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Work Less, Earn More is the podcast that explores how to get the most out of every hour you work. Gillian Perkins brings more than a decade of experience as an entrepreneur and educator to help you design a business that's not only flexible and fulfilling, but highly profitable. She shares strategies that are working in her own business to save time and maximize profits. She also features interviews with successful business owners on how they’re achieving big things in their businesses with crazy-little time investment. Share Work Less, Earn More with an overworked entrepreneur you know who could use a change of pace!
Gillian:
[0:00] Hey there, friends. Welcome back to Work Less, Earn More. I'm your host, Gillian Perkins, and today we're going to talk about a way to launch that is simpler, lighter, and more creative. Joining me today is Brittany Roberts, who's the creator of Instagram Launch Lab and the host of the One Woman Show podcast. Since 2020, she has helped hundreds of women sell their signature offers through lo-fi strategies that turn content into conversations without the funnel fatigue. In this episode, Brittany and I are going to get into the behind-the-scenes of her most successful launch yet, a close friend's Instagram launch that outsold her funnel. You'll hear how she curated 250 people, ran a three-day teaching series from her couch, and sold out her program without ever building a fancy funnel. We might also dig into a few frameworks that you can use and talk about why your next launch doesn't have to be fancy or require a huge team to work. So let's get into it.
[1:02] [intro bumper]
We became entrepreneurs because more than anything, we want freedom. We want to be in control of our own schedule, income, and life. But unfortunately, that isn't always the reality of being a business owner. I'm Gillian Perkins, and I'm on a mission to take back entrepreneurship for what it's supposed to be.
In every episode, I'll share with you how to get the most out of every hour you work so that you can work less and earn more. Let's get to it.
[/intro bumper]
Gillian:
[1:39] Hi there, Brittany. Welcome to Work Less, Learn More.
Brittany:
[1:41] Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be chatting with you.
Gillian:
[1:45] Yeah, I'm excited to get into this. I love talking funnels, but even more than just funnels, launch strategy. And so I'm really excited to hear about exactly how this launch of yours worked and how maybe you've been able to replicate the success with multiple launches in the past. But first, give me a little bit of backstory. Did you used to have a fancy funnel? And what causes you to switch?
Brittany:
[2:09] Yeah, I mean, like many online entrepreneurs, I think we go through all of these different phases and try different things, searching for a silver bullet or doing what is certainly working at that time. And when I first launched my program, I did the very traditional live webinar. And once I had sort of validated the offer that way, I transitioned that into an evergreen funnel, I should say. And it works pretty well, pretty decently. Of course, there's always natural differences between a live launch and an epic green funnel. But I was starting to notice, especially when it came to live webinars, as I was starting to run them three or four times a year for my signature main offer, that yes, I mean, data is always changing. Show-up rates are always changing. It's always a little bit different. Depends on time of year, what's going on, the messaging. But I was really noticing low show-up rates to Zoom webinars in particular. And it was off the back of a full multi-day challenge. We had lots of different technical aspects. There was a Facebook group. There was the Zoom challenges. There were little like exercises, workbooks. There were prizes to be won throughout. And I had done this big Zoom parade, essentially, multiple days. And it converted really well. And the last time I did that was 2023. And I was planning on recycling it and bringing it back in 2024 because it got really great response from definitely like more of those warmer leads people already in my ecosystem.
Brittany:
[3:35] But I was thinking about it. I was like, wow, it took me so much time to actually bring that together. And sure, I could definitely outsource more elements. And it was already created this time. It would just be a little bit more of rinse and repeat. But I noticed how drastically the attendance was dropping throughout the days. I was like, well, there's no point putting so much energy into when I need them on the last day. They're tapped out or they're busy. And three days of Zoom trainings from people that are not paying you. You know, it's a lot to ask from them out of their schedule. So I thought about, okay, how can I take the framework? Because the framework works in essentially sharing your methodology, stepping them through that, really indoctrinating them into your way of doing things and getting them to see your offer is that logical next step. But how can I remove the barrier to having to show up live? How can I remove the barrier to them having to be on a Zoom to see it and absorb it? So I thought about how can I just change the mechanism? So I flipped it and I literally repurposed the whole thing and just did it all on my close friends' Instagram stories.
Brittany:
[4:37] Same format, same three days, but just something a lot more lo-fi, both for me, definitely for me, but also for my participants that they could absorb this in a way that felt a lot easier and a lot more chill. And they could watch it while they were cooking dinner. They could tuck through it, let it play on the kitchen bench or they could watch it on the couch or before they went to sleep. And it completely changed the way that they responded and participated. and it felt much more,
Brittany:
[5:05] current. And definitely as well with my landscape, I work in the Instagram world. But I definitely felt that it was capturing attention because they're like, Oh, this is different. This feels different to all the other 45 Zoom webinars I've signed up for this year already. This feels like something I want to be at and I don't want to miss a day.
Gillian:
[5:22] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I had the exact same experience with challenges. I ran a couple back in the day. For me, it was probably like around 2018, I think, that I tried doing a couple challenges and they are so much work.
Gillian:
[5:37] Yes. There's so much work. And Sam, I had the exact same experience that there were fewer and fewer people showing up each day that we went live, whether it was going live in a Facebook group or going live on Zoom or something like that. And, you know, ultimately, the last day is the most important day for them to be there. You can kind of run into a similar sort of problem if you do a product launch style, like Jeff Walker style launch. You know there's a lot of it makes a lot of sense to do a launch in either of these ways you know to build up with the content to teach these different concepts that are important to kind of shift the buyer's mentality and get them to have the right beliefs that they need to make that purchase but getting them to show up for multiple days live can be so difficult so for example with the jeff walker style launch i still have a funnel that works that way but i just give them access to all the lessons at the same time. And I made them a lot shorter and they can watch them all at once. So I love how you took something that was working so well for you, your challenge that was working. You said the content was working, but you solved for the thing that wasn't working, getting people to show up multiple days and show up, like you said, on Zoom. So I'm curious, you said that you used a lot of the same content, but now you are sharing it with close friends Instagram stories. What exactly do you mean by that? Is that a specific kind of Instagram story?
Brittany:
[7:01] Yes, it is. So you can basically curate a list of people and you have to manually add people to that list that are going to see a certain kind of post that you share on Instagram stories. So you may not have ever noticed it if it's something you haven't used or you're not on someone's close friends list. But it's the same as posting any regular Instagram story. But right before you hit post, you'll change the toggle at the bottom and you'll say close friends only. And that means that that Instagram story will still get shared. It looks very much the same to you as the user. But it means that it's only showing up in the feed of people who have been added to that close friends list.
Brittany:
[7:39] So trying to reframe what that might look like, it's the same as sending an email only to people who have a certain tag or are on a segmented list. So what that does is curates a lot of exclusivity and privatized content that those, again, who are privy to it, can see it, feel like they're getting that extra additional bonus look into your world or sharing a training, whatever it is, however you're using it. There's a bunch of different ways you can use it. And you can then also start to actually market that there's that exclusivity there as well. So while the rest of your audience might not see those stories, you can say, Hey, I've actually got this amazing pop-up training going on right now on my stories. You'll be able to watch it in five minutes. And sometimes even showing them all the little extra little dots at the top of your Instagram story bar that they're not seeing. They're like, Oh my gosh, wow, yes, I want to get into that. And you can continue to play on that, I call it like front of house and back of house content.
Brittany:
[8:37] And playing with that element of they want to get into the club, essentially. And you can use that close friends list in, of course, the way I'm talking about it now, but in a bunch of different ways to keep your content creation basically similar. It's the exact same as posting an Instagram story, but you're really curating who is seeing it.
Gillian:
[8:56] So it sounds like one of the big advantages to doing that is to get people to be motivated to sit through the training. Whereas if they hadn't kind of opted in in that way by wanting to get on your close friends list, then they might kind of click off sooner because they aren't as emotionally invested. Is that right?
Brittany:
[9:15] Yes, absolutely. It definitely creates that allure of, oh, this is something I've chosen to be a part of.
Brittany:
[9:22] I've opted into it, especially if you are using it. That's why I recommend being very intentional with what you're opting into because people have enough content, they really don't want to see much more. So if you're actually hosting a specific training on a specific topic, or it's a Q&A, or you're doing audits, and they're able to put their name in to get audited, whatever makes sense for your niche in your audience, there's this attention and engagement that is so different to them just tapping through any other story. Because as well, when it pops up on their feed, it looks a little bit different. There's actually a green circle that is around your profile picture. So when they see that green circle, as compared to all the other Instagram stories they might want to tap into, they're like, oh, she's posted something new. There's something new there. I want to make sure I tap into that. And that really changed the participation and engagement of my challenge as compared to what I had done previously, while the engagement was good, it was certainly really hot and really just like consistent all the way through when I was using that framework.
Gillian:
[10:25] Yeah, that makes sense. And that answered part of my next question, which is, what is their experience like? Does it look any different to them? So you said there's like a green circle around your profile. Is there anything else, any other way in which it looks different to them? Do they get a notification or anything like that?
Brittany:
[10:43] Not really. There is the likelihood of it being closer to the front of their story queue the more that they are tapping into that. I always encourage really strategic use of polls and quizzes so that they're tapping, they're engaging, they're interacting. And also, I was including a lot of the same principles that people will do with live webinars and challenges. Enter the competition, tap your way through to the end. There's some type of gamification element throughout as well. Without that it would have been pretty decent because people can really just tap through anyway but it just increased the amount of actual reactions i was getting responses to the actual instagram stories as well so it was a listening more real conversation and i could actually see who was sending me these messages it wasn't just a random zoom email and i was encouraging people to turn on the notifications at the start of the training each day because they had opted in to see a training and i was the first time i did this coming from the angle there's going to be no replay. These trainings are up for 24 hours only. They're super juicy. They're action-packed and valuable. You'll actually have things you can go away and implement each day. So you need to make sure that you capture them in that 24-hour period and then they're gone. So I don't know how people would have had the notifications on but any cues you can give to keep people coming back and paying attention and getting involved really helps with that retention as well.
Gillian:
[12:03] Yeah. So are you saying that you did all those things with the old format of the challenge when you were doing it on Zoom and things like that too, and you carried those things over to Instagram?
Brittany:
[12:12] Yeah, I experimented with a few different formats, you know, teasing at the beginning that there would be an exclusive bonus for anyone who was taking action on the next step, you know, 24-hour sort of expiring bonuses. There were the gamification elements if they were participating in some of the exercises and they reported back on their progress. So you can, And in the same way with any type of live event, you can layer, you can mix and match. And that's why I really enjoyed about it because it was not just that I was able to transfer so many of those existing strategies, but see how they actually worked and actually get that very live, very instant response in the same way that you would with Zoom too.
Gillian:
[12:49] Yeah, yeah. So when you are sharing those stories with the close friends, you said that you are promoting it maybe to your whole following on Instagram and telling them that, you know, advertising it to them basically, right? How do they indicate to you that they want to get access to it? And how do you make sure that you add them to the close friends?
Brittany:
[13:10] A few different ways. So they could opt in in the same way. Maybe we're using like the classic comment the word or DM me the word. And I would just use the word close or some people use CF. Something easy for them to just respond to that. And I would get a lot of opt-ins that way. So through my front-facing Instagram posts, that's how I was doing it. I was also sending out emails. They could just respond to the email and hit reply with one word and I would add them. They needed to also have their Instagram handle.
Brittany:
[13:39] So I was aware of the fact like, okay, there's going to be some bumps in the road here, maybe some barriers. How can I... Not everyone's comfortable with revealing themselves in a DM or on a comment that they want to join a training that might be about a pain point in their life or business. So I was trying to think about how can I almost keep it anonymous in the way that they would just be able to normally click a link and sign up. So on my regular Instagram stories, my front-facing Instagram stories, I would just use, again, a lot of the engagement stickers. There's one that's just a very simple emoji button and they would just tap it. I don't really know what the purpose of this button is. But I would literally just say, if you want into my training, I'd do very similar marketing to where you'd market any type of workshop training. If you want me to add you, tap the green circle and I would have that icon there. Didn't require them to say anything. All they had to do was just tap that. And then it's just a process of going through and just adding them one by one. And, I think it's scale if it was to continue to increase having someone to help you manage that. Of course, it's manual. It's not the perfect automation world. But what I actually enjoyed about that process was really getting to know who are these leads, who are interested. They're opting in. They're obviously interested in getting to know these people.
Brittany:
[14:55] Like literally from their Instagram account, there was no hiding from them. It was very interesting. No fake emails, no fake signups. So it was very interesting in that manner because it was somewhat manual.
Gillian:
[15:07] Yeah. And I love how low lift just tapping the button is for them. They don't have to enter their email and worry that someone is stealing their email address or go through multiple steps to sign up or anything. So that's really cool.
Brittany:
[15:20] Yeah. That was the one that certainly worked the best and brought in a lot of people who I feel wouldn't have probably commented or sent me a DM or responded to an email. So I think it's important that you're mixing up those calls to actions. And there's not just one way to join. Again, especially... And I see this problem happening with a lot of people trying to go down the very popular ManyChat route, using those comment call to actions. Some people don't want to comment because it's something that's personal to them. And your solution, your offer might be amazing, but they don't want to reveal that they need your weight loss program or your financial support program or whatever it is. As amazing as it is, they're having to publicly declare that. And it's not just that you're going to be the one to see that they're revealing themselves as a lead. Their friends might see it, their co-workers might see it. So it's really important you've got those different avenues for people to be able to connect with you.
Gillian:
[16:15] Yeah. And anybody who uses Instagram knows that it's actually pretty likely that their friends or co-workers might see their comment. You know, it's not just lost in a sea of comments. I know the other day I saw somebody using mini chat on their post and it was a post about like a floral tutorial, like how to make a wreath, I think is what it was. Okay. How to make a wreath out of leaves. And she was using this mini chat feature and I saw one of my friends had commented on it and wanted the tutorial for the leaf wreath. And I was just like, oh, that's so random. Now I know my friend wants to make leaf wreaths, you know? Yeah, yeah. And it almost felt like a little awkward that I was seeing her like kind of weird comments. You know, she commented something like leaf wreath or something like that. And I was like, that was a strange thing. You know, it's a strange thing to say. Like, I'm just going to walk up to you and say leaf wreath. You know, that doesn't make any sense. So it's kind of a weird comment. And it would be so much more awkward if it was something about like, you know, weight loss or something about finances or something like that. So love that you thought about that and came up with a solution.
Brittany:
[17:15] Yeah, I think being so deep in Instagram as someone who coaches not just other Instagram coaches, but different consultants and course creators in so many different industries, I could easily say, well, just use these templates and all these things because that really works in my Instagram world where we're all kind of feeding each other's strategies to some degree. But when you have an audience as well that are not Instagram privy, that's another thing to consider. And I do have clients right now implementing this close friend strategy. And we have to sort of be mindful in a different way. Your audience might... Never have heard of close friends before. And there are a lot of people in my audience too that had never heard of it, weren't familiar with how it would work and weren't sure where the trainings were going to pop up. So it's equally as important to make sure the audience understands how this format is going to work, what they can expect, where to find it. So it's not just you want to start posting on there and expect everyone will come, but a lot of sort of like warming up to it is helpful. And I always recommend actually testing out how your audience responds to those close friend stories. Are they watching them? Are they following along? Do they get excited by that type of format? Do they learn well through that format? Or is it going to be too much where they're like, Oh, this is hard for me to follow in this little rectangle.
Brittany:
[18:31] And then also testing out those call to actions. It's definitely something we have to maybe continue to experiment with. Maybe people are never going to be able to wanting to click that little sticker, whatever it is in your niche. So we might need to get even more creative. We had one client that was actually considering still creating an opt-in form. So it still was private. We didn't end up going down that road. We didn't need it. But there's certainly ways you can get creative with it.
Gillian:
[18:54] Yeah, yeah. I was actually having the same thought right before you said that, that you could still create like a normal opt-in form, couldn't you? But instead of having them enter their email, you could have them give either their Instagram handle or the link to their Instagram profile, which that would be really interesting. So I'm curious, and I can think of reasons why, but I'm curious why you ended up deciding with that client to not go that route.
Brittany:
[19:18] She ended up finding that people were pretty happy with specifically that Instagram story version. Where it was somewhat the most anonymous version, I guess, that we could have where they just had to tap that sticker. There was no typing. There was no commenting. We sort of as well were thinking, okay, one day if we wanted to scale this even further, would we want to do ads? Would we want to try and reach more people with this? And how could we do this in a way again, where we're not having to have people comment or DM again, if they literally don't know us from a bar of soap, how could we still get their details and at least get them onto that close friends list? And we were sort of future pacing in a way and we ended up not needing it for
Brittany:
[19:58] this particular campaign that she was doing. But it really got us thinking about how you could continue to scale and grow this without having to kind of keep it too lo-fi in a way that people are like, oh, it's not really something I'm interested in, but also making it manageable and realistic as well.
Gillian:
[20:14] Yeah, for sure. Speaking of scaling, is there a limit of how many people you can put on that close friends list?
Brittany:
[20:21] I will say I don't know if there's a limit, but I have not reached it yet. So I should actually fact check that, but I haven't.
Brittany:
[20:29] And ultimately, and I got asked this question before as well, like once you've done these close friends, you know, series and trainings where it's very specific, they're opting in for this one particular training series or whatever it is. Do you just keep that same list and add to it? But I've decided to actually flush the list each time. There's a very specific training or opportunity that they're opting in for. Because I really want to know. And that's why I loved it so much was that I was really seeing who was interested. And it was obviously really trying to attract in those ready-to-buy warmer leads in my audience. But that's really what I want to use it for. I want to use it for that type of person in my audience. And of course, I still have other launch formats because I think relying on just one mechanism is going to always limit you. But flushing it out, starting again, and making sure you're getting that really keen interest every time, I think is a great way to go about it. You can flip it and use it in a different way. You can use it as a waitlist format. You can use it for the trainings. You can just use it for fun, behind the scenes, extra content. It's great for market research when you're wanting to really get a test group of people and really see what they want to know and what they're thinking. So it's a really fun tool. And to be honest, I'm very much still in the experimental phases with it because Instagram is always changing. The way people use it, always changing.
Gillian:
[21:53] Yeah, for sure. Well, I love the experiment. It's one of my favorite things about running a business online, especially. I used to run a local business and there's a lot of experimenting that happened there too. But online, it can often be easier and lower lift to launch different experiments and to conduct different experiments. So you said you clean out the entire list every time, at least pretty much, right? Do you keep any sort of record of who those people were, that they were interested in that offer or you're just tossing in the trash?
Brittany:
[22:23] The very, again, lo-fi, haven't quite worked out the best system yet is screenshotting the lists before they go. So you can actually just go into your close friends and look who are all the people added and screenshotting those lists. And of course, when I'm watching anyway, I still am still implementing lead tracking and a lot of data tracking in the back end, still very much manually. There's some automations in there as well. But I do have a pretty good guide of these people that I want to continue to nurture and keep track of. But yes, that's why I wouldn't solely rely on... I'm not saying unsubscribe from your email marketing software or your CRMs. This is not a replacement. It's a new alternative way that you can really capture your audience's attention on Instagram if you do feel like you've maybe lost touch with them. Maybe you feel like they're tuning you out a little bit. How to re-engage them. And again, mostly those people who are sort of like in your inner circle somewhat already and sort of just like layering that in with some of the other campaign styles and launches that you might be doing just to keep them on their toes because we want to keep things interesting at all times.
Gillian:
[23:31] Yeah, for sure.
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Gillian:
[25:21] I think it's so important that we stay up with times, right? Things are always changing, especially on the internet, especially when it comes to marketing, right? And I think things are changing faster than ever before with the onset of AI and just more content online than ever before. So yeah, super important, right? To be trying out new strategies, doing those experiments, figuring out what is the up and coming thing and what is working right now. But then also, you've got people's different personalities, right? And people's different habits. Some people, you can reach them in their inbox. Some people never check their
Gillian:
[25:57] email, but they spend a lot of time on Instagram, right? So you can reach more people if you use more than one launch strategy.
Brittany:
[26:04] Yeah, I definitely have noticed that shop rates, as I mentioned at the start of the episode and email opens, it's not as consistent as it used to be, as reliable as it used to be. and so many people kind of filtering information out. They're choosing to follow less people or they don't follow as many people in the space of a year. They're keeping their investments a little bit tighter. There's nothing wrong with that because I think we should all be doing that. It's definitely a result of the past few years and how things have evolved and changed. But we need to meet them where they're at and think about, okay, how can we make sure that we're not putting up all these barriers to working with us? And of course, with things like AI as well, Who can you trust? And if I'm going to drop to this webinar, is it actually going to be live or is it actually secretly pre-recorded? There's a lot of ways people are shortcutting now. And I really feel that when I was showing up on my close friends' Instagram stories, it really was me. I was mixing and matching the mediums. I had some face to camera content. I had some that I was writing things out. I would make a few little things in Canva just to make diagram descriptions a little bit easier.
Brittany:
[27:10] But they really knew that was me there live. It was in real time. They were expiring. And it brought a lot of closer connections and conversations that I don't think would have happened off the back of a regular launch.
Gillian:
[27:23] Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So tell us a little bit about the content that you share in these Instagram stories, these close friends Instagram stories for your launch.
Brittany:
[27:33] Yeah. So it's always typically a three-day, three-part framework element that usually seeds the need for either the next step in the process if they were wanting to move closer to a specific result or it's the high-level version of my curriculum that gives them that overview of how things work. In this particular training series recently that I did, it was that high-level overview of my curriculum. It was called Map Message Monetize. So actually, it was very meta in the way that it was actually helping them plan out their next campaign, talking about different messaging angles and definitely that belief loop that we need to recreate to help their audience have that right mindset and understanding for them to feel ready to invest and talking about actually different ways to monetize the Instagram audience. So if that was using things like close friends, or if it made more sense for their audience to move to a different platform to be converted and closed.
Brittany:
[28:31] The frameworks and the way that I like to come up with these training series, it always should be leading somewhere. We want to have the seeded the need for your offer towards the end. And it's not always like a big surprise. Doors are open. I've hijacked this training. Throughout, I'm still planting that opportunity. Yes, this is part of something I teach and there's a bigger picture here. I'm always using case studies. It's very open. And I think when you are going to the effort to put on a challenge, it should be a platform where there's value shared either way and people are getting something out of it. You're showing up with your energy and you have the opportunity to present an opportunity. Of course, the value in teaching comes first and making sure they really get something out of it at the end of every day. And that was definitely the feedback that I was getting. Like, oh, wow, I can just have this up on my desk and learn something, think differently about this, get some new ideas. And at the end of each day, I was still self-pitching, I would say. And then it leads to the sort of final opportunity at the very end.
Gillian:
[29:31] Mm-hmm. And so you said the content was very similar to when you had previously run a challenge. Was it still a challenge? Was there still that aspect of it?
Brittany:
[29:43] In terms of the participants?
Gillian:
[29:46] Yeah. Did you have challenges for them to do or something that they ultimately were completing in those three days?
Brittany:
[29:51] Yeah. So we worked through exercises that would actually help them to build out their future campaign plan for their next campaign. So some of the fundamental details of what they would need to feel confident, be like, okay, well, this is gonna be my structure. This is gonna be my timeline. This is gonna be the offer. And these are some of the different messaging angles I will need to think about in terms of when I'm putting together the full campaign, which they would need a little bit more detail than what I could provide on a close friend's story. But the idea is that, yeah, they walk away each day feeling like, Oh, I've reflected on something that maybe hasn't worked for me. Here are some alternatives, making a decision about, okay, what would make the most sense for me? And starting to really get the foundations of their plan together. So that each day they're building confidence, They have some more tangible takeaways. Like, I've got the planning elements done. I now don't have to go into this
Brittany:
[30:44] next step and think about where am I going to start. I've got the structure there. And then they would just need that next step, which would be joining the offer for them to actually be able to take full action.
Gillian:
[30:55] Yeah. So it sounds like the content was mostly educational, but you were challenging them to make plans.
Brittany:
[31:00] Yeah. To getting them thinking differently, especially with the topics of which I was teaching, was helping them to understand what are different options, what's happening in the market right now, how does that messaging need to shift in order to suit that market, how does their mechanism and their launch format need to also shift to work in this market as well, and just helping them to really maybe undo some of the beliefs as well around launching because there's that rhetoric of launching doesn't work anymore, so it doesn't work in a 2025 market, but it certainly can. The psychology still applies. It's just about how you attack it and where you run it sometimes.
Gillian:
[31:37] Yeah, for sure. How much time, how long are each of these... They're not lives, I guess. They're stories. So you are recording them and then they're watching them after, right? They're not watching you while you're live or do you let them watch you live?
Brittany:
[31:51] So it's all pre-recorded, but it's posted in real time, I guess you would say. There's a few different ways you could go about it. I ended up filming, I think in this particular one I've done, I've now done two, so I'm getting the mix and match a little bit. What I would recommend to people doing it is pre-filming them the day before, because when you're filming them, sometimes you've only got a few seconds to do like one slide and you might have a little redo of a few different things. So just giving yourself a little bit of time and not filming, editing, adding text and posting because there's been going to be a big delay between each of the different slides.
Gillian:
[32:28] Yeah.
Brittany:
[32:28] And if someone is sitting there, they're sitting down to watch it, they're going to have to wait maybe five minutes for the next thing to pop up and we might lose them. So whether you're filming them the same day, you're posting them or you're filming them a few days earlier. Sitting down to film everything, prepare everything in one go. So when you do choose to post them and you could say, the story's alive from 9am daily. So if your audience is that close and following, they can stay up to date with that. They can know that. They all get posted within... Typically, it takes around maybe a minute for them all to end up going live. And then that means that they all expire at the same time as well. So that they're all somewhat disappearing. And then you can be consistent with the next day as well. And there's not sort of like the dribs and drabs added on to the end where people might miss those things. So that was the framework that I kind of followed, making sure I'd filmed it, edited it, added any text. And I was... Once I'd filmed it, I was pretty much doing that on my couch. I'd just sit there and add some text, do a few little diagrams. I was using the notes app from my phone and just screenshotting things and adding it in there from my original notes that I had done. And once it was done, it was just a matter of posting it and it was live.
Gillian:
[33:35] Yeah, cool. So is there any particular reason? Because you can go live on Instagram stories, right? Is there a reason that you... I mean, I guess there's an obvious reason. So if you mess up, right? Is there any other reason that you chose to not go live, but instead do it in like the short Instagram story segments?
Brittany:
[33:54] For the consumability of it, and just the way that I feel like I wouldn't be able to leverage... I'm a very visual person. I love diagrams and flowcharts. And tables and things like that. And it also feel like me just sitting in front of the camera with no visual aids. I could have had a whiteboard, but it would have been flipped the wrong way around. I could have then maybe flipped my camera around, but I'd have to have someone there saying I'm in the frame. So it certainly could work, but it also means that you're speaking in real time. And of course, if people are there live, that's great. But for the people catching up, it just has that kind of slow, I've got to sit there and maybe listen to you for 20 minutes versus when I was using the close friend stories, I was mixing up my medium. So there were definitely one me talking straight to camera. Maybe that was like a 15, 20 second clip. But the next one would be an action list. So then they could hold down, read, screenshot, save, refer back to. The next slide would be me talking, but maybe I had the green screen behind me and I was referring to something behind you. So it kept it visually interesting, stimulating and engaging. It made it really easy for them to digest and consume. and it wasn't again sort of replicating too closely to that traditional webinar but it was playing on that but still making sure that the pace was there because I feel that pace is very important people's attention spans are very very short so making sure it was engaging and interesting was why I definitely lent towards that way yeah.
Gillian:
[35:20] Yeah that makes sense I don't know about you but when I'm on Instagram stories specifically is where I see it and I'm scrolling through that. Well, maybe I'm actually thinking of sometimes I'll be scrolling through the reels on Instagram and one will pop up that is somebody live and I always skip it. Because I'm jumping into the middle of whatever they're doing. And when I'm in kind of that mindset of scrolling through reels or scrolling through stories, I'm looking for, you know, those little snackable things. Do you know what I mean? Just a little tidbit. I'm not... I also consume a very long content. Yes. I can... I listen to very long podcasts and very long YouTube videos. But I'm normally doing a different activity, like physically with my body when I'm listening to that versus when I'm like, I need a distraction for a few minutes. So I sit down on the couch and I'll like scroll through a few things, right? I'm not in the mindset to listen to anything long. So I just skip those lives. So I think that is really smart what you've done here, just playing on the format that you're using and really making sure that your content is fitting into that ecosystem and you're not trying to kind of like shoehorn a webinar into Instagram stories.
Brittany:
[36:30] Yes, because that's obviously not what people signed up for, or at least not the way I marketed it. So it was about taking what works, like definitely taking the elements that felt that when people got onto the live webinar, they're like, yes, I love this. This is so helpful. But making sure that the format made sense. And it's so true. People don't typically go to Instagram to set up their phone, sit on the couch and sit there. And especially with lives, you can't have real-time captions. So people that are wanting to listen when they're in a public place, and as you said, you're diving into your video halfway through. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know where we are. It's just a little bit hard to follow along versus with the stories. They could listen with sound. They could listen without sound. They could tap through holds. They could skim. at least they were experiencing it and something visually along the way would stop them at some point and I was never really extending it beyond about 20 individual slides okay so I don't think it would take much longer than I would not even say longer than 10 minutes to get through each day I would put it around that five minute mark and mixing up having some static content in there with things written some visual diagrams some photos that really helped the engagement as well because I think it was all video all talking it would have dropped all the way through and people wouldn't have watched every single video.
Gillian:
[37:50] For sure. Yeah, that makes sense. So the series that you do, it's only three days long. And then you said each one is only about 20 slides, less than five minutes of content. I would think that that is, you know, with each one only being those 15, 20 seconds. So that's less than 15 minutes of content total. That's a lot shorter than normally if you're going live on Zoom or something for three days in a row or doing a traditional webinar. So tell me about like how that works. How do you manage to cut it down enough? And I'm also curious about like the calls to action. You said you do like a soft call to action the first couple days, then maybe a longer call to action or a more extensive pitch of some sort on the third day. And I'm curious, like with that little content, I'm curious, like, are you selling them straight from that story to like purchase the product right then? You're sending them straight to the sales page? Or is there any sort of in-between step?
Gillian:
[38:44] Like, are you actually just trying to get them to DM you? or what is that called action? Yeah. Sorry, that was kind of a lot of questions, but I hope you understand like why they go together. Totally. That makes sense. Like how do we cut down the content? What's that called action?
Brittany:
[38:55] And make sure I get everything in my response as well. Definitely when it comes to the shortness and the succinctness of the trainings, that was not the only touch point they were having with me during this period. So as I was talking about front of house, back of house, back of house really was like the meat of the training, the true educational stuff where they were going to find the most value. But there was still some other Instagram story content, more so still just promoting the training for anyone that wasn't there yet. But my feed content was very much corresponding to a lot of that as well. So the more that people are on your close friends list, the more that they're engaging with their content, they're going to be seeing more of your content. So I was still definitely leveraging feed content, carousels, reels... Leading up to backing up a lot of the things that were in the training as well, sort of expanding on it a little bit further, still at a very high level, but really making sure they were immersed. Basically, wherever I was on Instagram, they were like, Oh, okay, she's talking about it again. So it was a very immersive experience. When it came to the soft pitches at the end, usually I was tying some learning points, some resource, some framework that I had touched on back to something that I included in my program, talking about why it's an important step, how this is maybe the tip of the iceberg and there's all these other elements underneath that can help to facilitate or expedite this process.
Brittany:
[40:15] That was sort of how I was having the soft pitch elements as well using some case studies of real world applications. So talking about actual clients from the program I was pitching. So the call to actions there were very much like, if you're interested in this, hit reply. And a lot of the time, those were a little bit few and far between, but more so using those poll stickers, seeing their interactions there, me starting some conversations, them starting some conversations through those first few days. And then the third day was the more pitch worthy type of call to action that you would expect at the end of a webinar where you're saying you know this all sounds so great and here's the perfect next thing i've packaged up for you so that was the more elongated pitch so that probably extended out the slides a little bit further but it was still not taking up any of the main training that was just like an additional element at the end and opening up as well for you know questions And they're able to ask questions on the feedback. They were submitting what they were working on as well into that little question box area. And then what was the last final question I had to say? Oh, actual call to action was a link to the application. So again, I didn't want them to have to DM me. I didn't want them to have to reach out to me. They were able to and many did. I'm interested in this. I'm not quite sure. I have this question XYZ. If you like that. But the basic call to action was just me introducing the link to the application, talking through that, And that's how I was funneling in leads then that way.
Gillian:
[41:40] So then they would fill out an application form and you would follow up with them?
Brittany:
[41:44] Yeah, it just then followed the more traditional pathway of how I was then closing those leads. Some would be closed after the email with the information sent to them. Some, I think I ended up on one sales call. I always offer them, but that's not the typical route for most of my leads in that case. And then some require just a little bit more back and forth conversation that would either happen in my DMs because a lot of people like to voice note and it was all going down there. But some would just be a few back and forth emails. And yeah, that was it. Books were closed. I did end up I should have prefaced at the beginning. This was sort of like the early bird period was if you were wanting to get access to the early bird pricing was all through the close friends element. Then it would go to the public if the spots weren't filled. Ultimately, I didn't need to end up doing that. But that's the way you can work it as well if you want it to be. This is like first access, limited spots, special pricing, whatever it is. And then you can actually also still market, cut open palooza on your normal content as well if you wanted to.
Gillian:
[42:46] Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So just a couple things for context for the listeners. Would you mind sharing the price point of the product that you were selling with the strategy?
Brittany:
[42:58] So this was for the beta round of my program that was still like very much in, not in testing. We had a previous cohort as well, which is the second official cohort. This program now has two different tiers. There's a base level and a VIP level. But for this round, I wanted a small group of all VIPs. So it was the high ticket level. At that time, 3,500. And that was the full package 12-week program. They got group access to everything, full curriculum access, plus a one-on-one private channel with me. So they were able to get all of the group feelings of the program, which is what it is now primarily. But they got that VIP element. And I wanted them to all be VIPs in this space as I was continuing to iterate my curriculum and get feedback and really be somewhat in the trenches with them as they were actually going to be building these campaigns themselves and making sure all of the resources were as tangible as they could because I was going to be sharing this entire case study and element all of the tools that I did to build this actual close friends training series with them now that I had completed it.
Gillian:
[44:06] Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. And also, I was curious about the numbers on the close friends list. How many people did you put on your close friends list? And how many applications were you able to turn that into?
Brittany:
[44:18] I had 250 on the close friends list, I think, by the time the training had started. And it definitely trickled in as the training was happening. I knew that that would happen. And I knew that that would maybe cause some people missed day one. But it didn't ultimately end up bothering those people too much. I did plan. I had a contingency plan if people had asked about replays. I said, you know, if they're genuinely asking and they were like, I love day two, but I missed day one, I had saved them and I was able to send them a Google Drive link. They could just go through and view them like photos if they wanted to. So then towards the end, I ended up having, I think about like 17 applications through and I only had five spots. So I wanted to sell just five spots again, somewhat of a... Basically, these were one-on-one clients ultimately. Still facilitating in a group format in terms of group calls and group curriculum and group community spaces. But because of the nature of having them basically as a one-on-one client at the same time, it was very limited and ended up filling those spots without needing to take it to the public, you could say.
Gillian:
[45:25] Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. And that's really such a good conversion right from 250 leads, essentially, to five sales compared to if you had just been blasting this out, you know, promoting your program on Instagram stories or on your Instagram feed or even via email, you would have needed a much bigger list to make five sales.
Brittany:
[45:47] Yes. And you just don't know, you don't know who's seeing it, if they're really, you know, paying attention to it, if they're just tapping through it. So it was a really interesting experiment. And of course, every launch, the results compound. And you bring in leads who maybe now is not the time, but that experience for them really brings them closer to the next one. So... There were applications that were certainly close to being the right fit. There were applications that they weren't quite at that stage yet. So it was a very mixed bag. But it really was a great experiment again for me to get to know, okay, where is my audience at? Is this something that is relevant to them? Are they not quite at this stage yet? Do I need to backtrack even further with what I'm educating them about? And I feel that that really intimate experience gave me so much insight and hopefully it gave them a great experience as well so beyond just those sales of course it was it was an amazing it was so many different elements of this experiment was me really experimenting this format i had been sort of facilitating and teaching in a way just in a very unstructured way and putting some structure behind it and taught me a lot
Brittany:
[46:51] about how we can really use it in the future and in different ways as well yeah.
Gillian:
[46:55] For sure and So we're a little bit over on time. So I guess this will be kind of the last like topic or question here. I'm curious about what went in to the planning and prep for this series, how time intensive that was and what you planned to be able to pull this off. And maybe as you're answering this, I know we were going to maybe get into the map message and monetize framework, which I understand is like part of the planning process. So maybe you could touch on that as well.
Brittany:
[47:25] So as far as planning, in terms of marketing it, it was somewhat similar to marketing any type of live conversion event that you'd be doing. I gave myself a two-week window of announcing that the training would be happening with the dates. Using that time as well to register as many people onto my close friends list, I wanted to give myself a decent window.
Brittany:
[47:46] During that time, I was actually starting to post on my close friends as well, getting them familiar with seeing that green circle pop up, getting them used to that content in that way. I felt that was really important, like a bit of a training ground. And I would use that to test some of the topics out and what they really wanted to learn, what they were most curious about, what their questions were. So that was a great pre-training element. I kept this all basically an organic launch. So there was no additional ad setup. There was no email automations that I needed. I did send out some email invites to my full list. And then it was just a matter of manually adding them. So as far as tech setup, very, very minimal.
Brittany:
[48:25] And then when it came to planning, I, which I've now crafted and reverse engineered into a very elaborate chat GPT prompt, but it really was a matter of getting my training notes together and what I wanted to talk about. So I'm someone who likes to dot point it out in a Google Doc. That's what I did for each day. Then at that point, I started to use ChatGPT and I said, Okay, here are my training elements. This is what I want to teach. This is how I want each day to be shaped with an introduction, recap on what was on yesterday, a bit of housekeeping just in case anyone was just tuning in. The challenge element needed to be introduced at the beginning so they knew it came to participate all the way through to the end to be eligible to win. So I prepped it with that and I said, Okay, break these down into Instagram story slides and try to make it at a max of 25 or 20 slides, I think.
Brittany:
[49:17] And that way, it would then generate for me all of my notes into like, okay, put this on this story, this on this story. It was getting a little bit crazy and it started being like, make this like a green screen. It was telling me things I wanted to direct for myself. But that way, I knew I could condense it into this kind of framework and I could edit it from there. But that just ended up being what I was working off. It was just, it was all in a Google Doc. And it just then probably was, you know, two to three hours each day in terms of filming, editing, posting, and then a little bit of extra for some, you know, chatting conversations. And yeah, that was it.
Gillian:
[49:53] Yeah, for sure. Well, do you want to touch on the message monetize framework at all?
Brittany:
[49:59] Yes, sorry. Forgot the last part of the question. Yes. So that is basically my structure for the beginning planning stages of any campaign. So thinking about, okay, when I want to map out a campaign, what are some external elements that I need to be thinking of? So when you're thinking about your dates, what's going on in your audience's world? Here in Australia, we have school holidays that happen kind of like clockwork. It feels like everyone's always on school holidays. But that might affect how your audience is going to be engaging on social media, showing up, all those sorts of things if they're participating. So it might mean that that one-day Zoom live webinar makes sense for them. It's one thing they can show up to versus something that's a little bit more lo-fi in multiple days. So really deciding on your timeline, what's going on, world events, if this is around Black Friday, if it's not at all relevant to any other seasonal elements at all.
Brittany:
[50:46] And really choosing that mechanism that fits, again, for your audience, your offer, what you're selling, if this is a brand new beta offer, or if this is something that exists in the world and you just want to shake up the way that you sell it. The message element plays off that even further. You know, what's currently going on in your audience's world and life? What is relevant to them right now? What are they thinking about? What are they working towards? What are they trying to avoid? What are current topical elements that you need to include, even though your offer might not be... Let's say, for example, we talk about AI. Your offer might not be about AI at all, but that can still be part of the conversation because it's on their mind. And how can we think about what's really relevant and topical for your audience? And how can we create that new beliefs loop? So part of one of the challenges that was on that day was what is their old or their current belief loop? And what do we need to rewrite and basically correct in order for them to feel ready to want to invest and understand your offer.
Brittany:
[51:43] And then monetize is that final sort of sales element of it. So what does your sales content look like? What is that sort of open cart? Are you leveraging bonuses? Are you leveraging pricing incentives? And again, knowing what's going to get your leads off the fence might be different to what would get my leads off the fence in a campaign. So that's sort of the fundamental elements of having your dates and timelines, your messaging umbrella, essentially. and then as well, how you're actually making sales, converting leads and running your launch. And that's the fundamental process of getting your campaign started before you get into the nitty-gritty.
Gillian:
[52:22] Yeah, for sure. Well, Brittany, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for just breaking all this down, being such an open book. I really appreciate that. Before we wrap this up, can you tell the listeners how they can learn more about your Instagram launch strategy and where they can find you online?
Brittany:
[52:39] Yeah. Well, come find me on Instagram. It's definitely the number one place I'm hanging out. Maybe I'll have some close friends stories up that day. Who knows? But you can also check out my private podcast, which is Can We Be Honest About Launching? Which is talking more specifically about the 2025 landscape and what I've really observed continuing to launch through this year, even with a new program. Also, what I've been helping my clients with to navigate changes in the way that the online space is working and what I really feel is a great way to make your campaigns fun and interesting for your audience, but also really aligned with your own energy, your own style of doing things. If you're a natural, I call them like edutainers. If you love being on Zoom and that's your thing, how to lean into that, how to make it more fun and make sure it works for a 2025 market, but also how to do something a little bit more lo-fi, a little bit easier, whether that is that challenge experience or it's something even more chill using that close friend strategy. So that's all in the private podcast. And you can also find that on my Instagram.
Gillian:
[53:40] And how can they find the private podcast? Through your Instagram or?
Brittany:
[53:43] Yes, in the link in my buyer. It's also on my website as well.
Gillian:
[53:47] Okay, perfect. Well, we will make sure that we get those resources linked in the show notes for this episode. And thank you again so much, Brittany.
Brittany:
[53:54] Amazing. Thanks for having me.
Gillian:
[53:56] [outro bumper]
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I hope that that made a lot of sense to you and that you can see how powerful YouTube can be for growing your audience online. It really is the most predictable strategy that I found for doing so. And I've seen it work for hundreds and hundreds of clients at this point. It creates much more predictable, consistent and just faster results than we see with blogging or with podcasting and definitely much better results than with social media. If you want to learn how to get this strategy to start working for you, then go to creatorfasttrack.com and sign up for our free workshop that will teach you how to start a successful YouTube channel and grow it to 1000 subscribers in just three months. And by the way, 1000 subscribers is exactly the number you need to be able to get your channel monetized on YouTube. So you can start earning ad revenue from your new channel. And yes, you can reach that milestone in just three months. Just three months after you start making videos, you can be making money from your videos in addition to attracting clients with those videos. I would love to teach you how to make this happen. So go to creatorfasttrack.com and get signed up for that workshop.
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