Live Launch vs Evergreen: Which is best to sell your offer?
When it comes to selling a course or group program online, there is no single simple answer to the “Is live launching or evergreen best” question. Both have their pros and cons, and both, when done with intention, can yield great results.
What will work best for you and your business will also largely depend on your business model and how you work best.
So, before diving into all the details of Live vs Evergreen Launch, I’ll briefly touch on the main difference between these approaches, and then discuss in detail why I see so many business owners thinking that evergreen is the best option for them (when maybe it isn’t!), the mistakes they make when implementing either strategy and the things YOU should consider before deciding if you should take your offer evergreen
Let’s get started!
Live Launching
Live launching your offer is an open-close approach - you have set a timeline for when you’ll start and stop selling your offer. You may even have different periods within your open cart with different pricing - such as offering a discounted price to those who sign up in the first few days. Then between launches you may be selling another offer and/or building a waitlist before you launch this one again.
Delivering your offer when you Live Launch: When you Live Launch, you have more options with how you can run the delivery of your offer. The first and most common one is the “cohort-based” approach. Here everyone who comes in and purchases during that live launch window is a part of the same cohort running on the same timeline. This works best if you have a community and you are teaching components live or if you’re giving them access to the content at the same time.
You can also live launch if you have a longer-term program where you have pre-set live launches, but everyone becomes a part of the same ongoing group no matter if they joined 6 months ago or today.
🤩 Live Launch Pros
Time based urgency: Live launching builds a sense of urgency by having a date where the cart will close - which can create a sense of FOMO. Whilst this shouldn't be the only urgency you create when selling your offer (I teach more about this in my offer Launch Like You) it does help people come to a decision about whether to join your offer or not.
Supportive of cyclical business: As women (or even just as a human) we are naturally cyclical beings and business doesn’t necessarily have to be any different - there will be periods where we have more energy and wish to be more outward - showing up and selling more and periods where we will desire to be working on the foundations in the background and live launching is extremely supportive of this.
Supports cohort-based offers: Since a live launch ensures everyone joins within a specific time frame, it works well in cohort programs where all members progress through the content together and be on the same page.
Large Cash Injections: A live launch done right can bring in BIG money over a very short period (as well as creating future revenue with payment plans). This gives you the freedom to plan and fund your next launch with ease.
Concentrated Insights in Short Timeframe: Since live launches happen for a specific, short time period you are more likely to get a larger quantity of data within that time frame compared to if you were selling your offer on evergreen - this means you’ll get a clearer idea on what’s working when it comes to your sales strategy in less amount of time.
🥴 Live Launch Cons
Can require significant prep time: A few days’ live launch can take months of back-end planning, content creation, promoting, and marketing. However, I’ve found that if you have a solid launch system in place for your business, all of it gets way less time-intensive as it becomes more of a rinse-and-repeat process. So, no matter if you're launching the same product multiple times or it is something new, a pre-set system ensures you’re not starting from scratch.
More energy output for content creation and delivery: During the launch, you’re likely to be juggling a lot at once – delivering on your existing offers, connecting with your community, likely producing more content and ensuring that all your automations are working correctly. This becomes even more overwhelming when you have multiple live launches planned throughout the year or if a big chunk of your annual revenue depends on that one launch.
I do believe that alot of this live launch stress can be mitigated by a strategic launch plan and repeatable processes to support you - which is exactly why I created my mini course Launch Like You - so you can learn how to create your next five+ figure strategic launch plan that uniquely aligns with your energy and goals so that you can spend less time ‘in launch mode’ and more time present in life.
You can use the code BLOG20 to get it for only $77 - find out more here.
Evergreen
The Evergreen approach is simply the opposite of a Live Launch. It’s like having your doors open 24/7 after you’ve announced your offer - and for the most part, the system runs on automations. Yet, it is not a ‘set it and forget it’ model. It requires you to continuously be driving traffic to your funnel and to be looking at how your content and funnel are performing, and if there are any live components, you have to be ready to serve the newcomers at any point in time they decide to join the program.
🤩 Evergreen Pros
People can join anytime: You won’t need people to wait until the next live launch and whenever someone is ready they can join - this is also really supportive of people who have a longer decision-making process. You just have to simply keep showing up, showing them that you have a solution to their problem, and inviting them to make a purchase.
Opportunity to have more consistent income: This approach allows you to have more consistent sales around the year than having the lull of non-launch months where you don’t have large influxes of revenue.
No high energy launch periods: Regardless of how prepared you are live launches are still a period of higher output .
🥴 Evergreen Cons
The tech setup is usually more involved than a live launch: As evergreen funnels are designed to run on autopilot and are unique to the timeline of your lead entering the funnel it means there’s usually a lot more involved in setting it up and ensuring everything runs smoothly on autopilot - particularly if you have limited time bonuses, upsells, downsells etc build into your funnel.
Slower feedback loop for improvements: You are NOT going to immediately see the results of changes you make to your funnel or course content unless you have a large amount of traffic coming in (which is more usually the case with live launches). So, it’s going to take some time to collect meaningful data on what’s working best or not.
Lack of time-based urgency: With Evergreen people do not feel like missing out on anything because they know the cart is going to stay open today, the next week, the next month even - which means it’s even more important to ensure you have nailed the messaging of your offer and have enough natural urgency (ie you are solving an urgent problem you’re ideal client wants a solution to - like yesterday)
If it is a live program, you’ll need to be running it ALL the time: Selling a program with live components via an evergreen model requires continuous commitment and effort. Because you can’t make people wait a month or two to get started until you have enough signups - if people can purchase at anytime, they will expect to be able to dive into the program straight away.
So, why go evergreen?
I’ve worked with alot of coaches and course creators and the number one driving factor I see as to why people want to go evergreen is this… They live launched an offer and the didn’t enjoy the experience.. Maybe they didn’t get the results they desired, they felt burnt out and now they think that going to Evergreen is the solution.
It’s almost like a mindset – “I tried it, it felt SO stressful, and I didn’t even hit the numbers, now I’m burnt out, so it is not for me. And Evergreen must be the right option.”
But here’s the problem with this.. live launching is NOT the issue here, it is the way you APPROACH it.. yep read that again if you’re anti-launch.
So, now I’m going to dive into the mistakes people commonly make with their approach when it comes to live launching or going evergreen.
Common Mistakes
🚀 Live Launch Mistakes
Not Giving Enough Time to Each Phase of the Live Launch:
This, honestly, is where 99% of problems arise. Whether it is the time they give to prepare themselves for the launch, to warm up the audience and get them to a point where they are ready to buy the offer, or to keep the cart open – it’s so easy to underestimate just how much time is needed.
Creators get impulsive, and they are like, ‘Oh this is a great idea! Let’s launch it tomorrow!’. They open a sales window for a few days and then can’t wait to close it because they want to get started with the program.
And they wonder why they don’t get the desired results.
They’re not giving themselves enough time to set up what’s needed for a stress free launch AND they’re not giving their audience enough time to be taken through an intentional sales process.
Expecting Big Results on The First Launch:
So often we get caught up in comparing our business journey with everyone else's we see online - and more often than not we’re just seeing the highlights AND not the whole journey it took someone to get those results that we’re aiming for..
Whilst YES of course you can launch something for the first time, hit your goals and create incredible result - but if you don’t, the good news is you’ve got data and experience to learn from for the next time you launch.
I am a huge believer that the more you launch, the more you are able to refine your process – from marketing, and messaging, to follow-ups, everything gets better as you keep launching again and again - which is why I’m a fan of having a core, signature offer in your business rather than having lots of offers and funnels that you haven’t optimised.
📊 Evergreen Mistakes
Not Testing Beforehand
The first and most common mistake is going evergreen without testing the marketing, sales, or delivery strategies with a live launch.
In my experience, to give your evergreen the best chance at converting well you should live launch your offer 2-3 times before taking it evergreen because, as I mentioned earlier, a live launch gives you a concentrated amount of data on important metrics and gives you a better gauge on what’s working and what isn’t, in a very condensed time period. That data then allows you to optimise your funnel accordingly and make your evergreen offer profitable.
Whereas if you go straight into selling your offer on evergreen, you will have to wait a lot longer to collect the data you need to make adjustments as people trickle down that funnel very slowly.
Thinking Evergreen is “Set and Forget”
People usually think that Evergreen is not much work, and once the offer is live and set up, it runs itself, which I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately is not the case.
You can’t just create the offer, add a link to your bio and then expect to get results on autopilot. Instead, you have to consistently put effort into driving people to the top of your funnel through relevant content, ads, and other strategies. Then it's crucial to get them onto your list, and then to the place where automations take over, guiding them through the sales process.
In all, it is not a completely passive approach like most imagine it.
Not Having a Clear Understanding of Numbers
This may be one of the biggest mistakes - not understanding the numbers needed to get your desired income from your evergreen offer. Expecting to just be able to put your sales page in your insta bio, post a few stories and somehow have a consistent flow of sales… sorry but that’s not how it works #awkward
Let me take you through a quick tutorial with some industry benchmarks to explain this.
To work out how you’re going to hit your launch goal we need to look at your conversion rate and do a little math to work out how many leads you’ll need entering your funnel in order to hit your goal.
If you’re new to launching & funnels and don’t know the rate your offers convert at we can go by industry standard which is usually anywhere from 1-3% on average (although I’ve had clients convert up to 8%)
Our formula is going to look something like this:
[Sales # Goal] / [Conversion Rate %] = [Leads].
Let’s say your offer is $1250 and you have a goal of $10,000 sales meaning you want to make 8 sales - lets plug it into our formula and use a 3% conversion rate.
8 / 0.03 = 266
This means you’ll need to have 266 new leads entering your funnel every month to generate 10k worth of sales!
Then you’ll also need to work out how many eyes you’ll need on your top of funnel lead magnet - this is how you receive someone's email address to put them into your funnel such as a free masterclass, PDF download etc.
Ideally you’d want your lead magnet converting at over 50% so for simple math you can just double your leads number (266 x2 = 523) and this is how much traffic you’d need to be driving to your lead magnet every month in our scenario..
💡What to consider before going evergreen?
If you’re considering setting up your offer using the Evergreen approach, here are a few quick things to consider:
Live Launch Your Offer A Few Times, Before Going Evergreen
Before taking your offer evergreen, live launch it at least 2-3 times, or until you start getting your expected results in terms of traffic and conversion - I know live launching can be daunting, but it’s worth it.. I promise.
This repeated live launching allows you to refine your messaging, and content delivery process and tracks the different metrics during and after a purchase, which you need to improve for Evergreen to be fruitful in the long run.
If you have live launched a few times already, but didn’t have the tracking set up, and don’t have enough data, do not hesitate to launch a few more times.Have a Hybrid – Evergreen + Live Launch Model
I have many clients who run their offers in a more hybrid approach.
For example, one of my clients has a membership where anyone can join at any time through her evergreen funnel but she also launches 3-4 times a year. For these live launches she would run a conversion event (a masterclass), with a set open and close cart date which creates that buzz and urgency that naturally drives more sales. Between these launches she will then just focus on driving traffic to her top of funnel where they are put into an email sales sequence and given a limited-time offer to join the membership as well.Invest Your Time and Resources Well
As I have mentioned throughout this blog, an intentional investment of your time, energy, and resources is very important to set up the right systems for tracking the data. Funnels are simply a numbers game and you can’t fix what you don’t track.
Final Takeaways
As you can see there are benefits to both approaches to selling your course or coaching program and one way isn’t necessarily better than the other but if you’re just starting out or creating a new offer I strongly recommend you to live launch it first to ensure that if/when you do take it evergreen you’re setting yourself up for success.
Of course if you have any questions - reach out, I’d love to support you.