The art of the post-launch review: 5 questions to make your next launch a success

When it comes to launching, there's always room for improvement—well beyond just how much money you make. This is why a post-launch review is super important, so that you can learn what worked and what didn't. In today's episode, I'm sharing the art of the post-launch review and 5 questions you can answer to make your next launch even more successful.

– Why reviewing your launch numbers objectively, within the context of *your* business, is so valuable.
– The questions to ask yourself straight after your launch while it's all still fresh in your mind.
– How using your answers to these questions to tweak your next launch can set you up for even bigger success.

 

 
Today, I'm going to share five questions that will help you make your next launch even better based on the launch that you've just had. Now, I know it can be tempting when you close doors on your launch to either pop the champagne or go and hide and never want to look at the numbers, never want to look at that launch ever again.

So why do I think that you need to be putting a bit of time into reviewing that launch? So first of all, even if the launch was a success, I believe there is always room for improvement and improvement doesn't necessarily have to mean more profit. We can also talk about improvement in terms of more fun, more enjoyment, more impact, and more ease. It can be a more enjoyable launch. It can be an easier launch. It can impact more people in the future, but it can't do that unless we are willing to dive deep into the launch that we have just had. 

And when your launch is fresh in your mind, yes, you might not want to go back and look at it, but this is the best time to go back and do it because otherwise, you're going to forget some of the little niggly bits that came up or some of the smaller details that you might forget in a couple of weeks or a couple of months. 

 

Question #1: what parts of this launch were objectively successful and which ones weren't?

So the first question to ask yourself after a launch when you are reviewing it is what parts of this launch were objectively successful and which ones weren't.

Now, when I say objectively, I don't mean which parts felt like they didn't quite meet your expectations. I mean, getting into a spreadsheet and looking at conversion rates not how many people signed up in the end, not the total dollar number at the end. 

Now, whenever I work with a strategy-intensive client, I love it when they bring me a spreadsheet with all of the numbers from their launch because it makes my life so much easier in identifying which bits of the launch worked and which bits of the launch didn't work. So we know where to focus the time to make improvements for the next launch. 

I know it's so tempting to look at that final number, just the total sales or the total number of people who signed up but here's the thing that alone means nothing without the context. It means nothing because 000 launches for one person can be an absolute failure, but a 50, 000 launch for another person can be completely life-changing, completely business changing context is.

So important here and the total sales number alone, that alone doesn't tell us much about where we can improve the launch next time. So instead we want to look at the conversion rate at each step. 

 

Question #2: What didn't I enjoy about this launch?

So like business in general, launching is going to always involve a couple of things that you don't love and that you can't always avoid all of those things all of the time, unfortunately, but there may be a few things that you can remove, a few things that you can scrap next time so that the next launch is a little bit more enjoyable.

Maybe they are things that you can delegate to somebody else. For example, if you hate writing launch copy, maybe the next time you launch, you'll bring in a launch copywriter to take that off your plate or maybe there are tasks that you can automate or use software to streamline and make it a little easier, like planning out your launch content calendar or scheduling your emails rather than sending them out yourself.

 

Question #3: What took up way too much of my time? 

So some things might take a lot of time the first few times that you do them, but you get quicker at them as you go. Like for example, it used to take me forever to write cart open emails. Now for most of our launches, we do have a launch copywriter who helps out, but sometimes like the most recent launch. I wrote them myself and there's something that I can do a whole lot quicker now because I know how to structure them. I'm more comfortable writing whereas the first few times that I wrote them, I was overthinking. I had no idea how to structure them. It just took me way too long. 

These are things that can take a long time, but once they are done, you can reuse them in your next launch. So for the things that took up too much of your time, can we speed it up somehow? Like, is there a way that you can make it faster? ─ Could you maybe delegate it, automate it or delete it?

 

Question #4: What do I want to repeat next time? 

So in other words, what did you enjoy? What worked? What was fun? And you know, it's okay to do things in business just because we enjoy them. They don't all have to be objectively successful things for us to repeat them. 

Let's say that you taught a free masterclass and even if that masterclass didn't convert, you really enjoyed teaching it. Maybe you'll repeat that next time, right? It probably still played a role in somebody's decision to buy from you. So why not do it again if you enjoyed it? So go back and think, what did I really enjoy? What felt light? What gave me energy? Let's redo that. Let's do that next time. 

 

Question #5: What do I never want to do ever again in my launch? 

What do I never want to do again? Oh, like I said before, these might be things that you don't enjoy, but that you have to do, right?

There are going to be things that we don't want to do. Sometimes showing up and teaching a webinar may be painful for you, but you know that it converts. So you're going to have to do it again, unfortunately, but what are the things that you didn't do that also didn't deliver any kind of result?

These are the things to potentially skip next time or change. Okay, how could you change it to make it more enjoyable, more impactful, better converting? Or could you remove it altogether? And by skipping the things that we don't want, then that creates space for the things that we do want, it creates space for us to try new things and just see what happens because so much of launching is an experiment. 

We can never really have that guarantee that whatever we do is going to succeed. So let's throw some spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks and by taking things off your plate you create that space to throw the metaphorical spaghetti and see what does work.

 

Pin it?