Don’t make this mistake with your next launch (and what to do instead)

Want to create a quality digital product? Great! But unfortunately, even the best product won't sell itself—you need to have a strategy for it. Time and time again I see business owners focusing all of their energy on creating their program and getting the content “just right” but don't spend enough time actually launching it. In today's episode, I'm sharing more about this reallllly common mistake and what you can do instead.

– Why selling a digital product has nothing to do with creating it and everything to do with getting it into your customers' hands.
– Why having a great product with great content is important, but it doesn't mean that people will automatically buy from you.
– The two likely problems you'll experience if you don't have clarity on who exactly your product is for.
– The importance of purposeful audience research to understand their struggles and the language they use.
– Using free content to communicate your offer in the right ways to the right people.

 

 
Today, I'm talking about a big mistake that I noticed happening with people creating online courses, programs, memberships, basically any kind of offer they are planning to launch out into the world. 

Now, the big mistake is spending too much time focusing on the content of your product and not actually thinking about your launch or more specifically how you're going to sell this product. Now, when I'm talking about the launch in this context, I'm not talking about the very first time that you put it out into the world that's not what I mean by the launch. By the launch, I mean the sales process, the way that you are selling this offer, and you might launch the same offer several times in one year. 

So the big mistake is spending way too much time creating the content and not enough time thinking about how you are going to sell it.

Now, wanting to create the best online course program membership is great but unfortunately, the best offer, the best product, it's not going to sell itself and that's where your strategy comes into it. It has nothing at all to do with creating the product and what goes into it and everything to do with how you are going to get it into your customer's hands.

It's not about having a big audience. You can have a great product and a big audience and still struggle to sell your offer if you don't get these things, right?

 

Mistakes with your next launch and what to do instead

 

#1: Clarity on exactly who your offer is for. 

You may think you know who your offer is for, but most of the time when I chat with my students about this, they try and tell me who their offer is for and I realise, huh, they're rambling because they actually don't know who their offer is for. So they're just giving me the word vomit version of it. If I ask you who is your offer for and your response is some kind of broad segment of people. Business owners, for example, rather than saying a business owner who is in their third year of business and runs some kind of service-based business that means you don't know who your offer is for clearly enough.

And two problems with not knowing exactly who your offer is for. 

Firstly, your offer is not going to get them the best result. The best kind of online course or program is the one that gets the right people from A to B in the quickest possible way. But if you have a really broad intended buyer for this offer, then it's going to be really challenging because you might have to add extra content just in case they're in this situation or just in case they have this problem.

And the other problem is that your messaging won't resonate with them in a way that makes them think, Oh, this was made for me. And instead, you might find that they're questioning. Is this for me? Or they won't see the value in it. 

 

#2: Start talking to people who are similar to that ideal client.

Once you know who your offer is for, you need to start talking to people who are similar to that ideal client. Find out what they're struggling with. Find out how they are experiencing the problem that your offer solves. Find out what they desire and then listen to the language that they use to talk about it. 

Using the language or listening to that language is the shortcut to creating messaging that resonates with the right people and shows them that it's the right choice for them. It's exactly what they need. It also shows you what you need to include in your offer and what you may not need to include because they already understand this. And it also shows you what kind of free content you need to share in the lead-up to doors open. 

 

#3: Free content.

So when I talk about free content, I'm talking about social posts, podcast episodes. If you have podcast emails to your list, everything that you are sharing for free online in that 60 to 90 days before you actually ask somebody to buy. And all of this content is ideally bridging what I call the magician's gap, the gap between where your ideal client is right now and where they need to be to be ready to buy your particular offer.

This content is not going to be how-to content instead. Instead, you're going to cover that bridge. You're going to bridge that gap in their knowledge, their understanding, right? Your audience research will help you to understand where your audience is at right now and where your ideal client is right now.

And you as the expert also need to start thinking about where they need to be to be ready to buy and then you can bridge that gap with your free content so that when you sell to them, you've already brought them on this journey to where they need to be, right? Your other free content piece is your launch lead magnet.

 

#4: Your offer messaging. 

So in other words, how are you communicating your offer in a way that makes the right person think this was made for me? And the wrong person realised, Oh, this isn't for me. So your messaging is going to include how you preempt your ideal client's questions and their objections and how you address those.

It's going to include how you communicate the problem that your offers solve, the solution to their problem and the transformation that they're going to have once that problem is solved, it's going to communicate who it's for, who it's not for. And you could have the best online course, program, membership, whatever.

But if your messaging sucks, it's not going to sell. And more often than not, if somebody's launch fails, it's probably because of a messaging issue. This is what I've noticed, right? Most of the time, it's a messaging issue. It's not a matter of nobody wanting that actual offer. It's just that they couldn't communicate it in a way that made people realised this was what they needed and this is something that they should prioritise spending their money on.

 

#5: Validation. 

So testing that messaging. Once you've got that messaging, test it to see if it resonates with your ideal client and potentially even test the offer. So potentially launching it. Selling it and then creating it before you've invested all this time into creating an offer. Find out if that's something that people will actually spend money for. And I know wait lists can be a pretty common form of validation but then they're not a great form of validation. 

They're not super strong because you're not actually asking somebody to commit to 12 weeks of your course or commit to paying money for it. But instead, if you're asking somebody to pay for an early bird spot, then that's a much better form of validation. 

 

#6: Audience growth and email list building. 

Now I regularly chat with people who tell me some version of, I'm disappointed in my launch because only 10 people signed up. And then we do a little bit of digging into the numbers and it turns out that they only had a hundred people on their email list and their launch actually converted at 10%, which is amazing. Rather than waiting for your audience to be big enough before you launch, start that 60 to 90-day launch process and grow your audience at the same time and focus on building your email list.

Because now, once you start to think of launching as something that you can do over and over again, each time you launch, you can grow your audience a little bit more and you can sell more. And once it's converting well, then you can invest in paid ads and you can really double down on growing that audience and then converting them.

 

#7: Your launch assets. 

So your sales page, your cart open emails, your webinar slides, all of those things. They're not an afterthought. These are the things that actually help to sell your offer. They bring together your messaging in a way that helps the right people decide that your offer is right for them.

And the wrong people realise that your offer is the wrong one for them. It's not just all about sharing those features and benefits, right? So it's not about saying, Oh, we've got 10 Zoom calls so that you can ask all of your questions. But it's also thinking about what are the hesitations that might stop somebody from signing up or what questions might they have.

So if you've got 10 Zoom calls, some of the questions to preempt might be what time are the calls? Do I have to attend them live? Are there recordings? Can I submit my questions ahead of time? These are all potential questions that will come up for somebody that can stop them from buying. 

 

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