← Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
907: The Funnel Strategy That Ended My Live Launch Burnout
00:43:24
Focusing on one well-built funnel that works is a game changer! Learn how pairing live launches with automated funnels creates the ultimate revenue-driving duo.
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Abigail Pumphrey
If I've Learned anything in 2024 regarding funnels, it has specifically been that you really can't underestimate the power of, like, going primarily all into one funnel. That just works. Welcome to the Strategy Hour podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host, Abigail Pumphrey and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your way. One that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want. I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free. I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business. Settle in. It's time to talk strategy. Looking for a way to make a difference with your morning coffee? Grab a bag of talitha coffee@bossproject.com Coffee. Every purchase helps support survivors of human trafficking. Make every cup count@bossproject.com Coffee I just know, like, know in my gut that you are leaving so much money on the table and you're missing out. And so in today's episode, I want to dive into why I think it's a mistake to only live launch and truly the power behind automated funnels. Now, I don't want you to feel alone in this. I absolutely, for very many years used to rely solely on live launching. Like that was the only way this business made money. If I wanted cash to come in, it required putting together an offer, usually putting together a corresponding workshop, promoting the workshop to get people to sign up, getting people to attend live, ultimately producing the workshop live, and then having a sales sequence following that on both social and email. And I'm not saying that that's a bad way to go. I think live launching is an incredibly valuable tool and can carry you incredibly far. I've had some very, very profitable launches. My biggest launch to date was over $350,000 in the span of one week. And it was incredibly wild. But I also did launching low key in some of the early days. And so while that launching was probably more sustainable than some of my bigger launches, I was truly missing out on so much by not adding on a funnel component. So what I really mean by that is when I say launching all the time, I mean literally all the time. We're talking every two weeks. I had essentially a cycle where we would promote a workshop for seven to 10 days. We would have the workshop and then we would have a 7 to 10 day cart open and then maybe a few day break a week maybe, and then we went back to promoting a new workshop. Now for the most part, those sales sequences were only being sent to the people that actively signed up for the workshop. But even still, it was just go after go after go after go. And even when we were repeating launches and cycling through a couple of workshops, it was still a ton of work. Like that was the simple version, which just sounds crazy to say that that launching every two to three weeks was the simple version, but it truly was. The launches got more spaced out, but the launches got far more elaborate. We produced multi day challenges, you know, a five day challenge, I don't think we ever did a 30 day challenge. And I'm so, so, so grateful we never did because I have watched a lot of those crash and burn. But story for another day. Some of our most complicated launches included online summits where we had 50 or more guest speakers. And so we were coordinating, like identifying who the guests were going to be, what their topics were, doing all the recording we recorded with them for at least one or two of the summits, and then moved to a version where they recorded part of it and we just did intros. But it was still like so much work. The year we did summits, we did four summits in one calendar year. And that brought in thousands, thousands of participants. But it was exhausting. And at that point I felt like I was spending more time wrangling people. Like I felt like I was hurting cats. Like these are fantastic people. No problem with the actual humans participating in this. But chasing people around so that you can do your own job is just like not really how I roll. I really want to have more control. And so then we started doing more paid events that were solo. So like we moved away from the summit structure where we're utilizing other people and just used like in house talent. And we were the ones teaching. And it was still more of a production than like a singular workshop for sure. One of the most involved launches ever was for the incubator. And the reason I say that is it was, it was more than just getting people interested. We were getting people interested to come to a workshop to learn about our incubator, which was our high end group coaching program to at that point only have them apply. Then we were reviewing applications, if they were a good fit, approving them, having those people only go through a live launch and to, like, close sales. We were social selling, which meant we were in the DMS and we were messaging people and we were following up with them. And while that was an incredible tool to, like, absolutely get to know our audience, we knew who they were, we knew what their struggles were, we knew where they were getting held up, what individual things were happening for them. And that knowledge is so valuable. You can pour all of that information back into your launches and into the content that helps you nurture your people long term, no doubt. But it was also the most spent I ever felt. And I started to feel like I was losing myself in the business. Like, there was absolutely no boundaries. You know, I wasn't just thinking about work at work. I was thinking about work every waking second of the day. And the moment my phone pinged, I felt this incessant need to respond immediately. Part of that, obviously, was poor boundaries on my part. And there are so many pros to social selling, I have no qualms against that strategy. Rather, it didn't work for me because it drew me further and further away from the kind of lifestyle I wanted my business to afford myself. And so I really wanted to look for an alternative. And, you know, I think it's important to point out that while there's a ton of different styles to sell, obviously, like, you could do sales calls, you can do social selling, you can do webinars, you can do email sequences, you can sell on social, you can sell direct from cold to selling, you can, you know, exclusively sell to a very exclusive audience that is handpicked. There are so many ways to do this, and none of them are wrong. None of them are wrong. I think it's important that as your business grows and as you evolve as a human and as you have new priorities and new things going on in your life, that you reassess how you are willing to show up in that season. And the reason we changed our launching style over the years had very little to do with something not working. In fact, most of the time, it was still working. We were adjusting because we wanted to test something, or we were adjusting because we wanted to try it and experience it. And we were looking forward to seeing how it would go. We were doing it because we wanted to change how we were showing up. And I don't think that's a mistake. I think you get to decide what that season looks like for you and go all in on it. All of this to say, I actually don't think live launching is the problem. Like, it's not live launching Versus Evergreen is same problem, different, you know, font. You still are going to have challenges. You're still going to have things that drive you crazy. You're still going to have tech that breaks. You're still going to have problems. But what I want more people to see is how live launching can be an incredible, valuable companion to building funnels that convert incredibly well. Incredibly well. And I think I see a lot of people make a mistake in that they're like, oh, I think funnels are the solution. I'm going to work on building a funnel, but they're building it blind. They're going about doing this, and maybe you've done this where they created the product and they're ready to put it out into the world and they're like, okay, I have the product. I made the whole product before I sold it to anybody. I have it ready. If someone wants to buy, it's going to be there. And I don't want to go into live launching, so I want to sell it through funnels. So I'm going to make a lead magnet, and then on the back of the lead magnet, I'm going to drip out these emails that are going to give all these, this value for a set period of time, and then it's going to go through a sales funnel that will sell my product. Like, how many of you are shaking your head yes, like, that is me. I've been there. That's how I've been showing up. And it's not working, or it's not working to the level you want it to be working. And most of the time, that's the case because you don't have enough traffic to have any idea what's effective. And the best and fastest way to get the test info back that you need is live launching. Like, live launching is this huge, valuable asset that allows you to see how things perform, see how messaging works, see how things convert, look at your sales page, look at your emails, really understand what is or isn't working. And then from there, you can build an absolutely killer funnel. Now, I absolutely adore funnels and for whatever reason, did not lean into them in this season of multiple, multiple years of exclusively live launching. And I see now that the slowing down could have made a world of difference in stressful times, because it always felt like this pressure, if cash flow was not what we wanted it to be, that it was like, okay, well, I guess we got to plan a launch and then scramble to put something together and make it happen, versus if we had automated funnels set up that were supporting the products that already existed. Some of that effort could be putting leads into a funnel that, you know, converts. And that's a lot less pressure than trying to make sales when you're feeling a little desperate. I've never felt desperate in this business. Absolutely never. No. I have absolutely been in positions where launching felt like the only way out of a sticky situation. And I don't want you to be in that position. I want your business to be sustainable. I want it to be consistent. I want it to be reliable. I want it to feel like, you know what's going to happen on the backside of something. And I really think funnels are a huge component of what's going to help you see success long term. Now, before I get into some of my personal funnel strategy, I want to talk about the kinds of things I'm looking for in a live launch that are going to help inform the automated funnel, because you can't have one without the other. And so I really want you to be leaning into this to understand what you're trying to take away from it so that you can pour fuel on a fire that's already roaring. Right. So the live launch itself, when you're going through that process, I don't want you to feel like there's this pressure for it to be perfect. One, it's not going to be. Two, this is an opportunity for you to learn. And the best way to learn is while you are in very early stages of product development. So I want to see more people live launch on pre sale. You're going to be able to put a message out there and see how it resonates. I have absolutely changed direction on the contents of a paid product in the middle of a live launch because of the feedback I was getting from my audience. And if I had pre built the product, I would have had no way of adjusting. I have also come up with bonuses on the fly. Bonuses that were going to help overcome objections, get people over a hurdle, or help them solve a problem that they felt like was holding them back from saying yes to this thing. And then on top of all of that, I get to see how the price resonates, what the interest level looks like. Is this something that like a ton of people are excited about, or is this a more niche thing for a portion of my audience? Now, if I had all the time in the world, which I realized not all of you do, and sometimes I don't either. But some of my favorite launches, I actually tested content, first on social, and then I let the Post that showed the most engagement inform the emails I would write in a sales sequence. And when I was able to like weed out the things that didn't hit for people on social, it was usually a good indication of what was going to be amiss on email. And my email was naturally going to reach more people, a more engaged audience, a warmer audience that was more ready to buy. And so knowing what was going to hit the nail on the head for them really saved me a lot of time. But what I don't think people realize is that most of the time my live launches are longer than my automated sales sequences. And this is very much on purpose. My sales like live sales open cart is typically seven to 10 days, sometimes two weeks or more depending on the complexity of the product and or like the style of promotion I'm doing. But usually we're talking seven to 10 days most of the time. Throughout that time period, I'm sending one email a day plus two emails on cart close day, usually skipping a Saturday. So all that being said and done, I usually have somewhere between seven and I mean it can be even more than this, between 7 and 16 emails where I tested messaging. Now I don't do sales funnels the way the majority of people in this industry do them. Yes, some follow sales psychology and are very much like a standard sales email, but many of them are value add emails that are sprinkled in between so it doesn't feel like you're constantly being sold to. Now let me put a huge caveat to say you being straightforward with what a product is and the problem it solves is not you being sales. However, when I say value add, I mean like actually giving them other content they can consume outside of the email. So for sure my normal sales emails are still valuable. There's still inspiration that can be taken away, stories that can be taken away, info about the product, like product knowledge that can be taken away. But what I'm talking about, these specific value add emails, I'm usually talking about it pointing to additional content outside side of the email. So things like podcasts, blog posts, maybe something I did with an outside collaborator, something they can go consume. It may even be a video. It just like really depends on what we're talking about. But the goal being that they go consume this thing over here that is like very light in the sales department. And then from that I can really see, okay, here's what clicked and what I look at on the back end and we do a whole debrief. If you haven't heard my debrief process. You can probably find a podcast episode about it if you're in the co op. You absolutely should go watch the debriefs in the community. There's like a whole section in there, so if you can't find it, let me know. But the debriefs in there are juicy anyway. I keep seeing it happen. You're caught in a loop, waiting for that perfect moment, overthinking every decision and comparing your progress to the curated realities of others online. I've been there too, and I made a shift that changed absolutely everything. It simplified my approach and allowed me to start trusting my intuition again. Truly, everything changed. My business doubled, then doubled again. I rocked $300,000 launch, enrolled over 10,000 students in a single course, and finally started showing up in a way that felt effortless and aligned. Now I'm sharing those exact tools and strategies in my new three part workshop series Mindset Reboot. Right now you can grab it for just 11 hurry. Visit creative templateshop.commindset to find out more. Hiring with Indeed, your search is over. When it comes to hiring, don't go searching for the one, just meet your match with Indeed. Get unparalleled access to job secrets with over 350 million unique monthly visitors globally according to Indeed data and an extended reach through Glassdoor, I love that Indeed makes it easy to hire. When we've hired in the past, the process was full of unqualified applicants. With Indeed, we can target the right candidates for the right position, leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day. Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences, so the more you use Indeed the better it gets and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@inn Indeed.com strategy hour, just go to indeed.com strategy hour right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com strategy hour terms and conditions apply. Need to hire you need Indeed. I'm specifically looking at of the content, what social posts got the highest engagement. Primarily I'm looking for comments and shares and then I look at emails, I look at open rate, click rate, and I rely most on the number of sales it generated that day. Now obviously there's things that throw this off that you can't totally account for unless you were to add a bunch of other tech things that I do not think are necessary. So for example, you could have had seven sales one day, but the sales weren't all from that day's email. Someone could have read yesterday's email. I'm aware of that. And sometimes I will make a judgment call on do I actually think it was this email or do I think it was the day before? But most of the time, I attribute sales to the communication that went out that particular day. And I look at what performed the best. Now, I wouldn't say every time, but almost every single time. So I want you to know that this happens to me. Even after I've launched hundreds and hundreds of times to, like, so many different audiences at so many different price points, this still happens to me. Okay? I will always have emails during my live launch that didn't convert at all. You heard that? I will always have emails during my live launch that didn't convert at all. And so I specifically weed those out for the funnel. If they're not going to convert at all, I'm ditching them. And that means ultimately my automated funnel is going to be shorter. It is. So most of the time, my automated funnel is more like five days with a couple days kind of bridging the gap, especially if it came from a lead magnet into a paid offer. But more on that in a second. I want you to be thinking about your live launch essentially as a dress rehearsal for your automated funnel. Like, the better your launch performs, the more effective your funnel will be and the more cold traffic will convert. Because here's the thing and something that must be known, if you take a live launch and you convert it into an automated funnel, your automated funnel will always perform worse, which is a reason a lot of people don't lean into funnels, because they're like, oh, my gosh. Like, it's, you know, it's not converting as well. It's not converting as well. Not because it's not as effective, but because you generally converted more of your warm audience during the live launch than you are doing direct to cold. Like, direct to cold, sales will always convert lower. So if you had a launch that converted at 7% and you put something in a funnel and it only converts at three and a half percent, and you're like, it's broken. It's probably not. It's probably not broken. And that's above a threshold that, like, you should still be able to turn a profit by sending traffic through that funnel. So I don't want you to get caught up in the numbers. I want you to feel informed by the numbers and realize where things might fall flat. Like, if something isn't going to work or is performing a lot lower inside A funnel. It may be that it's not totally targeted to a cold audience. And so there are some adjustments that will ultimately have to be made. But if you start strong, you're going to end strong. Like, I have so much to say about funnels, so much to say about funnels. There is absolutely no way I could possibly fit it all in this podcast. I simply just wanted you to realize the money that you were leaving behind and get yourself inspired to spend time on this. Because building a funnel always feels front loaded. Like, it's always going to take more time up front and hence doing the live launch, getting paid immediately, building out the product. I like to build out the product while building the automated funnel. And then once everything's built, then you focus on just getting traffic into it. It's so fantastic. I'm sharing my top funnel building tips and my whole process for how I go about doing this. And like, flipping a live launch into an automated funnel. Inside leads on Autopilot. And if you're unfamiliar with leads on Autopilot, it's a component right now of email list Jumpstart, which you can find out more if you go to creative templateshop.com email. However, the more I got into developing curriculum for leads on Autopilot, I was like, wait a second. This is so much more than just getting leads in the door. Like, I want to see people converting those leads. And. And so this has turned into, you know, half about the marketing side of getting those lead magnets to convert and ultimately having people give you leads, which is my favorite. But then how do you take those leads that you do have and convert them on the backend using an automated funnel? I am getting into the weeds of building the automated funnel and showing you my process inside leads on Autopilot. So because of that, in the future, if you're like, this is no longer, it's probably not true. I foresee a future in which leads on autopilot potentially gets split into two programs. But if you get in and you're an og, like, you're going to get all the. The shiz. Okay. Anyway, all that to say inside leads on Autopilot. I'm talking specifically about getting those leads in the door. How to harness and utilize strategies that have other people providing the leads for you to really, like, put gas on this. And then once they're in the door, have clear audience segmentation and tailored messaging for them. Strong, positive, performing email sequences that are really focused both on storytelling and value and not just on getting another sale. Like, I want my audience to feel cared for, to feel understood, to feel like I've been there, done that, and can help them. And all of that happens when we show up fully and authentically ourselves. And so I'm talking a lot about messaging and writing in ways that I haven't in previous programs. I'm also specifically talking about testing and tweaking automated funnels for continued improvement. So if you want all of those best practices and you want to see my full process, you're going to want to get an email list, jumpstart, so you can have access to part two, which is leads on autopilot. So more on that if you go to creative templateshop.com email now, the cool part about going to creative templateshop.com email is it's going to take you to a free workshop that talks all about getting your first 1,000 subscribers. So it's really like a win, win, win. You watching that training and you getting inside of this like you're going to love it. And I'm so excited for you. I do want to spend a few minutes, though, talking about, like, what's next for me, because while I'm absolutely talking about the funnels that are converting for me in my business right now, I also want to talk to you about some of my plans for next year and then the new things I'm testing so that ultimately I can turn around and share that information with you as it's happening in real time. So the big portion is really thinking about how I'm talking to my audience on social versus paid versus my list. And I like to really think about those as three separate things. Specifically social. While there are absolutely people on social that are already following me, already on my list, and already customers, the majority of my content on social is focused on bringing in a cold audience, making them aware, creating visibility for my business, and attracting them in so that I can create those leads. Now, if you want to know more about, like, my strategy to have people go straight from cold into paid, I talk way more about that in digital product Jumpstart, which you can find@boss project.com jumpstart but if we're talking specifically about the social content and like the captions and what I'm actually writing and what's my strategy on Instagram, I talk about that inside Instagram profit playbook. You can see all of this@bossproject.com courses. So if you're like, wait, what's that? Go look there. Okay. Anyway, so I've done some testing and I am doing A combination of both direct to paid and direct to lead magnet from Organic Social that will ultimately lead to a paid funnel. Meaning there's a paid product on the back end of the funnel. So someone gets a lead magnet, they're going to get essentially a follow up sequence that's going to sell them a paid product. Now I'll be honest, not every single lead magnet I have has a funnel attached to it. Absolutely not. I will be working on building more of those out into next year because it does take time. Like it's so easy to just like move on to the next thing. You're like, I developed a killer lead magnet. Cool. You did? For what? Like just to build your list? No, it really should be so much more than that. And so while I have used lead magnets on both the front end and back end of launches to build an interested audience, I want to create more bang for my buck by having those lead magnets go directly into the corresponding paid offer. In contrast though, I am jumping back into paid advertising in 2025 and I'm really excited about it. Like I have put paid down, I wouldn't say 100% but like 95% for like the past three or four years. I've lost track at this point. I don't remember when we turned off ads. I know I did some minor testing at the beginning of 2024 and primarily was just putting dollar bills on social content that had already performed. But in 2025 more of my strategy will be put into taking cold traffic directly to a low priced entry point paid offer that will have an upsell funnel on the back end. So those are two different things, like and kind of connecting if that makes sense. If you have a lead magnet to a paid offer that's one funnel. But if you have a funnel after the paid offer, that's a separate funnel in a separate workflow but they work together obviously. And then I am going to be building in more strategic downsells on the back end. And I think strategic down sells are like a seriously under talked about topic that can be like high converting. Like some of my best strategic down sales like convert over 30% of the time. That's wild. That could be 10x. What the front end of the funnel converted at 10x. So like do not sleep on down sells. Especially when they're total no brainers. I think they're such a cool way to re engage leads and ultimately get bomb customers. But it really takes the right offer and you know, maybe if you talk me into it, I'll talk more about my down sell strategy on a future episode, but send me questions in the dms. I'd love to hear more about like what you want to know about it before I even because I can't imagine it being a whole episode. So send me a message, let me know what you want to know. I'm happy to do another follow up episode on it. Now. When you're at the point I am and you have so many offers, obviously this can become an overwhelming matrix of emails and moving parts and tech and all of the things. And so you know, just know it takes time and you don't have to get there overnight and you definitely don't have to have it be perfect. If I've Learned anything in 2024 regarding funnels, it has specifically been that you really can't underestimate the power of like going primarily all into one funnel that just works. And so there's absolutely been one funnel that has brought in the most leads and it has brought in the most like entry point sales and it has brought in the most backend down sales on the back end. It didn't necessarily have an upsell strategy in there. So I'm excited to like add that in and test that into 2025. But no, you don't have to make a million of these things for it to be effective and worth your time and, and ultimately work for your business. Because once these things are built and like you tested it with a live launch before you convert it into evergreen, you are gonna have assets that you can absolutely use well into the future that are going to be powerful and are going to help you really build this out in a way that is only going to help you scale your business. I don't know, I just can't say enough good things. Those live launches are so valuable for testing, they're valuable for building hype, they're valuable for getting a lot of traffic through, you know, a sales process all at once so that you have enough data to turn around and utilize funnels to allow for that more consistent scalable revenue. Just know you need to start small. You can let the funnel evolve as you gather more data. You can switch out emails, you can add emails. There's so many options here. You can even add, you know, ad components where you're having ads kind of follow people around for a set period of time after they perform a certain task. There's just so many options here. So if you want to see more about what this looks like, I really encourage you to go check out email list Jumpstart where I walk through more of my funnel strategy inside leads on Autopilot. You can dive in today@creative templateshop.com email I'm going to help you work on building those initial subscribers and get people in the door. So super excited for you to dive in and can't wait to hear how funnels are already working for you and the things that you specifically want to improve into next year. Feel free to send me a dm. I would love to hear your thoughts. You can find my profile by going to Boss Project on Instagram. My personal profile at Abigail says is linked there. I'd love to hear from you. It's always so fun having conversations with you and I can't wait to see what you build next. Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs to hear it and post on social. You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me, Abigail says and ossproject so we can share it. Okay. Second favor to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from Boss Project. I'd love if you join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.com signup to make sure I have all your contact details. Really love this show. It would mean so much to me if you'd leave a rating and review. It not only helps more listeners find the show, but allows us to bring on quality sponsors so we can keep bringing you this valuable content for free. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.