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Episode 208 - How to Create a Website Launch Marketing Plan
802 Plays1 year ago
In today's episode, Krista and I are chatting about how to put together a marketing plan for your next website launch. Winter is coming and we've found that, in the past at least, that's typically the time that people start thinking about making updates to their brand or to their website. If that's you, consider checking out our line of stunning, easy to customize, showit and wordpress website designs at daveyandkrista.com/shop. If you're looking for a more "done for you" option, send us a message at daveyandkrista.com/contact to learn more about custom, brand + website design.
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check 'em out at https://daveyandkrista.com/how-to-create-website-launch-marketing-plan/. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
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Transcript
Launching a Blog: Initial Content Strategy
00:00:00
Speaker
Whenever we're working with clients, we always advise them to have at least three to five blog posts at launch if their blog is new. Otherwise it kind of looks like the blog is broken. I think it's kind of lackluster to get there and there's nothing to really read. I typically advise not even putting that page live on the site if you don't have anything but like coming soon for like a specific page. So like if you're launching a blog, don't just say blog coming soon. Maybe just don't have the blog if you're going to go live without any blog posts.
Introduction to 'Brands That Book' Podcast
00:00:28
Speaker
You're listening to the Brands That Book show, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs who want practical tips and strategies for building engaging brands, crafting high converting websites, and creating reliable lead generation systems for their businesses. I'm your host, Davy Jones, co-founder of two agencies, a brand and website design agency, Davy & Krista, and the digital advertising agency, Till Agency. And I ask questions so you can find answers.
00:00:58
Speaker
In today's episode, Kristin and I are chatting about how to put together a marketing plan for your next website launch. Winter is coming, and we found that in the past at least, that's typically the time that people start thinking about making updates to their brand or to their website. If that's you, consider checking out our line of stunning, easy to customize, show it in WordPress website designs. You can find those over in the shop at davianchristin.com forward slash shop. But if you're looking for a more done for you option,
00:01:27
Speaker
Again, head on over to our website and send us a message to learn more about custom brand and website design. As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check them out at davianchrista.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts. Now onto the episode.
00:01:45
Speaker
All right. We are in the throes of pumpkin spice latte season, which means that right around the corner is website launch season.
Community Buzz: Starbucks & Coffee Talk
00:01:53
Speaker
I know. And we just got a Starbucks, which is really exciting for our town. We have not been yet because the line is always massive. Like we drove by the other day at five o'clock, which is dinnertime. Like who needs caffeine at five o'clock? And the line was like, I need caffeine at five o'clock. You have issues. The line was like 20 people. And I'm like, I'm never going to get my pumpkin spice latte because it's just so long.
00:02:15
Speaker
For what it's worth, when Krista says, we haven't been there yet, I mean, I probably, like, I might go, I guess, but I'm not like huge Starbucks fan to begin with. Not that I have anything against it, I just like, when I go and get coffee, I get a black coffee. You do. You know, like, I get an Americano. And so it's like, you know, what's the point of going and paying for an expensive Americano? I don't normally get pumpkins, I just like, like, won. Also, I'm not a huge Starbucks coffee fan, like, you have Starbucks coffee for our little coffee machine right now, and it's not my favorite.
00:02:45
Speaker
Well, you know, I like that. The only reason I got that is because it was a seasonal mix. And I do like kind of the seasonal smell of fall. This one is not seasonal. Okay. It's not as
Crafting a Website Launch Marketing Plan
00:02:54
Speaker
flavored as you like your coffee. It does not smell like a pumpkin and I want my coffee to smell like a pumpkin. Yes. Well, here we are. People are like, just get to the website launch marketing plan. So here we are going to move to the website launch marketing plan. And I hope there'll be more agreement on this topic than there is about coffee.
00:03:10
Speaker
because really the gift of coffee for me is caffeine. But anyways, moving on, moving on. Today what we're going to do is we're going to talk about putting together a website launch marketing plan. And we've put together some steps that you can take to create that plan. And the idea is hopefully you can take these steps and you can adjust them for your own needs. Right. But I think it's a pretty good template.
00:03:31
Speaker
There is a corresponding blog post here, so if you feel like maybe you're driving or you're working out or whatever, you can refer to those as notes. It even includes some extra tips for putting together a website launch marketing
Are Website Launches Overrated?
00:03:43
Speaker
plan. Links to free things and et cetera. Yeah, links to things that will hopefully make promoting your website easier like our downloadable, customizable... Canva. Yeah, Canva social templates. Yes. Right? And all sorts of things.
00:03:58
Speaker
But website launch season, you know, I feel like a lot of websites go on live, usually like around February. I feel like that's kind of peak season for us.
00:04:06
Speaker
I think it starts after Christmas. There are a lot of people who want a January 1st, new year, new website. Yeah, yeah. People are setting business goals. So anyways, we have nine tips and steps here. I tried to put them in order, things to think about throughout the process. One of the things I want to say about a website launch is that I think website launches are a little bit overrated. And I know it's weird to say that at the outset of a podcast episode like this, but I think that people build up
00:04:34
Speaker
website launch is so much like their business, it's do or die if this website launch doesn't go according to plan. Right. And, you know, maybe a website launch doesn't go particularly well, you know, maybe it falls short of expectations. That's okay, because really what happens next is the most important thing. You're going to learn a lot anytime you do a launch of any sort, right? Every launch I've ever done, I've learned a lot from.
00:04:59
Speaker
So taking those things, implementing them, and then just moving on. That's the most important thing. Website launches, I think, are important because you're going to have extra eyeballs on your website. I mean, just people who are curious, it is an opportunity to create some hype around your business, especially if maybe you're launching a new product or you're launching a new service at the same time.
00:05:20
Speaker
So being able to take advantage of that extra traffic, I think is awesome. You can create a lot of momentum, but if you put a lot of effort into a website launch, maybe it just doesn't go exactly according to how you thought it would go, that's okay.
Setting Realistic Goals for Website Launch
00:05:34
Speaker
Your business can still thrive. Yeah, hopefully you see it as a starting point for a new phase of your business rather than the thing that changes everything.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing is I was reading a couple articles as I was prepping our own content and just the amount of content out there about this topic that acts like, oh yeah, website launch, make or break your business. Like that's not true. Anyways, let's start with step one and that's determining your launch and website goals. And you know, really you should be asking yourself, you know, what are your goals for your website and what are your goals for your launch? And they might be a little bit different. Can you elaborate on those?
00:06:11
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, your goals for your website probably going to come down to lead generation. You know, I think for pretty much every business out there, lead generation is or should be one of the primary focuses. Certainly for your service-based business, right? It's all about leads. It's all about somebody inquiring, raising their hand, saying, hey, I'm interested in this service.
00:06:30
Speaker
But even if you're running some sort of e-com business where you're selling a product, you're selling a course, being able to generate leads from your website so people getting your email list or opting into text messages or whatever it is on your website and being able to nurture those people, super important because the majority of people are not going to purchase the first time they come across your brand or website. I think I've seen statistics as high as 90%. 90% of people aren't going to purchase the first time they go to a website.
00:07:00
Speaker
So having goals for your website probably gonna come down to something along the lines of increasing leads, increasing conversion rate of product sales or whatever. Your goals for launch though, part of that might be just brand awareness. Part of it might just be trying to make people more aware of your brand, creating that hype, right? Would you say that having a traffic goal is a good goal? If you're like, I want a thousand visitors, or is that not a good goal?
00:07:29
Speaker
I think it's kind of arbitrary. I mean, I guess if you have a lot of benchmarks in place, you know typically in a seven day span, your website generates this much traffic. Setting a goal based on that maybe makes sense, but I also think it's kind of just arbitrary. I would say if I'm thinking about through a launch of our own, it's almost always going to be like increasingly gen.
00:07:52
Speaker
Like how can I convert as many people as possible to our email list, right? And so that's really gonna be the primary focus. Now, your goals for your launch and your website might be the same. It might be like, okay, I really want my website to generate more leads for me. I really wanna use my website launch to amplify that for the week of launch or whatever.
00:08:16
Speaker
But getting clear on those goals, I think is super important. And I think that it shouldn't only be brand awareness. Like, oh, I just want people to know us. One, because it's hard to quantify that, right? I mean, I guess you could, you know, on social media, like Instagram is going to give you metrics and tell you how many professional accounts you've reached in the last however many days. But at the end of the day, I think that really your launch goals probably going to come down to some sort of conversion goal around sales or leads.
00:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Awesome. You're looking at me like, I don't know. That's important to understand, right? Because, you know, everything
Delivering Immediate Value at Launch
00:08:52
Speaker
else should be centered on, you know, reaching that goal. Okay. And so if it doesn't help you reach that goal, then it's, you know, maybe something that you can kind of put aside.
00:09:02
Speaker
And we'll add a link to this in our show notes and in our blog posts. But if you're like, I don't know what lead gen is, that's going to be capturing email addresses. And typically you need a third party software to do that, something like Flowdesk or ConvertKit. And I think that most website builder platforms, definitely the ones that we built on show it in an Elementor.
00:09:19
Speaker
Easily integrate with those and so if you could give somebody a free guide and they could download that and you would capture their email address or if you were on an e-commerce shop, maybe you give them like 10, 20, 15% off in exchange for their email address. And so that's what he's talking about when he's talking about lead gem. If that's all new to you.
00:09:38
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And we have so many resources talking about that, so we'll link to those in the show notes. Steps two and three here. Step two is offer value now. Don't promise to offer value later. And I think that we see this, people make a big deal about their website launch, but it's not quite done. Maybe they've only written one blog post, or maybe they haven't even launched their blog yet, or maybe they don't have some sort of lead magnet set up to capture leads, right? So start thinking about the way that you can offer value right now. It'd be like Chick-fil-A opening a new restaurant,
00:10:08
Speaker
And, you know, generating a lot of hype about it, you show up to the restaurant and they're like, you know, just passing out menus. Like, well, we don't have any of this stuff now. But if you come back later, we will. Yeah, I think it's kind of disappointing. Whenever we're working with clients, we always advise them to have at least three to five blog posts if at launch, if their blog is new.
00:10:26
Speaker
Otherwise it kind of looks like the blog is broken. I think it's kind of lackluster to get there and there's nothing to really read. I typically advise not even putting that page live on the site if you don't have anything but like coming soon for like a specific page. So like if you're launching a blog, don't just say blog coming soon. Maybe just don't have the blog if you're going to go live without any blog posts.
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah. I would start thinking through like, what's that thing that when somebody lands on your website, they're going to be like, oh, you know, that was really helpful. Or, you know, I'm going to save this for
Creating Launch Hype Aligned with Goals
00:10:56
Speaker
later. Right. You know, starting to think through that I think is really important. And, you know, again, just going back to lead generation, if the goal is lead generation, then you need to have some sort of lead magnet. It can't just be sign up for my newsletter. You're going to see really low conversion that way. Really low conversion and typically only from the warmest of warm leads. Your mom. You know? Yeah.
00:11:16
Speaker
Maybe not even her. Not because she doesn't love you, just because. She doesn't want more email. Yeah, you know, and that's what everybody thinks when they see you sign up for my newsletter, you know, unless you've already brought the value. Right. And I think step three here, very much related to what we're just talking about, which is brainstorming ways to create hype around your website launch.
00:11:35
Speaker
And hype is not the same thing as a strategy. You want to lead with the strategy. What's the strategy? It's generating more emails for your email list. Well, if that's the strategy, then thinking through things that can help you do that. One of those things that might be able to help you do that is running some sort of giveaway. I know in the past, and I think we actually linked to this in the blog post, it's a little bit old now, but we grew our email list at one point by 25% by running a giveaway using a giveaway tool called Gleam.
00:12:01
Speaker
But there are so many other giveaway tools out there now, too. And I'm trying to remember all the different ones that we've used. We used one called Rafflecopter. Yeah, I was just going to say that. And the other one that we've used is KingSumo. And I think one of the things that I like about KingSumo is it's like a one-time payment, right? Not as customizable as I'd like it to be, but still relatively affordable to use.
00:12:22
Speaker
But anyway, so if lead generation is the goal, then doing something like a giveaway makes a lot of sense. We also, in the show notes, we have another blog post. It's a little bit older, but we've just refreshed it and it's ways to create hype around your website launch. I want to say we have like 15 different ideas for creating hype around your website launch. So don't just try to check all of them, you know, right? Instead, go to those and see which ones align with your goals.
Importance of a Clear and Flexible Launch Schedule
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah. And if you're going to do something like a giveaway, you probably want to make sure that whatever you're giving away is actually going to generate the right kind of leads. Like there are probably a lot of different things that you could give away that would bring in a lot of leads and get a lot of people to sign up. Like you could give away money, you could give away an iPad, but are those people who are sending up for the iPad actually potential customers for you? If not, then it might not be worth doing that specific giveaway.
00:13:13
Speaker
Absolutely, and that's really important. And we talk a lot about that in some of our lead gen posts as well. So creating a launch schedule with your team. Now, this is something that you want to make sure that you get on the same page about with everybody involved in the process. So your designer, your copywriter, I mean, just anybody who has something to do with your website actually launching, you want to make sure that you clear that schedule with them first. The other thing I want to say about that is you want to make sure that you build in margin to your launch schedule.
00:13:42
Speaker
I would compare launching a website to building a house. Typically, if you are not a website designer, like if this is not something that you specialize in, there are just more pieces to the puzzle than a lot of people realize. Things just come up. There's just things that we think about as website designers that if you're not a website designer, you don't think about. Just like if I'm ordering stationery, I just don't know the things I don't know.
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, like Davie said, there are so many things that you just don't know what could hold up your site. Like maybe you need to move your domain name to a different registrar. That process could take up to a week and you have no control over how quickly it goes. Maybe you're doing a show at launch and you're coming from Squarespace. You need to ask Showit to migrate your blog posts.
00:14:24
Speaker
that process could take a week, but if they're really backed up or there's a holiday, that process could take longer. And then once those blog posts are migrated, you're probably going to want to go in and test them to make sure that everything was migrated okay. We've had lunches held up because people can't remember where they bought their domain or how to log in. So you just never know what's going to hold something up. And so my rule of thumb is never to actually announce a launch date.
00:14:48
Speaker
just because if something holds it up, you don't want to be on the hook for not being able to meet that deadline because something like a DNS migration just took longer than anybody could have anticipated, especially if it was something you had no control over.
Pre-launch Preparations: Social Graphics and Networking
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah. And if you are going to launch a date, you want to be able to like, you know, so let's say you want to do a 10 day countdown to your new website, you know, probably on, you know, day one of that 10 day countdown, you probably want to have already launched your website just to see that it launched well, you know, and then you can revert back, you know, potentially, or you could just use that as your soft launch, you know, countdown.
00:15:24
Speaker
One of the things that we were talking about too before we hit record on this podcast, which is that with some content management systems, it's not as easy as testing everything on a staging environment. For certain content management systems, for certain website platforms, you just have to hit publish to then go in and do your testing or your final testing. And of course, you're always going to do final testing no matter what website platform you're using. You just published a blog post about
00:15:50
Speaker
how we do QHX on websites. But point being, you want to give yourself some margin before you launch. Now, this is also true because you want to, if you're going to reach out to other people to help you promote your new website or help you promote your launch, you want to give them a heads up.
00:16:07
Speaker
Right. Like at least a few weeks notice, especially if it's something that they need to work into their own marketing schedule, their own social sharing schedule. Maybe they want to schedule this to go live on Instagram or a certain date. You want to give them time to find the graphics, write the captions, promote it, all the things and not feel like it was an afterthought or rush. Cause I think that it's more likely you're going to get a note from people if you don't give them enough materials and you don't give them enough time to easily share.
00:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's also, if someone were to ask us, like if a friend of ours was to say, hey, would you all help promote our new website? We just launched it or we're launching it next week. We'd probably say yes, but like it's like the way in which we're going to promote it is probably in like Instagram stories or something like that, you know?
00:16:51
Speaker
Whereas if somebody came to us like a few months in advance and like, hey, we're really trying to make a big deal out of this, would you mind, I don't know, emailing your list about it? Or would you mind sharing it to your feed or something like that? Then yeah, we need a couple months or a couple of weeks at the very least to figure out how to work that into our promotional schedule.
00:17:10
Speaker
So it's just something to keep in mind. And this is related to that, you know, creating social graphics and swipe copy for your launch way ahead of time. You know, this is good just for you to stay organized because once you actually launch, there's going to be other things on your plate. For instance, you know, doing a website QA on your test, you know, quality assurance, quality control, going through and testing everything. And you don't want to worry about having to do that, making sure everything's working correctly, doing those final checks, and then also creating the promotional materials for your launch.
00:17:37
Speaker
If you were asking other people to share, then it is pretty critical to at least give them launch graphics and copy that they can use. Most people are probably going to use their own stuff or adapt what you give them, but giving somebody a starting point, huge help, huge time saver. And we'd be very, I think, reluctant to share about something if we weren't given some of that material.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah. And if you don't know how to make like launch graphics, we will link to a few tutorials. I have a few free Canva graphics that you can grab and you can drop in like a scroll video of your website. You can drop in images of your website. And so hopefully it makes it really easy for you to make those graphics and then share about a new site.
00:18:17
Speaker
Absolutely. Step number six, actually asking people to share about your new website. I think everybody has relationships with other non-competing businesses. You know, what industry we typically use as an example, like if you're a photographer, you probably work with planners and florists and venues all the time, you know, so consider asking them to share about your new website. One thing to keep in mind is like,
00:18:38
Speaker
This is why relationship building is so important. If you've never expressed any interest in anybody else's business, and then you go ask them to start sharing about yours, you can't really be that shocked if people aren't super willing to help. And if people aren't willing to help,
00:18:54
Speaker
You shouldn't take that personally either. It's just like everybody has their own promotional stuff and own marketing to do. And so people are just trying to do their best with that. And like I said, just because your website launch isn't making the front page of the papers such like an old school, but anyways, doesn't mean that it can't be successful or it can't be worth it.
00:19:17
Speaker
Right, very true. All right, so seven, eight, and nine here. One of the things that I'm going to actually skip to nine and treat that as seven here is just having a strong call to action during your website launch. This ties back into your goals. If you're launching your website and you really don't care and you just kind of don't care what pages people visit, you just want eyeballs on the website,
00:19:42
Speaker
That's fine, giving people something specific to do or check out I think makes for a better launch. And it's more likely to pique somebody's curiosity. So again, that call to action might be to go join the giveaway. It might be to go for the Easter egg hunt. This is one of my favorite things that people have done during their website launch is they basically hide different Easter eggs throughout their website. And if you find them, you get something. And the cool thing about that is it typically gets people
00:20:12
Speaker
You know, browse, browse, yeah, it's really browse the website as long as it's something cool that you get in return, you know, so that's something, you know, another hype idea or sending people to your free guide lead magnet. That's another good one. Yeah. The point is, is that it's a singular call to action, you know, instead of just check out my website. The other two, I think are more practical eight, nine here. And that's set up your website analytics tools. And you know, our rule, if it hasn't been tested, it doesn't work.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yes. And setting up your website analytics tools is something that you would want to do before you start sharing about it. Otherwise you're not going to capture that traffic. You can't just like retroactively add your Google analytics code and it tell you what your traffic was for the
Analytics and Testing: Pre-launch Essentials
00:20:56
Speaker
last week. You need to do that before you start sharing about it in the same mood as you're, if you're adding a Facebook pixel, you would want to add that before you start sharing about it in order to track that traffic.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, and typically what we tell people is like about pixels at least, you know, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, whatever it is, we typically recommend that people add those pixels even if they're not running ads or don't have plans to run ads in the near future because that way it's called seasoning those pixels, like you're warming those pixels up. Basically those pixels are gathering data so that if you were to ever run ads in the future, your targeting would hopefully be a little bit more dialed in from the start, right?
00:21:33
Speaker
So it's free to create those pixels. You know, like if you have a Facebook account, you create a business manager account, like you can create a pixel and get that installed. It's also, if you're doing the website yourself, it's pretty easy to add them. We'll include a link to a tutorial that Davey made, but it's just a couple of steps to add them to a show it site or an elementary site.
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah, real easy. And the last thing we'll mention, if it hasn't been tested, it doesn't work. You know, and that's the thing is like, even if you've tested everything on a staging environment or before your site is pushed live, you want to go through testing once your site is actually pushed live. You know, sometimes like not everything moves over right from the staging environment. And that just is what it is.
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah. So you will want to test your contact forms, make sure it actually goes to the right spot. If you have e-commerce on your site, do a few test payments and test checkouts and even go through the payment process to make sure that you actually like everything works the way it should testing that maybe somebody gets in the email sequence, checking lead magnets, et cetera. And then of course, like checking every single link on the site to make sure that things work correctly.
00:22:38
Speaker
Absolutely. And this is just something you need to be doing periodically as well. You know, I woke up this morning, noticed our mobile menu looked like broken. Yes. It was just unstyled because of some JavaScript issue, but I fixed it. Yeah, but exactly. It's like one of those things where it's just like, we had no reason to believe that wasn't working. But had I not gone unchecked, you know, we might not know. And of course, I'm sure we would have gotten an email or message about it. But always good to recognize those things before your visitors do.
00:23:02
Speaker
Yes. Anyways, I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions about website launches, definitely check out the show notes for the other resources that we link to there. And we'd love to hear your questions. You know, honestly, the questions we get from listeners like you make for the best podcast episodes. And if you're going live using one of our designs, tag us on Instagram because we love to see those and share about them. Like really, they make our day 100%. So hopefully you found that helpful. Yeah. Thanks guys.
00:23:30
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brands of Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, and sharing this episode with others. For show notes and other resources, head on over to DavianChrista.com.