Listen Now:
Promoting something new takes longer than you think. And in today’s episode we’re going to break down exactly how much time you need to create a successful promotion.
Make no mistake! Promotion takes work. There’s only three ways you can successfully promote.
You’re either buying your way in with paid traffic, OR you’re working your way in with organic traffic. Or a combo of the two. That’s it. In today’s episode we cover your promotional timeline.
Our Episode on Segmentation – listen to this if you want to discover how to promote differently to different segments of your list. This will help you increase results and engagement!
Our Episode on Your Promo Storm – no matter what avenue you use to promote, including organic promotion in your plan is a smart move! It improves visibility, engagement, and ultimately results.
Want to talk to an expert about YOUR promotional timeline? Yeah… we can help you with that. Click below to book a call with us to talk about what's going on in your business (and how we can help.)
Alyson Lex 0:00
On today's episode, we're answering the question, what kind of timeline should I use when I'm promoting something new? The big question is this as entrepreneurs, coaches and business owners, how do we consistently sell our products, programs and services without making our customers feel like we're only in it for the almighty dollar? How do we serve the way we know we're meant to serve and still run a profitable business? How do we put good into the world while we put dollars into our pockets? How do we change the lives of our community while also bettering the life we lead? It's not
Jennie Wright 0:35
a zero sum game. It's not an either or scenario, it is possible to thrive while serving your clients to the best of your ability. This podcast will show you how. I'm Jennie Wright.
Alyson Lex 0:48
I'm Alyson Lex,
Jennie Wright 0:49
and welcome to the System to THRIVE. promoting something new, takes a heck of a lot longer than you think. And on today's episode, we're gonna break down exactly how much time you need to create a successful promotion. Make no mistake, promotions take work. And there's only three ways you can really successfully promote your program your product, your thing.
Alyson Lex 1:13
Number one, you're buying your way in with paid traffic. Number two, you're working your way in with organic traffic. And number three, a combo of the two. That's it, guys. There's no way around the fact that a well thought out and planned promotional schedule for your thing will get you a better result than a fly by the seat of your pants plan. Or no plan. The results speak for themselves,
Jennie Wright 1:42
holy cannoli. Do they ever speak for themselves. I was trying to I almost I almost went off the G rating for a second here. Okay, so it took me over nine months to launch my first course, the thought the idea began to grow back in May of 2018. The course wasn't launched until the first week of February 2019. And then in that time, there was a long list of things that had to be done. But one of the big things that had to be worked on was the promotion, the promotional calendar, the promotional plan, and we're going to talk about this a little bit because Allison was in the thick of things with me, Allison did all of the copy for that entire launch, Alison did the sales page, tons of emails promotional copy, you name it. And she was an integral part, first of all of the planning of that thing, but also of
Alyson Lex 2:33
the success of it.
Jennie Wright 2:34
And I firmly believe if we had not taken the time to plan out a really comprehensive marketing and planning and promotional calendar, we would not have had the results that we ended up having. So there was a lot that went into it. You know, I really wanted this to be a success, it was a huge change. For me prior to that. I worked with clients mostly in in the weeds kind of feel where I did projects. You know, I was the one building I did all the things. And of course, as the changes become you become more of a like a coach, right. And I like a lot of people have rushed my way into launches, and I've had low or even no results. And then I've gotten incredibly discouraged because honestly, it's a huge blow to the ego. And I shut down. I Cubby, I go away in my little, you know, warm, cozy spot, and I don't come out. And that can ruin your chances when the biggest thing that you should have and could have changed for a better result is the promotional plan.
Alyson Lex 3:32
So hashtag transparency, your I am a fly by the seat of your pants, or Jenny has been trying to train this out of me for years. And it's only slightly worked. Hmm, I, I have an idea. And I run. And part of that is because I get so excited about it. And I'm sure that some of you listening are feeling that you're so excited, you just want to go go go. Part of it is my personality too long of a planning process, and I start to get bored. And so what Jenny and I are going to talk about today is going to help you stop from getting bored. Okay, because it's gonna give you some things that are going to keep your attention throughout. And also, I will tell you, I launched a product at the end of 2019. I just did it. And when I did it, I winged it. I decided I was just going to launch it. I didn't even look at the calendar. I was just like, I'm gonna launch it tomorrow. That tomorrow happens to be the day before Thanksgiving, which is a really terrible day to launch. It's a really terrible day to launch your product. So that's the first step in not planning and that's the first thing that's a breakdown and throughout this episode, I'm sure I'll tell you more information. But that is a prime example. Of how not planning can lead to that complete after promo, disappointment? Oh, yeah. All right. So we want to help you avoid that total post promo breakdown. We're going to share what it really takes what you need to be focusing on, you're going to hear some successes, some failures, I'll let you guess, who had which. Oh, yeah, timelines for your marketing and your promo, they allow you and your team to see if you have a team, they get let you see the whole big picture, which is really, really important. Because then you know what's happening when and you know what you still need to do. And you can make sure it doesn't happen right near major holiday in the US. You can see the flaws, the holes, the overlaps really well, when you work from a big picture, well thought out timeline, please.
Jennie Wright 5:57
It really helps it then this is for a little launch. This is also for a big launch. This is for any kind of promo. So and when we say promo or launches, I don't want you to think that you have to be doing huge multi, you know, dollar, whatever dollar figure launches, I'm talking, even the little stuff. I'm talking, even just a webinar, or a Facebook Live that you want to get people on or a workshop, anything where you want people to gather together online, to see your thing. That's what we're talking about. timelines allow you to plan out the work and fit into your life, like Allison said, like not launching something the day before Thanksgiving. You know, if your kid does karate on Friday nights at six o'clock, then you can plan your promotional calendar on the fact that you're out of the house by 430 or five, or you know, you're getting your kid food at 430. So you got to be out of the house by five, right? So you know that you're gonna do your Facebook Live prior to four o'clock. And the thing about having a promotional plan is if you don't do that kind of thing, and you're going to be like, crap, I should have gone live today. But you know, I had to do this. And I had to do that. And everything else. By the way, everything. Everything will get in the way before you do your promo. Trust me. vacuuming looks good. Instead of doing your promo,
Alyson Lex 7:15
it's really, really good. Yeah,
Jennie Wright 7:18
washing your floors, honestly becomes the thing.
Alyson Lex 7:20
floors have never been cleaner than when I'm supposed to be promoting some.
Jennie Wright 7:25
Oh, yeah, all the laundry is done. I even clean like I'll even vacuum the ceilings. I have popcorn ceilings, in this place, I will even vacuum the popcorn ceilings, because that is more attractive to me, then promotion. So a few things are, you know, really interesting for us to talk about in terms of having that, you know, that big plan and don't get overwhelmed with it. Don't get overwhelmed. Just listen what we're saying. We're going to give you some really good techniques.
Alyson Lex 7:51
Before we dive super far in a few caveats, promotions, our work period, their hard work, and anyone who's telling you differently is not being honest. Or they're assuming that you're going to hire someone to do the hard work for you. Those are the two options. Not everybody in your following is going to engage with you on your promotions. There be people who unfollow you who unsubscribe, who don't comment. You might get emails from people saying you're emailing me too much. This is okay. Relax. The big thing is mindset is key. You're leveling up. It feels hard. It's never fully comfortable. We talked about how we'd rather clean floors, then promote and it's because it's uncomfortable. Be ready for that be ready to push be ready to kind of lean into that uncomfortable feeling and the doubt the worry. And the second guessing and this is where really having that plan helps. Because you know that no matter how you're feeling, you have to keep going because this is next on your list.
Jennie Wright 8:59
Correct. And one little addition to that, is that sometimes when people see the plan, they have the only like the holy crap moment, I have so much to do moment. Mm hmm. And you know what, there's a suck it up Buttercup kind of feel to that at the same time because again, promos are work, you know, in case of in case of worry, break glass, look at caveat number one from what
Alyson Lex 9:24
I think too, it's also really important. This is where planning it around your life comes in. But there is an aspect of planning your life around it to hundred percent. Don't take a vacation, when you know you're going to be promoting or launching. I've had that happen to Jenny's don't try not to move.
Jennie Wright 9:46
Yeah. But I've also had clients do it to me, where you're going to launch a summit and they go on vacation the week before launch. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, like should I go on vacation? Like No, no, but I haven't take but should I No, no, no. You Do not go on vacation the week before you launch your your thing, unless you have a team of 25 people who are handling everything. And all you have to do is take pictures with your you know your feet in the sand with a book. And that's your job. Great. But the majority of us have to actually, you know, be part of that definitely don't want to, you know, you have to schedule Yeah, and also schedule your promotions, not just around your life, but also the life of your ideal client.
Alyson Lex 10:25
That's a big one.
Jennie Wright 10:26
You know, some people are not morning people, and they don't like to get up early and do the things If that's you, but your ideal client is, then record your videos or write your emails, when it works for you. But make sure they go out or are available to your ideal client at the times that work for them. Right. And I think that needs to be something that people do 100%. Also consider, if you let's say you're and this is actually the really good, like first thing to do, right?
Alyson Lex 10:56
So I want to dive into this for just a second. If your ideal audience, for instance, is moms of grade schoolers, you probably don't want to launch something new the last week of August through the middle of September. Because that's back to school, especially not right now. But that's back to school. They're busy. They're trying to get things done. There's back to school nights, there's this there's that there's getting their kids ready. There's new schedules, there's, they're not paying attention to the new stuff that's coming out. And they're not going to pay attention to you. So really, there are three things to think about when you schedule your launches your life, your ideal clients life, and the world as a whole. Yep. Okay. This is major holidays, major goings on. Now. If your audience is 55 year old men who've never been married, or you know, single with no kids, you don't have to worry about back to school time. My worry more about golf season, or I'm not a 55 year old man. I don't know what they do. But whatever they're into, so your life, your ideal clients life, and kind of everything else going on in the world. Yeah. Okay. When you drill down into the details, right, so you've picked your ideal time to launch and promote, then it's time to think about what your promotion, life is gonna look like within those boundaries of promotion. Okay, so let's say we have, Jenny, what would be a good promo period for, let's say, a summit,
Jennie Wright 12:35
the minimum amount of time that I would do a promo for summit is at least two weeks, if you're doing organic, two weeks, if you're doing paid traffic, you need three, I love having a three week promo period simply because you can ease into it. And we ramp it up, just like you and I have talked about promotional storms. It's a ramp up. And so having that three weeks is I think, essential. And the week before the launch of the summit is key
Unknown Speaker 13:01
is hardcore, weak,
Jennie Wright 13:02
the hardcore weak, and we're going to talk about this a little bit more as we go. It's the hardcore week. And this is this applies to a summit a course, all of the things the week before the actual drop date, whatever that is closed card launch, you know, webinar, whatever it is, that is your key week of promo.
Alyson Lex 13:21
So I know in a previous episode, we talked about the promotional storm. And so your promotional period is that two weeks, but then you have your ramp up, which is another two weeks or so before that, the larger your thing, the more you should extend this out. So if you have a live event, two weeks, not enough, if you have a paid course, two weeks, probably not enough. And we'll talk about launching a paid course versus launching something free and a little bit. And so really, you want to say okay, here is the amount of time that I'm going to spend. Now let's look at what my life is going to look like in that. Okay, there are a few different types of promotion that you can do. And they're going to change. Because the last day of your promotion and the first day of your promotion are going to look very different. You're going to start with a you're more soft promo. And this is where you're delivering mostly content. And it's like an Oh, by the way, I have this thing. Just very gentle. Then you're going to move into the harder promote the hard promo. This is where the whole point of the message is, hey, I've got this thing and here's how awesome it is. And here's why you should sign up. You're going to have a mix of both throughout your entire period. But you're going to start mostly soft at the beginning and mostly hard at the end. Because what works two weeks out is different from what works one week out and different from 48 hours out.
Jennie Wright 14:59
Mm hmm. Agree. So what I want to add to that is, when you're looking at your promotional schedule, schedule, or you're looking at the way that you're about to share the event, or whatever it is that you're doing, the one week out the two weeks out the three weeks out, it's all different. I will say that the clock never stops, until the cart closes, or the promo launches. So here's an example that we were you know, that we have, and I'm going to kind of want to share this, it's kind of interesting that I ran a five day challenge. And I ran this challenge in November of 2019. And the challenge launched on a Monday, well, I didn't stop promoting, literally until I went to bed at 130 in the morning, like the Sunday night before. And the funny thing is, is that because I promote right until the end, right up until the very end, boy, I had to sleep, I added 58 more people to the challenge 58 more people, when eventually I was going to sell a course off the back end makes the difference between, you know, having a 44% conversion rate on a sales page, which is what we achieved and having X amount of people in the course. Right. And as a result, I know that one of those at least one of those 58 people ended up being a student, it's important to keep going so that you know what, what works. Two weeks out, and three weeks out and a week before and 48 hours, I will say that the ramp up continues. And we do have the feeling of you know, the fact that most people take action, right before the drop date, whatever the drop date is the closing date, whatever, most people take action, and you have to feed into that. So if you're looking at things like the coffee, and how that changes, I know Allison Allison can speak to what the coffee is, like 48 hours before, and that fear of FOMO and things, she adjusts the coffee to suit that right. And this can be said the same for webinars or selling a course. People need that last minute push. And where you think and you worry as an entrepreneur, that you're sending too many messages. This is where segmentation is your friend. Okay? If you're worried about that, and you're like, Oh, my God, I'm emailing my list too much, then this is where segmentation where you can make sure and we did a whole episode on segmentation. This is where you get to actually say I'm only going to email the people that really want to know the information at the level that I'm doing it at. Right so you don't piss off your entire list. Just an idea.
Alyson Lex 17:23
I am slightly different school of thought with that. So obviously, you want to, you don't want to make your list angry at you. But at the same time, don't be afraid to promote to them. If what you're doing the rest of the time is delivering them good value and content, then, and I'm gonna probably do a quick tip on this. You've put money into that relationship piggy bank, you've put tokens in there with every bit of content that you put out. Don't be afraid to cash in those tokens now. Oh, yeah. That's why you're doing it. Yeah. Right. So you also want to think about, and this is why what we talked about with the promo storm episode is so important. You're not just going to go from one email week to one email an hour, you're gonna ramp it up. That's why you have more than a one day promotional period. So that in the beginning, you're sending them a couple of emails, maybe maybe two emails a week, and then the next week, you send a third and then the following week, you send a fourth, so that by the time you're in the thick of the promotional period, it's not like Holy guacamole. Jenny used to email me once a month, and now she's talking to me every day. And I don't know how it's, there's no whiplash. It's just a general ramp up. And it's really important that you listen to the promotional storm episode, because we'll talk more in detail about that. By the way, that's Episode Seven, Episode Seven. Thank you. I was going to link it on the show notes page anyway. And like Jenny said, most people are going to take action, the closer that you get to the deadline. People by nature are procrastinators. That's just how it is. They're going to forget, they're going to put it off. They're going to lose interest. I just signed up for a summit yesterday, and it doesn't happen until October 5. You're gonna forget about it between I'm completely gonna forget. So the other part of your promotion is reminding and engaging the people who have already signed up. Oh, heck yes. Okay, so now, since we're going to talk about segmentation, you now have two audiences, the people who haven't signed up and the people who have so the first audience, the people who haven't signed up, the goal with them is to get them to a place where they can sign up, to get them to a place where they're interested in what you have to get them to a place where they're ready for what you have. And so whether that is a workshop, a webinar, summit a challenge product, I don't care. Whatever you have your job is to get them ready, get them interested and get them on board. For the people who have already signed up for a date based thing. You've got to keep them engaged, or they're gonna lose momentum. Yes. So they're hot. They're ready. They're there. They're excited. I saw this done really well, with a summit. Just a few weeks ago, there was a private Facebook group just for the summit. They everybody who wanted in on the summit was funneled in there. And the person who launched the summit was sharing behind the scenes. Yes, asking questions, encouraging people to get to know each other, really working to create the sense of community, dripping Facebook Lives. Hey, Pete, what's going on? sneak peeks? Then, of course, there was the call to action of No, anybody who wants this, invite them? Yeah, here's the link, like, and so she then engage this audience, got them excited. turn them into ambassadors for her was a fence. I mean, it was really well done.
Jennie Wright 21:14
Yeah, because she's already taking, she's already taking them. And she's already helping them if you can get somebody to sign up. And and we did this with the challenge. And we did this with our webinars. And we do this in our own business, that if you can get people to sign up, and then you're helping them before they technically even think you're going to help them. They're going to be wowed. They're going to you're going to develop that know, like and trust factor that everybody talks about so much. And you're going to create those raving fans, the sooner you can create the raving fans, the sooner you're going to get them to be your little promotional army.
Alyson Lex 21:47
Exactly. And of course, the more likely they are going to be to buy from you when it's time to make a paid offer. Absolutely.
Jennie Wright 21:57
When I was talking about segmentation earlier, and what I was saying is, I believe in the you know, the promo investment, piggy bank idea, I totally do. What I also like is being able to say to people, hey, you know, and I've done this before, I you know, something's coming up. Let's just say Jenny's while we thing is coming up, whatever that is. And I'm going to be talking about it. And if you're interested in it, I'd love to continue that conversation. And if this is something that you know, you stay, you want to stay on my email list, but you don't want to hear about Jenny's while we thing. That's okay. And click here. And some people do that. Now. Some people say Yeah, sure. Add this to your segmentation so that those people don't get overwhelmed with promo emails. The other thing is, as soon as somebody buys from you, if that's part of your promo, stop promoting to them, they go on to the nurture side of things, right? So you never ever want to have people who were like, dude, I already bought the thing, why are you still trying to sell me the thing, because then you're going to get people who are going to have regret some of them and will be like, Alright, I bought your thing, but you were incessantly pushing on me. I actually don't want the thing anymore. And I don't want to talk to you anymore. So I'm out.
Alyson Lex 23:05
And it's that's also important because you should be nurturing them on the buyer side, or the signup side. getting them excited getting them ready, getting them moving forward getting them engaged, which is different messaging. So if you use Active Campaign like we do, you pop them out of the the lead group into the buyer group and the buyer group gets XYZ automation and the lead group still get your promos, correct? Yep. At its most basic level, that is absolutely the kind of segmentation you should be doing
Jennie Wright 23:41
hundred percent. And when we go when we talk about promo as we get closer to the drop date, whatever the drop date is, the promo like Alyson was saying, changes, right? And what you're going to see that people love is behind the scenes. Yes. They love it. It's It's literally catnip to people they cannot not look, they have to see what's going on behind the scene. Now there's a way to do it, right? If it seems pushy and weird, don't do it. But it's kind of like, there's lots of things you can do here and examples are popping into my head. things where you're just like, you know, if you take a look at Alyson Nye in our feeds, we'll take these silly snapshots of us doing this podcast. Okay, super silly. And having said that, Alyson Here we go, ready? 123. Okay, super silly snapshot just taken. And we post these on our social timeline, showing people the behind the scenes of recording the podcast, okay. And we'll make silly comments. And that's like a behind the scenes, but then we put later down in the post, you know, check us out, watch the arc, listen to the podcast, and here's the links and don't forget to download, right. And that works a great deal than just having some social posts of, you know, a picture that we made on Canva that talks about the episode.
Alyson Lex 24:56
So which we do as well, yes, but it's a common It's a combination. And frankly, when I post, I just did it the other day. So Jenny sent me a screenshot. And she was all like super smiley, and I was making a face. I was in the middle of talking. I was making a silly face. And my caption was just something simple. Like, Jenny likes to send me screenshots where she looks awesome. And I look like a big dork. And you got a ton of attention. And people really enjoyed seeing that behind the scenes. Yep.
Jennie Wright 25:28
And we actually saw a bump in our downloads, we
Alyson Lex 25:31
did see a bump in our downloads, like whether
Jennie Wright 25:33
or not it was correlated,
Alyson Lex 25:34
right? correlation and causation. Not necessarily a thing. But that's something we're going to test. Yeah. Another thing that I've seen that I love this, and I totally want to do it, a previous client of mine was doing a webinar. And he knew he was going to be pitching at the end of the webinar. And so he took his phone. And he did alive right before the webinar, he was like, I'm getting ready to do this. Here's the prep, you can see my desktop total behind the scenes, right? Well, then he was like, You know what, I'm going to just set you down here. And he streamed, just him, no slides, nothing. The whole webinar on Facebook Live. Interesting. And he booked calls from it. Interesting. That is something I want to test for myself. as well. He didn't interact with the Facebook Live, it was literally he took his phone, he set it to the side, they got a side profile of his face. He didn't look at them. He didn't acknowledge them. They're just there. It was almost like I forgot to stop the live. But he he said, I'm just gonna set you down here and you can you can peek in.
Jennie Wright 26:44
That's kind of neat behind the scenes kind of feel like that.
Alyson Lex 26:46
Behind the scenes, it got a ton of views. He got a ton of comments, he booked calls, it boosted his visibility. And it was a way for him to generate additional leads. Now he didn't capture their email addresses. No. He didn't know who necessarily watched if they didn't comment. But he booked calls. So if that's something that's in line with your goals, if your primary and only goal is to capture email addresses, then don't do that. Yeah, think outside the box, like not every How can you get people in a behind the scenes way.
Jennie Wright 27:26
And not everything in your promo, like whatever it is that your promo is going to be is going to work. Some of this promo stuff is absolutely trial and error. The things that I the things that I have done and tried that have not worked out sister Oh, girl, list, the list of things is longer on the What did not work versus the What did work. But what I like about what the did work list is that it's repeatable. And we're always trying new things. You know, I literally saw just this past weekend, there's a, there's a marketer that I follow, I think she's really cool. do have some fan girl happening on that one. And she did a webinar, as I showed wasn't a webinar, it was a workshop on Sunday, two and a half hours, really good workshop. And they also streamed it into the Facebook group. So they had 14, or 1600 people or something like that No 16,000 people signed up for the webinar. And a whole bunch of people showed up on this Facebook Live part. It was really, really good.
Alyson Lex 28:25
So let's talk about
Jennie Wright 28:27
let's talk about something that people are going to ask us about anyways. And that's about the paid traffic side. With your promo, you know, is it worth doing Facebook ads or paid traffic? Two weeks out, or two days out? alson I've done this, we're like, yeah, we're just gonna throw some money at a boosted post three days before the webinar, you know, or two weeks before the webinar, things like that. We will tell you from our own personal experience, it hasn't worked for us. Okay, Facebook takes longer to understand your audience and the algorithms and all those wonderful things, then it does over two dates. When I'm doing a summit with a client or any kind of a launch, and Alice and I have done launches together with clients for challenges and courses and whatnot, the lead up time for the ads takes longer than the actual organic promo time. So we will say this as a rule of thumb, that if you're doing paid traffic, your lead up time or that promo time is a minimum of three weeks minimum, minimum, like capital letters, minimum reason being is that any person worth their salt with Facebook ads is going to create a whole bunch of ad sets and a whole bunch of different creative within those ad sets. And then they're going to see what works and then they're going to start paring down. The things that don't get traffic will start to get turned off and the things that are getting traffic will have more budget put towards them. Right. And it takes a little while to do that. That's the the finagling and the finessing of Facebook ads or paid traffic in general and you need to you need to bake in that time. time. So bake that into your promotional time if paid traffic is going to be your thing, and then bake out even additional time to make sure that your ads person has everything that they need to make it happen. So in your promotional timeline, if you're doing paid traffic, you might be doing a three week promo or four week promo on that. I think you have to have the creative done, or that conversation, five weeks out.
Alyson Lex 30:25
So something to worry about. And it works out really well, because I believe it is our next episode, after this one where we're speaking with a Facebook ads expert. So you should we've actually asked her this question, because obviously the interview is recorded. But we've asked her this question, and she's answered it. So listen to Episode 19. Absolutely. Michelle Bridger. She's amazing. Yeah, we are so excited to know her and definitely listen to what she has to say about it.
Jennie Wright 30:59
The way personally worked with our two,
Alyson Lex 31:01
there you go see high recommendation. The thing that I want to make sure I impress upon everybody listening is your promotional period, your launch is not the only time you should be working on building your audience. Whether you're going organic, paid or combination of both. Okay, there is nothing holding you back from continuing to grow your audience all year long. And using that audience during your promotional periods, here's how this might look. If you're using paid traffic, run leads through a lead magnet, grow your audience. Now you can email them, but you can also use that audience in Facebook to target when it's time to launch. Okay, if you're going 100% organic, you should be working and partnering with other people on their podcasts on in their groups, utilizing our solid social media hashtag strategy, delivering fabulous content, generating buzz building your audience, because launching to an organic audience of 100. And launching to an organic audience of 1000 does feel different. It is completely possible to have success with an organic audience of 100. We have a client who launched with literally 00 email list zero audience. And she got signups for a challenge. And she's thrilled. But we've had clients who have already had an established audience that have launched and have more signups. And they're thrilled to so continue to build your audience all year. That way, when you promote, whether it's organic or paid, I don't care. But when you promote, you're gonna do better if you have some kind of existing audience. 100 is better than zero. 1000 is better than 100 don't need 10,000 to be successful. But you'll you'll be happier with the outcome if you have a few
Jennie Wright 33:21
hundred percent. So there's something I want to say here and this matters as well and pull this
Alyson Lex 33:28
for what you need it to be.
Jennie Wright 33:30
The time of year, the lifespan of your promotion really, really matters. I can't emphasize it so much as much as I possibly can. Here's an example of what I mean. If you're a loving relationship coach, when you promote matters, okay, so depending on what your angle from loving, loving relationship is, February 14, Valentine's Day, might be a really good day, or maybe a really bad day. Right? And so your promotion has to work around these things. If you're a health and wellness coach, certain holidays are triggers for a lot of people. If you're a mental health and wellness coach, certain areas and things that are happening in the world, or when you need to step up. Right. A lot of people needed mental health and wellness support when the pandemic happened. People also need a lot of wealth and money management. When the pandemic happened. There's a lot of people who needed support as parents as relationship people in relationships and marriages. When the pandemic happened, we saw a lot of growth in those areas online. So you have to have you have to have the plan. But then you also be have to be able to look at what's going around and saying Okay, you know what, February 14 or Valentine's Day is when I'm going to do my my lovers workshop or you You could talk about the the trend of I don't even know there's no there's a term for Ellison. But it's what happens after Christmas and New Year where people break up because they're they just wanted somebody to be with them through the holidays. There's like a name for it. If you look it up, I didn't know that was a thing. But I learned it from my interesting. Well, and I want to just jump in, you said something. Think about it this way. Okay, Valentine's Day, Jenny said a lovers workshop. And to me, what that means is,
Alyson Lex 35:31
you know, maybe help my relationship get stronger. Okay, so I'm in a relationship, and you want me to watch your webinar on Valentine's Day, in or around. But on Valentine's Day would be a bad idea why? I'm on a date. Sure. Right. So this is what we talked about, at the beginning of the episode two, we're understanding what's going on in the world. And also, in your ideal clients world is important.
Jennie Wright 36:03
I had a client who deals with single women in their 40s. And for the last three Valentine's Days and nights, she's actually held a single, like a single ladies party online.
Alyson Lex 36:16
That it's fantastic.
Jennie Wright 36:17
Oh, yeah, they all get together, you Single Ladies. And they and they, you know, they they talk and they commiserate and blah, blah, blah, do all these kinds of things. Right? Absolutely. So and that works, because those people are like, you know, not getting any dates or whatever the it is. So right. That kind of makes sense. So I just kind of wanted to wrap up this episode. And I think that's a really good spot for it, to talk about just making sure that the lifespan of what you're doing and that you're, you're working those dates in. And the last thing I kind of want to say and I think Allison can probably help me with this is when you're planning out your promotions, and you're planning out your promotional calendars and stuff, there's there's two ways of doing it.
Alyson Lex 36:57
Really,
Jennie Wright 36:58
one, you can try and plan out your whole year, and then feel overwhelmed and go get a bucket of ice cream, because that's what I would do. Or you can do it in bite sized chunks. I like to work in quarters, I like to break the year down into quarters. And I prefer to do that, because then it doesn't feel so fricking overwhelming to me. And I'm not worrying in June, what I have to worry about in August, quite honestly, because I'm not that kind of person. And it also plays into the fact that we have shorter attention spans.
Alyson Lex 37:28
So what I do, and it's so funny, I just did an interview for somebody else's podcast where I really broke this down, but it's not live yet. So I'm primed for this. I put together my yearly goals, this is what I want to accomplish this year. And I actually have a little whiteboard about it from the dollar store and hangs on my wall. And it has my yearly goals right at the top, then the rest of the whiteboard is broken into quadrants one for each quarter. I funnel them out, I kind of say, Okay, I'm going to do this in q1, this in q2, just the big things, not the granular plan my whole world. But just I want to launch a product, I'm going to do it in q2, I want to write a book, I'm going to do that by q4. I'm going to do this I'm going to do that in q2, right like here's the big things I want to accomplish this year. Of course, there's a revenue goal, there's a list build goal. And so any of those goals get tracked throughout the year, but I have the things I want to accomplish. Then as I come up on those quarters, I can begin to plan just like Jennie does. So I say I want to launch a product in q2, it's getting to be the end of q1, let's really look at that product now. Because I know I want to get it done in q2, that gives me three, three and a half, four months from now. So it doesn't be you don't have to set your whole life in stone. And you know, frankly, my board right now q2 just has a big COVID on it. Because I didn't get a whole lot done in q2, I changed things around. But it's really important that you start to think in those terms. Mm hmm. Now, I haven't really shared this with Jenny yet, so I'm just going to do it. If you want help, kind of formulating your granular plan, I want to invite you to schedule a thrive call with Jenny and myself. Yeah, you can get the link to do that on our show notes page. But basically, what we're going to do is we're both going to hop on the phone with you for a recorded 60 minute call. We'll take a ton of notes, we'll help you come up with a plan. We'll help you figure out what to do next. We'll give you all kinds of information and the details can be on the show notes page or in the link on the show notes page. But the whole point is to get you going in the right direction. This is great if you're launching a new product. If you want to have a list build event like A summit or a challenge, if you are launching a new service or a coaching, business, anything like that, this is really where we shine. And this is really what we want to help you do. So if you head to System to thrive.com, slash one, eight, that's the number 18 numeral, you will see a link to go ahead and pick up one of those thrive calls spots for yourself. And Jenny, and I will be happy to work with you and figure out what you're doing next. So Jenny, I'm sorry that I didn't clear that with you. You're good. I like that. It's perfect. I think that everybody has, like we talked about your audience is different. Where you're starting from is different. The time of year matters, what you're promoting is different. And it's really hard for us to create a singular resource for this episode, that's going to cover all of your needs. And the best way for us to help you with that is to get you on a call, where we can really kind of coach you one on one super customized and specific, that's the best way. So that's all I've got. That's my offer.
Jennie Wright 41:09
Well, I appreciate the fact that you know, you and I have sort of laid it bare as to what we do, what we'd prefer people to do, the experiences that we've had, and what we've kind of gone through with our own promotional, I struggle, and I will Rage Against the Machine of promotional calendars, but I know I need to do them. So I'm like, I just suck it up, and I do it. There we go. Yeah. And I just want to take a second from Allison, I think everybody who's listening to the podcast, we're really grateful that you're here. We're really grateful that you take the time to listen to us, and hopefully apply anything that we're sharing with you, other than just the sound of our voices. So take a second and please hit the subscribe button, wherever it is that you're listening to this podcast, so you don't miss a single episode, or quick tip, which we've just recently added to the podcast from Elsa and I. So thank you so much, and we will be back with another big question the next time. Thanks again for watching or listening to this podcast. We hope we've answered some of your big questions today. Be sure to subscribe
Unknown Speaker 42:12
to the podcast anywhere
Jennie Wright 42:14
you're listening and leave us a review.
Alyson Lex 42:17
Also, make sure you've checked out the thrive collaborative podcast community, our Facebook group for listeners and entrepreneurs find us on Facebook or online at System to thrive.com