014 Ready, Set, Launch: A 30-Day Guide to Planning and Execution
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The top reasons founders of creator-led businesses fail are that they lack cohesive planning and discipline.
They forget that consistency compounds.
I want to teach you how to create an incredible launch plan that will get you on the road to your 6-figure year in the next 4 weeks.
I’ve used this same plan for every brand, creator, and startup I’ve launched in the last 10 years and all those launches garnered 6 figures or more in their first year.
All it will take is discipline and planning.
Let’s dive in.
Week #1: Define Your Target Audience
Knowing your target audience is crucial for any successful launch. It will help you understand their needs, pain points, and preferences, which will in turn help you create a product or service that addresses those needs and stands out in the market.
I went through a similar exercise when defining my focus for The Creative Brink:
Once you understand your audience, you can begin to define exactly what they need. This is where the magic happens.
Week #2: Research Your Competition and Market
This step is essential to understand the landscape in which you will be launching your product or service. By researching your competition, you can identify gaps in the market, and by researching the market, you can understand the current trends and what customers are looking for.
I always make it a point to learn about every player in the space – especially the top 10. Why? Because I need to understand what you’re doing so I can replicate it and what you’re not doing so I can create a solution for it.
Most people make the mistake of ignoring challengers in their space, don’t let that be you.
Week #3: Choose Platform Channels Where Your People Are
Knowing where your target audience spends their time online will help you reach them effectively. Whether it's social media, email marketing, or paid advertising, make sure to choose the platforms that will give you the best chance of reaching your target audience.
Why would I post on Instagram constantly when my target audience loves Twitter?
Why would I spend a lot of time on channels that don’t matter when I could be investing that time into strategies that will reach the people I want to reach and convert them?
That’s a key reason I focus less on other platforms and have invested heavily into remaining consistent with the 11,000+ creators that make up this list and podcast community.
I don’t need to spend more time convincing you to be here - you’re already here because you want to be. That’s the best place to start.
You don’t have to do this research on your own – there are several platforms that you can plug your social media into to better understand your audience.
My favorite to use for creators is Planoly, an all-in-one content planner and analytics dashboard.
Use Planoly, or a platform like it, to analyze your past content to understand your audience better. Gather intel on everything from Likes and comments to the types of content that your audience is the most responsive to, then build a plan that uses this information.
All of week 3 should be spent on better understanding your audience and planning the content pillars that will take them to the next level.
Week #4: Build a Content Plan
Once you work through your audience, competition, and channels – it’s time to build a content plan that will take all these factors into account. A content plan is a comprehensive outline of your message, content, and audience, including times to post and days. This will help you create a consistent and cohesive message that resonates with your target audience.
What does a content plan look like?
It’s a daily, weekly, or monthly breakdown of your content across channels including captions, hashtags, and topics.
Use the last week of planning to outline a content calendar and prepare the content for the next 3-weeks.
My content days are usually once a week. My advice here is to take an hour each day in week 4 to plan out content for 5 weeks, then pre-schedule it. This will get you ahead of things and start to build consistency with your audience almost immediately.
From here, you’ll be able to spend an hour each week building on your content stash.
Summary
In summary, learning your audience and building content for them will put you weeks ahead of the competition. It will also build up reservoirs of the two things that cause other creators to fail: consistency and discipline.
To do that, I recommend following a 4-week plan:
Week #1: Define Your Target Audience
Week #2: Research Your Competition and Market
Week #3: Choose Platform Channels Where Your People Are
Week #4: Build a Content Plan
That’s all for my guide on building a launch plan for your creator-led business.
Drop me a line if you'd like to download the “Creator Launch Checklist” to work through this plan for your next launch before it's available next month.
I’ll be updating this guide throughout 2023.
Thanks for reading.
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Love + Light,
LaTecia
Want more? Follow @lateciarising and let me know how I can help you scale as a creator. Want to support this newsletter and get featured? Drop me a line & I’ll be happy to collaborate.