34. The Ultimate Instagram Launch Plan: What to Post Before, During & After

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Social Content Made Easy, the podcast that helps you simplify content creation, grow your audience, and make sales on Instagram without spending hours glued to your phone. I'm your host, Nicole Iologio. And each week, I'll bring you bite-sized actionable strategies to help you confidently create scroll-stopping content that actually grows your business. So if you're sick of wasting hours creating content that no one sees and just want a simple proven way to show up while having some fun, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hey, hey, we're on episode 34. And this one was a very highly requested episode. Consider this your ultimate Instagram launch plan. This is what you're going to post before, during and after a sale or when launching a new product. We're just going to hop right into it. So if you're launching something on Instagram soon, whether it's a new offer, a digital product, a flash sale, a new freebie even, this is going to be your ultimate step by step plan to building a simple realistic launch on Instagram without burning out. You do not need to go live 87 times. This is going to walk you through a very simple launch plan that's actually going to yield you results. You're going to walk away knowing how to warm your audience up, what to post and when to post it during launch, a story strategy that I like to use, and then an ideal length of launch and what to expect from your launches. Phase one is what I call the warm up phase. This is going to take place at least one or two weeks out. If you can do more, I would recommend it. If you could do a whole month of warm up, that usually leads to better sales. Your goal during this phase is to build awareness, interest, and to really prime your audience for the offer. That means talking about what the offer is, even maybe helping them build out your offer in your stories. You're going to focus on connecting with your audience as well as problem aware content. So you're going to talk about the problem that your audience is facing and that your offer solves, but you're not going to talk about the offer quite yet. This is where you're really going to lean into storytelling. I want to use your own journey and talk about how you were able to overcome these problems that your audience is having. And then you could even talk about clients that you helped. If you haven't done it yourself, then talk about people that you have helped, your clients, your students. If you sell a physical product, it could be how you felt discouraged 'cause you can never find a pair of jeans that fit you the right way. Here's where you can also share some client wins or maybe some posts that are like, what I wish I knew before type of posts. So we're still in phase one. Another type that you do is tee up content. This is where you're going to drop hints, especially in your stories like, hey, something's coming. What would you want in a product? Like ask your audience, what would you want to see in a product? If I were to make you blink, what would you like from it? Or just tell them, hey, I'm making a course on Instagram stories. What are the five main things that you want to learn about Instagram stories? Whatever it might be, you ask your audience. And then as you're building it, you actually include the things that they're asking for inside of it. You can also start to tease the transformation they're going to get once they're finished with your service, with your digital product, or once they've purchased what you have to offer. You're going to share behind the scenes of maybe creating the product, building the product, saying something exciting is coming. I want you to start conversations in your DMs by using polls, quizzes, sliders, any kind of engagement stickers to get people excited for this. And I would love if you could do some talk to camera style stories and reels just to re-engage your audience and warm them up and remind them that you do know what you're talking about. There is a real person behind this account, especially, if you've been using B-roll a lot, and you haven't had your voice on camera. For this section, I would recommend two to three feed posts, like reels a week or carousels, if that's what you prefer, but stories every single day to build that connection and hype. During this time, it's also cool to remind them to join your email list, grab your freebie, grab a wait list if you're doing a wait list for this. This is all perfect priming type of content that you can do during this first one to four weeks. Already, let's get into phase two. Phase two is launch week. I recommend three to seven days of launch, depending on your audience size and your product type. Like, let's say that you have a smaller audience or like a lower ticket offer, I would recommend a full seven days of posting. Let's say you have like a super warm audience or you're selling something that's high ticket, and you have a relatively large audience. I would say you could stick with three to four days. Use your discretion here and honestly think about how long you can keep the hype for, how much you wanna be posting, how big your email list is, how many emails you wanna send if that's what you're doing. But think about all of this when you're thinking about your launch phase as well. Now, during this launch week, you are going to be posting every day or twice a day. Day one, you're gonna announce the offer with a very clear call to action, a very clear transformation that your audience is going to get. Day two through five is going to be like, frequently asked questions, maybe objection handling, behind the scenes, testimonials of people that have taken it or done something similar with you before. And then on the last day, you're going to do a last call post that you can then archive after it. And I like to do it, it says, "Tension, this is the last call for whatever the offer is. You need to get in tonight before the doors close." And that way in the morning, one store has closed, you can then archive that post if you want to or you can leave it up. During this launch week, I want your reels to be short and punchy except for one. One reel I want you to do a talking head reel and really talk about how your offer helps maybe show the behind the scenes, really show your passion behind it. That's going to get those people that are lurking and not quite sure that's going to help them build trusted you and more likely they'll pull the trigger then. But for the most part, your reels are going to be short, punchy before, after, transformation, think of storytelling, testimonials that you get, think about their story. So where they started, where they ended up and how your product helped them get from A to B. Okay, on stories, I recommend on your first day and your last day or just on two different days during your launch, you do the one story strategy that I have talked about in a previous episode. What you're going to do is you're going to say, hey, I have this new offer. This is the transformation that you get. List a little bit more about it. Give like three to four really good strong sentences that would make somebody be like, yes, this is what I need. And then your call to action is going to be comment code word below and I'll send you more information on this or comment code word below to join us or comment code word below to purchase. You're going to do that because once people start engaging with that and if they're actually commenting the code word, Instagram's going to see that as a good trigger and they're going to send your story out to way more people. And since it's only one story, people won't be stopping halfway through. I don't want you to do this all the time 'cause that's, you're going to start lacking connection with your audience, but if you do this twice during launch week, I think that's absolutely perfect. Even if you don't have a DM automation like many chat, what you can do is just manually reply to people. If you have a very large audience and don't have many chat yet, I do recommend that you get that. I can put a link below to, you can try it for a month for free with my link. I'll put that below, but I would recommend using many chat that way you're not constantly on your phone and you're not checking all the time to try to make sure people get what they're looking for as soon as possible. But if you have a smaller audience and you're on Instagram anyway, go ahead and just have them reply the code word and then you can manually send them the link. Now on the rest of your stories, you can do as many story frames as you want. You do 10 to 20 if you want. I want you to think about highlighting benefits, talking about the offer, put a countdown sticker on there. Anything that's fun and exciting and engaging for your audience. Also, bring up your day to day life too. It's good for people to see that there is a person behind the account and you're not just spitting out, hey, buy this, buy this. If you're going on walk with your dog, if you are picking your kids up from school, go ahead and post about that too. On the final day of your stories, if you are not doing the single story slide on the last day, then I recommend a really hard sell show up multiple times, show up in the morning, midday night, remind people that this is their last chance to get blah, blah, blah for whatever price it is right now. I need you to remember that launches are very front and backloaded. They just are. So most sales are going to happen on days one to two. And then most sales will also happen on the last day. Those are usually the highest converting days. Don't panic in the middle where you're like, oh my gosh, I got eight sales on the first day. And now I have one today. Don't panic during that middle. That's completely normal. Just keep showing up, keep talking about your offer. The way I think about it is if someone hasn't purchased yet, then I haven't done a good enough job of explaining what it is yet. So that's why I try to stay consistent with stories. I add value. That's what I would recommend for you as well. If you feel like you're starting to lull, think maybe people need to know a little bit more about this. Show a little bit more behind the scenes. Put up a question box. Ask people asking questions about it. That's something that I love to do during launches is on the second day of a launch, usually I'll say, do you have questions about blah, blah, blah. And then the next day I answer all of those questions. So that can be super powerful as well. What most people miss about this section is that they only post one time and then they expect sales right away. And that's just not going to happen. You need to post multiple times. People need to see your offer and you explaining it in different ways before they're gonna pull the trigger on it. Another problem is they don't warm up their audience enough. before the offer, so they're like, "I have no idea what this is, but good for them. Glad they're launching something." Another problem is they give up if sales don't come in right away. Maybe it is the first day and they only get one sale and then they kind of like, "Well, this is pointless. I'm going to shut down." But what if all of their sales were coming on the last day? What if 30 plus sales were happening on the last day? There's no way to know unless you keep going. Another problem is that they don't post on stories enough. These are actually more important than post-earning launches. People are going, especially your warm audience. Your stories are for your warm audience. This is how people are going to pull the trigger on buying something from you. Yes, our posts will lead to the sale as well, but our stories are really how people are going to buy. Another problem is that you skip repurposing. So if you're talking about it in stories, talk about it on a post. If you're talking about it on a post, talk about it in an email. You do not have to reinvent the wheel for every single place that you're talking about your offer. You can restructure your email to a carousel. You can restructure a carousel to a real all of it can build on one another. As always, I like to leave these episodes with a quick recap and an action challenge. Your recap is that phase one is all about warming up with connection, education, story content. Talk about that problem aware content. Make your audience aware of the problem that your offer is going to solve, but we're not talking about the offer yet. Phase two is a launch phase with daily posts, talking, headrails, high frequency stories, and remember that most sales happen at the beginning and at the end, but it's so important that you stay visible throughout your entire launch. Keep your energy up and do not go stirring the middle. Don't be like, oh, well, it's not working. And then leave. No, get all the way through your launch. If it's a flopped launch, that's okay. It happens. Re-evaluate and figure out what were the posts that did make people buy and what can I do better next time on the post that did not do well. Your challenge for this week is to map out your next launch. When is it going to be? When is your warm up phase going to be? When is your launch phase going to be? DM me on Instagram at insta.amplified. I'm going to send you one post idea for your launch. Completely for free. I just want you to know that I am here for you and I'm so excited for you and I really, really, really want to cheer you on throughout your next launch. Don't forget, if you want weekly post ideas and launch content, pre-written for you, the plug and post hub is exactly what you need. I linked it below. It gives you scripts, captions, content ideas every single Thursday that you can use for the following week. Writing a quick review or even screenshoting you listening to this or mention it on your Instagram stories. I will repost you. I'd be forever grateful. It really, really helps to get the word out about my podcast to more people. As always, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day and I'll see you next week. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I hope you're walking away with at least one actionable takeaway to make creating content easier. If you love today's episode, it would be in the world if you could take 10 seconds, leave a review or screenshot this episode and tag me on Instagram at insta.amplified. I'd love to connect and see your new content. Always cheering for you. See you next time. (upbeat music)