Transcript
Sigrun:
You are listening to The Sigrun Show, episode number 392. In this episode, I talk to Marisa Schmid about how she sold 212 spots in her first proper launch.
Welcome to the Sigrun Show. I’m your host, Sigrun, creator of SOMBA, the MBA program for online entrepreneurs. With each episode, I’ll share with you inspiring case studies and interviews to help you achieve your dreams and turn your passion into profits. Thank you for spending time with me today.
Building an online business takes time. I share with you proven strategies to help you get there faster. You’ll also learn how to master your mindset, uplevel your marketing and succeed with masterminds.
Today, I speak with Marisa Schmid, who is in my VIP mastermind program. Marisa is a spiritual teacher and author and teaches her students how to live a spiritual life. Through her coaching programs, she guides women to work with their own intuition and find their spirit guides. In this episode, she shares how she sold 212 spots in her first proper launch by following my launch method. Before we dive in, I want to let you know about an upcoming workshop. Launching is the foundation of my multiple seven-figure business. I wouldn’t be where I am today with my business if I hadn’t learned to launch and develop my own launch method. It is also the reason why my clients are so successful in their online businesses. Basically, they have learned to launch with my launch method, and now I want to teach you in this one-day live workshop. Go to the show notes at sigrun.com/392, where you can sign up for the upcoming launch workshop and there in the show notes, you will also find all the links to Marisa Schmid.
I am so excited to be here with Marisa Schmid and talk about her latest launch where she got 212 signups. That is such a high number that it’s definitely worth diving into what she did and how you can learn from her launch. Marisa, welcome on the show.
Marisa Schmid:
Thank you for having me. It’s a great pleasure.
Sigrun:
How often have you launched?
Marisa Schmid:
Oh, overall I have launched about… I don’t know. 10 times maybe, but different courses, but this course, this specific one, that’s the second launch that I had.
Sigrun:
So this was the second launch of this course, but overall you would say that you have some launch experience.
Marisa Schmid:
Yes, a little, but I never really did start kind of OpenCart launch because I just didn’t know how to do it. So usually I was just opening my doors and then I kept it open for some weeks, but I didn’t really launch it. So it wasn’t really a lot of thinking behind it. This was really the first time that I actually did it with a planning head in mind.
Sigrun:
Okay. So your previous launches were more like, “Hey, I have this program, you can buy it.” And then you just kept the cart open as long as there were spots left or until the program started.
Marisa Schmid:
Until the program started.
Sigrun:
Okay.
Marisa Schmid:
Well, one was sold out, so I had to close the cart. But yes, that’s what I did actually.
Sigrun:
So we wouldn’t really call it a launch in my books. No.
Marisa Schmid:
No, you probably wouldn’t.
Sigrun:
No, no.
Marisa Schmid:
In this case, that was the first launch.
Sigrun:
Ah, so this was your first proper launch and you had this amazing success. Okay. So how many people signed up for your launch activity? Okay, let me first ask you, what did you do? Was it a webinar, three-part video series challenge? What did you ask people to sign up for?
Marisa Schmid:
I asked them to sign up for a webinar. I did a launch webinar.
Sigrun:
Okay. Okay. And you had created the course already, so it was not because I often sell before I create or actually always sell before I create.
Marisa Schmid:
I know, but for this course, it was the second time. So I had it.
Sigrun:
And tell us a little bit about what you were selling. How long it was, the price point, and what was the big promise?
Marisa Schmid:
It was a six-week course. The price point was €200 or €199. And it’s about just [inaudible 00:04:55] and they just got one module every week, plus one, two hours of life coaching from me every week. That’s around what I offered them and was for €200.
Sigrun:
Okay. So the learn about the spirit guides, some people might not know what that is. Can you explain a little bit what do you do and what the course promised?
Marisa Schmid:
I’m a spiritual teacher and I teach people how to connect to their own guides, to their own inner compass and how to actually leave that intuitive life, how to become an intuitive, how to connect to your guides that you have in your life and to just live a happy life, a fulfilled life. Just live your life’s purpose. That’s what I teach. And the spirit guides course is the course where they actually really meet their spirit guides. So they really know who is guiding them through their life. So it’s going quite in depth into who they have as guides and how they are supported.
Sigrun:
So you have people on your email list. How big is your email list or was before this launch?
Marisa Schmid:
It was probably around 4,000, 4,500 maybe. It isn’t a huge email list, but I have quite a big following on YouTube.
Sigrun:
Yeah. So you have more like a following that they’re not necessarily signing up for your email list. It’s always better to have them on the list though. Yeah?
Marisa Schmid:
I know. I know. I keep telling them.
Sigrun:
You keep telling them. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. So you just announced a webinar.
Marisa Schmid:
I actually did, yes. I announced the webinar on my email list and probably I announced it on my podcast and YouTube lives. I did that, yes.
Sigrun:
Did you run any ads?
Marisa Schmid:
Yes, I did run ads. I run Facebook ads and I run YouTube ads.
Sigrun:
YouTube ads. I think you’re the only person that I know has run YouTube ads for webinar. I’m sure people do it, but people haven’t talked about it a lot. Tell us, especially those listening, who haven’t heard about this method yet, how do you run YouTube ads to webinar?
Marisa Schmid:
Well, actually I have 12,000 people on my YouTube community. So 12,000 subscribers and I for my videos use ads. So when you click on a video of mine, there is an ad first. And when I was preparing for that webinar I thought, “Well, if there is an ad in front of my video, I should be able to put an ad in front of somebody else’s video too.” So I did some web search and looked at the YouTube video and at the video about how to make an ad for YouTube. And that was actually fantastic because I figured that if you want to make a YouTube video ad, you can actually put that ad in front of the videos of specific channels. So I could make research of somebody who is doing something similar to me and then put my ads in front of her videos. That was really helpful because then I know I can really target my clientele. I can really target people who anyway, like what I do. And that’s what I did.
I went to my garden. It was, I think, April. I took my mobile phone and I stood there and was talking to them. So I tried to talk not more than a minute, probably 45 seconds. So it’s got to be really short and then you can just direct them to a landing page. Well, I didn’t really calculate the numbers because I didn’t think about making two landing pages, one for Facebook and one for YouTube. I will do that next time. So I can tell you more about that [inaudible 00:09:04].
Sigrun:
Absolutely. Thank you for that note, because that’s important. You need to know how many you got from each channel.
Marisa Schmid:
Exactly. [inaudible 00:09:12] unfortunately, but I could see that I had a lot of signups after I’d run that ad. So that was really helpful and it was actually quite fun.
Sigrun:
Yeah, I can imagine and it’s kind of this creativity. You’re doing something brand new and you’re trying it out, then it actually worked. You think it works?
Marisa Schmid:
I did think it works and it was actually really fun. And I really like to try out new things so that was fun for me too. Since then, I’m thinking that I should do some more YouTube ads, but I’m procrastinating it.
Sigrun:
Yeah. You start to get this perfectionism. You said actually to me, people like it when it obviously is not too professional. So you just being in your garden on your mobile phone, probably was in your favor.
Marisa Schmid:
Yes, definitely. I mean, I’m quite natural anyway. So whenever I’m just having a bad hair day, I’m going live anyway, because I think, “Well, they want to have to input. They don’t want to really see…” I mean, I’m not a model. I’m not there to model and say, “Hey, I’m looking great.” I’m there to actually teach something. So I don’t really bother about that. So I just put on some makeup and went out and took that. And I really liked that video actually. They were really fun and they were so… It was such an easy way to do that.
Sigrun:
Fabulous. Okay. Anyone listening, if you haven’t tried out do YouTube ads, try them out next time. Recommendation from Marisa.
Okay, you had some ads going, you obviously emailed your list and how many signups did you get for your launch webinar?
Marisa Schmid:
I had 564 signups for my launch webinar.
Sigrun:
564. Were you happy with that number? What’s that your goal?
Marisa Schmid:
I was quite happy because I thought usually you have to think about the [inaudible 00:10:58] going to take part of the webinar. And I thought, “Well, that gives me around 150 to 200 people.” And I thought, “Well, that’s not a bad number.” Because it was the first time that I was doing it, I was actually quite happy with it.
Sigrun:
Okay. You just focused on doing this one webinar. Did you have a Facebook group or anything to nurture them leading up to the webinar?
Marisa Schmid:
No. I just gave that. I offered a training and it was a free training. And my community knows that when I offer something, there is a lot of worth in it. So, I didn’t nurture it because I knew that they will know that there is something good inside it. And so offer it to them.
Sigrun:
For those who know you already, they know it, but I guess, brand new people wouldn’t.
Marisa Schmid:
Yeah.
Sigrun:
That’s always the challenge when you are doing a launch. People who know you before, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I’m not going to miss the opportunity of a training with Marisa.” But the others are kind of like still testing the waters and don’t know you it.
Marisa Schmid:
Yes.
Sigrun:
How many showed up actually for the webinar?
Marisa Schmid:
484.
Sigrun:
Excuse me?
Marisa Schmid:
It was 484.
Sigrun:
Is that 80 or 90% show up rate?
Marisa Schmid:
I didn’t actually count it. It’s probably around 80% that show up.
Sigrun:
Wow. How did you do that? Did you send out some reminder emails that promised them some drugs on the training or what?
Marisa Schmid:
I mean, I did send out some reminder emails, but as you know, I’m not one that sends out heaps and heaps of emails because I don’t want to overwhelm them because my community is really sensitive and I just don’t want to overwhelm them. So I did send out some emails, but I actually never expected so many people to show up. So that was really, really, well, overwhelming for me and really cool because it gives you so much energy to do that when you see that there is so many people there and it’s just great fun to do that.
Sigrun:
Were you technically ready to have so many on?
Marisa Schmid:
Well, for my Zoom I had the webinar and I had the webinar of up to 500 because I saw it could be over 100. And when they were coming more and more and more and more and more people, I was like, “Oh my God, this could be actually a problem.” But it never went up to more than 484. So that was okay. But I was sweating a little because of that-
Sigrun:
Yes, I can imagine.
Marisa Schmid:
… [inaudible 00:13:37].
Sigrun:
No, it’s very unusual. Show up rates operates are more between 20 and 30%.
Marisa Schmid:
Yeah. That’s actually what I was calculating with. I was calculated with 20 to 30%. I wasn’t calculating with 80%.
Sigrun:
Well, it shows there is a massive need and either people are not finding it anywhere else, which could explain it, or and it’s a loyal following of people who say, “I’m not going to miss anything.” You don’t do webinars that often. So, that can also be in your favor.
Marisa Schmid:
Yeah, that’s true. I don’t do webinars very often. I do Facebook lives about twice a month or maybe even a bit more, but not webinars. No, I don’t do that very often. So yeah, that could have been on my favor. They just wanted to be part of it and they thought, “Well, that must be great.”
Sigrun:
Wow. You were there with 484 participants. Did you have someone help you on the webinar to manage that or you were just there alone?
Marisa Schmid:
I was there alone. I didn’t even think about someone to manage it. I mean, I was actually planning for 150 people, so I thought, “Well, that should be no problem to do it.” I really wasn’t expecting that, so I didn’t ask anyone… I mean, looking back to it, I should have asked someone for assistance, but I was just not doing it.
Sigrun:
Well, I do it now, but I also can see that in the past I did not ask for any assistance. But I can say if someone is doing a webinar for the first time that they definitely want to have someone in the background to manage it, because I’ve seen people going into some sort of panic mode when suddenly a lot more people show up. So you managed, you were fine.
Marisa Schmid:
I was fine, but I was actually… Looking back to it, it would have been so much more sensitive to ask someone to help you. So yeah, you shouldn’t do that.
Sigrun:
How long was the webinar itself?
Marisa Schmid:
The webinar itself was probably around one and a half hours.
Sigrun:
Yeah, 90 minutes. I like that. I actually plan all my webinars 90 minutes as well..
Marisa Schmid:
I didn’t want to do it much longer because I don’t think that they are… I mean, it just doesn’t make sense to keep people so long in a webinar. They just, anyway, can’t concentrate, then they are thinking about something else. So I didn’t want to do it that long.
Sigrun:
So you do your training and then you lead over to, “Hey, here’s my course.” Did you tell them upfront that you would offer them a course?
Marisa Schmid:
Yeah, of course. I don’t like that. I like to be very, very open and very, very clear. When they signed up for the webinar, there was… Actually one part was we talk about the course. So that was very clear because I just don’t like to have surprises like that and I did that upfront in the webinar too. So when I started the webinar, I told them that if they have a problem when I’m talking about the course after the training, they should leave because that doesn’t make sense. And then I offered the course and that was interesting.
Sigrun:
Interesting. Okay, tell us more.
Marisa Schmid:
The first time I gave that course, I gave it on a website that I built myself. And as I told you, the doors were just opened and they could just sign up for it. So I had like two or three signups every day for whatever, three or four weeks. And this time I was giving that webinar, and then at the end of the webinar, I told them, “Now if you click on that link, you can subscribe, you can buy the course.” And I had 460 people still on the webinar and probably half of them tried to click the link.
Sigrun:
Oh.
Marisa Schmid:
The whole website completely collapsed.
Sigrun:
Yes. Yes. That’s what happens when you have more than 100 people clicking on the link. Wow.
Marisa Schmid:
That was a shame actually, because looking back to it, I probably lost about 50 people because they just couldn’t-
Sigrun:
Couldn’t click.
Marisa Schmid:
… click the link.
Sigrun:
Was it your web hosting you could improve in the future or anything you could thin of?
Marisa Schmid:
I did improve it. I saw that this is not going to work because… I mean, I just knew that if I have 200 people on my course and if all of them click on the same link the same evening, because I’m giving life teachings, it’s just not possible that it’s going to work because that would collapse the website every time. So what I did after I did the webinar, within the next 10 days, I moved the whole course to a webinar… What is it called? To a course platform where you can host courses. And when I checked there, they tell you that if you expect more than 1 million people to click, you should tell them up front. So I thought, “Well, that’s not going to be a problem for [inaudible 00:18:36].
Sigrun:
Not yet, not yet. Maybe one day it will come.
Marisa Schmid:
Yes.
Sigrun:
I want to repeat this in case someone missed it before. While you are doing your sales presentation, you’re making an offer, you still have about 95% of the people on the webinar, like only 5% leave. And you told them up front, “You can leave if you want to when I started the sales presentation.” Wow, that is amazing. It’s like you’ve captured their attention so much. They don’t want to leave. They want to know how they can be a part of it, and about 50% wanted to join.
Marisa Schmid:
Yes. That was absolutely fantastic. Actually what happened during the webinar, and that was really touching for me, there were some participants from the first course, from when I launched the course the first time, and they still, they were in the webinar and they told the other people in the webinar how cool the course was and I didn’t ask them. They were just like, “I did it already and it was so cool. You really have to do it.” And that was really touching for me because I mean, I never planned for that, but I think that was really motivating for everybody else.
Sigrun:
Absolutely.
Marisa Schmid:
So, just about half of them tried to buy our bought in the end. Half of them bought.
Sigrun:
Yeah. But this point that you just said that there were people from the course, the previous version on the webinar and they shared. There is nothing that replaces something like that. And this is one of the reasons that when I do a launch training, I always make it exciting enough for existing clients to join because this honest testimonial live on a webinar, as you said, you can’t buy it. Sometimes you can’t even ask for it. Well, sometimes you actually can, “Hey, it would be nice if you shared your success.” For instance, I have people sharing in our free Facebook group, I will just ask in my community, “Would you mind sharing?” And then they go and share. But on a webinar it’s different. So yeah, this definitely got people over the fence if they had any doubts, but there’s still anything else that you saw yourself doing in the presentation. Was it the training? What do you think it was that kept them so excited about taking the next steps with you?
Marisa Schmid:
When I was giving that webinar, I was so energized by all the people sitting there. I mean, I was expecting 150 people more or less, and there were 450 or 460. And I was so excited that so many people were there. So I was really doing a training. I wasn’t just giving a webinar. They had to do things. They had to stand up and sit down and write down things and I kept asking them write it to the chart so that we can see it. That was a lot of energy going on and I know that I was just like striving because there was so much energy going on. And that was such a reaction that I just felt all the energy and I think that they could really feel that I was really happy about what I’m offering. And I know exactly that the course that I’m offering is actually really good. So it’s a very, very good content and I can stand behind that with 100% of myself. I think that the two things that came together there was really motivating to people to work more with me to get into more depth with me and to figure out what I’m actually doing.
Sigrun:
Yeah. I think I say this a lot to, especially those who are selling for the first time, the first sale is to yourself. Like you got to absolutely believe in what you’re selling and then it doesn’t feel like you’re selling. Did you feel like you were selling?
Marisa Schmid:
Not at all. Actually I was just talking to a friend of mine just some weeks ago because she said, “You’re so good in marketing.” And I said, “Well, no, actually not. I’m just really 100% sure of what I’m selling or what I’m offering to the people and I see what I have for the world as my gift for the world.” That is, if you follow me, you can get a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of free content. You don’t have to buy anything from me and you get anyway weekly free content from me. But I’m so sure about what I’m offering. I’m so sure that this is really great and this is really important that the world gets it. That I don’t think that I’m actually selling. It’s more like I’m sharing.
And this course, where I sold the course, it was like I was sharing a great thing for them to use. I mean, they are always open to not buy, but I was just offering it to them and I thought it was really important for them to get into contact with their spirit guides. So that’s actually why I don’t feel like I’m selling. I feel like I’m sharing.
Sigrun:
Yeah. And that I think is so important. First of all, you absolutely believe in what you’re doing and that this course helps people. You have the proof from previous clients who were there to share it. Plus you talked about your energy.
Marisa Schmid:
Yes.
Sigrun:
I do believe if you don’t show up like 100, 150% in your energy, people are going to feel it. They’re going to feel it if you are like having a bad day and I think it’s all about a decision. Like you could still have a bad day, something could be going on badly in your personal life. But when you show up there, you need to compartmentalize. You need to block it out and focus on who you are serving.
Marisa Schmid:
I mean, for me personally, I have my personal Marisa. I’m the professional Marisa. And if I do something professional, I want to show up professional. So no matter what happens… And I can actually have a webinar with a migraine because while I’m working, I just don’t think that I’m having a migraine. I can go back to bed afterwards, but it’s just like, there is something that shifts inside me and I get into the professional mode and I just want to show a professional because I mean, if someone comes to my webinar, they are showing up too and I want to give that… I mean, it’s an honor that they showing up. So I want to give that back.
Sigrun:
Yeah. Did you offer any type of a fast-action bonus? Because if people were so eagerly trying to buy right away on your webinar, there must’ve been some sort of incentive.
Marisa Schmid:
Yes, I actually did offer a fast-action bonus. That went really bizarre because I mean, they couldn’t buy. But the ones that bought during the webinar… The offer was actually that when you buy during the webinar, you can get one extra live session with me. Instead of five live sessions, they would have six live sessions. And there is less people, so they have more chance to ask the questions. That was the offer that I gave to them. I had to expand it to 24 hours because they just couldn’t click, but that was actually… The plan was buy during the webinar.
Sigrun:
And also the plan was to have less people on that extra call. I guess that didn’t pan out.
Marisa Schmid:
Not at all.
Sigrun:
That is funny. That’s funny. Okay. So you had to extend it 24 hours because of the technical issues of people not being able to buy right away, which you have solved for the next launch.
Marisa Schmid:
I have it solved for every launch.
Sigrun:
Fabulous. I think people only make the changes once they realize, “Oh, there’s an issue here.”
Marisa Schmid:
Yes. I didn’t even think that that could be an issue.
Sigrun:
No.
Marisa Schmid:
It never came to my mind.
Sigrun:
No, no. But now you’re listening to this podcast and you know this can happen, so be prepared-
Marisa Schmid:
You plan in advance.
Sigrun:
Yes. And this was the first time you said this was your first proper launch with a webinar, with the instructions on how to do a webinar and all that stuff and you had OpenCart. How was OpenCart?
Marisa Schmid:
The cart was open around… I think it was eight days or something.
Sigrun:
So eight days, yeah. Did you follow up during those eight days with the people who had not bought yet?
Marisa Schmid:
I did follow up with one email. I didn’t go forward because I just had to first solve my technical issues. And then I didn’t want to overwhelm them because that’s just who I am. And then-