Launch debrief: What worked (and didn’t) and what we’re doing differently this year (ft. Anita Siek)

One of *the* most important parts of a launch is the debrief afterwards. So, in today's episode, I'm joined by my biz bestie Anita Siek who's the founder of Wordfetti, a human-centred copy and brand house and template shop for brands that don't do “normal”. We're openly sharing what worked and what didn't with our launches last year and how we're changing things up this year.

– How challenging launches can affect you personally and professionally.
– How understanding specific customer objections can be used as an effective content strategy.
– Why adapting your launch based on audience feedback and needs is so important for the next time round.
– The importance of reflecting on your personal growth and the evolution of your strategies in response to business challenges.

 

 
Today I'm chatting with Anita Sikh, who is one of my biz besties and real-life best friends. We're debriefing on our launches from 2023. So Anita runs a very similar business to mine in that most of her business is also based around launches of her courses and programs. She's a brand strategist, a copywriter. She is the founder of Wordfetti, and she's also the host of Brand Fetty podcast.

Today we're sharing what worked well in our launches in 2023, what didn't work and what we're going to change going forward into 2024 and beyond.

It's a very candid, very casual chat, but I know that you'll get a lot out of listening to and experiencing launches and what goes on a little bit behind the scenes. So enjoy!

Let's start with what didn't work.

Steph: I'm going to start with the most recent one that didn't work. And in hindsight, I understand why it didn't.
I did an audience survey. I always do my audience surveys and I realized, Oh, nobody knows what they're doing next year. Everyone's overwhelmed. They're scattered. They don't know what they're doing in 2024. So I thought, I'm going to just put together a small group, for 2024 planning, strategy intensive, kind of over four weeks, we'll go through and plan out everything for 2024, work through the mindset blocks that are stopping them from taking action on the things they want to do.
And it was a solid offer. I wrote all the copy myself because it was such a last-minute thing. I was so happy with it. And we ended up not going ahead with it because not enough people signed up for it to be worthwhile. And it was such a shock to me at the time because I was like, this is everyone's overwhelmed.
They so clearly need the strategy and the planning and the action steps, but everyone was so overwhelmed that they couldn't commit to doing extra calls pre-Christmas. So it was good insight to learn for next year, November, December, we probably will not launch something like that. It was a reality check.
Because we haven't had a failed launch in a very long time.

I had outlined what we were going to do each week in the group calls, but I hadn't actually created it. And I was able to use that outline anyway, because I taught that then to my Freedom Fast Track students, in January, instead of teaching it to a small group. So I was able to reuse that anyway.

 

Anita: It's interesting because I have a slightly different perspective for launching something in November and December, and I guess it really speaks to what people need in that given moment. I think when I reflect back on 2023 and a learning or a failure in learning that I had ─ was towards the second launch that we had for Word for the Awards, which is our signature copywriting program towards the second half of the year, which was around September.
Our ads were very, very, very expensive. We ran a three day challenge and the conversion rate was great. Around 17, 18 percent when we did the three day Copy Confidence Challenge, and it is a really great challenge.

S: So 18 percent of the people in the challenge converted into Wordfetti Your Words?

A: Yes. It's the highest we've ever had. And we launched that in a way at the beginning of the year. So I'm thought, you know what, now we're going to go ham on ads.
We've got the math. So we ran ads and look, so many different things can influence how much ads cost, of course, from external factors to. Gosh, so many different factors, right? But I think I had placed so much hope towards using ads for us to really get the people that we wanted, uh, into the challenge that I think it was, we started ads probably two and a half weeks before the actual challenge.

I usually leave ads up around five days to see how it goes and then make the call. What do we do? It was costing us almost a hundred or hundred and twenty dollars per person.
It was towards probably day 10 when we thought, you know what? This is not happening. I was frustrated.
But it taught me a lot because I think I just put almost all my eggs in the basket of trusting the fact that we were going to get X amount in people signing up to the challenge that ─ I forgot what they say about how there's usually five or 10 or 10 percent whatever of what you do that will create the 90 percent.
Oh, the 80 20 rule. The 20 percent, but at least the 80 percent. And one of the biggest things for me, which I definitely found towards the second half of the year, ── that I kind of wobbled a little bit with myself and the team with the consistency in our content.
And we were still consistent, but I was exhausted towards the second half of the year, towards September, October, along with so many people I know who probably would have been exhausted too, that I think towards the second half of the year, I just put all my eggs in a basket of the ads that I didn't think to create, continue on with that momentum, with the 20 percent that I knew, which was completely original different pieces of content on our social media.
A lot of our content is usually a mix of repurposed content, which still is the case. I'm a big lover of repurposed content. But we definitely wobbled a little bit purely because I was exhausted.
We just had big hopes with ads and it just didn't pan out, but you know what? You have no control. With every launch, there's so much that's in your control. And there's also so much that is out of your control. You can have everything perfect in your launch. You're like, I was so happy with the copy that I wrote for that launch.
But it was completely out of my control that my audience was exhausted and their calendars were full and they couldn't commit to four weeks of calls. Like that's not within my control. All we can focus on is the things that are in our control. And in your case, yeah, the content that you're sharing, how you're showing up, how you're removing the risk of just relying on that one source of leads for your challenge.

It's always a lesson, isn't it?

 

What worked well in our launches

What would you say has been something that has worked well in your launch this last year, Steph? What's been something that you feel has worked really well?

So, one thing that we do every time that we launch Launch Magic, I think we started doing it actually in 2022 for the first time, and it's been such a game changer in 2023 as well is teaching module one of Launch Magic as a live workshop for free.
So many people don't quite understand what is actually involved in Launch Magic. They're like, Oh, like how is this 12 weeks long? Like I want to launch really quickly. Like surely this is just going to be repeating so much beginner stuff. And then as soon as they do module one, they're sya, Oh, I get it.
There's actually a lot to it. There's a whole strategy here that I didn't even know I needed. And this is, and because we get straight into it, it's straight into the good stuff. It's not like we're spending the first module just doing basics ─ and that gets them across the line.

There've been so many people who have signed up because they've done that workshop and they've seen what's inside it. Previously in 2022, I just released the module. I gave them access to the prerecorded module for 72 hours. And so many people didn't complete it, but teaching it live was the game changer.
People registered, they showed up, they could ask questions. It was the way to do it.

So when you say you taught it live, how long was the session? Or was it like a summarized version of that?

It was a 90 minutes module. I'm not one of those people, probably the longest video in my course in any of my courses would maybe be 20 minutes. I'm short and to the point. If you listen to my podcast episodes, my lessons are the same. It's like, this is what you need to do. Sometimes I might give you a bit of why you need to do it, but generally you probably already know why you need to do it.
This is what you need to do. This is how you're going to do it. Here is a spreadsheet or a workbook to go and implement it. That's kind of my process. So yeah, all of module one's pretty short. But there's a lot of Q and A time in there and a sales pitch as well.

I love that. So it's almost like giving them that first step with a win. So even if they turned up to the masterclass or the webinar, they would have gotten epic value. If they want to continue on, it's like the most perfect next step.

What worked well for you?

So to expand on when I was chatting about what didn't go well. Every single time, and this happens with each launch, it's always something that just does not go to plan. I'm just going say it out right now, there's always for me, there's always like a tech glitch, there's usually like just something that just does not go to plan.
When things don't go the way you planned, it's almost like a science experiment where you're hypothesizing that given this and this and this, that you think it's probable that it's this, but it's not until you do the fricking thing that you're like, Oh, okay. So with your example, it's just like, okay, people are really overwhelmed and this is not the thing that they may want.
So one thing that has worked well, um, especially moments like that when things are not going to plan and ads are very expensive. Is literally me, so I will literally go in, me writing or rewriting certain emails in our launch sequence. So that is something that I did with the previous launch, but also the launch earlier in the year as well.
The launch emails are done prior, but the thing is there is fluidity for us to actually completely rewrite or tweak certain emails within the middle or introduce new bonuses. So with both our launches in 2023,  we rewrote probably the last three, four days worth of emails and tweaked certain messaging, um, in the emails, which I feel like, and I think.
has really supported us in still getting the numbers that we had projected or aimed for. Um, and this is a bit of a mixture, as in the next question that people may actually have is like, well, how or what do you rewrite or why do you rewrite it? So obviously when you open doors, you start having conversations with potential students and people, or even in QA, you start getting people asking certain questions.
And there are usually certain things that I would see and feel or read. Uh, and what would then end up happening is if there is a certain theme, so for example, one of the biggest objections I feel like for 2023 was just time. Overwhelming time. And I heard that consistently, and I feel like you probably would have as well, right?
And of course, when it comes to objection handling, when it comes to time, it's like more around prioritization. Like they're not prioritizing and all of that, but that was not enough. Like even us explaining like this is why you should prioritize it and this is why copy is really key. That wasn't in a way enough.
And I think what really helped I feel like with our last two launches to support this particular objection was actually literally getting one of like a number of our students. actually speaking to this objection and how this looked like for them. So we interviewed a series of, um, like students or alumni and actually would ask them questions and being like, you know, you're a mum.
And for example, you're a mom and you've got like two, three little humans and you're a time pool. So how did you actually go through word, fed your words and actually launch your sales page or launch your website? So we then started to create content really. specific, not just saying, this is why you should care about copy and learning how to write copy, but actually placed someone who fit that persona almost to a tee.
Um, and time and lack of time was relevant for the busy mums. It was also relevant for For someone who was in the thick of service execution and delivery. So we then chose also specific personas that fit within time, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Um, this is really similar actually, as you were saying, as you were speaking, I was like, oh yeah, we did this as well in two of our launches.
So at the start of last year, I launched Freedom Fast Track for the first time. And obviously when you launch something for the first time, you kind of don't really, you're still feeling it out. Right. You're still trying to figure out like what objections are people going to have, what questions are they going to ask?
And the one question that kept coming up was I'm at this stage of my business. This is how much money I'm making. This is the kind of business I run. Is this a right fit for me? So I think it was like two days before doors closed, I went and just created a quiz. For people to figure out where they could answer a bunch of multi choice questions and figure out if they were a right fit for it or not.
And I added that email in that converted so many people. the other thing that I did in one of our launch magic launches last year, so similar to very similar to what you did, uh, one of our big objections is, Oh, my audience is too small to launch. I'm going to need to wait. I'm going to grow my audience first and I'll join next time.
So I added a case study email of somebody who had, I think she had 150 people. On her email list when she launched and had like a 16, 000 launch. Right. So, right. Yeah. for each of those specific objections I went through, cause I have so many testimonials, so many case studies I went through and I was like, what case study can we turn into an email here ━ to speak to that directly?
So yeah, a hundred percent. I'm a big fan of adding extra emails as soon as you start spotting new objections. Like it's, it's all well and good schedule at all. Great. But also listen to what people are asking you. Yes. Add those things. And the conversations. Yeah, look at those. Don't be afraid to ask somebody, why are you not buying?
Yes, a hundred percent. It's, it's also, I think when, when in the topic of testimonials, it's such a big missed opportunity for us to, we think testimonials is just, Oh, it was so nice to work with Steph and she is awesome and she smiles really nicely. Like it's not just nice words about you, like you can get so strategic and start theming up your testimonials.
Like maybe it's time, maybe it is, uh, you know, out of budget, but then they're like, you know, I make back my money in X amount of days, you know, start theming up your testimonials. Yeah. Yeah. This is actually a tweak that I've made. So I, I do all of my testimonials via Zoom. I had, I used to go, I used to stick to a script where I had set questions I would ask everybody and then I would turn that, turn their responses into a testimonial, get them to check it.
And then use a testimonial. But now I've actually stopped sticking with the script. I'm now more interested in listening to what they're telling me and try to identify what parts of their story somebody else who is my ideal client is going to relate to. And then I can ask extra questions about those parts of the story.
So similar to what you did with your client set. Love that. Yeah. Love it. Love it. What are you, what are you going to do differently this year when you're, uh, test in 2024, Steph? Uh, so one thing we have started doing already is working with a Facebook ads agency for so long. I've been running the ads myself because I'm actually really good at it.
But you're very, very good at it. I wasn't. It's not the best use of my time. And as a result, it was kind of, the ads were becoming an afterthought in all of our other launches because launch strategy is where I shine. And then the ads were just something that I could do. So that would become like a, Oh crap, cart open is tomorrow.
I'd better go set up some ads. Instead of strategically having somebody like, you know, creating the. Graphics and the caption, like the text, everything. Um, so yeah, now I've got an ads agency doing that for our next launch, which will be really interesting to see how that goes.  something else that we're doing differently is just being a lot more organized with our launches, a lot more structured.
Uh, you know, there's always been an element of ad hoc because the first. I mean, most of the launches that I did in the first couple of years of my business were just me. So I was working off my own mental to do list. I wasn't having to give instructions to anybody else. And then in the last two years, I've really started delegating parts of the launches, but at the end of the day, it's all still been, you know, I've still been the one that's, it's all in my head and I'm delegating.
So now trying to be a little bit more structured in terms of, All of the tasks are in ClickUp, there is nothing in my head and all of the processes are getting documented and we're starting to, you know, everyone knows what they need to be working on at any given point. And if they can't meet a particular deadline, well, then they need to communicate that in time. ─
Yeah. That's such a transition, right? Like I've, it's sometimes you can't help but be like, I don't want to document all my like launch steps. But it's. It's um, yeah, we did that last year, like literally create like a template for each like word for your words launch or this, and now it's so much, ─ the first one is like where you have to pour in all like, what do I do?
Like during a launch, because I'm like, ah, I don't know, like I just like, it's just so in our heads that we just do not, I don't know. Think to like, when we start to remove certain things out of the things that we do, we're just like, Oh, wow, I do all that. Wow. Yeah, exactly. And it's, you know, we've been through, this is now our third launch where since we started building out our master launch process and it's still, there's still so much that needs refining in it, but it's getting there.
It's always a work in progress, always a work in progress, always. Yeah, what are you going to do differently? You know what? I really miss writing, like, love letters or emails to my email list. So I would now, well now I say it, it's going to be like hashtag keep me accountable, but I would love to write more ─ emails and love letters, I'm going to coin it, love letters to my audience.
And I think, yes, uh, there is podcast content that I do, but this is, again, this comes back to when I think we were talking about this in the first conversation episode that we were doing, um, I used to just write it so quickly, but then it's just come to, like, towards the last two, three years. These emails in my head are just like, Oh no, it must have so much value in it that I then don't write the email because, you know, we get such incredible, beautiful responses from people for our e lessons.
So one of our freebies that I'm like, Oh my gosh, I need to always make sure it is as much and as good a value. Um. But I definitely want to write more emails and I want to connect with the community in our emails, um, a lot more. So that's definitely one thing I definitely want to test and do and have some fun with this year.
More emails and love letters.

 

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