Planning your first launch? These are the five mistakes that I want you to avoid so that way you don't miss out on a ton of money. In this blog post, we are going to go over what these mistakes are and what I want you to do instead, so keep reading!
Before we dive deep into it, I want to just let you in on a little secret. While you're reading to these mistakes you may feel a little attacked, but I don't want you to run away from it. I want you to know that it is totally normal! By the end of this post, you will not only know what these mistakes are, but you will also have clear strategies to avoid them and to make sure that while you are planning your launch, you are doing it in a way that feels good and that serves not only you, but your audience and your clients in the absolute best way.
Launching Without a Clear Goal
The number one mistake that online service providers and coaches make is that they try to launch without having a clear goal. This is a problem is because they don't know what they're working towards, so they're not able to determine if the plan that they are using is actually working or if the launch will be a profitable one. One of the ways to avoid this very common mistake is to set a good, better, and a best goal. Basically, choose three targets that you use to measure while your launch is going on if you are on track. Your good goal is normally the minimum goal that you would need in order for your launch to be profitable, your better goal is normally the goal that you actually really want, and your best goal is normally the goal that is exceeding above what you would normally want in your launch.
A good example of the good, better, best goal system: Let's say you have a goal of 10 people enrolled in your program. Your good goal may be seven and your best goal may be 12. You're able to use these good, better, best goals to determine, based on where you are in your launch, if your conversions will allow you to hit the profit margin that you need in order to be successful.
Leveraging this good, better, best goal also helps you to determine if your content is working, if your emails are working, and where you are seeing the most traction from your audience. When you are launching with a goal, then you have a roadmap to be able to say if you are on track or if you are not on track. You can determine if your goal is in alignment by looking at your past data and looking at industry standards to see if it even makes sense. For instance, if you are looking at your landing page conversions and you see that your landing page conversion is typically 27%, but you are looking to create a goal that would mean that you would need a 47% conversion, then you know that that goal may not be realistic and you're able to tweak it, so that way it is more attainable for you and more in alignment with what you have historically been able to do with your audience.
Launching Without a Profitable Audience
Mistake number two is launching before you build a profitable audience. So many people do this and then they get frustrated because they're like, "Why is it that every time I launch the only people who are in my emails are my aunt or my cousin or it's crickets, there's no one there!?" This is the reason why. You need to ensure that your audience is invested in your content, that they see you as an expert, that there is a trust factor, and that they are actually interested in what it is that you are presenting to them before you go through the hassle of launching.
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A few ways to generate interest from your audience:
Showing them behind the scenes,
Getting their input on the name of your program or your service, the length of it, the price of it, etc;
Leveraging market research and data or their comments and questions to create a marketing and a messaging strategy that resonates with how they are presenting themselves to you in your Instagram or Facebook or in your group or wherever they are in your audience.
You want to make sure that you are getting your audience's input and that they know that something is coming before you surprise them with a new product or service. If you are leveraging behind-the-scenes content, if you're getting their input, you are getting a buy-in from this audience that says, "Wow, I see this person as an expert, they're asking questions, I'm providing answers. Now I am invested in this program or this service, because I have had an input in what it would ultimately turn out to look like. I've been watching them building, they've been answering my questions." All of these things help to build momentum even before you launch.
If you want to learn some strategies to build a profitable audience, then make sure you grab the Profitable People Program. You can also watch this video and learn strategies to increase your brand visibility ahead of your launch. These strategies are so important because they will help you fill the top of your funnel with more qualified leads, more people who are interested in what you do, are interested in your program or your service.
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Launching Without Testing Your Technology
The third biggest launch mistake is not testing your tech. Have you ever gone through someone's launch or signed up for the waitlist and you didn't get a thank you email, you didn't get access to a digital file, or one of the links was broken? This is one of the biggest ways to lose money in your launch or to even lose trust with your audience. You always want to make sure that before your launch goes live, that you have gone through the system, gone through the tech as a customer, and that everything has checked out. For another layer of preparation, have one other person that you trust go through the process. Your VA, your business bestie, anyone who would go through it and give you reliable feedback.
You want to make sure that your clients are having a seamless onboarding experience and that they are getting all of the information that they need to continue moving through that funnel. If something is broken or it's not working, you run the risk of decreasing your conversion rates, feeling frustrated or having to fix something during the launch which leaves you feeling frazzled. Testing your tech is just a really easy way to combat all of that and to make the experience enjoyable for not only yourself, but also for your clients as well.
Launching Without Following Up
I'm sure you've heard this common saying "The fortune is in the follow-up." That is especially true for launching a new product or service. I never want you to think that just because you talked to one person one time that they are automatically going to remember. There is so much stimulus, there are so many messages, there are so many things that are constantly grabbing at our attention every day. During your launch, your job will always be positioning yourself at the top of your ideal client's brain and that means that you have to constantly remind them that you are there for them, that you can answer any questions they may have, that the cart or waitlist is open, or that you see that they have signed up. You really want to make sure that you're keeping track of who is engaged with your stories, especially during the pre-launch period where you're priming them, where you're getting their feedback, where you're using polls, and you're using question stickers to really get them engaged.
The pre-launch data is gold. Leverage that data and that you keep track of it for the time when your launch goes live. Then you're able to go back and you're able to say, "Hey, Brianca, I saw that you clicked this poll and you helped me pick the name of this program. I just wanted to let you know that I so appreciated your feedback and this program is now live. If you're interested, you can go check out the sales page and add your name to the list!" This now creates a relationship with your ideal client, because they're like, "Wow. She remembered that I helped her pick out this name. She remembered that I was invested in this solution, and now she's coming back to me to remind me that the cart is open. Let me go check it out."
You also want to make sure that you're engaging with your audience while they're on the waitlist. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is they bring their audience onto a glamorous waitlist then they say nothing to the audience for weeks until the product/service/event is live. It just doesn't make sense! That is a warm audience so you want to keep them warm, you want to keep them engaged, you want to keep talking to them. Make sure that you are continuously following up even if they apply and don't move forward or if they joined the waitlist, but didn't move froward. Follow up with everyone because it may just be a case of them forgetting to continue with the process.
When I launched Marketing Masters, my monthly membership program, I had so many people on the waitlist, but when the cart opened, they didn't sign up. Thankfully, I had all of their Instagram handles from my form, so I sent them individualized DMs letting them know that the doors to the program were open specifically for them and I would love for them to apply, or I would love for them to ask me any questions. I got seven enrollments that day just by using the follow-up strategy. Follow up works! You want to make sure that you are following up and that you're not just saying something one time and then crossing your fingers and hoping that they will follow through. Remind them over and over again that this opportunity is waiting for them if and when they are ready.
Launching Without Auditing Your Data
Then the fifth mistake is going to be not auditing your data. How many times have you had a launch, you made all this money, and then you never even go back to say, "Oh, I did this, right. I really liked this. I didn't like this. This didn't go well." It happens to all of my clients, but I want you to know that one of the ways to make sure that your launches are optimized and that they are getting better every single time is to make sure that you are going back and checking that data. You want to be looking for things like:
What were your conversion rates?
What content performed the best? What emails had the highest open rate or the highest click-through rate?
What did you like about this launch? What did you not like?
Was your wait list conversion higher than it normally is? And if so, did you do anything differently?
Did you increase the number of platforms that you were on and is that why you saw a higher conversion rate? Did you put out a different lead magnet?
You want to be able to pinpoint the successes or the failures of your launch to certain actions so that way you can do more of the actions that work and less of the actions that do not work.
You want to make sure that not only do you collect this data at the end of your launch, but that you leverage this data when you are planning for your next launch. This is the way to ensure that you're creating a system so that way every time you were launching, it is getting better and better and better and better and better.
Final Thoughts
Just to recap, the five costly mistakes that coaches should avoid when planning their launch are: launching without a goal, launching before building a profitable audience, not testing your tech, not following up, and not auditing your data. If you are doing any of these five mistakes, I want you to stop right now and start implementing the strategies that we've gone over today to ensure that your launch can be profitable and that your audience can have a seamless experience.
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Let me know in the comments, what the biggest mistake is that you've ever made in your launch. I can tell you off the top that the biggest mistake I ever made was number two. I did not create a profitable audience before I launched and I ended up launching to crickets and it was a catastrophe 🥴