If there’s anyone that knows a thing or two about launching, it’s us. In the past 5 years we’ve been in business, we’ve launched more times than we can count with a multitude of different products and services as our business transitioned and grew.

During the different seasons of our business, we’ve had big launches, small launches, and everything in between, so we’ve also picked up on how to do it without being so stressed. We think the number one important thing about launching is that it’s fun and simple. Otherwise, who the heck would ever want to launch anything?

So, today, we’re going to share with you a little about our plan for launching simply, and show you our little secret for making launching even easier.

2021 is right around the corner, and last week we talked all about the never-ending cycle of being super super motivated to crush your goals in the new year, and then as the year goes on, momentum starts to fade ever so slowly.

We even talked about the importance of reflecting on your goals the week before and how doing so can help you plan strategically and intentionally, so you aren’t just writing down goals that aren’t realistic or reachable.

Now, what about the actual planning process? At the end of 2019, we tried a new technique that helped us plan for 2020 tremendously, and we’re going to break that down for you today.

The month of December (a.k.a. the month of goal-setting) is one of our favorite times of the year. Nothing fuels us more than to sit down with each other and discuss our aspirations for what we aim to achieve in the new year. For some reason we’re especially fueled this month, probably because we can’t wait to leave behind the chaos that is 2020 (or soon to be was).

However, a struggle for many of our fellow creatives is actually staying motivated all year long. We know the feeling– you’re pumped to crush your goals while you’re planning them, and you still have the ball rolling through Q1, but then.. it slows down.

And it keeps getting slower.. and slower.. and slower until you reflect on your year, realize how shitty it’s been, aim to change that in the next year, get all pumped up again, and the cycle repeats.

So, how do you break the cycle?

No matter what type of giveaway you end up deciding to try first, the foundations of running a successful giveaway are generally the same. If you follow these eight basic steps, you’ll have a clear control over your giveaway and can potentially reach a lot of new people.

Client and customer testimonials are one of the most crucial pieces of your marketing strategy. The journey you want to take people on to lead them to a sale consists of three main parts:

1. The “Are you in my head?” stage when you relay their pain points to them

2. The “Yeah, that actually would be nice..” stage when you have them envision what their life would be like if those problems weren’t problems

3. The “Okay, I’m ready to buy!” stage when you present the solution as your product or service

But– hold on a minute– hardly any one is just going to be ready to buy after seeing your thing. First they want to know if it will even work, and that’s when you bring in the big guns. (Big guns being testimonials, if that wasn’t clear.)

Testimonials can sometimes be the single defining moment of someone ready to hand their money over, or not. You probably wouldn’t purchase a product on Amazon if it didn't have a single review, would it? We as consumers count on those reviews as the proof of a product being worth the investment or not.

So, what makes your products or services any different? You can use those testimonials strategically in your marketing plan to be the final push that gets someone over the line and to the checkout page or paying their first invoice.

That’s why we’re going to share with you 7 places you should be showcasing client or customer testimonials, if you aren’t already.

We all know that testimonials are a crucial part to a functioning business. Unfortunately, many of us are met with fear and anxiety just from the thought of having to ask clients for testimonials/feedback.

“What if I’m actually not doing a good enough job to warrant a great testimonial?”

Thinking of actually bringing it up to your clients almost makes you want to run away or barf (or both). It can even seem like a super awkward conversation, like you’re saying, “Hey, I know we’ve working together for a while, and I think I’ve been doing a great job, but can you just confirm that by writing a testimonial that will potentially be shared with thousands of people depending on how good it is?”

Okay, so you won’t actually say it that way, but it can seem like it! So today, we’re going to walk you through how you can put this task on autopilot so that you can avoid the testimonial-asking anxiety. Or if you’re just simply the worst at remembering to ask for them, these tips are also for you!

It’s been over three years (really, close to four) since we launched The Strategy Hour Podcast. Since then, we’ve made the ranks of Apple’s Top 30 Business Management Podcasts, have been featured in multiple blog posts about business-related podcasts, have had X total downloads on Apple Podcasts alone, and we’re coming up hot on the heels our 500th episode (that’s a lot of freakin’ recording time!).

And while we’re so grateful that our podcast took off the way it did and has influenced thousands of lives and launching it was a blast, in no way has it always been easy. So, today, we’re going to be pulling back the curtain on how we launched our podcast, the challenges we faced, all of the hustle we put in to launch, how we plan and upload new episodes, the whole 9.

If the idea of launching a podcast has been tossing and turning in your brain, our totally candid and honest experience will hopefully help you determine whether this is the right next move in your business journey!

Instagram recently released their new feature, Instagram Reels, and it’s catching like wildfire due to the similarities with its rival, TikTok. The reason TikTok is such an amazing platform for businesses is all thanks to the possibilities you have of organically reaching a large audience, and now Instagram has adopted this capability.

Accounts have been able to grow by the thousands after landing on Instagram’s explore page and gaining views from hundreds of thousands of people (similar to what happens when a TikTok video lands on the For You page). If you tailor your content to catch the attention of the right people, the opportunity to grow on Instagram is higher now more than ever.

But for those people who aren’t experienced with TikTok and the culture that’s now been brought over to Instagram, it can be super difficult determining what kind of content to post, how it works, etc. So, with that, we want to give a breakdown of Instagram Reels, how to use it, and what kind of content to post so you can increase your organic reach!

There are nearly 300 million daily users on Pinterest. That’s 300 million potential customers and clients out there just waiting to scroll upon your content. In fact, 97% of searches on Pinterest are unbranded, which leaves a huge opportunity for your content to show up. But how do you make them stop scrolling to check it out?

Since Pinterest is a visual search engine, you can bet that there are millions of beautifully stunning images already, but images are static, so a great way to catch someone’s eye is by creating a video Pin.

They’ve been around for a while, but their popularity has been rising exponentially in the past couple of years with the amount in 2019 increasing six times what it was in 2018. Even though video Pins are gaining traction, they’re still less used than images, which means there’s a huge opportunity just waiting for you to increase your visibility on the platform.

Another great thing about video Pins is that they automatically start playing when they’re halfway on a user’s screen. In a sea of static images, that’ll immediately catch someone’s eye and, hopefully, entice them to click through to your website. Why else should you create video Pins, though, and how do you create them?