There's no such thing as a perfect plan

In 4 more sleeps (*gulp*) we launch Phlywheel - a DIY platform using community, content, and coaching to help SMBs get marketing agency expertise without the marketing agency costs - to the world! [July 13!]

Yep. Launch day is just around the corner after spending over a year researching, validating, brainstorming, prototyping, testing, building, scrapping, REbuilding, repeat...not to mention this all happened through the loss of a loved one, a global pandemic, and radical shifts in the political landscape. Oh...and what we've built is completely bootstrapped within our agency - a "side-hustle" for the entire team.

We've been preparing for this day for months and, yet, I still feel so woefully underprepared.

To get a sense of how ridiculously thorough we've been to get prepared:

• We hired an experienced PR firm
• ...and a SaaS launch expert
• we've been growing interest on Product Hunt
• we ran a beta group to test our thesis (it's pretty solid! whew!)
• we've been holding excellent events to give a taste of the upcoming content
• we've run brand-awareness ads that shifted to consideration that will move to conversion after launch (on LinkedIn, Reddit, Google, Twitter + some other more niche networks)
• we've tested messaging and set some good leading indicators and figured out some funnels
• we've been growing our new social channels
• we've made promotional and explainer videos
• we've been creating a steady stream of quality content for our blog,
• we've been reaching out and building relationships in multiple communities where our future customers hang out
• we've planned a bumpin' virtual launch party *WHICH IS ALSO ON MY BIRTHDAY* with some really fun special (celebrity!) guests and giveaways (yes, you can sign up for free even if you don't plan on joining Phlywheel)

• we've lined up some amazing programming going forward with Tamar Huggins, April Dunford, and more...

...and the list goes on. But, as a seasoned marketer, I know that none of this guarantees a successful launch. There are just too many other factors at play when you go to launch a company into the world. If there's anything that 2020 has taught us, it should be that nothing is certain and the playing field ain't fair.

As human beings, we're terrific at hindsight vision. There are countless celebrations of marketing strategy genius around successful launches:

So-and-so did these perfect things that resulted in his success!

and

Whats-her-face shared her secret to how she made a huge splash!

We hear about the successes all of the time, but I can almost guarantee you that there are plenty of so-and-so's and whats-her-faces that did the exact same thing but achieved incredibly different (ie. disappointing) results.

As human beings, we're terrific at hindsight vision.

There have been plenty of failures who were perfectly prepared...we just don't talk about them. And don't @ me with the meritocracy stuff. Bad outcomes happen to brilliant, prepared people doing amazing things and great outcomes happen to unprepared, lazy people doing mediocre things all of the time. The hype changes the story.

So, what does this mean as I countdown to the big launch? Is it all for naught? If I don't think that all of the stuff we're doing and money we're investing will help guarantee a successful launch, why am I doing it? Why plan at all?

Well, here's why we are still planing:

1. The saying, "You make your own luck" has some merit to it. By covering all of our bases, we're giving ourselves more opportunities to get in front of our audience - who we already know is out there because we have a bunch of them in our beta!
2. It's what we do. I mean, imagine if a marketing agency just built a thing and didn't do any marketing. That would be silly! ?? For real, though. If nothing else, we're getting some amazing data and insights from our efforts.

What I've learned about marketing in the past 20+ years is that a plan isn't guaranteed, but having NO plan at all is pretty much guaranteed to fail. It's incredibly rare that you "build it and they will come." And even in the cases that people say, "I didn't do marketing and we succeeded," you'll find out that they actually did do marketing (outreach, networking, content, etc), they just didn't think of it as marketing.

So, no...there is no such thing as a perfect plan, but a great plan can greatly improve the outcome.

Wish us luck! We're gonna need it!