Welcome back to another episode of the Marisa Rader podcast. Today, we are talking about all things launching, whether that's a product launch, a seasonal launch. If you are doing digital products, physical products, we are going to break it all down exactly how you can plan out an entire years worth of product launches in just a matter of hours. So let's dive in, get motivated and inspired to take your business to the next level with a Marissa Raider show. This podcast was created for female entrepreneurs who want to manage the juggling act of successfully running a business and raising a family, hosted by mom, wife Ceo and Breakthrough coach Marissa Rader. The show features topics such as effortless goal setting, forming successful habits, reducing stress levels, starting your own business and more. Take your business to new heights with Marissa's expertise on how to be an empowered woman in charge of her career by understanding how both sides can be equally important.

You will learn how to make amazing things happen while also balancing home life. It is absolutely possible. Listen, now, as Marissa helps give you the insight and guidance that you need to reach all your goals, check out our website at W W W dot Marissa Raider dot com or follow along on Instagram at Marissa Radar coaching for tips, tricks and motivation to unlock the secrets of success in all aspects of your life. Hey, hey, how are you today? Welcome back to the Marissa Raider Show. We are talking about product launching and creating a launch plan is critical to the success of your product launch. Raise your hand. I know you can't see me but my hand is raised if you have ever planned a launch and by planned to launch, I mean, you made some products and you threw them up on Instagram and you were like ta da, they're live on my website, go buy them.

There is no shame in that. I've been there. I've done it. But without a plan, you risk missing important pieces like actually having deadlines or maybe you're overspending on your production and your marketing because you just threw it together on a whim and you might even be failing to reach your target audience effectively. So here are my key steps to think about and put into place when you're creating your launch plan. So the very first thing that I do when I start to think about my year and I know you're thinking, shouldn't this podcast be in January? No, because we are coming up on halfway through the year and it's ok to start planning out for your year whenever, whenever you're ready. I want this information to be available to you so that you can get it done and you can get it done right, and make you some money.

Ok. So the first thing that I do is I have 12 months worth of calendar. I either print it off on Google. That's what I used to do. Now. I have this nice 12 month calendar that I get to use, you know, dry erase or what erase markers on. And so I like that because I can see the whole view all at once. I can see all 12 months. So right now I know exactly what is scheduled for September when my kids Christmas break is gonna be in December. I can see all of that. I'm literally looking at my calendar right now. So what I do is I go ahead and I put all of the dates that I know there are things on. So I know that my family is going on vacation in July. That was the first thing I added to it. I add my kids' school breaks on there and the holidays. I then go through my vendor events that I've applied and been accepted to and put all of those on there for the different weekends.

I put my conference that I'm hosting on there. I put all of the things that already are scheduled. And then after that, that's when I start looking for my launch dates because cool. Yeah, some people launch things quarterly. Some people do a big holiday sale. Some people X Y Z, you name it, people do it. But what I have found makes the most successful launch is having it fit into your schedule. So last year I made a rookie mistake, even though I wasn't even a rookie, I was going on vacation with my husband and kids and some of our family and it was gonna, we were gonna be gone over a week. We were gonna be not at home for an entire week. I thought quick launching before we left would be a great idea. It was a digital product. I didn't have to ship anything out.

It would be fine. But what I did not take into account was how much stress I would be under throughout that launch and not even like detrimental stress or anything like that. But just launching takes a fair amount of brain power, physical effort, all of those things. And so I really wasn't taking that into account that I was gonna go from exhausted state straight into vacation mode. And you would normally think like that sounds like a great idea. But I had a hard time turning myself off on that vacation because I wanted to rehash what went well and what didn't go well and what I should do differently next time, like I didn't get to finish my process of my launch. So, lesson learned. I'm not putting a launch right before my vacation again. It just does not work well for me. So once you have your calendar all mapped out for the non negotiables, the things that are important to you throughout the year, then you're going to set your launch dates, choose a date for your product launch that gives you enough time to develop, produce and market your product effectively.

Did you hear that last one being able to market your product effectively? Did you know that you should have an entire runway leading up to your product, the size of your runway and the length of it depends on what it is you're launching, but you need to take that into account, you can't make your product. So say I make, I make bath salts. Maybe I'm launching a new holiday line of bath salts. I'm not. But if I were, I wouldn't want to come up with my sense on November. I don't know. Let's see, 22nd and then have them go live on the 25th and have not told anybody that I was working on that. You need to have a little bit of build up. You need to build that excitement and build the energy around that launch in order for it to be successful. So when you're picking your time that you're gonna do your launch, you need to make sure that you have time to develop it, produce it, market it and do it all effectively.

So you need to consider factors like seasonal trends, your holidays, industry events that may impact your launch, things like that, then once you have those chosen when you're gonna launch, so maybe you launch a new line of products, you know, if you make candles or you do something that's based on holidays or seasonal. So maybe you have a spring line, a summer, a fall and a winter line of, of it. So set those dates and then work backwards from that date to create the timeline for development. When do you need to have production done? When you need to have marketing done? This needs to include milestones like your product design completion, your prototype testing. If it's something new, how you're gonna package it, what that design looks like. So maybe you put different labels on it or if you design shirts or clothing, you need to have all of that ready to go so that you can start production when you need it and you need to know when your production needs to end in order to market this to people.

The next thing is is you need to define your budget. How much money can you realistically allocate to each stage of the launch process? So do you have a budget for product development, actual production, packaging, marketing and advertising or any other costs associated with the launch? Be sure to factor in, you know, unexpected expenses build in a contingency plan. We've all been there where we use the same supplier for the same things and then all of a sudden they don't have it. That's happened to me multiple times with the cups that I make and I can't get the cups from the supplier so that I'm in a bind, paying more for cups to get here sooner. Where is, if I just fully planned out my launches, I probably would not have those issues. The other thing you need to think about is, you know, what's it going to cost to develop this new product?

If it's a brand new product, say you usually make candles and now you're going to make um diffusers or you're going to, you make headbands and now you're gonna try scrunchies out. You know, how much money is it gonna take to perfect that before you launch. Those are the things you need to think about. How much are you willing to invest to make this successful? Are you going to do paid Facebook ads for any of your launch? That sort of thing? The next thing that you need to do is actually create a marketing and advertising plan. So identify the marketing channels and strategies that will best help you reach your target audience. So maybe it's social media, maybe it's your email list, people who have already bought from you or already like your products that gave you their coveted email address, use that maybe you wanna do an try and influence our partnership where you find someone who you either gift the product to or give a promo code to and they can make money off of the candles they sell for you or the scrunchies or the bath salt or whatever it is that you're making and selling.

Maybe you have an online program where you're running a workshop on how to teach somebody the skill that you do, find somebody to market it that way that all takes time. OK. So do the pr outreach. Do all of that figure out exactly how you want to market it, what that looks like for you and then make sure you have enough time to make a detailed plan for each channel, including the messaging the creative assets, the timelines. So what I mean by messaging and creative assets, what words are you going to use? What's going to get people to buy them? Is it just describing your product to them or do they need to be able to feel what it would be like to use that product or what value are you bringing? How are you going to convey this? So that by the time they are done seeing your runway for this launch, they can't help but to put it in their cart and actually purchase it. Creative assets are images, product, images, um social media images, anything graphics that you need to create.

So like I like to use can um my Va Shannon and I live inside can. That's where we create all of our content inside there that you see. And so what do you need? Make a list, make a detailed plan. When do you need these pieces by? And then the last piece of it is actually testing your product. So as you move through this launch process, actually be open to feedback from people, be willing to make the changes and use the suggestions that they're giving, test your product with real customers, track the results. What do they have to say about it? Are they wanting more of the product before they can even use the first one? Like actually get your product into people's hands? Like that's part of those expenses that I was talking about earlier that you need to plan for to have a really successful product lunch. You need to make sure that it's something that people actually want. How do you do that? You give it to people, you don't necessarily have to give it to people, but you have to get it in people's hands so that, you know, do you need to change or just something to ensure that you have the best possible lunch outcome?

So maybe you have five really great customers and you say, hey, I really appreciate your support. Have this new product line coming up. Can I send you one of the one of the pieces from the line for your in exchange for your honest feedback, you know, or valuable insights, just approach them and say, hey, I would love to send you this, this piece of my upcoming launch. I I need some market research done on it and I would love to have your honest opinion. And then just remember that the success of a product launch depends on careful planning and execution. You can't go all willy nilly and then wonder why your launch wasn't as successful as it could be. I am the queen of that. I still do that at some points because if you got my Monday mindset done is better than perfect. Is something that I do live by. And then I wonder, hm, I wonder if I was well thought out and planned, if that could have gone better.

Well, of course, it could have Marissa, like get your life together. But there are certain things that I just, I have to draw the line in. I can't do it all myself. So if you are making your launches a priority and you want to be able to rely on big launches to propel your business forward, these are the steps that you need to take. So let's just do a quick recap of those. You need to plan out all of the non negotiables on your calendar, either print out 12 monthly calendars, January, February, you know, all the things or get one. I have a one on Amazon. I don't know, it's probably like a foot and a half, two ft by three ft, something like that that hangs on the wall in my office. And I have all of the important dates on there. So all of my vendor events, my kids' holidays that they don't have school, our family vacations, anything important on there. Is there first? That's what I start with and then develop your timeline.

Make sure that you define your budget if you're going to have one which I suggest having at least a small budget for each launch to help with those finer details, make your marketing and advertising plan, including that messaging those creative assets and the timeliness. Then depending on the size of your business, I know I didn't mention this one before, but you might need to assemble a launch team. So if you need to bring in a designer or a photographer or project manager or something like that, probably not at this point in your business, but a photographer could be helpful. Somebody that could schedule your social media post for you just during the launches as like a trial. Don't be afraid to do that and then test out your products before you launch them. Take all of the feedback and be willing to make changes. If they give you solid advice, I cannot wait to hear about what you're launching.

So reach out to me on Instagram at Mercer coaching. Let me know what you're going to be launching here. In the second half of the year. And if you found this to be valuable, share it with all of your business besties. Um My personal goal is to get 10,000 downloads for the podcast um by the end of the year. And so it's hard for me to do that alone. But if you find value in this, go ahead and share it out, just click that button down on the bottom of the app that you're listening to it on and text it to a friend. I know when a friend texts me about a podcast, I'm much more likely to listen to it. So, thank you. Thank you for being here today. As always, I'm gonna be here cheering you on and I cannot wait to chat with you again next Monday for our next mindset episode. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Marisa Raider show. Our goal here is to support and encourage female entrepreneurship along with managing the everyday chaos.

Life throws our way. We strive to help women who want to take their lives and business aspirations to the next level and know that it takes focus, dedication and hard work to get there. For more great content for Marissa. Be sure to check out her website W W W dot Marissa Raider dot com or follow her on Instagram at life coach underscore Marissa see you next time on the Marisa Raider Show.