In this episode, I explain why a successful launch actually begins before you start promoting it. I introduce the often-missed pre-launch phase and share how warming up your audience in advance makes your promotion, live delivery, and sales stages far more effective.

I walk through two key questions to shape your pre-launch content — what your audience needs to understand first and what objections you need to address — so you can bring them to the same starting line and turn cold prospects into warm, ready-to-buy participants.

If you only begin nurturing your audience when you announce your webinar or challenge, you’ve missed a critical opportunity to prepare them to say yes.

By answering what they need to understand and addressing objections early, you reduce resistance before you ever sell.

Strategic pre-launch content ensures your audience is informed, aligned, and ready — making your promotion and sales phase significantly more powerful.

 

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Most people think that a launch starts at the point where they open the doors to their launch experience. IEA webinar. Or a masterclass. Or a bootcamp. But actually your launch starts way before then, and today I'm gonna share with you one of the things that you can do prior to your launch to ensure that your launch is even more successful than it is already.

If you are new round here, my name is Theresa Heath wearing and I work with course creators, membership owners and coaches, and I help them grow their online businesses and sell in a way that feels really authentic to them. Today we are gonna be touching on something that lots of online business owners miss out and it's at the detriment of their launches.

You see, when most people talk about launching, they tend to talk about three distinct phases of the launch. Phase one is the launch phase. This is where you are promoting your bootcamp, your challenge, your webinar. [00:01:00] Then you have the live launch. That is when you are delivering the webinar or you are delivering the bootcamp, and then you have the sales phase, which is the bit where the doors open and you start selling.

But what people are missing is right at the beginning, there's another. Phase, and I call this the pre-launch phase. And this phase is as important, if not more important than some of the other phases because this is where you are getting them ready to actually go through your launch. So let's talk a little bit about how this works now when you have a launch phase.

That second phase, this is where you are promoting the bootcamp or the webinar or the challenge. But what we need to think about is how do we make sure that they are ready to sign up for that bootcamp or that challenge or that webinar or whatever it is. The very first thing that you need in place is actually to have a launch experience that they want to actually join.

So what we need to think about is what are [00:02:00] you creating in that masterclass, or what are you offering in that bootcamp that they actually want? So that's the first thing that goes without saying that. We can't do an amazing pre-launch and we can't do an amazing kind of launch experience if it's something they don't wanna sign up to.

So the very first thing you need to think about is you know what your customers need help with, and you are going to help them with that. Thing, and you have nailed it. You've nailed a really good launch experience. So how do we get them ready to actually take part in the launch? So I'm gonna use the example of bootcamp.

Let's say I am running a bootcamp on how to do webinars. I know it's a bit meta when I talk about my own stuff because I'm talking about. Challenges and webinars. Anyway, you, let's stick with it. So I'm gonna talk about doing a bootcamp. Let's say that I am going to do my launch experience as a bootcamp, and the theme of my launch is I'm gonna help you plan your next webinar, or I'm going to talk you through how to do your next webinar.

So there are a [00:03:00] couple of questions I need to ask myself to help me create content that is going to go out. Prior to me even sharing that, I'm doing a bootcamp. Okay? So whatever your launch experience is, whether it be a webinar, a bootcamp, a challenge for at least two weeks prior to even mentioning it, I want you to think about doing this pre-launch content.

The pre-launch content is going to get them ready. When you are ready to actually talk about the thing and share the actual launch experience that you're going to do, so there's a couple of questions that you need to ask yourself in order to create that content. Question number one, what do they need to know or understand before you can teach them the thing that you are going to teach them in?

Your launch experience. Okay, so my example, I'm doing a bootcamp. This is just an example just to [00:04:00] pretend I'm gonna do a bootcamp about how to do webinars. So what do my customers or my potential customers need to know or understand before I can teach them about webinars? Okay, so that's the first question.

What do they need to know or understand before you can teach them the thing that you are gonna teach them in your launch experience? Question number two is what objections might they have about learning that thing? When we think about these questions, question number one and question number two, what objections they might have about learning that thing.

What we're doing is we are getting them ready for the point where we start promoting the actual. Launch experience. So the challenge, the bootcamp, the webinar, whatever it is. In my case, in my example, I'm talking about a bootcamp, and the bootcamp is gonna teach 'em how to do webinars. I know it's. It's tricky when I do my own stuff, but we get it.

Okay, so let me think about that. So in order for me to create my pre-launch content, [00:05:00] I need to answer those questions. So for instance, when I was doing, or if I'm doing a bootcamp that is talking about how to create webinars that finally convert, what are the answers to those questions? So as a reminder, question one, what do they need to know or understand?

Four. I can teach them that. Well, if they don't know that webinars are a way to sell an online offer, then they need to know and understand that because there's no way they're gonna sign up for a bootcamp on teaching them how to do webinars if they don't know it's even a thing. For instance, one of the things come up in my world is the word launch.

That often people think that when we say the word launch, we are talking about selling something for the first time. So they need to know and understand that if I'm talking about a launch that actually. I'm not necessarily talking about selling or launching something for the first time. This can be. For any of your online products and if you've sold it before, what else do they need to know or understand?

Well, they need to know [00:06:00] that that webinars are still a thing. They need to know that webinars can be successful and get them sales. They also need to know that there is a very specific way in which you need to do a webinar that actually you can't just get on and do some free training. That's not what it is.

So if that's what they thought it is, then they need to know and understand that. And then the next question is, what objections might they have about learning this? So I guess the example I just gave you is a very good objection. So an objection of, I know what a webinar is. Well, maybe not the way that I teach it, or I've done a webinar before.

They don't work. Okay. How do I get over that Objection. So I might create some content that says. That you've create. You know, you've done a webinar before and it didn't work. These were the three reasons why, or I might create content that says webinars are dead, or you think webinars are dead. Here are the last results I got from webinars.

What we're trying to do is we're trying to get your audience. All to the same point on the starting line [00:07:00] because if your customers are all at different points, are points of where, um, I hate webinars. Webinars don't work. Webinars are rubbish. Like whatever the thing is you are teaching, then. They're not even gonna be at the start line when I say I'm doing a bootcamp teaching webinars, because they'll be like, well, I don't think webinars work, so why would I sign up for a bootcamp that teaches me how to do webinars.

So I want you to think about those two questions. They are so important in terms of creating content and having that content come out prior. To your launch experience prior to the point where you are actually doing your launch experience. To give you an example, some of the content that I put out, I did actually do some, it actually wasn't a, a launch experience.

It was actually, um, a paid workshop about webinars, but it's the same sort of principle. So before I even mentioned the fact that I was doing this workshop. I created content and in the podcast at the time, I created episodes that were mastering the Art [00:08:00] of Webinars, a step-by-step guide to successful online launches.

Then I did one about, uh, launch reality, understanding the realistic expectations. So I talked about what real numbers look like, because again, one of the objections might be, well, I did it and it didn't work. Whereas if I can educate them and go, well, actually this is what the realistic numbers look like, then maybe.

They will then go, oh, okay, well mine did work. I didn't realize on social media, I put posts up that talked about webinars aren't dead. You might think they are, they're not. They work. They still work. They're still brilliant. Also, I included things like motivational posts talked about, you know, you could be just one launch away from your success.

So things to inspire them and think, yes, great. I want to do this. So I'd recommend that for at least two weeks prior to you even mentioning the fact that you're doing a webinar, a bootcamp, a challenge, or whatever your launch experience is, that you start putting out this content. Now, this content can go out for [00:09:00] a month or two before your launch.

Experience. It's really as long as you can give it. And I have to say when I watch some of the bigger launches that I watch or some of the big launches that I'm involved with, those pre-launch periods are quite long, and that content is really pivotal to getting everyone to the same place and motivating everyone and making everyone feel ready.

For the actual launch experience. So I wanted to give you a couple of other ideas of, I've given you the idea of mine. If I was doing a bootcamp about a webinar, very confusing. Let's say that you are doing a webinar about Pinterest, so three easy steps to 10 x your traffic using Pinterest. Some of the questions and some of the things that you wanna think about in answer to those two questions are, if they've never used Pinterest, why should they try it?

Pinterest only works for certain businesses or certain brands. You'd need to address those objections. I have to be using Pinterest, so you might talk about how to get started. You might talk about how easy it is to get started. You might. Put some content out about how [00:10:00] they should set up their account. I don't have time for another social media platform, so that objection of, I'm doing this already, how would I then add in another one?

So you might talk about how if you were using Pinterest, it's so much easier and you don't have to do all these other things. And actually you can schedule everything. So you can see how I'm addressing some of those issues coming in. Before we even get to the fact that we're talking about doing the webinar, the masterclass, whatever.

So then let's imagine you are in an industry where you are doing a launch experience where it's about five steps of being the best boss in 2026. Learn how you can improve your confidence and impact your leadership role if you're gonna do a launch experience about that. The content you need to think about in your pre-launch is.

What does a good boss look like? If they aren't sure about what a good boss looks like, then are they gonna sign up for something about being a good boss, or if they think they're a good boss already, because they dunno what it looks like. So then. The question, are they a good boss? It could be a quiz that they take.

Um, [00:11:00] what can being a good boss do for them? So it might be a, an objection of, well, yeah, why does it matter that I'm a good boss? Like, does it make me more money? Does it, what does it do? And then examples of good bosses from their life. So you might talk about, you know, this was a really good example of this.

So remember, those questions are designed to help you really create content to get everyone to the start line. And then. When you start the race, that's when you're saying, sign up to this thing and come and join this thing. And at that point you should have matched their objections. You should have helped alleviate some of their concerns and fears, and you hopefully should have got them the answers they need to some of the questions that they might have about the thing that you're teaching.

So one final reminder, let me just remind you what those questions are. Again, they're super important in terms of getting that pre-launch content so that when you put your launch out there, they're ready. So question number one was, what do they need to know or understand before you can teach them the [00:12:00] thing that you are teaching them?

And question number two. What objections might they have about learning that thing? And if you are creating your content based on those two questions for the few weeks prior to your launch, you are gonna get everyone in your audience ready for the point where you put your launch experience out there that hopefully they are going to want to sign up and join you.

Okay? I really hope that this has been helpful. If you are doing pre-launch, tell me below. Message me, send me a DM on social media. If you're listening to this on the podcast, I would love to know if this is something you are already doing, if not. I would love to hear your thoughts on today's episode. I will be back next week with another episode.