1. Tweet today’s quote → 2. Get to work!
YOU MADE IT. 🙌
Today is the day that you click a button and send 2 weeks worth of hard work out into internet land.
I remember the feeling of launching my first store. To be honest, it was probably 50% excitement and 50% stress. (Amanda weighed in at 49% excitement and 51% stress.)
I was overthinking things a lot, and worried that other people would blame me if I failed. But the truth is: that didn’t matter in the end. Because I learned that people remember your success and they forget your failure. Even if they do remember your failure… it doesn’t last long.
So hopefully you’re hanging in there and you’re remembering why you’re here: to make life better for you.
This is what you’ll need to remind yourself of every day. A successful business is only as tough and resilient as its captain (…that’s you).
Okay, enough with the emotional pep talk.
Today, we’re going to:
- Make your store live
- Blast out your launch-day promotions on email and social media
Let’s launch this store!
Make your store live
It’s kind of funny how much work goes into building a store versus how easy it is to make it go live. It’s just a few clicks.
Go to ‘Sales Channels’ ➜ ‘Online Store’ ➜ ‘Themes’ in the left sidebar.
→ Click Here to Launch Your Online Business with Shopify
The screen will have a ‘Disable password’ button. Click it.
On the next screen, uncheck the ‘Enable password’ box and click ‘Save.’
You should see a notice that says your store is live. Click ‘View store’ to check it out!
Yessssss. Take a minute and do a little dance.
Now it’s time to get the word out.
Launch day promotions
Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase ‘spray and pray,’ where you promote something as much as humanly possible, in as many places you can think of, and hope that it works out.
That’s sort of what we’re going for here. (Except without the spam factor, of course.)
We want your site to get in front of as many eyeballs as you can manage. Especially today, but pretty much every other day after this until you’ve reached – and hopefully exceeded – your goals.
So that’s what we’ll do.
Send out launch day emails
Fortunately, those are already prepared and saved as drafts in your Gmail account from yesterday. Click send and they’ll be on their merry way.
Don’t forget to send the separate email to your giveaway winner(s).
Keep an eye on your email throughout the day in case you get responses from your winners, as well as in the event that anyone really does take you up on the offer to reply directly for questions.
Post on your business & personal social media
Obviously, you want to promote the launch through your company’s social media pages.
Here’s what Amanda’s Facebook post looked like.
As for her personal Facebook, Amanda was actually more nervous than excited to tell her friends about her launch. It felt really vulnerable to her the same way my first store felt vulnerable to me – it starts to make you question your own value in case you were to fail.
But ultimately, Amanda realized that this was an irrational fear. In her personal network, she’d only ever been met by love and support.
And this was no exception.
When she posted the launch on her facebook, she got a whole lot of encouragement and congratulations… and some lovably sarcastic jokes. Naturally.
But you know what else happened?
Amanda got 2 sales from this post!
While this was a huge boost in her morale, she wasn’t done yet. She wanted what she called a ‘real’ sale, one that didn’t have the kind of built-in trust from knowing someone personally.
(While I completely disagree with her – I definitely think this counts as a ‘real’ sale – I understand why she felt that way.)
So she kept on plugging to get the word out as much as possible.
To do this, go back to the lists and databases you’ve been compiling throughout these past 2 weeks. Reach out to admins and ask if it’s okay for you to post. Offer them ‘exclusive’ discounts, maybe with a special discount code to encourage them that it’s more special.
There are a lot of things you can do to promote your store. The busier you keep yourself, and the more posts and announcements you make, the greater your chances of getting some sales.
Day 14 Recap
Today, you:
✓ LAUNCHED YOUR STORE! Go tell the world.
✓ Sent out a launch announcement email to your giveaway entrants (and a victory email to the winners)
✓ Promoted your store in as many places as possible without getting yourself flagged or banned
Awesome. See you tomorrow, when we’re back on the grind to do it all again.
