How I Hit a 6-Figure Launch Without Any Paid Ads
Building an audience and getting traction with your offers is incredibly hard. It’s not an overnight success like the highlight reel on social media makes it seem. I know there are about a million and one “solutions” that are being pushed out into the online ad space right now that promise fast growth — Facebook ads, Tik Tok, paying for visibility, etc.
But the thing is, you don’t need to spend money on these to build a following. And you don’t need a big following either. What’s more important is that you’re creating offers that people want while building meaningful connections with the audience you have.
Launching Without Paid Ads IS Possible
A few months ago, I launched my very first coaching program — $10K on Replay — and I didn’t pay a single penny for Facebook ads.
Let me tell you, it was A LOT of work. I had a whole fleet of IG posts, Reels, and Story ideas in my head, but honestly? I was way too tired to promote this thing on social media. The creative energy I needed to build a great offer was tapped out, so I barely posted anything on social media.
And guess what? I still hit 6 figures with this launch.
This means the world doesn’t revolve around Instagram Reels and TikToks, even if they do help get you noticed.
Wanna know what helped me create a six-figure launch? Read on to find out what worked (and what didn’t!).
The ONLY Two Platforms I Used to Promote My Coaching Program
Typically, I only show up on YouTube and Instagram, along with a weekly email. With this launch though, I didn’t have the capacity for everything, so I went with what I knew would be the most effective platform for this launch.
I focused solely on YouTube and my emails. When it was all said and done, I ended up posting on Instagram LESS than a handful of times, including Stories, Reels, and feed posts.
Juggling multiple platforms is exhausting. Each one has its own set of rules and algorithms to battle, and because launches are tough (not always stressful, just a lot of work, brainpower, and time invested), I had even less availability to be everywhere at once.
For my audience, in particular, email and YouTube is where I tend to get the most traction, so I stuck to the two things that get eyes on my offers consistently.
How I Had a Successful Launch With Just Email & Social
Want to see how this launch broke down between my emails and YouTube videos? Here goes:
Using YouTube to Prime My Audience
On YouTube, it was all about priming my audience and sharing more business strategies. I don’t make the big bucks through growing my subscriber count. It’s the business model I use and my approach to business that’s helped me scale, which is what I wanted to share with people inside $10K on Replay. It aims to teach business owners how to start hitting $10K a month consistently, so all of my content needed to point in that direction.
I did a couple of videos to prep the runway and ease people into the topic:
None of my videos talked about growing a following. None of my strategies focused on growing my channel. I’m known for my business strategy on YouTube, so I knew that if I was talking about something out of my norm, the YouTube algorithm would be confused. It would be harder to get views and tell people about the program if I deviated from my niche.
These three videos ended up being some of the most engaging videos I’ve ever done. The comment count was crazy and my audience retention was so high that I had to do a triple-take. Knowing my audience struggles with content creation helped me lean into their biggest pain point and offer them a solution, making them want more of this help.
How Email Marketing Fits Into The Story
With each new video I post, I write an email to accompany it. I send it to all of my subscribers to let them know there’s an awesome new video out, and that they should go watch it. This made sure that the people who didn’t see my video organically on YouTube when I posted still knew it was there.
When email marketing gets teamed up with YouTube, you’ve got a genius strategy. Because of the algorithms we all hate (something YouTbe and email don’t really play into), not everyone is seeing your content. I hear from a lot of business owners that they don’t want to send the same content they’ve been posting on social media because they’re scared of being repetitive.
The average business account gets less than 1% engagement on each post, and the average American adult is only on Instagram for 30 minutes a day. This number varies by industry and the specific demographics of your audience, but what these numbers show us is that yeah…not everyone is seeing your content.
If a follower isn’t on YouTube much, and they pretty much rely on Instagram or other social media platforms to find helpful videos, they may not know you have a new video out until they stumble upon your page again months later while binge-scrolling through your posts.
Email services don't have an algorithm to fight against, so you can potentially get your videos seen by more of your audience.
The Goal of My “Prepping” Videos
The primary goal of the videos I used to “prep that launch runway” was to get people to the sales page for a free private training of mine, where they had to apply to get registered. The CTA in these videos, and in many of my emails, was to apply. In that free training, I showed them how to hit consistent monthly revenue…are you seeing the connection yet?
Since my team and I would be working with them one-on-one for an entire year, we wanted to make sure the partnership with each person made sense, and that it had a place in their businesses too.
We ended up having:
160 applications
113 accepted
20 join my coaching program
8 people paid in full ($5K)
12 did 12-month payment plans of $500
For a total of $112,000 for the $10K on Replay coaching program launch. That was with no social media promo and zero paid ads.
The End Result of This Launch
Obviously, the end goal was to have people sign up for my coaching program, and that’s exactly what happened. It went better than I had expected and I’m super grateful! But that doesn’t mean it went off without a hitch.
I like to look at each launch as a learning experience, successful or not. There are a ton of different factors that influence how a launch performs — the needs of your audience at that time, your business needs at that time, how you promote it, outside influences and other things going on in the world — so each launch isn’t an exact replica of each other.
What Worked This Time
This was the fifteenth launch I’ve done, which includes every launch for my membership and course launches. But again, each launch is unique, and when the dust settled, and we went back to see how we did, here’s what I saw work well:
Special pricing offered an initiative for people to join now and skip out on the waiting because pricing will definitely be going up next time.
Since this program was brand new, there were no testimonials. I had to entice people to join without social proof, which is why I decided on founder’s pricing. They basically got into this program at half-price as a founding member!
Members who paid in full got the opportunity to book a one-on-one call with me, which boosted registration.
I’ve been wanting to coach for years, and my audience has been wanting me to coach for years. The time was right to start this, which reiterates to me how important it is to listen to what your audience wants.
What Didn’t Work so Well
No launch is perfect. Each time you do it, you find the hiccups and work to improve them for the next one. This wasn’t my first launch but it was my first coaching program launch. Here’s what I found didn't go so well for my audience and the $10K on Replay Program.
I needed to work more on the behind-the-scenes automation before launching, including
Sending contracts
Welcome/onboarding
Getting people into slack
Sending welcome gifts (which I’m still doing…the program launched in April)
I needed to have a better system for showing people the VIP treatment when they got started, especially since they were the first-ever clients of this coaching program!
What I’ll Change Next Time
Just because you had a great launch for your membership, doesn’t mean your coaching program launch will automatically be a hit. You have your target audience, but within that audience lies segments.
Not everyone interested in one thing will automatically be interested in the other. Sure, they will overlap, but they won’t all be the same. That’s why it’s really important that you tap into the specific needs and feedback of the audience for each offer.
Keeping that in mind, here’s what I’ll be changing for the next launch:
My team and I are going to test this on evergreen mode, so no live launches for a few months until we get our systems streamlined.
I need to promo it more — people don’t know unless you tell them!
Talk more about what’s currently happening on the inside, share testimonials before the program is over, etc. to give my online audience a peek into what it’ll be like to work with me in this coaching program.
The TL;DR? Launching Isn’t Easy
There’s a lot more behind the scenes than what I expand on in the post. Launching is hard and this particular one was only smooth because I’ve been through the wringer a few times and have made plenty of mistakes that I learned from.
Launching isn’t something you can just throw together and expect to live up to the hype after just a week of planning. There’s a lot of backend work that goes beyond figuring out what you’ll be offering.
In this video, I’m dishing out the 12 biggest things I’ve learned from launching, so you don’t make the same mistakes I did. Watch it way before your next launch so you have plenty of time to prepare…unless you enjoy pulling your hair out and crying at 1 AM because your launch is all over the place (#BeenThereDoneThat — just watch the video).
