What a Launch Really Is (And Why It's Not What You Think)

Everyone's talking about launches, launch season, and the seven-figure launch story. But what if the version of "launch" you've been comparing yourself to isn't even the right definition?

In this episode, Ruthie breaks down what a launch actually means when you're running a service-based business without open cart, closed cart mechanics or false scarcity. She reframes the launch as a campaign window: one offer, one timeframe, one message lens, and shares the three production questions every founder needs to answer before diving into a launch season (when you're planning, when you're producing, and who's producing it).

Using a golf analogy, a gardening analogy, and a very real parenting analogy, Ruthie walks through why your campaign isn't a failure just because you're tired of talking about it, why every launch is a runway for the next one, and how to define your fall campaign window without burning yourself out.

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@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

Ruthie (00:00)
I'm kicking off today's episode with a little golf analogy. And even if you're not a golfer, stick around, stick with me. Earlier this summer, the open championship, which is also known as the British Open Open, Scotty Scheffler was asked in a press conference about Bryson DeChambeau's penalty during, I think it was the second round. And there was a rules violation, and it was a whole big controversy, it's a whole thing. But Scotty's answer made me laugh. He said something like,

You know, I don't really have a lot to say about that. But then a beat later he said, I do actually have a lot to say about that. But I don't know if I want to get into it publicly just yet. And when I heard that thought is how I feel about the world of launching. I have a lot to say, but I don't know w I've always kind of not really known what I want to say publicly.

Because the online marketing world is so loud about launches, launch strategy, launch models, launch debriefs, the I made seven figures in my launch. It's everywhere. And it gives a lot of people launch FOMO. And I've had a lot to say for a long time, but I haven't said much here because I didn't really know how to talk about launches.

But that's what I wanted to do today. I want to talk about launches, launch season, launch momentum, and my personal opinion on launches, because some of it might surprise you. Before we get any anywhere near tactics or strategies or anything, I want to set a couple of ground rules. Okay. Ground rule number one nothing is guaranteed. Nothing.

What do they say? Nothing in life is guaranteed except death and taxes. Say. Like marketing strategies, launches, nothing is guaranteed. You may have heard me share my gardening analogy before, because you know, I love a good analogy. Marketing is like planting seeds. You water them, you fertilize them, you do your best to plant in good soil, and you still can't control exactly when the harvest comes or how big it is.

And anyone selling you a guaranteed harvest is like selling you weather control. Like it's not a thing. I mean, cloud seeding, you heard people talk about that, that whole controversy. It's not a thing, guys. But you know that you're smart. All right, ground rule number two is there is no one right air quotes over here, way to launch. Launching looks different than it did six years ago. Honestly, it probably looks different than it did six months ago.

So if you've ever fallen into the trap of I followed exactly what she said to do, I bought her course, I did the thing, it still didn't work. Hear me that the failure of a borrowed blueprint is information about fit. And that's all it is. You're not a failure. It's not your fault. Just because it worked for her doesn't mean it could work for you. And it might not be your fault, it's probably not your fault that it didn't work for you.

So we're come back to this trap later, but I I wanted to just start with that. Now that I have given you the groundwork rules, we're gonna define launching. Because the internet's definition of a launch is the source of a lot of the pain and maybe some of the confusion, right? So here's what a launch means to me.

When you hear launch, you're probably picturing the big version: a brand new offer, open cart, closed cart, countdown type timer, five cents, you know, spots left, doors closed, Friday at midnight. Not yeah, that is a version of a launch, but let me give you a more useful definition. A launch could be something new, but it might be a relaunch.

Of something that already exists, packaged differently, talked about from a fresh perspective, with one thing changed, or maybe nothing changed. Which is why sometimes I think about launches more as campaigns. And that's the version that I want you to hold on to the for the rest of this episode is that a launch is really a campaign window. One offer, one period of time, one specific.

Lens. And we're going to talk about this way. and you're you're talking about that offer during this time period using this lens, and that's it. That that's a campaign, also known as a launch, right? I might use the word launch and campaign interchangeably. The word doesn't matter. It's the container that we're talking about.

As a service provider, I can tell you that I personally don't run open cart, closed cart mechanics. And I don't subscribe to the false scarcity playbook. There is sometimes promotions that I will run or my clients will run, where there's time-boundness around a bonus offer or special pricing, but at the end of the day,

I am never gonna tell you I only have five spots left to work with me in this quarter when that's not true. I'm not gonna make up scarcity. I hate that. I hate false scarcity. Or I hate, you know, three more days till the doors close. The doors don't close. Okay. Don't say that if it's not true. I hate that. For my business, enrollment or working with me is open year-round.

Assuming our team has capacity. And we might talk about in our marketing sometimes that, hey, this quarter or this month, we have capacity to bring on one new client. And when we don't have capacity to bring on new clients, we're probably not talking about it. Or we're talking about booking a call to see if we're a fit for when we do have capacity, right? So a campaign window doesn't have to be about open cart, close cart, or closing a door on a on a buyer.

Right. The the time-boundness of a campaign doesn't have to be about specific real deadlines. It's a campaign window that's time-bound is for you to concentrate your message. And that brings me a little bit more to what the container is for.

A campaign window helps you delineate your content and focus your content. For those weeks, your content has one assignment. And that assignment forces you to think through the whole journey, right? Attract, nurture, convert. Top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. Who needs to discover this offer, this thing?

And what does the on the fence person need to hear? And what does the person who is ready to take the next step need to do? We're not going through that journey with random acts of content. We're being strategic and intentional. And by boxing it into this window of time, it's forcing us to answer those questions, right?

And the truth is about repetition is this is where most campaigns or often a campaign can fall apart. You tell yourself, okay, this is the campaign window, this is the launch window, this is when I'm launching. And then you start creating content. And you're like, I've said all this already. We already posted this. Surely everyone is sick of this. No, no, they're not.

That's the campaign working as designed. Because if you're sick of it, that means your audience is just now starting to see the content and follow along with the message. Every single person in your audience will only see a fraction of your messages. The woman who saw Tuesday's post did not see Thursday's email. The one who caught week one missed week three. And

You can blame Instagram, you can blame the algorithm, you can blame the fact that people are busy and we just have billions of pieces of content to consume, but you're not performing one continuous monologue to one attentive room of people. You're saying one important thing many times to many partially attentive rooms.

So if you're tired of your own campaign message, it's roughly at that point when your audience is just beginning to register. So don't give up. If you're in a campaign window, if you set this campaign window for yourself, this launch period, and you're like, my gosh, I'm so tired of talking about this. Keep talking about it, okay?

And another thing to think about with every single launch or campaign window, right? Because they're the same. Everything you do in a launch or a campaign window is also a runway for the next one.

A campaign window is building on your next campaign, even if it misses the goal for that campaign. I'm gonna give you this as a in a parenting analogy. You might be trying to teach your child a specific skill, and maybe they don't learn that skill in the week that you were talking about.

But they learn it down the road because we're still on the runway. And likely while you're talking to them or practicing that specific skill, they might learn another skill or practice another skill that you needed them to learn. I wish I had a more specific example for you here, but I think you get the idea.

You built a content suite, sales emails, posts, a landing page. All of those things exist now and will get stronger with edits instead of having to be built from scratch next time. So whether this is the runway for this particular campaign window into the next campaign window.

This might be a runway for when you talk about this offer in a different campaign window in six months, right? So even if we didn't get the results that we were hoping for, it was not a waste, right? It was a chance for you to get new eyes on your content, to warm your audience a little bit more, to learn from the data of putting this messaging and this content out there. And hopefully.

We had some people convert in that campaign window, but we were also putting people into the funnel or into the pipeline so that they might be ready during the next campaign window. So you're collecting real data, you're filling the funnel. And doing those things are valuable. They are, but they're not sexy, like I had a seven-figure launch, but they're important.

And even if you had one opt-in, that one opt-in is a real person who is now in your world and you can talk to. There, it's now a lead, it's now a connection. So the comparison trap, like I get it. The seven-figure launch that you measured yourself against, it's it's frustrating. I get it. You you saw one takeoff and you're like, why in the world did I not get the results that she got?

Because what she didn't tell you about, that guru who sold you the course is the 10 years of runway that she had underneath. The email list that she built over a decade, or the previous eight campaigns, the messaging that was refined through every single one of them. The audience that has been watching her plant seeds for years before this harvest came in.

Comparing your first campaign window or even your second or your third to someone's seven-figure launch is like comparing a seedling to an orchard. Like they're different things. They have different histories. But you can't do that and then conclude, well, I'm I'm just really bad at gardening because I didn't get a tree when I, you know, planted this one seed and she's got over here with bushels of peaches. I don't think I've ever used that term in my life. Bushels of peaches.

I'm we're getting really deep with this gardening analogy. Stick with me. But momentum is what you're gaining by running this campaign going through this launch. So when you stop thinking about launches or campaigns as islands, and you think about them as windows that inherit the runway from the last one.

That is the strategy that is building the momentum. And it's quieter than the one that the internet claims can 10x your revenue or give you the six-figure launch or whatever. But it's the version that compounds over time. It's the building that's quiet but helpful. So I want to make this practical for you.

If you've been following along this month, we have been talking about mapping your campaign calendar. We talked about, you know, Christmas in July last month and planning for Q4 and knowing when the heavier pushes or maybe the launch windows are actually going to happen. We want we put them on the calendar. So the remaining decisions are production decisions. And

There are really three decisions you need to make around production for a launch window. Because here's one thing that I another thing that I think people kind of make the mistake of. They say, okay, let's take Black Friday for example. Let's say I'm gonna run a promotion or a campaign around Small Business Saturday. I'm gonna start on Black Friday. I'm gonna run it for a week, seven days. And so I put that on my calendar. That's not the window of time.

That is going to take up the most of my energy. It's the preparing for that window that is likely going to take more energy than I'm maybe realizing. So here's the three questions that we need to answer. Number one, when is the planning happening? Not when is the actual campaign, when is the campaign live, but when is the planning happening?

A campaign that you plan mid-campaign is like not a campaign that's still throwing spaghetti at the wall. That's still reactive content, right? So when are we doing the planning? Okay. Number two, the next thing we have to ask is when is the content being produced? Because planning and producing use different amounts of brain power.

And or different types of brain power and planning will get you better production. But they both take time and they both take energy, right? So there are two different kinds of options for when the content is being produced. Number one, or option A, everything could be batched before the window opens. This is the calmest version and connects straight to the idea of launch batching that we talked about last episode.

Because you're really sitting down and you're planning and creating, planning and producing through the entire messaging arc from awareness to conversion. You're going through the customer journey with your content and you're doing it all at once so you can really check and make sure that you're connecting the dots and that we're being repetitive enough with the message, right?

Option two is to plan it fully, like have it all mapped out, but batch it during the window so that you can react to market signals, so that you can double down on what's landing or adjust what isn't. Both of those work. There's pros and cons to both. I want you to pick based upon your energy.

The way you can create content, or if your team is creating content, what works best for them? Or if you have contractors align again on what is being produced when. And think about, I'll give you an example with a client that I'm working with right now. They have a big campaign that kind of goes on really all of Q4. It's it's a messaging campaign that ran that starts really being the seeds start getting planted in August and it really ramps up.

October, November, December, right? So I'm currently, as I'm recording this episode, I'm planning their September social content. Well, the social content, a lot of it is pointing to opt-ins that are going to be live in September that are not live yet. The social content, we've planned to repurpose blog posts that are going to be written and published in September, but they're not written yet.

So I can't repurpose them for a post. So thinking about the production schedule, if you do have different contractors working on things, and I see this happen for social media managers a lot, unfortunately, is client says, okay, we're launching in this window. Can you create me social content for the launch? But you don't give the social media manager anything to go off of.

So then what ends up happening is the social content and the long form content or the emails or even the landing pages or opt-in pages or sales pages, they're all disconnected. Because we need to start with the planning and then think about the production in a way that each piece of content can feed into the other types of content. And that leads me to the third question of who is producing this content? Is it you?

Is it your team? Is it contractors? Because a campaign window is often a sprint. And the rule from two weeks ago doesn't pause for these sprints. And when I say the rule from two weeks ago, when we talked about kind of like what are our rules around the volume of content, right? But the sprint is deliberate. It has an end date and it sits on top of the floor that you've already

Set for yourself without replacing it. Your capacity gets honored mid-campaign, especially mid-campaign, because you planned ahead. You planned when that production was going to happen. And a launch or a campaign that like wrecks you or drains you ends up becoming a launch that you abandon, right? So think about.

When is the launch window? When is the actual campaign window? When are we planning? When is the content being produced? And who is producing it? Those are all things to think about. And by the way, just side note, if you're like, I don't have the brain capacity to think about all that, Ruthie, that's the mental load of marketing. And that's what a marketing director sitting in your corner will think about for you. But let's land the plane.

Let's land the whole month that we've been talking about while we're at it because you've been building something across the last few episodes, whether you've noticed it or not. In week one of this month, we wrote a summer debrief. We named our floor and our real capacity. Last week we talked about how and when we could batch content. And this week, we are defining.

one fall campaign window. So I want you to look at the next few months and pick a campaign window. Pick one offer, pick real dates with a beginning and an end, one kind of core message. And let me give you an example about that core message because you might be like, the core message doesn't change. It can from campaign to campaign. Here's the thing. I'm in my messaging, the offer, there's two offers that we're always selling our mixer, the

Free networking event or working with the corner office, our agency. The mixer happens four times a year. And each time we have a slightly different lens on how we talk about it, even though it's the same thing. In February, we're talking about falling in love with your marketing again. In May, we're talking about preparing for your summer rhythms and minimum viable visibility.

In August, we're talking about back to school, back to basics. And in November, we're talking about the holidays. So it's the same offer, but it's got a different magazine cover, right? So that's kind of what I mean by campaign message lens. So okay, you're looking at the calendar, you're picking your campaign window for this fall, you're picking when you're planning the content and messaging, you're picking.

when the content needs to be produced and you're committing to who is producing it. Let me tell you, if you are working with other team members or contractors, this is a gift that you are going to give them because the last thing that your contractors want is the week before a launch for you or a campaign for you to say, actually I need can't I need content all around this thing by next week. Like

You gotta give them some runway too, or give yourself runway. You're building your own runway, right? And even if this is a small campaign, it's a weekend promotion, or it's one week, or it's around a sp specific holiday, you know, it could be a campaign with a Halloween lens. Whatever it is that you do or serve people with or sell, it could be this lens of like this thing that you help people with doesn't have to be scary.

And we put this kind of magazine cover with Hall Halloween theme on it, and we talk about it for three or four days around Halloween. But it's concentrated and it's focused and it goes through the entire customer journey with different pieces of content on different channels, not just one post, right? So there's a difference between one piece of content, one post, and a campaign, right? So

I mentioned the marketing mixer. before you go, do all your planning, mark a calendar, Thursday, August 20th. If you have not registered, please register. I want to see you at the back to school back to basics mixer. It is our virtual networking event for mom founders. And I love to do one as we're kicking off the school year because you know, August is the new January. It's a great time for new energy. It's a great time to get in the room with other founders, living a similar experience and in a similar energy to you. So

The consistencycorner.com slash mixer is where you can register. The link is also in the show notes. And if you happen to be listening to this one after August 20th, we'll have another one in Q4. It's in November. Same link. And get that one on your calendar. And I'll see you there. Thanks so much for being here on the show today, and we'll see you in the next episode.