sequence]
- Your [Blog Post] is written to lead to a natural call to action to sign up in exchange for your [Lead Magnet]
By working backwards from your Productized Service to your blog post, you’re creating the elements that have the best chance of success of selling your Productized Service.
“How do I implement this for my business?”
First, you’ll want to work backwards from your productized service and ‘build out’ each element in your funnel:
- For your productized service, what does the drip email sequence look like? How does it sell your service?
- For your Lead Magnet, how does it relate to the drip email sequence that they’ll be receiving? How do both the lead magnet and the service solve the same ‘expensive problem’ for the subscriber?
- For the article that the visitor arrives at, how does it naturally lead to the next step of “…and when you get [Lead Magnet], you’ll learn how to solve this expensive problem!”
It’s this backwards planning that helps you develop a cohesion in your marketing funnel. Let’s walk through what I view as a hypothetical ‘great’ example of an implementation.
Example ‘Evergreen’ Productized Launch
For this example, let’s talk about the productized service that we’re selling: an ‘Email Subscriber Growth Audit’ where you review the top of your customer’s email marketing funnel and identify optimizations that they can implement to increase their opt-in rate.
For this Evergreen Launch idea to work, we’ll want to make sure that the drip sequence, the lead magnet, and the article topics are all in alignment, to clearly sell the subscriber on the expensive problem, the solution, and the value.
Let’s step through each piece one-by-one:
Drip Sequence
Because our end goal is to sell an ‘Email Subscriber Growth Audit’ (“Growth Audit”), we’ll want our course to naturally lead the subscriber to the conclusion that by purchasing our Growth Audit, they’ll experience a solution to their expensive problem (“Why isn’t my list growing? I have a ton of traffic, but my opt-in rate is so low!”)
To do that, our drip sequence needs to cover a few ‘key’ elements:
- The expensive problem that our subscriber is experiencing
- The solution that we’re prescribing – and what makes our solution unique
- The ‘what’ and ‘why’ behind our solution, broken down into individual steps (and emails)
- A pitch, selling your productized service
- Objections and testimonials for your productized service
- Frequently asked questions about your productized service
- A final pitch for your productized service
For our example of a “Growth Audit”, our drip sequence could move through:
- Expensive Problem — “Why isn’t my list growing? I have a ton of traffic!”
- Solution — “By doing a systematic audit of the mouth of your funnel, you’ll identify the areas to optimize”
- What and Why — “Look at these key areas and consider these optimizations”
- Pitch — “My Growth Audit does this for you, saving you time and helping you make more money”
- Objections — Common objections – and testimonials that overcome those objections
- FAQs — Frequently Asked Questions about your Growth Audit
- Final Pitch — One final pitch for your Growth Audit
Lead Magnet
Now that we have a crystal clear idea of the drip sequence that’s ‘selling’ our productized service, we can design a lead magnet that directly links to this drip sequence. That means:
- The Lead Magnet should address the same expensive problem
- The Lead Magnet should perscribe the same solution
- The Lead Magnet should offer some immediate, implementable value: a small fix, a checklist, a guide, or something else immediately actionable
For our example “Growth Audit”, our lead magnet could be a checklist of 5 quick optimizations to make to increase your opt-in rate.
Article Writing
And with this lead magnet, drip sequence, and productized service, we have a formula (and ‘destination’ in mind) for every article that you write:
- First, you start with a question that someone in your audience has asked, related to the expensive problem your productized service solves
- Then, you write the article to answer their question
- Finally, as the conclusion, you’re able to say “And to learn more about how to solve [Expensive Problem], enter your email below to get my [Lead Magnet] — and you’ll also get a free course walking you through how to [Solve Expensive Problem]
That way, every article that our hypothetical consultant writes about Opt-In Rate Optimization or Email Marketing Audits can point to the same lead magnet and course. And the people that read those articles will be the ones most likely to purchase the productized service.
By pairing an evergreen launch sequence with a productized service, you’re exposing every new subscribers on your list to a tuned offering. This method helps you guarantee that you’re exposing the right subscribers to the right offer.
Likewise, as you add new productized services (and eventually information products) to your offers, you can expand and add to your ‘launch’ campaigns. That way:
- Someone shows up for “Lead Magnet #1”
- They receive the email sequence related to that lead magnet — and the pitch for the associated productized service
- They make a buy / don’t buy decision
- Then, depending on their decision, you can move them to separate sequence educating them on another expensive problem or offering them a ‘downsell’ offering of a lower-priced alternative service
When you follow this method, you’re exposing every subscriber that comes through your door to your best products and content. You’re continually educating incoming subscribers on the expensive problems that you can solve for them — and the solutions that you’re making available to them for purchase.
