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Things You’ll Learn in this Episode of Doing it Online:

• The 3 questions to ask yourself after a “failed” launch.
• How to self-audit a launch that didn’t run to plan so you don’t throw away the elements that actually were working. 
• Why community is key when it comes to launching…

The Doing It Online Podcast Episode 59: How to fix a “failed” launch.

“Failed” launches suck. There’s really no way around it. 

BUT! 

You don’t suck. Your business doesn’t suck.

And hen a launch doesn’t go to plan you’ve got 2 options:

1. Dissolve into a pool of misery and despair. 
2. Learn a few lessons, gather some data and make informed choices for your next launch. 

Because honestly, there’s really no failure. Only learning. 

A “failed” launch is data, information and feedback. 

But what are you meant to do with that information? And how do you know which bits of data to be looking at? 

So glad you asked! Because in today’s episode, I’m going to take you through how to self-audit your launches (especially the ones that really didn’t go to plan) so you can pin-point exactly where things are going wrong. 

And more importantly, where things are going right, so you don’t chuck away something that’s actually amazing! 

So, come on, let’s do this together and we’ll pin-point exactly where things are going off the rails for you, so that you can hold onto the pieces that are working, tweak the ones that aren’t and work towards your best launch ever.

How to fix a “failed” launch: what to look out for

There’s 3 things we’re going to analyse with our data from the launch that didn’t go to plan. 

1. Your offer
2. Your marketing and messaging
3. Or, was it something completely outside of your control? (e.g: A global pandemic.)

But before we go into that I just wanted to quickly share with you a story, (you’ll get way more detail when you have a listen to the episode, but I’ll recap it here.) 

A friend of mine with a phenomenal 7+ figure business, a super solid, totally on clockwork business and her latest launch? Tanked. 

And even she went through the ‘I-suck-disaster-thinking’ despite having such a rock-solid business, so that’s takeaway number one. (Not every shiny entrepreneur on the internet is immune to the ‘I suck’ thoughts.)

And when she called me to troubleshoot it through, we realised a few things came into play, including her pricing and some outside circumstances that she had zero control over. 

But there was actually nothing wrong with her offer, her business or her. 

Now she has information to go back into her next launch and tweak so she can get her numbers back up. 

No disaster thinking required!

Ok! I’m going to share with you the very same questions that I asked her, so that you can self-audit your own launches… 

Question 1: What did you change?

What did you change and which pieces are new? This is why I’m a big believer in rerunning pieces of your launch, rather than doing it from scratch each time. Because when you re-run, you can compare like for like. If you’ve run with the same bonuses and offers and discount, and it didn’t convert this time, that’s information.

Of course, with a brand new launch, you won’t have this information to compare to, which is when we start with industry benchmarks. And that leads me to my second question…

Question 2: Do you know what your stats are? 

Do you know what your stats are for the individual components of your launch AND how they stack up against the benchmarks of your industry. 

This is one of the reasons people love eCourse Empire, because for every part of a launch, and for every part of a funnel, we have benchmarks for that. And it means they can refer to those numbers and it gives them a great way to health check their launch or funnels. 

Then they can see certain numbers are in the “healthy” range, so that’s not the issue and it helps them narrow down to where the conversions are falling off. The aim here is to look for the big holes in stats, not where things are off by 1 or 2 %. So if the benchmark is 35% and you’re getting 33% or even 31%…that’s not the issue. If you were getting 10% then boom. That’s a red flag that something is off there. 

Again, I do go into this in more detail in the episode so when you’ve got your pen and paper go give that a listen.

Pro tip: We compile the stats from ALL of our launches in a spreadsheet so we can compare them side by side.

Question 3: Were your expectations too high?

Now, this is one of the things that always blows everybody’s minds in our program, because not only do we give them realistic calculators and benchmarks, but then they can also jump on a live call (we have 2-3 a week)! And then we break it down together to see where things are going off course. 

Recently we had a client who was convinced her webinar was rubbish, so we looked at her numbers and we realised that the webinar was actually amazing. It had a really high conversion rate, people stayed right to the end, but the title and the opt-in page weren’t great, so people weren’t actually getting to it. 

She nearly chucked away an amazing webinar! This is why knowing your numbers is KEY. 

And we don’t just pull numbers out of the air, we reverse engineer our goals (and that’s what we get our clients to do too) and we work backwards, setting milestones from there. 

Question 4: When troubleshooting a launch, don’t hide. 

Please don’t be ashamed that something hasn’t gone to plan and refuse to tell people about it. There can be a lot of shame in a “failed” launch, but sometimes sharing about it can actually help you see that it wasn’t something to do with your specific launch at all, but something people are finding across the board. But if you don’t ask the questions and get vulnerable (with the right people – not just anyone) then you’ll risk making all kinds of wrong assumptions and going back to that disaster “I suck” thinking. 

Aint nobody got time for that. 

That’s why having a community like eCourse Empire or something similar is so powerful. It’s a group of your own business BFF’s to be transparent with, in the journey together. 

So don’t hide. Don’t be ashamed of a launch that hasn’t gone to plan. Sometimes it’s not even you – it’s a timing thing, completely out of your control. And it’s critical you know that so you don’t go and throw out a bunch of great stuff in the bin. 

And when you gather up your information and chat it through with your community, you can take all that data into your next launch and make it your best ever…