The 7 mistakes that cost you sales in a launch

Launching can be an exciting time in any online business. However there are some avoidable mistakes that I see often and today I share with you my thoughts on 7 of the most common ones.

In this episode we chat about:
– Why creating it before you've launched it can be a costly mistake.
– The overwhelming value of audience research in answering the magician's gap.
– Why making sales is about more than just exciting your audience about your offer
– Why evergreen offers are not the solution to consistent sales
– The value in launching repeatedly and executing a 60-90 day sales process to bridge the gap between where your audience is now and their being ready to buy
– The benefit of capitalising on a small audience to improve in your next launch

 

Today, I am sharing the seven big mistakes that can cost you sales in a launch. So in particular, I'm talking about launches of online courses, group programs and memberships, but this can apply to essentially any kind of digital product that you are launching.

 

Mistake #1: Investing so much time into creating the product before you've even sold the first one. 

I see this all the time. Somebody will go and they'll start creating a course and they'll go off into their course creation cave. And they think they know what their audience wants. So they go and they start creating module one.

And then they think about, oh, maybe I should include this thing and this thing. And they end up going down all of these rabbit holes and it ends up taking them six months, a year, two years to create this course. 

Then they come out of the creation cave and they think, great, I'm going to launch it. I'm going to put it on my website. I'm going to put it out to my audience and they're going to be so excited about it. And that never happens. They put it out there and it's crickets. And that's because they spent all of their time creating this incredible product, but they've spent no time launching it. 

And the only way to test whether people will actually pay for it is to actually ask them to pay for it. 

So if you spend two years creating an online course and then you put it out to your audience and they're like, oh, I really want to learn this in a group program format. You're now going to be much less likely to change it, or they say, well, we already know what's in modules one and two, but we just want what's module three onwards. 

You're much less likely now to go and scrap modules one and two and change the messaging around your course because you've invested so much time. You are so invested in the outcome.

 

Mistake #2: Not doing enough of the audience research or not doing the right audience research. 

Asking your audience, would you buy, this is very different to asking your audience, what are you struggling with? What would the dream solution look like? How can I help you?

One of them is a simple yes or no question, and they might give you what you want to hear because they don't want to hurt your feelings. Whereas the other one gives you a real insight into what's going on in their brains, what they need from you, how you can help them, and how you can create a digital product that solves whatever they are struggling with.

And maybe you've surveyed your audience, but you've never gone very deep. You've never done one-on-one Zoom calls to find out what's really going on in their mind. You as the expert, know what somebody needs. And you're going to go and create your course or your program or your membership giving them what they need. But then they think they need something completely different. 

So if you go out there and you sell them what they need, they're going to be like, no, thank you. I don't need that. I need this other thing. So this is the magician's gap. This is really what the magician's gap is in essence. The difference between what you know that they need and what they think that they need. 

 

Mistake #3: Trying to get your audience excited about what you are selling and thinking that this excitement will be what sells.

And unfortunately, excitement isn't what sells. You as the expert might know really well what they need to solve, the problem that they have, but they're not going to get excited about something if they don't think it's even relevant to them. So instead, your launch should be about educating them through the magician's gap.

 

Mistake #4: Going straight to Evergreen.

What do I mean by evergreen? So when I say evergreen, that means doors are always open. It's always available to buy. Most people think of evergreen as just putting it on their website and leaving that. But this doesn't work because there's no deadline for somebody to buy. And without a deadline, they're going to keep putting it off. 

Buying for as long as possible, especially in the current environment, I have noticed that there have been more people sitting on the fence of my launches until the very last minute and then buying right before doors close. And that's because they're taking longer to make a decision. They're more discerning about what they're buying.

And having a deadline. It's not about pressuring somebody into making a decision, but it's about saying, Hey, you need to decide by this date. Are you in or are you out? You can't keep procrastinating or putting it off because you're not going to have more time or more money or whatever the thing you think you're going to have next week that you don't already have this week.

Another reason why it doesn't work is that most of the time I have noticed when people say, oh, I'm putting this on evergreen. It literally means they are putting it on their website and leaving it there. And there's no sales process, it's just a sales page and a checkout and that's it. 

There's nowhere for them to get their objections addressed, there's no actual sales process. There's no way that you are bridging that magician's gap for them. So they're not going to be ready to buy when they land on the sales page.

A much more effective option is to live launch it a few times before putting it on evergreen, and translating that live launch sales process into a fully automated version of the same process. 

 

Mistake #5: Only launching their product once.

Your course or your program or your membership is an asset that can generate cash for your business over and over and over again.

Launching at once and then putting it on your website for people to buy. Launching at once and leaving doors open for eternity, that usually doesn't generate sales the way that you intend it to and it's probably because you don't have much of a sales process behind it now. 

Launch is essentially a sales process. That's what it really is. It sounds so unsexy, but that is what a launch is from. Start to finish moving somebody from where they are to where they need to be, to be ready to buy. And yes, you might do this with your existing audience with one Launch, but what about new people who come into your audience after that? How are you moving them through that gap?

 

Mistake #6: Not having a sales process.

Now your entire sales process starts 60 to 90 days before doors open. When I talk about your launch starts 60 to 90 days before doors open, you're talking about your product for 60 to 90 days. That is your free content. Your free content is the start of your sales process.

And then you might have a webinar where you're still bridging that gap. You will have cart open emails. You will have a sales page and a checkout page. Your sales process is that entire process from your free content through until they've purchased. And that is what makes up your Launch. It's not just your sales page and checkout and a whole lot of hype building.

But it's actually where and when you're talking about it, when you're talking about your product, where are you sending them? How are you making sure that they've had that, they've learned all of the things they need to know before they'll be ready to buy.

 

Mistake #7: Waiting until they have a bigger audience.

Now you're not launching just once. You are launching the same thing over and over again. So you don't need to save up your audience until it's big enough to have one big launch. Your first few launches probably won't be huge unless you already have a large audience.

But this is a good thing because it's like learning to ride a bike in your driveway rather than on a main road. Your first launch can be an experiment. You gather feedback and then you implement that in the next launch. And then again, you launch again and again and again, and this takes so much pressure off launching because it doesn't have to be. 

This must succeed at all costs kind of endeavor. But rather it's a learning experience that gets easier each time and grows each time.

 

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