Mapping out brand launch tasks in Asana

Welcome to The Digital Brew, a podcast about making your business more awesome online.

Your hosts are Angela (a copywriter) and Stew (a web designer). Pour yourself a cuppa and let’s get started with today’s episode…

In this episode, we talk about mapping out your brand launch tasks in Asana.

This should be super useful for you if you’re planning to launch or relaunch a brand. Or if you kind of “fell into it” the first time you launched and you want to go back and tick some of the boxes you missed.

One of the first things we did when we decided for sure that we were going to start a new brand was to create a new Asana organisation for it.

This made it go from an idea or abstract concept to something real that we were doing and could do and had to get done (hello deadlines!). Plus we could start dividing up tasks and assigning them to each other.

We created a new project called “TDB launch tasks” to contain everything relating to the launch.

At this point, we’d already decided on a name and bought the domain, and we had a pretty reasonable idea about what services we’d offer, but that was pretty much it.

Here’s our list of launch tasks (divided up into key categories):

Admin/accounting/legal:

• Start trademarking process
• Purchase company name on ASIC
• Set up and test email accounts
• Contact accountant for consultation about business structure/tax/finance requirements
• Decide business structure and get paperwork done
• Set up accounting software (we used Rounded)
• Register for GST
• Set up ticketing system
• Create terms and conditions
• Create proposal template (we use Nusii)
• Set up professional indemnity insurance (we’re with Bizcover)
• Set up business bank accounts (we’re with Suncorp because they’re our existing bank, but to be honest, they’re a bit archaic and probably wouldn’t recommend)

Services/packaging

• Map out standard package inclusions and pricing
• Map out care plan package inclusions and pricing
• Decide on hosting solution for clients
• Find email hosting provider (for ourselves)
• Create client portal/onboarding system (we’re using Trello)
• Create client training videos
• Create client training backend template
• Create offboarding/congratulations PDF

Brand/marketing

• Create brand strategy/guidelines (target audience, voice, style, USP, etc.)
• Create logo
• Set up coming soon page on website with waitlist/signup
• Map out pages for website
• Write content for website
• Design website
• Integrate email marketing system for newsletter signup
• Create social media post templates
• Create info pack for pre-launch
• Create email signatures
• Set up Google analytics and search console (linked to GA)
• Create and add descriptions to social media pages – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn
• Test and launch website
• Update LinkedIn bios to include company page/details
• Add website to relevant business directories
• Organise photoshoot

Launch/pre-launch

• Write pre-launch blogs, emails, and social media content for personal brands
• Choose a launch date
• Write launch content for new brand (emails and social media content)
• Record first batch of podcast episodes
• Write show notes, emails, and social media posts
• Schedule podcast episodes to launch as a batch

A few tips for working with Asana or any project management system:

• Set deadlines, even if they’re not really deadlines
• Use your project management system to delegate and collaborate if there’s more than just you involved in the launch project
• Assign tasks to the person who is currently responsible for them
• Use the task description to link to the relevant Google doc or web page, if appropriate
• Use commenting to keep task-related conversations in one place
• Mark your task off when it’s done
• Add new tasks when you think of them so you don’t forget to do the thing
• Have an ideas list to dump any thoughts that pop into your head through the day
• If a task is non-essential for launching and may distract you from other more important stuff, put it under “ideas” or “phase 2” and leave it for now

Of course, there are plenty of other tools you can use. You don’t have to stick with Asana if you don’t like it (a lot of people don’t). Try Trello, Clickup, BaseCamp, Airtable, Wrike, Jira,

Workfront, Podio, or Smartsheet. Or if you’re a bit old school, pen and paper works, too.

To wrap it up…

Using a tool is a very good way to start your brand off right – a good system will help you stay on track with other projects even after you’ve launched. If you build those good habits now, you’ll feel so much more prepared and organised when it’s time to work with customers and clients.

It’s really important that you don’t just wing it with your launch. If you wing it, you’ll only work on the fun stuff and keep putting off the boring (but important things).

Start by getting all your tasks that you can think of down on paper (or in digital form) so you can zoom out and see the big picture, map out your plan, and see your progress.

If you’re hesitating to write down tasks and due dates, you’re probably freaking out about your idea becoming real and/or it potentially failing (especially if you’ve had a business go not-so-great in the past). That’s normal. But you have to push past it.

If you really want it to happen, you have to make it happen!

We’ll catch you in the next episode, which is all about designing packages and services (and pricing them).

Thanks for tuning in to The Digital Brew with Ange and Stew. Make sure you head over to thedigitalbrew.com for more episodes, detailed show notes, resources, and our newsletter. And if you feel like this episode has helped make your business more awesome, pop us a review. We’ll catch you next time!