I’m excited to delve into this topic with you because it can be quite a controversial debate, but I don’t think it needs to be…live vs evergreen, let's go!
My aim is to help you understand the main differences and the best ways you can use them, so you can make an empowered decision about how you use either or both of them in your business.
Yes, you don’t have to choose between the two! Misconception number one is that you either have a business that relies solely on live launches, or a business that allows you to sit on the beach sipping frozen margaritas whilst your evergreen product guarantees passive income…misconception number two!
In this deep dive you’ll understand the benefits of each strategy and how you can start to incorporate them in your business.
What is a live launch?
A live launch gives your audience a set amount of time to be able to buy and sign-up to whatever it is you’re selling. A live launch usually has a doors open, doors close period in which you gradually build anticipation for and then go hard on the promotions during this time.
A live launch needs at least 30 days warming up time, but I would recommend anytime between 60-90 days to really ensure you have planned your launch thoroughly and given your audience enough time to get familiar with the service you’re selling.
What is an evergreen launch?
An evergreen product allows your audience or community to buy from you or join you in a service at any time. The doors are always open as the service or product doesn’t necessarily have a live element to it, ie. live weekly calls.
An example of an evergreen would be a membership, an online self-paced course or programme or even or podcast.
Prioritising a live launch
This is where my experience and opinion comes in. I believe before you spend lots of time developing an evergreen product, you need to live launch it first.
Why? Because:
If it’s a self-paced course for example, you want to test the content and value out on an audience who are actively showing up for it and able to give you feedback live.
If you want to develop an evergreen membership, you need to know what your community will expect and need from it to sign-up. This again comes from in depth research and understanding of your audience which is easily done through live launching.
For an evergreen to be successful, your audience needs to feel excited about you as a leader and without any prior launches, you’re not attracting enough people into your world who wholeheartedly believe in you.
This isn’t to completely discount the benefits of evergreen launching but before you do, you need to have:
Certain systems in place to make the process seamless, ie. funnels created and a way to support customers who need assistance with logins etc.
A completely developed idea or concept that has been tried, tested and improved.
A promotional plan to ensure your audience has the opportunity to know about your evergreen and how they can join it throughout the year so you don’t see sales slowing down.
The best things about live launching
I am a huge fan of live launching because I believe it lays really strong foundations for a sustainable business AND allows you to introduce an evergreen product in the future.
The pro’s to live launching include:
Live feedback, insights and clarity around your offer, your messaging and your content so you can continue to develop and improve, according to your ideal client.
Momentum is created because you have lots of action to take in a specific amount of time, leading to greater visibility and greater engagement.
Your audience will be directly funnelled to your mailing list where your hottest leads are.
You’re able to predict when your higher income months are.
You’re not going to get your offer or service spot-on the first time you launch it or put it out into the world (unless you are very lucky). No matter how good YOU think your service is, I can guarantee you’ll need to make tweaks and improvements to it each time which is why live launching is so important. Each time you launch your service you can test different elements so you are moving closer to the ‘perfect’ offer/service.
Lastly, a live launch doesn’t have to be a huge, all-singing all-dancing event. You can do mini live launches or private live launches that won’t need as much work.
The other side to live launching
Live launching requires a lot of planning and energy. Planning in terms of timelines, content planning, promotional planning, strategic planning. And when those doors open, you need to bring the energy and excitement in order to get your audience to sit up and listen.
Live launching will highlight any shadow work or mindset blocks that need to be worked on, this isn’t necessarily a negative but unless you have support to work through these, it can be a challenging time.
There are a lot of people out there live launching all of the time, so you really need to lead yourself and your audience with authenticity and creativity to ensure you stand out from the crowd.
The best things about evergreen launching
Once you have set-up all of the systems and have a seamless funnel created that successfully leads your audience to buy your product or service, you can start to make money when you sleep.
This means more freedom in your life to:
Travel
Spend more quality time with your friends and family
Create and develop new offerings for your audience
The other side to evergreen launching
Creating a product to sell as an evergreen takes a lot of time and resources to set-up. It could also be quite costly if you need to use an expensive platform to host it on.
If you do end up investing and putting a huge amount of time and energy into it, without a live launch element, there will be no urgency from your audience to buy or sign up to it because they know they can join at any time.
Which leads me on to the next point, you need a strategy in place to ensure you are constantly promoting it. So many people will spend all of their time, energy and money and then forget about continued promotions.
Lastly, because there isn’t a live, face-to-face element to an evergreen, if you see sales slow down or suddenly stop, you have to try and predict what the problem is before being able to fix it, which isn’t ideal!
It’s not one or the other
I believe there is room for both evergreen and live launch formats in every product suite. However I wouldn’t recommend prioritising evergreen before you nail your live launches, grow your customer loyalty and start seeing consistent income from your most loved services.
If you are a coach who really want to incorporate live launches into your strategy, I’d love to support you with either my:
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