Megan Martin 0:00
This is talking small business with Kat Schmoyer and Meghan Martin a podcast for creatives who like to keep it real about what it actually takes to grow an online business

Kat Schmoyer 0:09
we’re competitors turned to biz besties who chat daily and now we’re bringing you into the conversation

Hey y’all cat here we are back with another episode of talking small business and this one y’all we are talking about some business things that we’re excited to talk to you live launch versus Evergreen Launch. What does that mean? Should you do it one or the other both all the options so if you are in the digital biz space, this is a definitely an episode for you. And we can’t wait to hear your feedback. As you guys listen so alright, launching first and foremost disclaimers here. I love launching like I’m like all about launch strategy. It’s something I do with my integrator clients. It is so much fun for me. Meghna and I are per usual opposite feelings around around the word The L Word the launching word. So okay, before we like jump away too deep into a live launch versus evergreen. Let’s do like one on one. Okay, Megan, can you explain when we say live launch? What do we mean? And then what do we mean when we say Evergreen Launch? Okay, cool.

Megan Martin 1:25
So when we say the term First of all, actually, we are opposite. I hate launching. So, cat is the launch, like I know the facts to tell you about how to launch but I hate launching. So it’s really not my cup of tea. But I do it because I’m a business owner or whatever. But Alright, let’s break down live launch versus evergreen. Live launch. When we say this, we mean that you have a product or a service or whatever it is an offering, let’s call it offering from now on. So we don’t like you don’t think that we’re talking about one versus the other. Anything that you want to sell is called an offering, right or an offer. And if you do a live launch, what that means is that that offer is not always for sale, it’s not 2424. Seven available, it’s only for sale, when you determine to put it for sale. So typically that means a period of time, whether that’s two days, three days, five days, seven days a month, whatever it is, a live launch means that they can purchase it during a certain period of time. But then after that period of time is over, it is no longer available to purchase. Whenever they want, they either have to join some sort of waitlist, or they have to wait for you to put it on sale. Again. That is what we mean by live launch. When we say Evergreen Launch, it’s essentially the exact opposite. They can purchase it 24. Seven, they can purchase it, you know, on Monday at 9am. They can purchase it on Thursday at 2:22am in the morning, like whatever wherever time zone they are. You can purchase it whenever you want. So an evergreen, well it’s really an Evergreen Launch is like launching your product and out into the world where you’re just like hey, this is it. But it never stopped. You never close the car. You never in the sale or the promotion. So those are Did I say that right? I feel like I did.

Kat Schmoyer 3:29
You did? Yeah, no, you did. You absolutely did. And there are pros and cons to both. There are ways where live launching might be the perfect fit for you there are times when evergreen might be a good fit. There are also times when they can work in tandem, which isn’t necessarily talked about as much. So we definitely want to make sure that we talk about that today. So and we said this in the beginning as like a joke, but also reality that I love launching and Megan doesn’t enjoy launching. Megan, can you share her? I’m not kidding you like you’re going to I’m going to ask you right now share why launching like, why is it not something that you enjoy? And then I want to talk about like why I do enjoy long string.

Megan Martin 4:14
Okay, so if you guys have listened to the podcast at all or know my story at all, like I just I don’t do deadlines. I don’t like strict boundaries. I don’t set goals. When I do set goals. I’m making stuff up. I honestly wanted to cuss right there because I really am like making you know, on brand on resume. Like that’s what goal setting is to me. It’s like playing you know, and then I don’t do any of that stuff. So why am I making goals okay? So, but I’ll also in reality as a mom of four, and just the lifestyle that Jeremy and I want and we are actively everyday trying to walk in deadlines. Just don’t work for me and I find that they are extremely stressful. Every time I have a deadline either the lawn guy show up in the middle of me trying to record a video or my child gets the flu or you know I get sick or it always happens it can’t even explain it it’s like a phenomenon when I tried to set a deadline something terrible to where like it just derails everything. And I’m going to be up until 1am in the morning and I’m really not a nice person when I don’t get sleep and so there’s all these things that are like yes, I could live launch I know how to live launch and I could help you actually create a live launch strategy if you wanted me to. I personally just don’t like it and we’ve talked before about like, this is your business and you get to decide how you want to run it and you get to decide like to to structure your business in a way that actually makes you happy and I am the opposite of happy during every single live launch period I’ve ever done

Kat Schmoyer 6:00
so opposite basically all the reasons Megan doesn’t like live launching are the reasons that I love life launching so there you go friends. I love goal setting I love deadlines I work really well with deadlines I love the adrenaline rush of a live launch and like pouring so much energy into like this is it like opencart is today like bells on like we are going for it like it just there is something about it that it’s probably a problem how much I really enjoy it it’s actually worked out great because I can’t do it as much in my business so now I just get to help other people do their launches. It’s perfect. So live launch a alright we know live launching there is like a stress element to it. Okay. And for me, though, I love that stress. But it might you might be listening to this and thinking like Megan, like, man, I don’t want that in my life. Like I’m not about that. However, whether you like it or you don’t like it, it is still a solid business strategy when you are launching your offering, specifically, like the initial time and offering is available. And so Megan, I want to talk about like why is live launching helpful like why is live launching a strategy that you might want to consider in your business, taking out the the fact that like you might not enjoy it. But let’s just think like straight business here. Why is live launching a launch tactic that’s helpful.

Megan Martin 7:27
I think there’s a few reasons why live launching is a really great strategy to go for whether or not you are like, driven by the experience of a live launch. The first being if this is your very first launch, I do think a live launch is good for you to do. And there’s a few reasons why the first being that every single time you launch anything or you bring launching essentially is bringing attention to something, right. It’s a product or an offering or whatever we want to call it. But it’s you know, bringing attention to an offering your business, a launch could also not just be about sales, you know, we launched new websites, we have different periods of time in our business where we bring attention to something, we’re talking about launching the perspective of launching something that you’re selling, but it still does bring attention. And every time I’ve ever done a live launch, my audience has grown. So if this is your first time launching something for sale, it is really beneficial to do it live in the sense that people are naturally going to start paying attention to what you’re talking about. People are naturally going to share their excitement with you and maybe with friends, or maybe people that follow them on social media. It’s happened every time it’s just an adult cat. Have you seen this like phenomenon that every time you launch? It’s like your audience grows and your your the attention is it’s like an like an avalanche of like momentum. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. So especially if this is your first time i think that that’s in your benefit. Another reason why you might want to live launch whether or not you like it is if you have a really high price point. That high price points in terms of what you’re selling, take more interaction and engagement with your potential customer than somebody who is selling something for a low price point. And you know, I teach on selling digital products and Can’t you help people as well set up their digital product funnels and that whole back end of their business and I don’t care who you’re learning from, but if they tell you that you can automate literally everything in your business from top to bottom, forwards and backwards side to side. I am going to just call bs right now like I’m calling it I am sorry, you That is not true. Like there’s no way that you can automate everything to that level, especially if you have a high ticket offer. People, like you’re selling to real people and have you if you’ve ever purchased something for a high price point, there’s a lot of nerves around that there’s a lot of stress, there’s a lot of anxiety, am I making the right decision, and people want to buy from people and people want to connect with people when they’re about to put 1000s of dollars on the line. And I firmly believe that if you want to sell something for a high price point go forth and do but you need to have the expectation that you’re going to need to connect with the other person on the other side of the screen.

Kat Schmoyer 10:32
Totally agree. It gives it also like with a high price point, not only does it allow for more touch points for you with the potential customer, but it also puts on the customer a sense of urgency and scarcity, because it’s only available for a certain period of time. So if they really want it now is it whereas if it’s evergreen, and it’s always available, there’s the thought of lacking, just get it next month, like it’ll be fine, I’ll just grab it next week, like I don’t need to worry about it, no, it’s actually only available for this week, or it’s only available for these three days, whatever it is that that like live launch period is. And so it’s not only helpful for them to get that high touch from you. But also for them to feel a little bit more of that urgency that you need them to feel in order to jump into something that’s a higher price point.

Megan Martin 11:24
The other thing I would say is thinking through what type of transformation that you are providing, whether it’s a product or a service, in the sense of is it really easy for me to grasp what it is that you are selling to me, there are some industries and niches that are naturally just easy to understand. For example, I know we brought this up as an example before in the past, but the example of a contract template, like I have a business, I’m going to be working with someone I need a contract to work with that person like that doesn’t take a lot of convincing for me to to know that I need to buy this product, right? It’s a very, very easy to understand. But there are some industries in some niches, where the concept of what you’re trying to sell to me is not easy for me to grasp, I can’t quickly and I’m talking about within like 60 seconds, understand what you’re trying to sell to me, I’m thinking of like the concept of like manifestation or you know, like mindset work this type of industry and niche, it’s very difficult for you to explain to me in a sales page, copy alone, what it is that you’re trying to sell to me. So a live launch type situation opens up the door for you to create opportunities to show up in face to face, whether that’s on a screen, or some sort of call situation or whatever, where you can talk one on one and engage with real people in real time about what it is that you do, why you’re passionate about it, and the results that you can get them and really explain that transformation and like a human form like a humanized form. I just I think live launching really lends itself well to that.

Kat Schmoyer 13:14
I love that point. It’s so true. Like people just need that personal connection to understand like, wait, this is what you can help me do. And sometimes it needs to move beyond the sales page. And that’s a perfect example of when like, maybe reading the words just won’t cut it and there needs to be a little bit more in there to get them to join or to get them to sign up or you know, whatever it is that you’re asking them to do.

Megan Martin 13:38
I think another reason why you might want a live launch, even if you don’t like it, or even if you don’t like the idea of it is because as business owners at the end of the day, yes, we’re doing what we’re passionate about. We love being creative and all the things but at the end of the day, you are selling something, period. If you are in business, you are selling you’re in the business of selling Welcome, welcome to this land. It’s an so many entrepreneurs struggle with selling, they sell they struggle because they don’t want to come off quote unquote salesy. They don’t want to be too pushy. You know, they want people to feel comfortable and happy. And yes, we do want that we want to be ethical in our sales. But at the end of the day, you can’t get out of the fact that you are selling something and if selling is one of those things that is like oh I just get the heebie jeebies when I think about it, I would absolutely encourage you to do a live launch because it’s going to naturally get you to practice selling. And the more that you do live launches, the more that you’re going to get comfortable with selling and the more that you’re going to get comfortable with the fact that like selling is not a bad thing.

Kat Schmoyer 14:46
Yeah, such a good point. And live long chain to like throw in one more. Comment there live on chain. While I know I said in the beginning like you know it can feel more stressful because there’s like a finite time period and there are no deadlines associated with it. For me, there’s an adrenaline rush, right? It doesn’t have to be that stressful. And we could do a whole episode just on like strategies for a live launch and ways that you can simplify. to still make it something that you enjoy or you like to do in your business, you don’t have to follow all the tricks of the trade, I would actually suggest that you don’t, especially if it’s your first time, start simple, create a solid foundation, and then be able to add in more of those little tricks in there later on. If you decide live launching is going to become you know, a consistent part of your marketing strategy. But I want to encourage you that if you are thinking about live launching, you can simplify the live launch process and still do it for all of the reasons that Megan just suggested that you do it for.

Megan Martin 15:49
Alright, so I think we’ve like covered team live launch. So we should probably talk about why you might want to evergreen, a product or a service as opposed to a live launch, meaning that open cart and cart and after that cart closes, you can’t get it for whatever period of time it is till you open it back up. So why would somebody want to evergreen cat? Do you have any suggestions for someone who should choose evergreen instead of live launch?

Kat Schmoyer 16:22
I do. And I was actually very anti evergreen until about a year and a half two years ago. I just love live launching so much. And I’ve personally seen really great success with an open cart and cart strategy whether that was an in person event like with our conference, whether that was coaching services, whether that’s digital products like digital courses, I did webinar launches, challenge launches, that sort of thing. So, backstory I didn’t like evergreen, I felt like Well, what’s the point? Like people don’t have urgency, they don’t have scarcity, like why are they going to jump to it. But my tune has changed in the last two years with working with clients on some evergreen systems and funnels in their business. And then in my own business, I would say that I feel like Evergreen Launch can be really powerful for low ticket offers. First and foremost, like the opposite of that high ticket needing more high touch with a live launch, I feel like a low ticket offer on evergreen can be really powerful for your business both in terms of generating automatic revenue, right, we’ve all heard the like I want to make money in our sleep like I passive revenue, like evergreen revenue can do that. You can literally get sales every single day from the products that you have on evergreen. So I think for low cost offers evergreen is really helpful for your business. For me personally, evergreen, I have seen my my low cost evergreen offers. So they’re not only creating revenue for me right away, but they’re creating list growth, they’re growing my email marketing, getting people into my email funnels at a low cost offer and then allowing me to sell them on higher ticket offers because of that. So I think that’s another really great way that evergreen can work for you is if it’s low cost leading them to something else, depending on what those offers are. And now I know that specific to digital, you know service based you your services are probably not low cost, right. So service based, you’re likely going to be going live launch. If you’re doing that, that would be my recommendation whereas evergreen is a little bit more digital product model. Those would be like two big things I think about when I think about ways that evergreen can be really powerful for your business.

Megan Martin 18:33
I think another thing to think about if you’re determining Should I go live launch or should I go evergreen, and again, if this is your first time ever selling anything, a live launch is a great idea. I’m just again for all the reasons we just said but I would say I want you to consider Do you want to be a live launch business owner like cat she loves the thrill of the launch. She loves that it’s ending she she is it’s like phenomenal to watch her and a launch and to like see her do her thing. Like it’s amazing and I’m sure I’m certain of it that there are other people out in the world that really just live for the thrill of a live launch like that. But if you’re like more like me and that absolutely makes you want to break out in hives and you would rather just like shut down your business then do

Kat Schmoyer 19:28
so dramatic.

Megan Martin 19:31
I mean this is how much I really I just don’t like it I really don’t I it is not my thing. I am a stress ball, my family suffers for it. If that’s more like you, and you know you know that you want to go evergreen, then I would absolutely encourage you to think about if you know for a fact that you want to run an evergreen business, then you might just decide to start evergreen because the truth is and I know There’s been educators who teach that, you know, you can just create a live launch, and then you can flip the webinar and you can flip it into this evergreen funnel. Yes, you can. But I really don’t think that works. Like I mean, unless you have a pretty solid and large ad budget and ad strategy. I think that the business model is, it only works for a very select few people. I don’t know if you agree with me or not, but I just really don’t think it works for the masses,

Kat Schmoyer 20:32
I do, I think you just have to have enough people entering that funnel to make it worthwhile. And like you said, so your ad budget needs to be very high and Andrew to make sure that you’re getting and when we say Hi, I’m talking like 1000s of dollars a day, like you need to be like getting people in this funnel so that they’re watching this evergreen webinar, and then signing up for the product at the end of the webinar. And we’ve all been hit with those Facebook ads, we know what, what that looks like,

Megan Martin 20:57
well, and I think in like 2000, you know, 10 you could make a webinar and then flip it and pretend like it was recorded, you know, I mean, like people believed you, but like we all know, we all know you’re lying now, okay, it’s not live at 6:15am it’s not live. Okay, so just stop telling me it’s live. soapbox, whatever, uh, moving on. But my point is, if you know you want to go evergreen, I truly believe that an evergreen funnel and a live launch funnel are two different things. They’re not the same thing. They have different strategies, they have different levers you’re pulling in order to help your customer understand what you’re trying to sell to them and the transformation that you can provide. And there’s different touch points involved. Again, like we talked about, you can have more one on one or like live call experiences in a live launch where an evergreen you don’t have that the whole goal is to not have to show up, you know, in a live capacity. So if you know that you want to go evergreen, it might just be worth your while to build a really, really strong evergreen funnel from the get go. Again, the only caveat I would say is this selling makes you absolutely break out into hives, then that means that you need to practice some selling. So in that case, I would actually encourage you to live launch first.

Kat Schmoyer 22:18
We talk about some really specifics like are there like and let’s do digital world first, because I feel like digital really can go evergreen or live or both. So within digital products, and when we say digital products, courses, memberships, templates, bundle loads, downloads, things like that. So for digital products, Megan, our digital expert here, would you suggest that there are certain products that convert better live versus evergreen? Or like even let me start with that question. Firstly, do you feel like there’s a certain product that does better live or evergreen?

Megan Martin 22:57
I don’t think that there’s a certain product type that would do better one or way the other? I really do think price point matters in this conversation. Yeah, also, I think that price point tends to determine the level of access to the person on the other side of the screen. So typically, when you have a higher price point, there’s lots of either there’s like higher touch points. And the example of like, maybe you have coaching calls as a part of your program or offer or you have some sort of like, I don’t know, community or Facebook group or something to where like you are showing up regularly or for a certain period or a certain commitment, right? Typically higher price points involve that. And so that’s why I think higher price points make more sense for live launches. And if you have a lower price point offer, I don’t think it matters what type of product you have, then I just think that it just depends on what kind of business you want to run. Like I, I want to be hands off, I do not want to have to work every day. I enjoy deciding on Mondays, if I’m going to work that day, or if I’m not going to work that day and I’m going to go run errands. And for me, evergreen makes a lot of sense for that because I don’t have to, like if I don’t show up to sell, I am not limiting myself from bringing in revenue, I can still make money that day. If someone were to buy Yes, it absolutely removes that psychological trigger of urgency and scarcity, which are very powerful in sales. But for me, honestly like my perspective is in this conversation is that I don’t work from a place of scarcity myself like yes, someone might decide to wait till next week but I have just determined that that’s okay. If they wait till next week, like my business is not going to fall apart if they don’t purchase right today, you know? So that’s just my difference in mindset. But yeah, I wouldn’t say that I think a certain type of product converts better I think a certain price point of product converts better evergreen versus black launch.

Kat Schmoyer 25:11
So with price, I’m going to give people a little bit of a, whether it’s a range or just your opinion on Okay, when we say like, the higher price point like, what is that? Is that over? $600? Is that over? $1,000? Like, I would love to hear your opinion, because I have some opinions based on like things that I’ve worked in my own business and with clients. So when you say price, like what is that break for you, that means like, Oh, that’s a little bit higher, that should probably be a live launch versus an evergreen product.

Megan Martin 25:40
Or I would, I would say, and I guess I’m gonna eat my words a little bit. But I would say that anything are around like $500 or more is going to be alive is what I’m considering higher ticket. A lot of times, you’ll see people talk about higher ticket when they’re saying something in the 1000s like 1000, or more. And agree, I agree that is a higher ticket offer. But still $500 is quite a bit a lot of money, you know. And so I think that you need to be able to show up in some way, shape or form to engage with people in that price range, you know, for 99 is still $500. So please like don’t, you know, charm pricing is a thing. But still, if you’re if you’re like, Hi for hundreds, I would probably still suggest that you do a live launch just to engage with people. But there are scenarios where types of products do matter. For example, I sell website templates, and I’ve sold website templates that were $1,000 legitimately 12 $100 for a website template, because I capped the number at 10 templates that were able to be sold at one time. I never did a live launch for any of these things like I never did a webinar or whatever. It’s like a website template, whatever you don’t want it, you know. And so that worked in my favor. But that’s such a very niche offering, I would say for the most part for most people, if you’re selling something that’s over $500, you probably need to do some sort of live element in your launch.

Kat Schmoyer 27:07
I absolutely agree with that, like 500 is what I was thinking for over that think more live. I also think something to consider here is promotional periods, even with an evergreen model. So like Megan, with your website templates, yes, they were a higher price point like 12 $100. But you would run sales and potentially get more sales during the sale promo period when they were 30% off or whatever the case may be. And I think that that’s a strategy anybody doing evergreen promotion needs to think about a my shop, everything’s under $100. It’s a very lower price point. But I’ll still do promo periods to then beef that up even further. And so I think when you’re doing evergreen, that’s a way that scarcity and urgency can come into play and be helpful for you if you run a sale. And so that’s just something to consider as well.

Megan Martin 28:00
Right which brings us to the point that the traditional mindset would be I need to choose live launch versus evergreen. And I just I’m realizing even in my own business right now with my new course that like Jeremy and I literally just had this conversation the other day like should we run my new course as an evergreen offering or should we do it as a live launch and then we were like pro and counting the different scenarios of these things. And why we might want to do it with a live launch and maybe change some of the structure to have some of those like more higher touch points involved and maybe raise the price a little bit or should we just do it as evergreen because no you know that we like being more hands off like we’re literally we’re going through all of this and I came to the realization which is so unlike me because as a seven I’m so like black or white you know it has to be like one way or the other am all or nothing all the time when it came to this realization that this offering does not have to be live launch or evergreen it can be both and you know, like it can be a it can be an evergreen product that is always available to purchase but it can also have just like you said cat season like promotional periods where a may change the structure slightly of the offering and allow people to purchase into like a three day time period or maybe I do put it on sale like my website templates and what I’ve done in the past and I promotional offerings where I offer a discount for a very limited time and then I can show up in a live capacity. Maybe I do a live webinar for one of these promotional periods maybe I do a challenge. Maybe I do you know i ramp up more of my email marketing and I’m doing it like I would do a live launch but it’s really just it doesn’t even have to be around changing the product or giving a discount it could literally just be like mimicking the concept of a live launched to again like we started this episode. Bring attention back to what we’re selling, I can mimic a live launch, but the product can still be evergreen. And I think like we we tend to as business owners think it only has to be one way or another when it really can be both of them at the same exact time.

Kat Schmoyer 30:16
Just thinking about like a way to remix it right and like figure out like, Hey, you want evergreen, like you want to know that on Tuesday, you could sell a course and on Friday, you could sell the course and then the next week, it could, you might not sell one. But then the next week, you might sell three like you want that because your business requires that revenue. But you also know that there are advantages to the live launch scenario, I was thinking when you were talking about Jess giordana, and her jordanna. And the pamphlet, template shop that she has, I feel like I’ve seen her do this several times in the last like two years, where they’re evergreen products. She’s a copywriter, she sells templates for writing copy for your website, they’re valuable, well, we’ll make sure we link them here. But she has them available, you could go to her website right now and purchase them. But she also does quite a few promotions all year long, she’ll do a webinar one time, she’ll do an extra, like get this bonus, whatever if you join over this three day period, discount the price, things like that. And it’s really strategic for her to like Meghan just said, bring in revenue all year long with the same product because it’s on evergreen, but then also build awareness around a product during those sale periods that allows you to pitch it to your list to continue to remind your audience with more urgency and scarcity because you have those promo periods built in.

Megan Martin 31:38
Yeah, so I think at the end of the day, I actually like this combo method. And even me, as somebody who is tight be and doesn’t like to put deadlines on it, I can still function in that way. Like I don’t have to say, you know, October 15, I’m going to do this live situation like I can have my own, I can still have a flexible schedule, I can say I want to do this in October. And if my life falls apart, it’s not going to, you know, or if my kids get sick or whatever, like I can just not do the webinar on October 15. You know, like, I can just push it back if I need to, and not make it a big deal. So I think that this model of like doing both evergreen with live with a live component built in on a semi regular basis is where I’m currently landing which is interesting again, because I’m normally like one way or the other and I’m not doing both, you know?

Kat Schmoyer 32:37
Yeah, it is interesting. I’m excited to like, hear how it goes with the course for you. And I’m sure we’ll have to do another sort of like BTS episode of like, Alright, Megan, how did it go? Live launch like mixed with evergreen? What did you think?

Megan Martin 32:50
Yeah, we’ll have to come in and do another conversation here soon. And I’ll give you the results of how I’m feeling about it and where we land. But I hope this conversation was interesting for you to listen to and I hope it gave you some clarity over which way you should go. So tell us in DMS on social media on Instagram. Which way are you going to go? Are you going to live launch? Are you going to evergreen or are you going to do a little remix of the live Lodge and evergreen so tell us we’d love to hear from you what you prefer and why and we will catch you in the next conversation.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai