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Master Your Launch Timeline: Step-by-Step Guide to a Stress-Free Launch Calendar · Growing a Deeply Rooted Business: Launches, Funnels & Email Marketing with Intention

• 0:00
  Jessica: As a certified launch manager, I've been around the block or two with launches, and one of the things we see all the time is that a business owner has decided to launch, and their timeline looks like this.
• 0:13
  Jessica: Month one, month two, month three, and all of it is marketing.
• 0:16
  Jessica: So we know during launches you have to get the word out, you gotta build the hype, you gotta run the ads, you gotta open the cart.
• 0:23
  Jessica: But if you don't start pre-planning before all of that comes up you're gonna be left with an evolved sequence that is still in your head.
• 0:31
  Jessica: You haven't actually built your landing page, or you're doing your presentation the day before, and that kind of stressed out look does not help you convert better.
• 0:39
  Jessica: Because I really believe that the person who is pitching, who is actually selling the product, their energy matters the most.
• 0:47
  Jessica: And the problem is that when most people are planning launches, they're thinking strictly about that marketing timeline, the ramp up, the open cart, the closed cart, the debrief, the promo, all of that, and they're not really taking into
• 1:02
  Jessica: account the launch.
• 1:03
  Jessica: So today we're gonna be breaking down both timelines, where the ops actually should start, and then when marketing swings in, and why the order matters way more than you think.
• 1:14
  Jessica: So let's get into it.
• 1:15
  Rachel: Welcome back to another episode of the Deeply Rooted Business podcast.
• 1:19
  Rachel: I'm Rachel, your marketing ecosystem architect, and I'm here with Jess, our systems ops guru genius.
• 1:27
  Rachel: So before we get into the episode, let's do a quick energy check.
• 1:31
  Rachel: 'Cause I know that there's a lot of feelings about launching.
• 1:34
  Rachel: I harbor a lot of energy and issue with some types of launches.
• 1:40
  Rachel: Some people get excited.
• 1:41
  Rachel: Not me.
• 1:42
  Rachel: Some people get a little anxious thinking about all of the moving pieces and all of that.
• 1:46
  Rachel: So if you're feeling a little overwhelmed, I could confidently say that this topic we're talking about today could be one of the reasons.
• 1:55
  Rachel: So we're gonna untangle that today.
• 1:58
  Rachel: Stick around towards the end because we're gonna be breaking down exactly where each timeline starts and what order is not really an optional go-with-the-flow type.
• 2:08
  Rachel: So let's get into the first portion of this, which is the ops timeline.
• 2:14
  Jessica: The ops timeline is something that I know most business owners don't think about or don't like to think about, because typically they will come to me after they have tried to run a launch without a launch timeline.
• 2:27
  Jessica: What is seen and talked about most in the online space is that marketing timeline.
• 2:32
  Jessica: It is way sexier and easier to sell the marketing strategies and the marketing timelines.
• 2:38
  Jessica: But the ops timeline is what's going to make your launch not only convert better the more times you do it, but also help it be less stressful for you in the long run.
• 2:50
  Jessica: So the first thing that we always kind of start with is goal setting and launch vision setting.
• 2:56
  Jessica: So clarity on what you're actually developing.
• 3:01
  Jessica: How are you going to sell your offer?
• 3:03
  Jessica: What is the goal based on those very realistic numbers that we talked about last episode?
• 3:09
  Jessica: What does success look like for you?
• 3:12
  Jessica: Really kind of getting the groundwork and the foundation for your launch.
• 3:17
  Jessica: Because everything else is going to depend on this part kind of being locked, and it's gonna act as a filter for your decision-making process throughout the launch.
• 3:28
  Rachel: And I don't think this is a one-hour decision.
• 3:31
  Rachel: This really is one of those where you let it sit and marinate.
• 3:35
  Rachel: I would say put the most time into this because it's gonna set that foundation forward.
• 3:41
  Rachel: This really establishes if you are still in the product development side of things.
• 3:46
  Rachel: It helps you flush a lot of those decisions out as well.
• 3:50
  Rachel: I'm going through this with a client right now, where we're not necessarily talking launch specifics, but we're talking about, launch energy.
• 3:57
  Rachel: We're still really in that post-launch from launch one and moving into launch two, where we're saying what didn't we like, and what do we wanna bring forward?
• 4:05
  Rachel: Those are the key elements of goal setting.
• 4:08
  Rachel: Setting a goal for what your energy should feel like too is just as important as setting a goal for revenue and all of those components as well.
• 4:17
  Jessica: I totally agree.
• 4:18
  Jessica: This and this next part that we're gonna talk about is your strategy, figuring out what the actual launch is gonna look like.
• 4:25
  Jessica: We did a whole episode on launch styles and how to pick which launch style is best for you.
• 4:30
  Jessica: But even deeper than that, once your style is established, what is your plan for getting people to that launch event?
• 4:36
  Jessica: What is your plan for following up with them after that launch event?
• 4:40
  Jessica: Really going through the customer awareness journey, which I love when Rachel talks about that, and figuring out what needs to be true at each stage to help you maximize for conversions.
• 4:53
  Jessica: And I feel like this is another one that you need to give space to breathe, space to marinate, space to kind of set it aside and come back and look at it from a fresh lens and eyes.
• 5:03
  Jessica: Because changing things down road is only gonna complicate more, so you wanna make sure that your strategy is locked even before you say go.
• 5:13
  Jessica: As a launch manager or someone supports launches, this is one of the key elements that I kind of hold my clients accountable to is, we are going to lock this strategy, and after we're gonna have very few availability
• 5:26
  Jessica: for pivots because there's a domino effect when you change something.
• 5:29
  Jessica: If you change the fast action bonus, for example, then you've gotta go change the sales page, and the follow-up emails, and the pitch deck, and all of this.
• 5:37
  Jessica: So making sure that you kinda have all the strategic levers mapped out and where you wanna pull them ahead of time will really help from having to do a lot of rework or creating a lot of launch chaos
• 5:47
  Jessica: down the road.
• 5:48
  Rachel: Yeah, and if you plan accordingly, you have that time to really validate a lot of the uncertainties.
• 5:55
  Rachel: So If this is launch one, and you're like, "Well, I don't know where people are in the awareness cycle," validating through content on social or through your email list before ramp-up happens really is this time.
• 6:08
  Rachel: In this launch that I'm currently planning for launch two of, we have a lot of gaps that we weren't completely aware of, and so we've done surveys, audience polls on social and really kind of filled a lot of
• 6:20
  Rachel: those gaps to bring us closer to what we want in our strategy for launch two.
• 6:25
  Rachel: And that's where this getting ahead of it is and not acting on a whim where you're like, "Oh, I wanna launch next month."
• 6:32
  Rachel: When you're planning your annual calendar, really being intentional about that time is gonna set you up for more success.
• 6:40
  Rachel: If you give yourself that runway for this discovery and for all of these different opportunities of whatever questions came up in strategy discovery, you can say, "Oh, well, I don't actually know, but I have two weeks here that
• 6:52
  Rachel: I could, play around with the audience, maybe go live a few times, maybe drop some polls, put some stories out there, and see how people are interacting."
• 7:01
  Rachel: Those are the things that you give yourself when you do act with the intention of a longer timeline versus just being like, "Let's launch.
• 7:10
  Rachel: Chaos."
• 7:11
  Jessica: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:11
  Jessica: And I mean, typically what the minimum timeline from an ops perspective, what I'm looking at is probably 12 weeks to give us two weeks for goal setting, getting clear on vision, two weeks for strategy, two weeks for planning,
• 7:25
  Jessica: two weeks for copy, and then two weeks to build and then, optimize before live launch.
• 7:31
  Jessica: But that marketing, it's probably maybe a six-week timeline, half of that, because you're doing ramp up and then promotion and then open cart.
• 7:39
  Jessica: So you really need to be thinking about your launches, almost a quarter ahead of time if you want them to be grounded in strategy and intention like we're recommending.
• 7:48
  Jessica: Step four is once you've got your strategy locked, then it's time to have an honest capacity conversation with yourself.
• 7:55
  Jessica: And if you have a launch date in mind that you need to either hit because you need the money at that point, or you need to hit because you have other things going around, you wanna make sure that
• 8:04
  Jessica: you're gonna have the capacity to execute all of the elements in your strategy.
• 8:10
  Jessica: We like to talk a lot about a 1.0 version of a launch, and then being able to build and add components each time, especially if you're a business owner who's bootstrapping their way up through this launch process.
• 8:21
  Jessica: But if you do have more funds available, then it's about looking at your current team that's supporting you and finding, who are the gaps?
• 8:28
  Jessica: Do I need to bring in an email marketing copywriter?
• 8:30
  Jessica: Do I need to bring in someone to help me design my pitch deck?
• 8:34
  Jessica: Do I need marketing assets created?
• 8:36
  Jessica: And identifying who or if it's you on your team and what items you need to outsource, 'cause from there, you've gotta go find these people if you don't already have them.
• 8:47
  Jessica: It's going to take you about one to two weeks to kind of assemble your launch team.
• 8:53
  Jessica: You'll probably have an idea at step one when you first start who you might wanna bring in, but this is just solidifying that RACI chart, who's responsible for completing each piece of the work, and then mapping out, when
• 9:04
  Jessica: all of the work is actually going to happen.
• 9:07
  Rachel: Yeah, so the step is basically who's on the team, and then what's the sequence, what are the dependencies?
• 9:12
  Rachel: I always tell myself this, I'm like, "Then you put it in the planner.
• 9:16
  Rachel: Then you have it out of your brain and into something that you can slowly, review on your calls and check, check, check, and go through the list."
• 9:25
  Rachel: Because the components are gonna start all happening at the same time.
• 9:30
  Rachel: Once you're out of the initial, op setup and you're in the main portion of the marketing, then it's important to stay on track with things.
• 9:37
  Rachel: But you can easily get lost in that setup stuff.
• 9:40
  Rachel: So once you're done, have it out of your brain and you're into that action step, then you can move into this next step, which is that copywriting asset design, like prep.
• 9:50
  Rachel: I would say this is definitely where, a lot of creativity happens, and I've seen a lot of people fail in this stage when they're like, "Well, I just wanna, I wanna have the inspiration to talk to people on
• 10:02
  Rachel: stories or on my posts, the day of."
• 10:05
  Rachel: And I think however you can get ahead, whether that's scripting your stories, scripting your emails, all of those components, there's a lot of copy and development that needs to happen in launches.
• 10:17
  Rachel: You have the sales page.
• 10:18
  Rachel: You have the email sequence.
• 10:19
  Rachel: You have checkout page, post-checkout, client onboarding, all full picture of things that you really, really wanna get ahead of this as much as possible because this is the step that really does take the longest to put together.
• 10:34
  Rachel: You don't want this to be rushed.
• 10:37
  Rachel: If your launch doesn't do well, you don't want the feeling to be like, "Ugh, well, I should have given this more time."
• 10:43
  Jessica: Yeah, and you want it to all feel intentional and cohesive.
• 10:46
  Jessica: So going back, and this kind of works hand-in-hand with the planning stage, is that one of the things before I start project planning the launch is creating that launch funnel map or even outlining the customer journey on Google
• 10:57
  Jessica: Doc of, what are all of the touchpoints that we're going to have with the customer, and then going through what is the goal of each of these assets?
• 11:07
  Jessica: Getting it all on a Google Doc, and then I can just kinda start working down the Google Doc to make sure that copy is developed for that.
• 11:13
  Jessica: But typically, I like to start from the pitch deck.
• 11:17
  Jessica: I almost like to start backwards from that when I'm doing the copy because I feel like that informs it.
• 11:23
  Jessica: So it's like I will almost write onboarding email first, and then checkout page, then the sales page, then deck, then emails And then social media because I feel like all the bigger decisions need to be made on those
• 11:36
  Jessica: last assets, and that's kind of gonna inform everything backwards from there.
• 11:40
  Jessica: So that's kind of how I approach and plan it.
• 11:43
  Jessica: From there, it kind of allows the tech team to come in and start getting work earlier since their setup takes more time than just loading an email.
• 11:52
  Jessica: So if I'm starting on pages first, then I can hand that off to design and tech while the email copy is still getting written and starts to flow through a nice little, chart of assembly line.
• 12:03
  Rachel: Yeah, and if you're a solopreneur or a small team, and you're tech team, a little design team, these are all more of a reason why you should 100% give yourself more time, because it is essentially just going to
• 12:17
  Rachel: be you putting on a different hat, and then you giving yourself the time to switch into a different role, and then put on another hat.
• 12:24
  Rachel: It's a well-oiled machine when you do have the components of a launch team to support you.
• 12:29
  Rachel: But the reality is that so many of us are also launching independently and by ourselves, so it's even more important then to have the time to make sure you're not burning yourself out or working until 11:00 PM just
• 12:45
  Rachel: because you're trying to do everything at the same time.
• 12:48
  Rachel: Just want a put a little note on that if you're laughing at us because we're talking about all these...
• 12:52
  Jessica: Yeah Well, and I think, too, it's one of the things that really frustrated me when I first started planning launches is that the timelines for all these launch programs that we're buying were very unrealistic for solopreneurs.
• 13:03
  Jessica: But they weren't disclosing that this was a timeline built for a team to execute.
• 13:08
  Jessica: If you gotta think like, "I've gotta write my sales page around serving my clients," then probably one week is you writing your sales page, and the next week is writing your sales emails, and the next week is writing
• 13:19
  Jessica: your sales social posts.
• 13:20
  Jessica: That's how you have to do it if you're doing it by yourself, so it's way more important to give yourself maybe even longer than 12 weeks if it's your first time.
• 13:28
  Jessica: Now, if it's your second time, we can start to speed things up because we've got things we can pull from, and we work and all of that.
• 13:33
  Jessica: But yes, give yourself way more time than you think you're going to do.
• 13:36
  Jessica: So then moving into after design, we usually move into tech, setting up all the tech, testing all the tech.
• 13:41
  Jessica: Tech will give you the most headache during a launch, so you wanna make sure that you've got plenty of time to test that.
• 13:46
  Jessica: And then I always like to have, what I call an optimization week or an optimization period where everything is done.
• 13:51
  Jessica: My goal as a launch manager is for pretty much everything to be done related to that launch before the day of, like, if we're doing a webinar, a live webinar.
• 14:00
  Jessica: We'll still be doing some final stuff while we're promoting the webinar, but that live webinar, I want them to be able to take creation hat off and move fully into sales mode, so that they're not trying to have
• 14:10
  Jessica: to write a sales email and show up on social media and have all the stress of is anyone gonna buy and all of that.
• 14:16
  Jessica: It's just better to try to get it done all beforehand.
• 14:18
  Jessica: And then, of course, we wanna do a whole debrief, which we did a whole episode on that, so I'm gonna skip through that for time's sake.
• 14:23
  Jessica: I'm gonna pass it off to Rachel so she can do our marketing timeline.
• 14:28
  Rachel: With the ops timeline, you're probably like, Whoa, what is happening?"
• 14:32
  Rachel: The marketing timeline really comes in to about when she was talking about tech, copywriting and website, they're almost parallel entities.
• 14:41
  Rachel: But moving into the phase that I would consider the start of the marketing timeline is that ramp-up phase.
• 14:49
  Rachel: This is traditionally two to three weeks prior to, let's say if you're running a live event, prior to the promotion of that.
• 14:59
  Rachel: If you're running a live event, that's two to three weeks before open cart.
• 15:04
  Rachel: So you're really about six weeks out from launch where you're really warming up your audience, whether you've created a new lead magnet or not, you're really trying to get the people who are most primed for this product to
• 15:18
  Rachel: pay more attention in this space.
• 15:20
  Rachel: So let's say a course creator or a business coach trying to help teach people about social media, you would start talking about this specific audience's pain points that you're getting them from problem aware to time of promo is
• 15:37
  Rachel: solution aware, and then time of open cart is product aware.
• 15:42
  Rachel: What What we don't want to happen is when people usually skip the ramp-up, they use either the live event or the first couple of emails to do a lot of that problem awareness messaging, where it's really validating that
• 15:54
  Rachel: this person understands their problem to the fullest extent, which at the point of open cart they should have their credit card ready and be saying, "Are you the right person for me or are you not?"
• 16:05
  Rachel: Or even beyond that point.
• 16:06
  Rachel: If you're looking at buying behavior, the ramp-up serves the purpose to get the most primed people ready to start paying attention.
• 16:16
  Rachel: After ramp up is that live promo.
• 16:19
  Rachel: If you're doing a live event or a challenge or trying to get people just alert to the fact that a promotion or a launch is about to happen, this is where you shift into it.
• 16:31
  Rachel: And the problem of skipping ramp up before you get to this part is that people typically start to tune out after you start talking about a sale or a promotion or a launch.
• 16:42
  Rachel: And so what you want to do is make sure that they're paying so much attention and being like, "Dang, they really know my pain points.
• 16:50
  Rachel: They understand me."
• 16:52
  Rachel: Maybe intuitively they should know something is coming, but it really should be this moment of awareness shift that feels very intentional and unnoticing.
• 17:03
  Rachel: I think everybody who has been part of a launch where you're just...
• 17:06
  Rachel: i'll say the YAP Challenge, where I was like, "Oh my God, this person is everywhere.
• 17:11
  Rachel: I am seeing her content.
• 17:13
  Rachel: I want whatever she's doing."
• 17:15
  Rachel: And this was before I even knew the YAP Challenge was a thing.
• 17:18
  Rachel: It should have that energy to it, which is hard to put into words, but the purpose of a ramp up is coming into step two, where you're like, "Okay, here's what I'm talking about.
• 17:28
  Rachel: Here's what I'm selling."
• 17:29
  Rachel: You don't immediately isolate people that don't wanna be sold to.
• 17:33
  Rachel: And then you move into open cart, and the open cart is where The sales window is actually starting, and it typically happens after your live event or after that pivotal moment at the very beginning of a launch.
• 17:47
  Rachel: You can typically have your launch from five to seven days.
• 17:51
  Rachel: My clients that are very, very much life-first businesses will probably not run a launch through the weekend where they have to be actively on.
• 18:00
  Rachel: We sometimes try to plan the middle of the launch, which is always a mid-launch lull in the weekends just because we know that that's already gonna be dead time.
• 18:09
  Rachel: You can typically just put some of your stuff that you know is just gonna pass that awareness from solution aware to product aware and use that there.
• 18:17
  Rachel: So five to seven days, and then, move whenever that cart closes, you can either move into a downsell or into a post-launch survey like we've talked about in previous times.
• 18:27
  Rachel: But I think that including the ramp-up, it should be two to three weeks promotion of an event, and then your actual launch itself, one week, downsell and surveys, another week.
• 18:38
  Rachel: I lost track of how many weeks that is.
• 18:39
  Rachel: But that's typically the breakdown of how the marketing element of it works.
• 18:46
  Jessica: I would say ops would probably be 12 to 16 weeks, and then your marketing is probably six weeks.
• 18:51
  Jessica: But it's kind of coming into the end of that 12-week period.
• 18:55
  Jessica: I think the number one thing that people miss is that they skip the ops portion of that timeline because nobody talks about that, and they start trying to ramp up while they're creating the assets still, which is very
• 19:08
  Jessica: confusing because if you don't know what you're selling, it's hard to actually try to sell it.
• 19:12
  Jessica: So it's really important to have that strategy nailed down as you move into your ramp up and your promotion.
• 19:19
  Rachel: Yeah, and I mean, just try to imagine doing all of that discovery and the goal setting while you're also trying to ramp up and it really is so chaotic if you plan without that ops portion.
• 19:31
  Jessica: For sure, for sure.
• 19:32
  Jessica: All right, so let's give them a quick rundown of both the timelines.
• 19:35
  Jessica: So ops, you wanna make sure goal setting, strategy, planning, copywriting, assets, tech, build live.
• 19:41
  Jessica: And then marketing don't skip the ramp-up, it's the most important part.
• 19:45
  Jessica: About two weeks to invite to promo, open your cart five to seven days, whatever your preference is, and then always make sure that you're doing some sort of post-launch survey.
• 19:53
  Jessica: And if you wanna do a downsell, make sure you're including that in your ops plan as well.
• 19:58
  Jessica: And like I said, the number one mistake that everyone makes, is skipping that ops portion or not giving them enough time for that strategy, vision, goal-setting portion.
• 20:08
  Jessica: Because then when you're getting to asset creations, you're getting stalled, because then you're gonna have to go back and make a decision that you should've made two weeks ago, and then realize that that decision is gonna domino down
• 20:17
  Jessica: to the other things that you already created, and it's just gonna be a mess.
• 20:20
  Jessica: We don't want that to happen, so make sure you are doing your due diligence and getting this all planned out ahead of time.
• 20:28
  Rachel: Awesome.
• 20:28
  Rachel: So I hope that was helpful.
• 20:30
  Rachel: What we wanna know, if anybody is planning launches, are you in the ops phase right now or the marketing phase?
• 20:37
  Rachel: We wanna pay attention.
• 20:38
  Rachel: Drop it in the comments, send us a DM, or even just email us.
• 20:42
  Rachel: We wanna follow along, and we hope that you're following along through this series.
• 20:46
  Rachel: We have two more episodes for launch coming through.
• 20:49
  Rachel: If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a biz bestie who's also in launch mode right now.
• 20:55
  Rachel: Leave us a review.
• 20:56
  Rachel: Follow us if you haven't already.
• 20:58
  Rachel: And until next week,
• 21:00
  Jessica: We are rooting for you
• 21:01
  Rachel: you.