Full Episode Transcript

Don’t Let Your New Wellness Offering Flop: How to Launch It for Success

One of the biggest mistakes I see fitness and wellness businesses make when they add a new modality or service is assuming the hard part was buying it or creating it.

It wasn't.

The hard part is getting customers to understand it, try it, buy it and keep using it.

So in this episode, I'm giving you my 14-step Launch-to-Lift Checklist for turning a new wellness offering into something customers actually use and your business can actually profit from.

You're listening to Wellness Means Business with Casey Conrad.

I'm Casey Conrad, and I've spent more than 35 years helping fitness and wellness businesses grow. If you've got expertise, a product, a program, a service, a wellness modality, or some combination of those, but need to build a better business around it, you're in the right place.

Wellness Means Business gives independent fitness and wellness entrepreneurs practical strategies to attract more clients, increase sales, grow revenue and build stronger, more profitable businesses.

So let's get down to business.

In today's episode, I'm gonna give you one of the most valuable tools my clients pay me big bucks for.

It's called the Launch-to-Lift Checklist, which is part of the Launch-to-Lift framework that we use when launching any new modality or service in a business or practice.

Of course, the goal is that we wanna turn your new wellness offering into something that customers not only use, but that helps you grow and profit in your business.

So let's get into it.

The Launch-to-Lift Checklist

Number one: Define the WHY.

Now, I wanna stop here and say this. If you've listened to some of my other episodes, particularly Episodes 2 and 3, the first few items we're gonna cover here are things we talked quite in depth about in those episodes.

But I'm gonna assume that maybe you're listening to this episode and you haven't gone through those yet.

So, answering the why:

Why are we adding this modality?

What business problem or customer problem is it solving?

And what does success look like for us?

Number two: Define the WHO.

Who exactly is it for?

You might have a diverse set of customer avatars, so who is the ideal customer or member that this particular service or modality is going to speak to?

What's the problem or the goal they're looking for that makes that particular product or service very attractive to them?

Number three: Define the OUTCOME, not the thing.

Remember, don't fall in love with the modality.

What's the outcome?

People are looking for solutions to problems, so you've gotta take the features and benefits of the technology and put them into customer-facing benefits.

What's the promise to them?

What problem is it gonna solve?

Then you wanna make sure you're able to convey that in a way your customers can understand.

A lot of times, we get into, "Oh, it's 660 nanometers."

That doesn't mean anything to the customer.

What's the language we can use that's simple for them to understand and remember?

This is particularly true if you're introducing something they're not familiar with.

If you've got more of a niche biophotonic light therapy or scalar therapy—I know those are way out on the spectrum for most of you listening to this—you can't assume that your client knows exactly what that is.

Stay away from what I call the techno-speak language.

You wanna talk in easy-to-understand terms.

Number four: Build the BUSINESS MODEL.

What does this mean?

You've gone through some of this before in evaluating the financial feasibility, but what are we gonna charge?

Are we gonna do sessions?

Are we gonna do packages?

Is this gonna be part of a membership or an option to add on to a membership?

Can we bundle this as an add-on to other things we offer?

Are we going to have some sort of introductory offer?

The bottom line is you've gotta evaluate all these things before you launch because they need to make sense in the larger scheme of your business model.

If you're going to make some ridiculously attractive introductory offer and then you're bundling it with, say, a package of something else, does that translate?

Is the customer gonna say, "Well, that's really not worth the $129 because you're selling it over there for $49. Don't BS me."

Number five: Build the CUSTOMER JOURNEY.

How are they gonna discover it?

What are you gonna do in terms of exposure?

Are you online? Do you have a physical location? Do you go to people's houses?

What does that look like?

And how are they going to try it?

You've gotta think through that.

What happens during their first experience?

Do they need complete silence? Do they have to dress a particular way? Whatever the case may be.

What does the staff need to tell them ahead of time?

Are there any post-therapy instructions if it's a modality?

And then, what's the next step?

This is particularly important because you can't assume that your staff—especially if it's front desk or reception staff—are going to be comfortable asking for the money.

You've gotta make sure you've got that next step documented.

Is there support material that needs to go with it?

Is it going to trigger an automation with an email?

How does the customer buy it when they're done with it?

At the end of the day, you wanna make that a super-simple transition.

Number six: Get the TEAM ready.

While we're talking about staff, let's talk about getting the entire team ready.

The first thing you wanna make sure is that if it's something your team members can experience and want to experience, they do.

Look, if you're not a solopreneur and you have staff, I'm telling you: it's gonna be your staff who make or break the success of your launch.

They're the ones who are front-facing to the customer.

They're either gonna say, "I don't know what it is"—that's the 5:00 AM front desk person who hasn't been trained—or they're going to understand it.

So you wanna make sure you're giving them the experience so they can say, "Look, I might not be able to explain it all, but here's what I experienced."

Hopefully, those are good experiences!

Then you have to train them on who your ideal client is and why they're the ideal client.

Make sure you've got two or three—two or three, not a whole list—simple talking points that are easy for them not only to remember, but to convey.

Again, avoid the techno-speak.

You should also have them prepared for any basic questions.

"Can I use this if I have a pacemaker?"

"What if I have this or that?"

What are the most basic questions?

Of course, you're gonna find more of these out during your pre-launch, but these are all important things.

And you wanna make sure all of your operational procedures are in writing long before your first customer arrives at your facility.

Now, I'm just gonna take a pause here and say this.

If you like this type of content—this no-holds-back content I am giving you—I am literally going through the checklist that I give my clients who pay me.

If you want that, I want you to know that this podcast represents only half of the content I give each week.

Be sure you're receiving my weekly Wellness Means Business Brief, where I give you more high-quality content that is completely different from what I cover in the podcast that week.

Literally, you're getting half of my content here.

You can get that by going to CaseyConrad.com/wellnessmeansbusiness.

Number seven: Create the LAUNCH OFFER.

Like anything else, when you're creating your offer, you have to give them a compelling reason to buy it now.

Is it a trial or some sort of introductory package?

Are you just demoing?

Sometimes we demo for free.

Is there a founding member offer?

I've got an episode slated where we talk about how you can pre-pay for your new modality before you even have to pay for it. It's awesome.

Are you going to have an event?

Is there gonna be some sort of challenge?

You wanna get very clear on what your introductory offer is.

And I know I mentioned this before when I talked about setting the price: what you wanna make sure you're not doing is diminishing the value proposition of your product.

What do I mean by that?

You don't wanna discount something so much that when you try to convert the customer from a trial to an actual monthly or package payment, they go:

"What? You sold it to me for that, and now it's this?"

Be really clear.

For example, let's say you've got something that's 10 sessions for $149.

What you don't wanna do is give a package that's $49 for 10 sessions as your introductory offer.

No. That's blowing it.

What you'd be better off doing is saying, "Okay, that's 10 sessions for $149. If I went to 33% of that, which is around $49, maybe I give four sessions for $49."

That way, I'm not buggering up that conversion possibility.

Number eight: SOFT LAUNCH first.

You've got all of that outlined, but you're still not gonna launch to the general public yet.

You're gonna do a soft launch first.

I suggest you do a soft launch to your staff.

For a lot of reasons.

Not only does it become a training practice, but it's going to allow you to build some momentum.

It doesn't matter how many staff members you have. There's going to be somebody in there who has an extraordinary outcome from this new modality or service you're offering.

That becomes incredible leverage for testimonials later, when you're getting ready to launch to the general public.

Once I launch with my staff, then I go to what I call my VIPs—your loyal members. That 10% who would know exactly where the light switches are in your building. They've been with you for a long time.

And it might not even be to them alone. It could be their family members first.

For example, with our diabetes program, we've got loyal members who maybe aren't diabetic, but they've got a family member who is.

So we give them basically a golden ticket to offer it to a family member at that same incredible member price.

That's fantastic leverage because they're still gonna be talking to people about it because their family member's gonna tell them about it, blah, blah, blah.

Again, I'm gonna dive deep into these subjects throughout these episodes. I'm trying to give you the big picture here.

From there, you wanna open it up to a small test group of paying members.

Even if it's still a discounted rate, you want to work out all the operational problems that you may not have uncovered with your staff and those super-loyal members.

They're gonna be more forgiving of certain things.

And we always make it required that if you're gonna participate in this early launch, a testimonial is going to be required at the end if they have a good experience.

Then you finally say, "Okay, we're ready to launch it to the public."

Now, you've got to do some additional things before you do that.

Number nine: Create the EDUCATION campaign.

You say, "Educational campaign? What the heck are you talking about?"

If any of you follow my sales training, you know my equation:

S = E + M. Selling is education plus motivation.

Education is a huge part of the sales process, and when you look at behavioral change, it's a huge part of that.

So you don't just announce:

"Hey, we got this thing!"

You have to talk about what the problem is.

Why does it matter?

Who is this for?

What are they going to get and expect from this amazing product or program?

How does it fit with what your customers already want?

Maybe it's augmenting what they're already doing in your business.

And this is where you're gonna start to really leverage those testimonials.

They are the gold that's going to provide a lot of magnetism to your program.

Number ten: Create the PROMOTIONAL campaign.

What does that look like?

What are your email sequences?

Hopefully, you're using an automated system where you can set that up.

What are your socials gonna look like?

Do you need to add something to your website or maybe have a dedicated landing page?

What about signage inside the facility if you have a physical location?

Do you set up demo nights or maybe a launch event?

How are you going to leverage those existing customers who might have participated in something?

And are there any external joint marketing partnerships that could be appropriate?

For example, let's say you're going to bring in a compression product.

Could you work with a local runners club or something like that?

If it's going to be, say, a sleep program, can you work with a local mattress company or maybe some naturopaths in the area because this is a modality they don't offer?

You really wanna start thinking about these things from a promotional standpoint.

Number eleven: LAUNCH.

Now you've got all that lined up, and you launch.

Now it's concentrated.

You're going to build the momentum.

Speed sells.

You don't wanna trickle this out.

You've done all the back work. Now it is boom.

You're gonna get it out there. You're gonna have a call to action. You're gonna have a deadline or some sort of "first 20 people."

There's gotta be urgency, urgency, urgency.

And make sure you know what they're going to do.

Personally, if you have a physical facility—even if you don't, but particularly if you've got signage in your building—I love using QR codes that take people to a landing page to download a coupon.

We'll talk more about this strategy in a future episode, but this is phenomenal because it ends up capturing a lot more people than just those who are ready to pull the trigger and pay for it.

You're getting people at different stages in the buying process.

Most importantly, your call to action really should be that if they're not gonna buy, you're gonna build your list.

Now you have the ability to follow up with those people.

If you don't have that as part of your call-to-action strategy—if they're not gonna buy, they're gonna fill something out to get the coupon or get the free demo—you're losing that opportunity.

Even if it's a free demo, we do that.

That way they're in our system, and I don't have to worry about entering them after the fact.

Number twelve: FOLLOW UP.

Now comes the hard work.

Following up on all the people who didn't take that initial bite at the apple.

What are you gonna do?

They opted in for the coupon, but they didn't redeem it.

They came in for a demo, but they didn't buy.

They bought the trial, but they didn't convert to regular usage.

You've got to make sure you're clearly trying to move them along that continuum to become regular users of the modality.

Not everybody's gonna be.

But remember:

Selling is education plus motivation.

If they don't have a particular reason that's motivating them to wanna use that modality, maybe it's because they don't have that particular issue.

But maybe it's because they don't know enough yet.

And certainly you're not gonna be able to expect your staff to convey every possible reason.

Number thirteen: MEASURE.

Measure, measure, measure.

Remember, we cannot improve what we do not measure.

If you're marketing outside the facility, how many leads or inquiries did we get?

How many people gave us their name and phone number?

How many people showed up?

With internal members, how many people took the trial?

What was our conversion rate?

If we had trials, what was the utilization?

Did people finish their packages?

What were the results?

What was the bottom-line number that we got from that?

And what was the general customer feedback?

Because what you're gonna do next is rinse and repeat.

Number fourteen: OPTIMIZE and RELAUNCH.

Once you've gone through that whole process, you wanna find the weak link.

How do we refine the messaging?

During our launch, what were the frequently asked questions?

What were the objections that we heard?

How do we weave that back into our offer as we move forward?

Of course, you've got new customers coming in all the time, so this microcosm is going to be utilized again and again.

You're gonna make adjustments.

You're gonna tweak it.

I know I tell this story all the time.

When I first launched my original book in 1992, I used to do direct mail to fitness facilities for the book.

It took me about a year, but I got to a point where I knew that for every single offer that got delivered to that particular location, I had a 50% purchase conversion.

That's extraordinary.

And then I used the same letter forever—until email became a thing.

So anyway, it is rinse and repeat.

And I suggest that you document this all along the way.

You've got your checklist now, but literally document it.

Why?

Because this is gonna become your template.

Anything you launch in the future, you should be following the exact same process.

Of course, the materials will differ, but you should be following the exact same process.

Here's the bottom line.

You made an investment, whether it was a modality or a service, and in some ways you need to look at it like it's a new business.

It's a business within a business.

It really is.

And a new business takes time. It takes energy. It takes effort in order to ultimately succeed.

It doesn't happen overnight.

The same exact thing is true for any launch of a product within your business.

But you know what?

It's so worth it because the impact these modalities can have on the ultimate outcome of both your customers' health and your wealth—adding another little profit margin to your business—is absolutely incredible.

So remember:

The launch is just the beginning. It's not the ongoing marketing plan.

That's a conversation for another day.

Don't forget to go subscribe to the Wellness Means Business Brief at CaseyConrad.com/wellnessmeansbusiness.

Go out, make a difference, make a profit, and remember—Wellness Means Business.

Until next time, this is Casey Conrad.