Simple Roadmap To Launching Your Therapy Website Like A Pro

When it comes to online marketing, there is always so much to do and beyond little time. This conundrum only intensifies when you are working to launch a new website.

Not only are you focusing on making the website itself great, you also may be considering how your website fits and functions as the core piece of your online marketing. Creating and launching a website may include adding a lot of items to your online marketing to-do list.

When it comes specifically to the launch piece, what do professional website designers and online marketers put on their to-do lists? What are the priority items in order to ensure a successful website launch?

This post will share a few ways you can have a low stress but highly effective website launch.

How A Launch Is A Great Opportunity For Getting Yourself Out There

You don’t launch a website everyday. This means that during a launch you are provided a unique opportunity for shameless self-promotion that you don’t have otherwise.

Your website launch is the opportunity to announce, “Hey everyone! My new website is launched! Go check it out!” And it’s totally an acceptable to do so.

It’s acceptable because everyone knows how important websites are, how much work they can take, and how it doesn’t happen every day.

There’s an element of excitement that just rubs off. So for those you have in your reach, be that referral sources, friends, family, community members, or your email list, can all join with you in the excitement of a fresh, new site.

Things To Consider For Your Launch Strategy

Content

Blog Posts

If you are launching your first ever blog along with your site launch, you will want to have a few posts written that can be inserted and back-dated so your website has some content to show.

Additionally, whether you are going to be launching your first blog or already have one going, writing and scheduling your posts to publish for the time period immediately after launch can be a huge time saver as well. With all the tasks that come up with launching a website, having at least one month of posts done and scheduled will be a great relief.

Email Marketing

If you don’t have email marketing setup but will want to have sign up forms on your site, the week prior to launch isn’t the time to set everything up for the first time. Much better to start that early and maybe even run a few practice campaigns so you understand what’s involved.

Having your email marketing setup means you can also create a landing page within the software and invite people to sign up so they can be on your list prior to launch. That way, they can be among the first to know about your launch on launch day too.

Guest Blogging

Getting yourself out there in guest blog posts is always a good idea but wouldn’t it be awesome to have a few posts getting published the same week as your launch?

If you are going to be featuring any high value content, guest blogging is also a great way to backlink to that content directly.

Social Media Marketing

When on the road towards launching a site, it’s wise to let people join you on that road. Social media is a great way to generate interest and build anticipation in your upcoming website launch.

If you don’t already have social media set up, prior to launching a website is a good time to do so. This is also partially because you will want to decide on usernames for all of the platforms as well as considering that the availability of social media usernames may influence your choice of domain name. Knowing which domain name to use for your website is very important to know prior to launch.

Social media is also a great place to share your enthusiasm for your launch and get people on board. Some ideas for the types of posts you can post are:

• “So excited that I’m getting started on creating my new website. The best part is I’ll be able to share content that really helps you.”
• “My new website build is going so great. We launch in 30 days so I can’t wait to share it with you”
• “Here’s a sneak peek at my new website design. There will be a blog full of great content that will help you with your relationships.”
• “I’m writing some blog posts for my new website that is due to launch in two weeks. Current post I’m working: Why Sexual Abuse Survivors Experience Guilt. If you’re interested in learning about the launch, sign up for my email list here to be among the first to know (and get access to my new blog posts too).”
• “My new website is going to be so cool. Interested in getting a front row seat to the launch (and content in your inbox to help you lower your anxiety as an entrepreneur)? sign up for my email list to get both.”

Using a mixture of posts with various types of content can help mix it up. On social media, you’ll want to be sure you’re not only posting these types of updates of course. You’ll also want to include your regularly scheduled high-value content that you’re sharing to social media and mix new-website-related posts in perhaps at a ratio of 1 per every 8-10 posts.

Other Marketing Ideas

Right before a launch is a great time to amp up your online networking too. Did you know that one way that you can make friends is by asking for help?

Reaching out to a few connections you have for help on small website-related things could help you forge important connections for referrals. For instance, why not send two images of yourself and ask for feedback on which one to choose for your new website?

In addition to deepening your relationship, you can also reach out to any local businesses that you may want to feature in your content. Like if you focus on therapy services for new moms, ask a local massage therapist if they’d be willing to get interviewed on the benefits of massage for new mothers. Mention it’s for your brand new blog, launching in one month, and you’d love to feature them.

Any exciting marketing ideas you have can be worked into your launch strategy. Balancing that of course with your other ongoing marketing activities.

Testing and Tweaking The Site Before It Goes Live

In cooperation with your website designer or developer, you will also want to account for the time it takes to do the final functionality checks and content tweaks in your launch strategy. Some ideas on what to test include:

• Links including all of the internal links to pages or posts as well as mailto links and telephone number links.
• All types of forms including contact forms and email list optin forms being sure to test that they are working.
• Typos it’s great if you plan on getting fresh eyes on your site to make sure a typo isn’t just being overlooked.
• Content updates like maybe it’s something you wrote but feel could be worded better or something you thought you added but didn’t. It almost always happens that you’ll see something that just bugs you.
• Analytics depending on how you are launching a site, this may have to happen shortly after your site goes live but preferably before any visitors visit so that you are collecting data about your website visitors and their behavior from the very start.

The Key To A Great Launch Is Planning

Launches are exciting but not necessarily stress-free. The underlying key to reducing and managing that stress is good planning. If possible, sit down a month or two prior to launch and create and schedule your strategy.

The strategy will need to include a clear idea of how the event of your website’s launch will fit into your greater online marketing strategy.

There are related things that will need to get done in order for them to coincide with the launch. Things like getting social media set up or having enough clarity on your content marketing strategy for blogging can be important pieces to work into the months or weeks up to your website launch.

Planning also means you can spread out the activities! You don’t have to do everything in the same week, losing hours of sleep and throwing your self care out the window. Knowing what it is that needs to be done, and when, will help you create space and time for these activities instead of doing that last minute cram.

A Basic RoadMap You Can Follow To Launch

This basic roadmap was created with a particular type of therapist with a particular online marketing strategy in mind.

This roadmap assumes that the therapist will need to create 6 blog posts, 2 for back dating and 4 for the month after launch. And will also be completely new to email marketing but is going to be launching with email marketing set up, a email list sign up that has already been promoted, and optin forms on their site.

This therapist has already set up social media and their online directory listings and had been using them for a while but will be launching their first ever website.

This roadmap is spread out over 2 months and assumes 4-6 hours per week to accomplish the tasks. Use this roadmap as is or update it to suit you and your online marketing strategy.

Week 1

1. Write your first blog post. This is the post that will be backdated in your blog and will server as your first post. Your first blog post is a good chance to write something friendly, like a letter to your blog post reader on what your blog has in store or your intentions for who you’ll be helping and how.
2. Research and choose an option for email marketing. Do some googling around what options there are for email marketing software. What are your colleagues using? What might be a good choice for you? Research, compare, and choose. Take note of it for next week.

Week 2

1. Write your second blog post. Your second post onwards, you’ll want to start digging into high-value content. These posts don’t have to be super long but should share topics of deep interest to your clients. This post will be back dated so it will be in your blog upon launching.
2. Set up your email marketing account and create a list. Most email marketing software will allow you to create a list for your email subscribers to subscribe to. Create a list and play with the forms too if you have time.
3. Post on social media that your new website is in the works and you are excited about it.

Week 3

1. Write a blog post. This post will be scheduled for the week after launch.
2. Create a landing page for your email marketing account. Most email marketing software will allow you to create a simple landing page that you can link to for people to sign up for your list. Research and create a landing page.
3. Post on social media that your new, exciting website is in the works.

Week 4

1. Write a blog post. This post will be scheduled for two weeks after launch.
2. Post on social media that your new, exciting website is in the works and invite them to sign up for your new email list making sure to highlight the benefits included in both (what will people get out of signing up?).

Week 5

• Write a blog post. This post will be scheduled for three weeks after launch.

1. Post on social media that your new, exciting website is in the works.

Week 6

1. Write a blog post. This post will be scheduled for four weeks after launch.
2. Post on social media that your new, exciting website is in the works and invite people to sign up for your email list.

Week 7

1. Flexible time. Schedule in time a couple weeks prior to launch to catch up on anything that wasn’t accomplished on time or to manage anything unexpected. If you’ve been on top of everything, you can also use this time for resting.
2. Write your launch email if you’ve been getting people subscribed to your email list, you’ll want to have something to send them about your website launching. It can be something super simple just announcing the launch with some specific calls to action around what benefits are in store for visiting the new site.
3. Post on social media that your new, exciting website is in the works.

Week 8

1. Do some testing and tweaking. At this point, you should have the ability to see a demo of your site and do some testing. Test links, analytics, and forms especially. Ask a friend to check it over for typos or last minute content tweaks. You can also insert your back-dated blog posts or any additional, updated content.
2. Post on social media that your new website is soclose to getting launched!!!

Launch!

1. Send your launch email to your email list announcing the launch with some specific calls to action around what they will find on the site
2. Send out emails to those not on your email list who may still like to know: referral sources, colleagues, friends, family.
3. Post on social media about your site launch being sure to call readers of the social media post into action

Even if Your Site is Imperfect, Launch Anyway

There is so so much to get done with launching a website. The roadmap outlined in this post goes pretty deep into what an optimal launch strategy might look like. However, even if you don’t have time for all of the items or your site just didn’t get those last tweaks, you should launch your site anyway.

Websites are never perfect and if during the creation of your website you allow yourself to believe that you can simply delay the launch if things don’t get done, you may end up delaying the website for months. “It will be ready when it’s ready” is not a good launch strategy.

As long as your website is usable and does you no harm in terms of your professionalism, launch when you say you wil. Websites can be updated over time.

You may also be able to do a partial launch. Maybe you didn’t get any blog posts done! Well, that’s ok, launch the pages on your site that are done and build on them over time, but don’t wait to launch. Just get yourself out there!

Even though there is always a lot to do with online marketing and in the specific area of leveraging a website launch, you can do it! With a bit of planning and ideas about goals you’d like to reach and by when, it can make the marketing activities possible and even enjoyable.

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