You’ve put months into getting to this point on your journey from idea to launch, and now, it’s time to do just that: LAUNCH!
Congratulations!
You and I both know that to get to this point you’ve invested A LOT of time, energy, effort, frustrations… and when launch day hits, it’s go time.
But for us, launch day wasn’t a single event.
Starting way back in the Brainstorming and Planning phase, and throughout the Marketing phase, we always had in the back of our minds that launch day would last for 33 days: the same number of days as our Kickstarter campaign.
In order to make that happen – to leverage the Kickstarter platform, to keep our audience engaged, to continue the momentum we were able to spark before the campaign even launched – we had to do a lot of preparation and planning.
Good news is, because you’ve been on this journey with us throughout Season 7, you already know every step we took – and the timeline we followed.
What happened on launch day
When January 4, 2016 arrived, we pulled out all the stops.
John woke up at 3:30am Pacific time to hit publish on a campaign that we’d be preparing over a year for. Within just four hours we had hit our first funding goal of $25k, which assured us we were off to an incredibly strong start!
That day the first Freedom-focused episode went live on Entrepreneurs On Fire and on The Freedom Journal podcast: it was an interview I hosted with John as my guest.
That day we also were able to watch as dozens of emails went out and hundreds of social media posts were shared by our supporters – remember, these are the friends who we made ‘the ask’ to (discussed in our Marketing phase).
Guest posts were going live, our press release was picked up, and news stations were featuring The Freedom Journal campaign throughout the day.
All the time, energy and effort spent preparing for this day was paying off – BIG TIME!
Not only were all of our marketing efforts coming together beautifully, but we were receiving dozens of emails from Fire Nation and other Freedom Journal supporters expressing their excitement for The Freedom Journal and the campaign as a whole.
So it turned out it wasn’t just us pulling out all the stops on launch day; Fire Nation did, too!
How we leverage our launch party
We closed out launch day strong with a launch party at a local co-working space, Co-mmunity, right near our home in San Diego.
This allowed us to invite our local supporters to help celebrate in person, and it also gave us some pretty cool marketing opportunities…
For example, anyone who attended the launch party was given the opportunity to either ‘up’ their pledge, or make a pledge for the first time right then and there.
The benefit of doing so?
Anyone who pledge at the 4-pack level or higher would receive a hardcover copy of The Freedom Journal right then and there. Those who took advantage were among the first to hold The Freedom Journal in their hands!
But like I said earlier, launch day wasn’t the only day we pulled out all the stops.
We continued pulling out all the stops for the entire 33 days.
Most of this is evidenced through studying our marketing campaign, which was carefully crafted for maximum impact throughout the 33 days of the Kickstarter campaign.
Other marketing strategies we used throughout the campaign
But a few strategies we used that weren’t necessarily planned are as follows:
- Consistent updates being sent out to backers via the Kickstarter platform
- The Up-pledge strategy (which I review in detail in this episode)
- Consistent updates on the podcast
Launch day should be a huge event, but all the hard work you’ve put in up to this point should be leveraged throughout your entire launch campaign.
Whether that’s a few days, a couple of weeks, or 33 days, remember to be creative and test different things out! You never know what’s going to stick with YOUR audience.
