CRAFT PRE-LAUNCH

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MODULE 5 LESSON 2
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MODULE 5 LESSON 2 TRANSCRIPTION CRAFT PRE-LAUNCH CONTENT

TRANSC R I P T I O N

Craft Pre-Launch Content

Hey, what’s up everybody?

Brian Dean here and welcome to the second lesson in this module.

In the last lesson, I told you the story of how I first started launching products to my list. I thought,
at the time, that the more stuff you add to the launch, the more sales you’d get. So I started using all
sorts of so-called advanced strategies, like webinars, funnels, and email list segmentation.

Now this stuff probably did help a little bit, but it made me and my team exhausted after every launch.
There’s just so much to manage, that it felt like every launch, we’re all walking on a tight rope. If one
thing went wrong, it felt like the entire launch would fail. Because we were doing so much, there were
a lot of things that could go wrong. Plus all that stuff distracted me from the most important elements
of a successful launch, messaging, a great product, social proof and scarcity.

Once I stripped out all the fluff and focused on the basics, sales shot through the roof. That’s why today
we use the same exact launch structure for every single launch that we do. That structure is the
Insanely Simple Launch Sequence that I showed you in the last lesson.

So as you can see, the launch is broken down into two weeks.

Week one is your pre-launch, and here’s where you send high value content to your readers and build
up lots of goodwill. That way when you launch the next week, you’ll have a list of people that know,
like, and trust you and will be ready to buy.

In this lesson, we’re going to focus on this pre-launch week. Specifically, I’m going to show you the
exact three emails that you need to send during pre-launch week. I’ll also show you frameworks and
examples to make this process super simple.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

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Like I talked about in the last lesson, when I first started launching products, I would read a lot of blog
posts about launches, I would watch YouTube videos about launches, and I took a bunch of launch
related courses.

Now, even though the instructors of these courses and the people that wrote these blog posts tended
to make things way too complicated, I did notice that they all had one thing in common. They all said
that for your launch to work, it needs to have a big idea.

When I looked back at our own launches, I noticed a pattern.

Launches that focused on one big idea did significantly better than those that didn’t. In fact,
sometimes we’d have an amazing high quality launch with tons of awesome content, but it wasn’t tied
together by a single idea, and those launches didn’t really do that well. Other times we’d launch with
just a few simple text-based emails, but these emails built up to the same big idea. Because of that,
these launches tended to do really well.

For example, let’s look at the big idea from one of our most successful SEO That Works launches.
We repeated this big idea during the pre-launch and even during the launch week itself. This big idea
really resonated with our audience and the list and the people we sent it to. So whenever I’d send an
email out, our open rates, clicks and of course sales were higher than average.

So that’s all great. Big ideas are great, but I noticed one big problem with this big idea approach,
a problem that I struggled with until recently.

So what’s the problem? It’s really hard to come up with big ideas. In fact, even the term big idea
is intimidating. Whenever someone told me that I needed to come up with a big idea, I’d get all stressed
out, because I felt like I needed to come up with a plan for world peace on the spot, and that was just
for one launch. I was supposed to come up with a different big idea for every launch and I remember
thinking to myself, “How the heck am I going to pull this off?”

That’s when I figured out a simple way to come up with launch “big ideas.”

Despite the name, I also learned that these ideas don’t have to be big or important or grandiose
or anything like that. In fact, simple down-to-earth, easy to understand concepts work best.

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So how do you come up with a big idea for your launch, an idea that ties your entire launch together
into a theme?

The answer is you don’t. Instead of a big idea, each launch should contain a Myth Buster, which leads
us to the first step of our prelaunch process, Develop Your Myth Buster.

This Myth Buster approach was a game changer for me, because instead of trying to come up with
some big, huge life-changing idea, all I needed to do was bust a common myth. This was a lot easier
to do. As it turned out from my experience, as I learned, it was a lot more powerful too.

Think about it this way. No matter what industry you’re in, there are myths and misconceptions out
there. In the nutrition space, lots of people still think that low-fat diets work, or in the blogging world,
I still see people writing that, “To grow your blog, you need to publish content on a weekly basis.”

When you bust one of those myths, a few important things happen.

First, you grab your reader’s attention. Now some people try to grab people’s attention and launch their
product on the same day. This is a mistake I made when I first started launching products, and I learned
that this approach very rarely works. Instead, you want to grab your reader’s attention before you
launch, then send them valuable content throughout pre-launch week.

Nothing grabs people’s attention better than a Myth Buster, because when you say, “You don’t need to
publish new content all the time or low-fat diets are horrible for weight loss.” People are going to say,
“Wait, what’d you say?” Then when you actually launch your product, you have a group of people that
are going to be super receptive to what you send them.

Second, when you break down common misconceptions, you build trust and goodwill with your readers
and your audience.

This is a big one.

Every now and then I’ll get an email from someone and announcing their new product and this email
is completely out of left field. They literally haven’t emailed me for weeks and then out of the blue
they’re just selling me something. But when you send your readers valuable content that smashes
and destroys common myths, your readers will appreciate you for telling them like it is. Then they’ll
start to see you as a thought leader in your industry.

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Third, and possibly most important of all.

When you break down common myths and misconceptions, it shows that you have new, different
material that other people don’t have. So, when you send people content that goes against
conventional wisdom, people are going to think, “Wow, this person really has a different, unique
perspective on things.”

That way when you launch your course, they don’t have to wonder if you’re going to rehash the same
stuff they’ve seen 100 times already. You already showed them that your material is different and
unique.

Fortunately, coming up with a Myth Buster is super simple. You just need to use this framework “Most
people think X, but the truth is Y”.

For example, for one of our SEO That Works launches, we used this Myth Buster throughout the launch.

Okay, so now that you have your Myth Buster, it’s time to start working on your three pre-launch emails.
The Origin Story, The Deep Dive, and The Solution.

So the second step in this process is to create your origin story email.

The goal of this email is just to show people how you figured out that your myth was actually a myth.
You see, lots of bloggers try to act like they’re all-seeing, all-knowing Gods, like knowledge has been
handed to them on some stone tablets on a mountain top, and it’s just really off-putting for people.

So if you email people saying, “This is a myth that I figured out, because I’m smarter than everybody
else,” it’s not going to be well-received. Obviously you’d never send an email like that, but I’m sure
you’ve seen these hyped up emails from marketers before.

Well, that’s exactly where The Origin Story comes into play. With The Origin Story, you introduce your
Myth Buster and you tell the story of how you discovered it. That way you show your readers that
you’ve gone through a lot of the same challenges that they’re going through right now, which makes
you super relatable to your readers.

For example, check out this Origin Story email that I sent out a few months back.

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As you can see, I don’t just say, “Stop publishing all the time.” I tell the story of how I actually thought
this myth was true, but I discovered that it wasn’t. When I change things up, things worked better
for me.

I have more details on how to structure and write your Origin Story email in the worksheet, but that’s
the basic gist.

The next step in this process, step number three, is to create your deep dive email.

So in the first prelaunch email, you told a story of how you discovered that a common piece of advice
in your industry is actually a myth. In a second pre-launch email, The Deep Dive, you completely take
apart this common myth piece by piece.

In other words, you show people exactly why this myth is a myth, you also hint that there’s a better
way. Because it’s just one thing to say, “This is a myth,” but you need to back up your stance with proof,
and that’s where this email comes into play. You show people proof that this myth is wrong.

Now this proof can be in the form of a scientific study or industry study, it can also just be your own
experience. The exact type of proof doesn’t really matter, as long as you have something to back up
your statement, you’re good.

For example, in this video, I list out some of the reasons why publishing without promotion isn’t good
advice. I also back this up with reasons why this approach is misguided. Again, this isn’t a double blind
placebo study with a confidence interval of whatever, it’s just my personal experience, which is good
enough.

Make no mistake here. Even though this email may not be the most actionable tactical email in the
world, it’s still really valuable content. By breaking down a common myth, you’re helping your readers
avoid a pitfall that could cost them, in terms of money, time, or both, which your audience will
appreciate.

For example, here are some of the responses I received after sending out a Deep Dive pre-launch email.

Then at the end of your email, after you list out the reasons why your myth is in fact a myth, tease a
solution. That’s actually where the final pre-launch email, The Solution, comes into play.

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Here’s where you give people a small bite-size solution, a little tactic, and it’s a solution that’s the
complete opposite of what the myth tells people to do.

So at this point you’ve pulled back the curtain on a common myth, you also broke down that myth piece
by piece and you teased a better way. Now it’s time to send your readers a valuable piece of tactical
content they can use.

Now to be clear, you don’t need to give away the farm here. In fact, you want the solution to be a simple
tactic that people can use right away. When readers actually use your material and get actual real life
tangible results, they’re going to think, “Wow, this stuff actually works.” Which means your readers are
going to be prime to buy when you actually launch your product.

In fact, whenever I send out an email that contains some sort of tactic, I get replies from readers asking
me about the next time SEO That Works will open up.

So let’s look at an example solution email that I sent out during a recent launch. As you can see, I reveal
a relatively simple tactic that people can use to optimize their content. It’s not a five step framework
or a huge guide or some sort of 80 minute video, it’s one simple tactic that people can use to take action
on right away. That’s the type of thing you want to send here.

I have more info on how this works in the worksheet, but all you really need here is a simple tactic that
gets your readers away from the myth and on the right track.

With that, your pre-launch is done.

To quickly recap, you learn that every pre-launch needs a single idea that ties everything together.
Without it, your pre-launch content is just a jumbled mess.

You also learn that the easiest and most effective way to come up with this idea isn’t to stare out into
the sunset and try to come up with some grandiose theory about how the universe works. Instead,
all you need to do is bust a common myth in your industry.

Then write three emails that talk about and break down that myth, The Origin Story, The Deep Dive,
and The Solution.

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So at this point, you might be wondering, “Wait, that’s it? Three emails, no three part video series,
no Facebook Ads?”

That’s right, because remember, a successful launch isn’t about webinars, Facebook Ads, or other
complicated stuff. Yes, that stuff may help in certain cases, but most of the time, 99% of the time,
it’s just a major distraction, a major distraction from the fundamentals of a successful launch.

Grabbing attention, providing value, a clear message, and of course, selling a great product.

Speaking of selling, in the next lesson, I’m going to show you exactly how to launch your product
the right way.

See you then.