Tina Tower [00:00:00]:
Hi friends, welcome to her mirror. And today we are talking all about whether or not you should do an evergreen. And so I plan to do one or the other. So first up, what is an evergreen and what is a lifelot? So evergreen program simply means that it is always available, it is often marketed through automated sites and people can buy it at any time. So having that it can give you a little bit more freedom because it is always available and it will give you more sustainable brick revenue coming in. Whereas when you go into to live launch, a live launch means you are opening doors, you usually have some sort of launch event. So you will have a launch week with a challenge or webinars coming into that and then you are closing doors. And so when you're looking at the two of those, there is a lot of positives and negatives to each.

Main Episode

Tina Tower [00:01:11]:
I personally love a combination of both. I don't want to choose this or that. I want to choose just as. However, before we get into it, I will let you know my bias because I have never been able to match the results of a live launch within evergreen. So I have always gotten packed incredible results from live launching over evergreens. I have tried them both. I have both of them in my business at the moment. And often evergreen, it's switched as passive income, but it isn't, you know, if you define passive income, it's income that you get from doing that thing.

Tina Tower [00:01:45]:
Whereas what any online course is, is hugely scalable, hugely leveraged. But it's certainly not passive. You have to create all the content and then you may be thinking we'll build it and they will come. But it needs to have a lot of front end for the back end management. Really easy. Once you get clients, everything's automated in there, but the front end. About 80% of your job will be marketing because you need to be staying at that funnel. You need to be constantly farming and what's working in terms of your emails and your landing pages and all of the different things they're getting to calling.

Tina Tower [00:02:20]:
So pros of live launching, let's go through that first. The energy is electric and this is why I think it does so incredibly well is there's a lot of high energy, there's a lot of excitement because it's more of an event, it's more exciting because it's not like, you know, say you're going to leave it, it's always here. It's a very exciting grab it now or it's gone. It's easier to create urgency and momentum. So it's not. Whereas a lot of Evergreen tunnels are on deadline funnels in like deadline funnel sort of software where you can. It's not fake urgency. You can put funnel channels on their special offers.

Tina Tower [00:02:55]:
However, people know that it's always available and so it's not through urgency like it is when you're doing a live launch. It is also great for building community advice. I love running live launches because they time you can get like open to the party. It's like an open where you can have a live event, you can have the live training going, you get a lot of buzz around it. People are all excited to be there. It's all very, very fun. You get high conversion rates with focused attention. So conversion rates I find are way higher on a live launch than on an Evergreen funnel.

Tina Tower [00:03:29]:
Like if we're talking live launch, you're thinking, hey, webinar, for example, webinar that you're running for live launch, you might get 100 people register for it, 30 people show up live. Out of those 30 people, you get tenants and join. So it's kind of like a 30% conversion rate on each one. Whereas in Evergreen really good conversion rates are somewhere between 3 and 5%. So you need a lot more volume coming into that funnel to get the same amount of results in sales. It's also really good for validating new offers because when you're running live, I totally encourage everybody when they're in their early stages of running their online business to do a live launch. Because you will never learn as much as when you do a live launch about the people that you're serving. So it allows you to have conversations, people will ask you questions, you will realise what your dedications are to join your program.

Tina Tower [00:04:24]:
You'll be able to teach live and be able to see what's landing and what's not and what people are enjoying. So you get that momentum and you get that knowledge building in there as well. The different parts of live launching. I have some people inside her entire builder that they don't like live launching so much that they just stick with Evergreen and that is totally fine. I am very much in the camp of there is not one size fits all. I do think that the key to your success is doing the thing that is going to work best for you and get your goals. For me, I use Evergreen work because if a kid I would never like to launch. But because I get to connect with so many people because I get such great results, I will do it every time because the end sets the vitamins for it.

Tina Tower [00:05:14]:
So with the cons, it is time consuming. It's a huge amount to set up for a very limited window. So for us, we spend about two months setting up launch for that one week of open time that we had. It's very emotionally intense. I have live launched Hometown Builder 17 times now and it doesn't matter how many times I do it, I still act like a basket case the week before it's opening. It's still because it's so fast date, right? So it's not like ever going there every day. Just get another chance to have a better day the day before. With live launching, you only can live launch.

Tina Tower [00:05:49]:
In my first couple of years I did four times a year, every 12 weeks I would live launch again and I did that for two years straight. Now I do it twice a year and I would very much encourage people when you're starting to build to doing it four times a year because the higher the frequency the better and the faster results you're going to get. Now though, because I launch with such velocity, you could say I only do it once a year or I would be very, very tired. The other con is it's a revenue roller focus so you can have peaks and valleys. It's kind of like you're getting say you do a $200,000 launch, you will get that money in for the launch and then you're getting more money until you launch again. And so payment plans are great so that you don't have such wonky revenue emails. Membership is great so that it's monthly recurring revenue rather than just a one time course. But if you are selling one time courses through local options, then you just really need to be all over your.

Tina Tower [00:06:49]:
You really need to be already forecasting so that you know how many people do you need to have fun with and when is your next launch going to be so that you can space out that revenue going forward in there as well. You also can't forget and forget. So every time your live launches you are definitely not reinventing the wheel, but you are going, how can I be better than before? How can we do something we haven't done before? How can we make it fun? I think like after launching, 17 funds the same program and I'm constantly going, how can I make this so that people don't see it and go here to go again, the same old thing. I really want people to be able to see it and go, wow. Like this is something we haven't seen before. But it allows me to really be creative and come up with some Zany ideas, which we have done. You know, we've launched from Hawaii before. We've launched from Launch House in the Gold coast, where I got a bunch of members to all come in and launch together.

Tina Tower [00:07:43]:
We've done a lot of different things to keep it exciting. Okay, so then it can lead to burnout if you do it to offset as well. That is another common is that if you are on that treadmill where you do it every 12 weeks, it actually doesn't leave much downtime. So I've got a client at the moment who she's launching every 12 weeks because she has scary, ambitious growth goals. But it means her course runs for eight weeks. So when she closes that launch, she's then in delivery for eight weeks and then it's only four weeks until the next launch. So she's straight into that free launch over and over and over again. So there's not really any downtime in there.

Tina Tower [00:08:24]:
So that is a bit of a compliment. Okay, let's solve the pros and cons for Evergreen. So Evergreen is for you. If you want consistency, you're more potent and you want to scale. So I say more patience because the FM takes a while to speak and measure all of the different moving parts to get it right. So it's a lot slower results than you can get from live launching. If you get it dialed in, it can work really, really effectively. So the upside of Evergreen revenue is basically on autopilot.

Tina Tower [00:08:59]:
Once you get it dialed in, you know your numbers so well that you know, if I spend this much on the ad, I get this many people into my funnel, this is my conversion rate. This will be out of it. And then you can choose to dial it up, dial it down and move the levers as you choose. There's also a lot more freedom in your calendar. You're not having to do these live words events, you're not having to run live webinars and challenges and do all of those components in your advance. It's really good for SEO. It's really good for content marketing because you're always selling and it's really good to paid ads to I should have put that into a flow of live launching. I'm going to have that in there right now.

Tina Tower [00:09:37]:
Actually is one thing I love about live launching for Evergreen Dozen is that I can go on season and off season. So instead of always being selling, I can just two weeks of the year, only two weeks of the year I have to sell and the rest of it I can just focus on delivering value, loving up my clients and delivering value to the public. And so for me, I love that rather than always being on this sales cycle. So that to me is a really big advantage of life watching over Evergreen as well. It is also great for scarers like Evergreen. Great for Scarers once the upper is validated. So once, like I said, you get it valid, it is much easier to turn up that volume in there as well because it's usually related to acquisition cost. So if you're going Margaret talking to a Facebook ad and she was telling me at the moment of the same a lot in the industry is you've got a 297 program.

Tina Tower [00:10:31]:
The acquisition cost will be around 1997 to be able to buy that. And so then it's what you say. And that to me is just a really high price to pay. And so that's something to do way up in there as well. The downside to Evergreen is that the lower, lower sense of urgency, which means there's going to be lower conversion rates and that usually is across the board. So I know people that make millions from their Evergreen program and they say the same. They love Evergreen and they have it with a model that is sustained with Metahads and they're spending a lot of money on Metahad. But it is very diligent.

Tina Tower [00:11:12]:
So it's a very straightforward mathematical equation in there. The other downside is there is a lot of start time for tech and automation. So if you're thinking about the funnels and the testing of those funnels and the different automations that you're needing to run, it's a lot more complex than what running a live launch is because you've got. My favourite software that we're using is Deadline Funnel and that works really well. But there's a lot of different things that you need to test on that page. There can be a lot of variables. If you're looking at your conversion rate, you know what? I'm sitting at 1% and I want to go up to 5%. What should I be changing? It could be so many different things.

Tina Tower [00:11:55]:
You can look at your ad copy and your creative and messy. You can look at the lead magnet that's coming in the opt in page, the thank you page where you're bouncing them to next. You're looking at the headlines on your opt in pages, you're looking at the colors of your buttons, you're looking at the words on the page. There are so many different variables that are going to influence open, not to mention your webinar. It's a pre recorded webinar that's going to be. It could be your kitchen, it could be the webinar's too long, too short. There's a lot of different things that you can be. Also I found for me, I felt disconnected when I did Evergreen.

Tina Tower [00:12:32]:
I could still love this. I feel like super weird when people tell me I've done your programs. I have no idea who they are. And that is a lot of people's drama, being connected to people and knowing their names and knowing who they are as well. But you can feel a bit disconnected if you're not actively engaging with your audience. It's really a lot more difficult to know what are people finding difficult, what are their struggles, what are their objectives. I feel like I, because I run my launches, always have a finger on the pulse with where the trend is going in the online course industry and what people are feeling and the sentiment that's happening at the moment. Whereas if I wasn't running those live launches, I feel that disconnect and I wouldn't really know because I can't talk to as many people.

Tina Tower [00:13:22]:
So what you want to figure out is which one is right for you? Now, like I said, I like a combination of both. I like having live launches. Then we also have our evergreen funders that are there designed to get over the objection of joining, which is our large link program. And so what I mean by that is with IB for Lunch, which is our evergreen program, people can come in in different ways. So to give you a little example of our evergreen funnels, we have hello World, which is our 27 door option, which people come in either directly into that $27 offer. And when I say they come in, they're coming in through ads. So Google Ads, LinkedIn ads, YouTube ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, all coming in through ads. The other way people come in is through podcast episodes.

Tina Tower [00:14:09]:
When I'm on other people's podcasts, they're coming in through speaking engagements, they're coming in through Google searches. So they're coming in in all different ways. But when people are coming in, they'll either come in through the lead magnet, which then is closed, and then the thank you page of that lead magnet them into hello world which is $27. Then after hello World taking them into idea to launch. So that way people are being able to complete that program and then they'll be ready to go. The other funnel we have going is through deadline funnels where people go straight into a pre recorded webinar which then steps straight into Ideas for launch. And so at the moment, we're testing all of these different pathways to see which ones are most optimised, not for the amount of people that we get in, but the most revenue we get on the back end. And then the other thing we want to optimize for is the most amount of conversions into grandpa.

Tina Tower [00:15:02]:
Because our end game is to get the most amount of people as we can into franchising and membership. And so it's not just to them. How many people can we grow our list from? Because, you know, that's a vanity metric. It only matters if those people are getting that great transformation going through our program and then wanting to join our membership and stay in that community with us as well. So the question to kind of ask yourself to figure out which one's going to be like to you is do you thrive on energy or do you crave consistency? If you like the more consistent mathematical equations, then Evergreen may be the way for you. If you enjoy interacting with people, if you enjoy the excitement and the buzz and the creativity, then live launches is probably going to be more your style. I would ask, is my offer fully validated? If your offer is not fully validated, run it live first. Run it live to test it, get out any heat and then once it's working, then move it on to Evergreen.

Tina Tower [00:16:03]:
The other is, do you have an engaged audience or a traffic strategy? So with live launching a lot easier. Like for me, running a live launch in itself is such an incredible marketing activity. Sometimes when people are first starting out and you do your first live launch, you know, we're sold all these things, all these dreams and going. You can make $100,000 in your first launch, which is possible, I've seen people do that. But more often than not, you're going to sell about five things in your first launch. Five to 10 people will join that first launch. And so with that, you're not going to make a huge amount of money, but what you are going to do is you're going to build that database, you're going to get people that now know what you're talking about so that you can learn, you can refine your offers, you can refine your messaging. And the next time, that second one, that's the one that's going to get it.

Tina Tower [00:16:54]:
And you don't really get there if you are just running through Evergreen Tunnels at the start because you're not getting that feedback. You're not seeing what's landing with people and what's working in there as well. The other question I would ask yourself is do I need past now or do I want to stay for the long term? If you need past balance, go live every time. If you have the patience and the timeline and you want that consistency, Evergreen can work, but it is going to be a slower burn. So that is why every time when people are in their first couple of years, I encourage you to live launch and I encourage you to live launch them in there as well. Now like I said, there is a hybrid sweet spot. I don't think it needs to be before that. I think you can have different than that.

Tina Tower [00:17:38]:
I think that Evergreen all year long plus like one to two lab launches a year is the sweet spot is the perfect scenario if you're wanting to do $670 course business in there as well. I would also like once run automated funnels, like an automated webinar funnel. Beautiful to have in your office suite, but still have a live webinar occasionally. So if you've got if you can run 4, 5, 6 live webinars a year, that's still going to give you that connection with your audience that you're going to need in there as well. So always test your ideas wise so that you can get that immediate feedback and then move your winning things into that Evergreen funnel. It is the best and most sustainable way to be able to do it that you absolutely want to. When you get the right one that solves not only for you but.

I'm Tina Tower, and I'm cheering you on all the way.