4 Keys to Successfully Launch an Offering With No Practical Marketing
I recently launched a mini-program, MYSTIQUE. The 'marketing strategy’ was as follows: an almost empty sales page, emails full of riddles and prose akin to Sleepy Hollow, and a few Instagram stories containing lines to a song complete with creepy wind noises humming in the background.
Over 50 people bought the program in a short 7-day launch period.
What gives?
I'll tell you what gives.
Industry business and marketing standards are big fat liars.
Whoah, calm down.
Let's try this again.
Every alleged business have-to is a belief you can opt into or out of.
Be it sales pages that feel like 5-minute movie trailers (what's the point of watching this, NETFLIX, when you literally just gave the entire plot away 🤨) or Facebook lives that begin with HELLO EVERYONE, LET ME KNOW WHERE YOU'RE TUNING IN FROM AND DROP A HEART IN THE CHAT!!!! (which I swear has nothing to do with engagement; I genuinely love beginning my videos screaming different locations out!) to the classic, "This person got everything they ever wanted the moment they paid me! Millions of dollars? A new designer wardrobe? The perfect life? All of these and more appear the moment you pay me! I swear!"
Heh heh heh
I'm being hyperbolic 😀 (But you've seen at least a version of these, I'm sure.)
Insert whatever business have-to here that you've tried that makes you want to get offline and move to a farm in the middle of nowhere (oh wait, I already did that) or is just plain wildly inauthentic to who you are. Then, I will show you someone who is not doing that thing and is still successful.
Before you get all triggered by the examples above, know this:
My personal opinions around integrity aside, the axiom I live by in business is nothing is off the table. However, I'm gonna be damn sure that if it's on the table, I have a semblance of authentic connection to it that goes beyond "well blah blah did it, and it worked for them."
You can do anything you want in business, and it can work.
But if you're here, you probably care about integrity, authenticity, and life-giving success. So the question is, who is the you that wants to do that thing and how much of that you is you? 🙃
What happens when you cultivate a relationship with your ever-evolving authenticity and the generative flow of life force that births from it?
What occurs when the business that your ego needs to work or desperately keep up with that you'll do anything becomes a calling that nourishes devotion to your becoming? And in return (oh yeah, there's a return), supports you energetically and financially.
What if I told you that, out beyond ideas of this absurd marketing strategy and that questionable business coach, there is a field that would never ask you to override the wisdom of nature? A field of generative businesses that produce life-giving success (and corn).
I'll meet you there.
Exits soapbox.
Takes off mustache 🥸
Without further ado, here are 4 keys to (successfully) launching a program with no practical marketing.
1. Instead of chasing form, try prioritizing a connection to frequency first
Here are some easy-to-digest bullet points of how this might look in real time.
• Instead of assuming every random desire that enters your mind is meant to be manifested, take some time to inquire, establish even an inkling of grounded connection, and then go forth! (Cheat code: upon going forth, try to care less about the desire manifesting as you see it now and more about the mutable desire-seeking process that will always bring you into more profound engagement with yourself and life.)
• If you're someone who drowns in the sea of what everyone else is doing in their business, you'll probably benefit from learning what it feels like when you're lost in the riptide of matching every person's energy you come across that has something you want. Practicing healthy separation from other people's energy (ideas, projects, content, etc.) will put you in touch with your own. This will put you in touch with authentic guidance, resonance, and inspiration. Which will make you sparkly ✨
• When working with a business idea or project, instead of rushing from seed to bloom — allow the seed to be a seed! This precious incubation phase is full of information and awareness, often missed in a rush to be done. Like, "Oh my god, this isn't even my idea — it's my Mom’s fear for me manifesting as trying to prove I’m successful!"
Glad you didn't rush that one, huh?
• Assess your current definition of what it means when something is working. Not getting as many likes on an Instagram post as blah blah does not mean it's not working. Your program selling 10 spots instead of 100 does not mean it's not working.
Let's be clear — we have no shortage of examples of sacrificing authenticity, capacity, and integrity, and it working. But that's not what I'm talking about.
If you follow the tenants I laid out above, patience and perseverance are your friends.
Not a single grounded success story goes, "I appeared with my idea, and I was immediately loved by everyone, handed piles of money, and invited to be on Oprah. The end."
2. Contrary to popular belief, people enjoy (are starving for) innovative forms of business and marketing.
Okay, so you're walking your talk. You're devoted. You're committed to frequency first.
Now what?
Have some fun!
But, I don't have to tell you that. Because, by law, it will be so.
Frequency births form.
Vision dovetails into details.
Ideas carry instructions.
I love this part of the process because this is when I witness clients, program participants, (and myself) attune to 'the how' that only collaborating with creation could have delivered.
You suddenly get the idea to do something you wrote off last year as something you would never do, and now, like a child on a playground — you give it a curious gleeful try, and it works.
Like when you tune into the 'why don't we do it this way' download, that blows everyone's minds.
Or when you receive the creation you are in such a passionate love affair with, you forget that other creations exist. Creation-monogamy, FTW!
To the uninitiated eye, this appears as things working like magic.
Let me tell you, friends, in my world, "like magic" means your commitment to life (and thus, deeply engaging with it) goes so hard in the paint that sustenance is not a question. It's a requirement. Period.
3. Intuition and logic are meant to work together.
I am so bored by business extremes.
On one side, strategy, consistency, and numbers are everything with a sprinkle of personal development hustle. I like to imagine this group as marketing bros who skip leg day, create a lot of content that makes you feel like someone is yelling at you, and recently tried LSD at Coachella.
On the other side, we have the gooey world of 'feminine business,' where "intuition" or, more accurately, whatever feeling is floating around me reigns supreme; I only do what feels good; and p.s. I’m non-committal as hell. I imagine these as the overly identified with being spiritual women who moan a lot and hold eye contact for a really long time (just in case you forget how spiritual they are).
Honorable mention characters: people hyper-obsessed with manifestation whose business mission statement is usually some ungrounded "you can have anything you (think) you want!" statement, anyone who refers to themself as a "boss babe," and… Jeff Bezos 🫠
Once again, I'm being dramatic. There are extremes and, of course, every shade of nuance and complexity (and character!) exists in between.
All this to say, in my world, intuition and logic are in an eternal romance. They love and respect each other. They prioritize a weekly date night. They use clear communication. Along the way, they can't help but birth fields of cabbage patch babies who go on to make the world a better place.
In the hierarchy of my business, intuition and logic are equal shareholders.
Not surprisingly, this idea is a module in MYSTIQUE.
4. Mystique is a dying art, and people are hungry for it.
That webinar or IG live where you give a literal stale peanut of value and then quickly segue into herding people into the offering (where the alleged real value is) — is tired.
Consistently knowing everything about everyone's lives and businesses (though a lovely breeding ground for fantasy relationships!) — is weird.
Expecting yourself to come up with 'new content every day’ when you are a cyclical being who has a life outside of social media — is absurd.
Letting everyone know you're taking the weekend off of social media and encouraging your audience to get off of social media in a post on social media — is ridiculous.
Would you rather see a beautiful bralette that teases the existence of a nipple or just see a zoomed-in picture of the nipple? Because when I look around, I see a lot of zoomed-in areolas and not very many mysterious bralettes.
Contrary to all these nipples, the human species is enchanted by (and I would wager, starving for) some good old fashion MYSTIQUE (there's that delightful creation again).
Seriously, think about it.
Psychology has proven that we get more excited by the thought of the surprise than by the actual surprise itself. Women love foreplay. Men love the fantasy of what they can't see. Jack loves hiding in the box. The baby revels in its hidden 9-month gestation period. The opening of the chamber of secrets almost destroys everyone at Hogwarts and beyond. Beyoncé refusing to do interviews for the last 10 years has only made her more famous. The list goes on.
So, is your business and marketing a zoomed-in areola?
Do you, perhaps, need a bralette liaison?
It me! And also your true nature. You just might need to do some deep cleaning to find it.
Throw all of this into a cauldron plus a dash of devotion to the mystery, a sprinkle of making peace with misperceptions, and — voilà! 🪄
I present to you why I successfully launched MYSTIQUE in an utterly nonsensical way.
It's like magic, wouldn't you say?
