Online Business Launch Tech Step 3 - Flesh Out Your Tech

This is part of the series that is designed to complement the free download

Online Business Launch Strategy (21 step Process, Tech and Launch infographic).

If you don't have that yet, go to the download page to get it now before reading this post.

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Part 2 (Tech), Step 3   - Plan Your Tech

In our last step (2) we got our first funnel up and running.

If you did this, then CONGRATULATIONS!

It is a significant achievement and a very important one.

So well done!

But, a funnel is no use without anything to put through it ... so you should now be implementing the traffic strategy you created in Online Business Launch Process Step 4.

As you watch the traffic filter in, you should start to analyse what you see and use it to refine and improve your funnel.

Monitor Your Funnel

You will want to gather information such as:

1. How many people are arriving at your optin page? (X)
2. How many are opting into the page (Y) to get your freebie?
3. Is Your page converting well (Y/X)?  For beginners, over 20% and you are doing very well.
4. If you are paying for traffic, then your key measure right now is $ spent (Z) / optins (Y).  So Z/Y tells you what each of the optins is costing you.  This may not mean much now, but later on it will be an important factor when you come to work out how many of these optins are become paying customers, and what value each one brings in on average.

Maybe this is better explained with an example.

Don't worry, we'll go into this in detail in a further post, but let's take a quick look now:

Example: people coming into your funnel -

• X = 10,000 people arrive at your optin page
• Y = 2,000 optin (20%)
• This cost Z = $4,000 (Z/Y = $2 / optin)
• Say 5% become customers = 100 people
• Then you'd have to get more than $40 / person to cover just your traffic costs.

So the metrics of cost for traffic, optin conversion rate, sales conversion rate and value per customer are all essential to watch and improve over time.

Assuming You Are Getting Traffic

With that diversion out of the way, assume now that you are getting traffic to your funnel either through organic or paid or other means.

What do you do now?

While your list is growing, now is a great time to plan out (flesh out) the bulk of your upcoming technology development.

The better you plan these, the less you will be surprised and the less you will be flustered by unpleasant obstacles when they come up.

And they will come up.

Tech To Unpack

Once again, the tech you need to plan will depend on your marketing and product strategies.  Here are a few suggestions you might like to consider:

1. Website - Setup your Kajabi 'home' including offer pages, contact, about and settings like SEO and payment gateways
2. Payment gateway setup (Stripe and Paypal) so you can accept payment
3. Social Media - Are you going to be 'posting' often or only occassionally, which platforms, if so, how will you manage it?
4. Regular content - Will you blogs, podcast, Youtube etc?
5. Course creation - what is your course going to look like content-wise? video style (talking head, slides, shared screen), audio, lighting, editing, b-roll, graphics/images
6. Surveys/Quiz - are you going to setup ways to gather info about what else your avatar wants? if so, how?
7. Email campaigns - when will you write the emails for your avatar when they 'arrive' on your list? What will the content look like (remember your avatar's journey?)

That's just the beginning.

This stuff is a known quantity for someone who has been around the block a few times, but if you aren't familiar with Kajabi, then setting up your website can take a lot longer than you expect.  If you are not experienced with video editing, then getting your videos looking acceptable can be a painful and very slow process.

It can all be done, but THINK THOUGH IT NOW so you can PLAN OUT WHEN you are going to tackle each part.

To DIY or OutSource?

The age-old tradeoff.

DIY and lower upfront cost and greater IP  vs  outsource and higher cost.

What way do you go?

I can't answer that for you, but what I do see is a lot of false economies.

I know this, because I'm sometimes one of those who likes to do things myself, retain the IP and save a few bucks, ... but it ends up taking me away from what I should be doing (where my super power really is) and costing me WAY more than it should have.

KAJABI is a great example.

No, its not cheap.

But the ticket price is not the biggest cost.

The bigger cost is the worry, stress, time wasted and broken launch because you tried to be el-cheapo.  Don't believe me? check out Michelle's testimony of this very tradeoff on my homepage.  She tried to do it with Squarespace and 10 other things Zapped into it, and it was a disaster.  Then she switched to Kajabi and made her year's subscription back in 14 days.

Cheap up front is often just the beginning of your costs.

Point made.

So...

Use this time while you are growing your list to plan out your tech, get some advice and decide what you will outsource and what you will do yourself.

In my experience the extremes are bad.  Don't outsource everything, but also don't DIY everything.  Work out what is right for you based on your goals, budget and abilities.

Coming up next

Next we jump into online product launch tech in Kajabi step 4 - Building your Tech.