Episode #039: What To Do When a Launch Goes Sideways
What To Do When a Launch Goes Sideways
Have you ever had a launch go sideways? If so, this episode is about how to handle it, react, and move forward with ease and grace.
When you tune in you'll learn:
The key stats to analyze after a flop launch
The Importance of messaging (and how to fix it) when a launch doesn't convert where it should
Why CELEBRATING a bad launch is super important
So tune in - because we all have a bad launch at some point, and now you can be prepared.
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 39. And in this episode, we're talking about what to do when a launch doesn't go the way you want. So if you've been launching or you've had a launch recently, or you're thinking about launching and in the back of your head, you're saying, what if this doesn't work, this episode is for you. So stay tuned.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average marketer, welcome back to the podcast. Now I want to first say thank you. I know it's been a couple weeks since we created a podcast, we've had some crazy stuff going on in our personal life, but we are back and we are pumped. And by we, I mean me, and I'm back and I'm pumped. And I'm really excited for this week's episode because I think in the world of online marketing, a lot of times we hear about things that go well, right? We hear about people who are doing this six figure launches, or doubling their membership, or selling out their paid workshops. And it's not often that people share when things don't go well. And I thought it would be a really good time. And I'll tell you why in a second to share an episode that's a little more direct about what we do when things don't go the way we've planned.
So what does that mean exactly? Why is now the time? Well, I want to tell you a brief story, and then I promise I will get into some juicy goodness. That's going to help you make sure that your next launch is a success or understand what happened if your next launch isn't a success, or you've already had a launch that wasn't a success. So recently we relaunched our membership. For those of you who don't know, we have a membership it's $49 a month, Not Your Average membership. We'll link it up in the show notes. And I'm going to talk about it a little bit later. But we had a membership and in July of 2022, we had this goal to add 100 to 150 new members. And what happened was we started running the ads. We got about a thousand dollars into the advertising and we were just paying too much per lead.
We couldn't get the ads dialed in. We couldn't get the messaging right. I had just come back from a vacation. I was totally behind the eight ball on creating a lot of the content. And frankly, it was just a perfect storm of, I can tell that this is not going to go the way I wanted to go. Now, ultimately we ended up getting 23 new people into the membership as a direct result of our launch, but that was really frustrating because it's nowhere near where we wanted to be. And so we kind of said, like, we need to look at this launch and figure out what happened, what worked, what didn't work, and how are we going to fix it going forward. And that's what this episode is about, is understanding how to be proactive about your next promotions instead of reactive about the things that haven't worked well for you. And I think it's also worth noting that when we track our ads, we also found that none of the sales of our membership actually came from the people who opted in from advertising. So a lot of things just didn't go well.
And so the first thing that I want to tell you is that when something like this happens, when you have a launch that doesn't go as well as you want, whether it be you hit 20% of your goal or you hit 0% of your goal. To me, the most important thing, the first thing is that you take a moment to regroup and just acknowledge your feelings. I think it's so easy to get caught up in this culture of like, what do I do now? How do I fix it? Where do I go? What's next? And kind of panic, that's what we do. We panic. And we don't think about what are the potential ramifications of not just sitting in your feelings for a minute, right? I'm a firm believer that just having those feelings, experiencing those feelings, being with those feelings is a really positive thing. And what I give it is about 24 hours of self pity. I call it my 24 hour rule.
If I'm feeling like, "Man, this was terrible, Zach. I'm not happy with this. This isn't the results I wanted." I just kind of let myself sit in a little bit of self pity for 24 hours. And I think so often we overlook the value of that because sometimes we just push things down because we think I've got to make more money, or I've got to fix this, or I've got to figure out why. But the reality is, it was once told to me when I was starting my business, I took a big risk and I left my assistantship. I had a full-time assistantship for my master's program. And I decided to leave that. And I remember talking to a mentor of mine and I said, what happens if this doesn't work? And he said, well, you still have skills. You can always like, worst case scenario, you could go get a job. And I think in the online marketing space, we vilify a 9:00 to 5:00 so much that we forget that that's still an option.
Is it the option we want to take? No. Would it stink if we're already full time and we had to go back to a 9:00 to 5:00? Sure. Does it stink if you're already working a 9:00 to 5:00 and you thought this was your big webinar to get out and it flops? Totally. I'm not saying that none of that is true. What I am saying. And what I want you to hear from me is that there's always a backup plan. Okay? You always have a backup plan. So feel your feelings know that nothing is fatal, nothing is final. And then the next thing you want to do is analyze the launch. So first thing you want to do is actually look at the launch because I talk to clients a lot who go, "My launch failed, my launch wasn't good because I didn't hit my goals." And when we look at the numbers, the launch actually didn't do that bad.
So I'm going to give you a really specific example from our last launch. We ended up having about 350 people sign up for our webinar. Most of those came from our email list. We'll talk about why that was a little low in a moment. But 23 people bought the membership, which means our webinar converted in the launch at 6.6%. 6.6% of people who signed up for our webinar ended up joining our membership. That's not too shabby. That's actually pretty good. So I always check a few key metrics. What was the conversion rate like? What were my expenses in my profit? Did I make money? We ended up profiting about $1,172, and we created $1,000 a month in new recurring revenue. I also look at the opt-in rate of my landing pages, were people getting to my landing pages are clicking on my ads and then actually signing up for the training? And then I'll also look at the offer. And I'll look at the offer very critically and say, is this something people were asking for that people wanted?
And generally what I can look at is my conversion rate. If people are seeing the offer, but not buying, that tells me that I've got an issue with the messaging or the offer. So the first thing I do is without being too nerdy is a statistical analysis of the conversion rate of the launch, the expenses, the profit, the opt-in rates. And then I'll look at those numbers and see how it relates to the offer itself. Because here's the thing. If you do this and you go, oh wow, I converted at 5%. That's not bad. Really anything over 3% is really good conversion rate these days. And if you are converting above 3%, 4%, 5% and you're like, "But my launch didn't go well." It's a volume game. And you know that now. And this is one of the reasons that I'm such a huge advocate for building your list all the time.
We recently did this launch and when the ads stopped working, I told my team, I was like, "You know what? Instead of banging our head against the wall, trying to get these ads to work, let's just have an organic launch." And I knew that was going to cost us sales. I knew that after the launch, I was still going to be in my feelings for a couple days. But the reality is because we're building our list 24/7, it wasn't the end of the world. Now, did it make our numbers lower? Sure. Are we churning out people in the membership and we'll probably need to do some sort of promotion in August? Absolutely. But when we take the emotion out of it, by first letting those emotions sink in and experience them. And then doing an analysis of the numbers where emotions don't creep into play, we were able to see that actually this launched it okay.
Now, I want to acknowledge that if you do this and you're like, "My launch didn't do okay." Then generally what it comes down to is that you've got messaging issues. If you're like, "I had 300 people sign up and no one bought." That's usually messaging. It means that the message that you're connecting with your audience on your offer is not resonating with them. Now, those are really fancy ways of saying people just don't want what you're selling, you know? And that's okay. It just means that you need to refine. So when I find out that my offer was like, if I look at my stats, and I'm like, oh, this wasn't a good message. I know that it's time to refine that message. And so I'll give you a really specific example. When we looked at the conversion rate of our opt-in page for our launch, we found that it was a little low. We like our opt-in page for a launch organically to be 40% or higher. And we found that it was under 30%.
That tells us that people were clicking on the links, seeing the opt-in page and going, "I'm not interested in this." And to me, that's a big like, whoa. If people aren't even signing up for the free thing, how are they going to convert to the paid thing? And you might be saying, "Well, Zach, they did convert to the paid thing." And that's true. They did. But that is probably more due to the fact that we targeted an organic audience. We leaned into this organic audience. And so these are people who already know, like, and trust me, and were more likely to buy. But if you do this and we say like, hey, the messaging, wasn't good on the opt-in page, the messaging wasn't good on the offer. What I'll do is I'll actually survey my audience and ask them, "Hey, I noticed that you didn't join the membership. Can I ask, why? Can I ask what held you back from joining?
And I'll literally just send out a quick survey to people who went through my launch and ask them why they didn't buy. And just to be clear, you're always going to get people who say, "I don't have time. I don't have money." We're looking for people who are saying like, 'This wasn't a good fit for me. Or my biggest struggle is this. And you talked about that. Or I really wanted to do this, but I didn't think that it would come with what I needed. Or it wouldn't come with the support I needed, or there wasn't enough handholding, or there's too much handholding, or it felt too advanced, or it felt too beginner." You want to start to identify what it is that people are saying was not working for them in terms of the messaging of the offer. And you can do this for both the freebie and for the launch product.
So you could by rights, email your whole list and say, "Hey, I've been talking about my free webinar for the past couple weeks. We just wrapped up a promotion with it. And I noticed you didn't sign up for the webinar. Can I ask why?" And it can be that simple. You can literally have people just respond to an email, or you can give them a link to click and fill out a one-question survey. The point is that you're trying to pinpoint why people didn't move through the flow. Why people didn't come off your email list or off of your Facebook ads into your webinar, or challenge your video series, and then ultimately buy the product. And rather than guess, and assume, and interpret just the numbers. We can get qualitative data by asking our audience what it is that would support them. Okay. Now, once you've done that, I wanted to tell you that the next important thing is to create a proactive plan. Now, I want to be super clear. I use the word proactive intentionally, because I don't want you to create a reactive plan.
I was recently talking to a member of my coaching program and they had switched their business model a little bit. And they said, "I really would like to generate some cash. And so I feel like I need to do this, and then I'm going to do that. And I'm going to launch this thing. And then right after that, I'm going to promote that thing." And I said, "You know, this sounds like a really reactive plan." And they said, "Well, what do you mean?" And I said, "It sounds like, instead of planning based on what you want to do or what the business needs, you're reacting to a negative by trying to create cash." Now hear me out. I'm not saying that if your launch goes sideways and you're relying on that cash flow, that you don't need the cash. What I'm saying is if you make all of your plans from this place of desperate, I need cash now, J.G. Wentworth style, it's going to come back, and it's going to bite you.
Because when we react, we're rushed, we're pressed, we're under pressure. When we're proactive, we're thinking, we're being critical, we're being mindful, we're planning. What I'm saying is, you need to start thinking about what your next steps are from a holistic perspective of like the next three to four months, not the next three to four days. Now, does that mean that you can't do all of this analysis, figure out what went wrong, and relaunch two weeks later? No. It doesn't mean that. You could absolutely do that. What it does mean is that, if you're going, "Oh my gosh, I was hoping to generate $10,000 in cash and I generated $4,000. So what am I going to do right now for $6,000 in the next three days?" That's going to kill you. You don't want to do that. You don't want to put yourself under that pressure and stress. Because the pressure to perform is going to backfire and make it harder for you to get the results that you're seeking.
So what I do is I typically say, what do I want the next three months to look like based on what just happened. So for us, we are going to do an extra launch of our membership, and we're going to tie it into some of the other promotions in our business. So the point is not simply, oh, how do I replace those members that I was going to get? How do I get 125 members? Instead we said, okay, what can I put in place to get a hundred new members over the next 30, 60, 90 days? So our goal has shifted from, I want to get 100 to 150 members during this promotion, to I want to get 100 to 125 members by the end of October. So that gives me 90 days to figure this out. So part of this is that by releasing that pressure valve, I don't feel like I have to do a million things. I don't feel like I have to be at this maximum operational efficiency to get good results. I can just start chipping away at a bigger plan.
The next thing that I want to talk to you about is how important it is to get support. Now, I'm not going to sit here and say, "Oh, get support. You have to hire me if you want to do that. If you had a failed launch, come hire me." We have a membership. I'm going to talk about it briefly, but you can get support in any number of ways. If you work with a coach, go to your coach, tell them what happened and create that plan together. Leverage your existing resources. If you don't have a coach, maybe you have a peer in this space. And I want to stress that you go to a peer, not family or friend who doesn't understand your business. Taking advice from somebody who doesn't understand your business is never a good idea in my opinion, but you can go to a peer who's maybe in a similar boat as you or who's had a failed launch, or who's doing really well and can help you figure out what didn't work with your launch.
Now, if you're listening to this and you're like, "Man, I wish I had a community where I could go to when stuff doesn't go right. You might want to join us inside, Not Your Average membership. And Not Your Average membership is a monthly community that you get to be a part of where every month we release a specific action plan for you to generate more leads, sales, and growth in your business. Plus, it's got an entirely supportive community. Now, we'll link it up in the show notes over at heartsoulhustle.com/NYAP039. But you can check it out right now if you want at join.notyouraveragemembership.com. Again, that's join.notyouraveragemembership.com. So J-O-I-N.notyouraveragemembership.com. So if you want to check it out, if you're looking for a supportive community, if you want a place where for just 49 bucks a month, you can get my eyes on your content, peers' eyes on your content, and join a community of people who are going through the same challenges, struggles, and successes that you are. Then you want to check out, Not Your Average membership.
The last thing that I want to touch on before we start to wrap up here is that it's important to celebrate the small stuff, because all the small stuff is big stuff. I think it's easy when something like this happens and using our launch as a really specific example to go, "Man, we wanted 100 people, and we got 23. That sucks". Instead of going, "Man, 23 people trusted me. To join me inside my membership, to start taking action, to get results with their business. How freaking cool is that?" You have to celebrate the wins. You sell one. Congratulations. You've sold more than 80% to 90% of the people who think about starting a business. You sold 20. Amazing. Look at all the good stuff you're doing. So what your goal was 100, 20 is nothing to scoff at. You've got to celebrate.
All your emails went out on time. You did everything in advance. You were prepared, you were ready. Celebrate the small stuff. Even if you don't get that big win of hitting that metric you want to feel good, the reality is you can choose to feel good now. And you should choose to feel good now. So I just want to do a quick recap of everything that we covered today. So if your launch goes sideways, here's what to do. First things first, regroup. Sit in your feelings. It's okay. We're humans. We're not cyborgs. We're allowed to have emotions. So sit with those. I have the 24 hours self-pity rule where for 24 hours I can go, "Man, this just sucks." But then I'm going to get to work and start creating a plan to get myself out of the stuck.
Two, analyze the numbers, start looking at the key metrics from your launch to see how it actually performed. I like to look at conversion rate, profit, expenses, revenue, opt-in rates, and how the offer was received by my audience. Now, if I look at those numbers and I find out that, oh, wow, people were seeing the offer, but they weren't buying it. Then, I'm going to look at the messaging. And the best way to look at the messaging in my opinion is to simply ask people, "Hey, why didn't you buy? Or why didn't you join the training?" Once I've looked at all that, I'm going to create a proactive, not a reactive plan. And we really talked about how there's power in planning ahead versus power in reacting out of fear or desperation. Then I'm going to get support. So whether that's a peer, a mentor, a coach, or you join our membership, you absolutely want to get support, kind of share these analysis with somebody else and see what they think and see if there's things that maybe you're just overlooking or not seeing.
And finally, celebrate the small stuff, because even the small stuff is big stuff. So if you want a recap of anything that we covered today, you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/NYAP039. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/NYAP039 for Not Your Average Podcast, episode number 39. Over there, we'll have a complete transcript of the entire show that you can go back and read through, along with links to some various resources like the membership, where to find me on Instagram, all that good stuff. So it is so good to be back. I hope you get mad value out of this episode, and until next time. Stay not so average.
