Why your failed launch actually wasn’t a failure

A lot of people come to me, and they'll say, “Steph, my launch failed, only three people bought.”

I get that, it feels like it might be a failure when only three people bought. But that's not how we know whether your launch failed or not.

>> Click here to listen to the podcast on your app of choice <<

Your failed launch probably wasn't a failure. Here's why.

Subjectively, yes, it's a failure because it didn't meet your expectations. That's fair enough. You maybe wanted 10 people or 20 people or 50 people. So when you only got those three people, that might feel like a little bit of a kick in the gut. But here's the thing, right, what is failure anyway? When we say, “Only three people bought,” that doesn't mean anything on its own. Neither does it mean anything when you say, “Oh, I only made $1,000 in sales.”

What we're really looking at is the deeper numbers. We need to look at things like how many people did you have in your audience? How many people did you have on your launch list? What was your cost per lead? What were your earnings per lead? What was your conversion rate? Because here's the thing, a small launch can be way more successful than a big launch. We can't objectively say whether a launch was a success or a failure without knowing these other numbers, without knowing your audience size, your cost per lead, your earnings per lead, your conversion rate. A launch with three buyers can actually be objectively more successful than one with 30 buyers. A $3,000 launch can be more successful than a $30,000 launch, as weird as it sounds. I know, it's really hard to wrap your head around it, but just that total number of sales or the dollar figure, does not indicate whether the launch was successful or not. Because once we know those other numbers, we can determine whether the launch was successful or not.

If it was successful, we know we can scale it up. Getting those bigger numbers just becomes a matter of getting that launch content in front of more people. Whereas, if we try to scale a launch that's not converting very well, it's a bit like trying to fill a leaky bucket. You can throw lots of ad spend at it, you can try and grow your audience, but when you launch it, you're not going to convert successfully. Let's use an example, right, so let's say we've got 100 people on our email list, and we've got two launches. So Launch A converted at 5%, so Launch A converted five people, Launch B converted one person. So we've got a 5% conversion rate versus a 1% conversion rate.

If you were to now grow your audience size by x10, Launch One would convert 50 people and Launch Two would convert 10 people. So it's growing at a bigger rate because it's got a higher conversion rate. Whereas Launch Two is like that leaky bucket. And that's the goal with Launch Magic, right? That's what I teach in Launch Magic, is I don't care if your launch is small, I care about how well it converts. Small can be fixed easily. Once it's small, then we can go and we can start building your audience with confidence knowing that the launch will scale up with it. But if the launch isn't converting well, well there's a sign that something in your launch isn't working, and it needs to be fixed.

Now, I just want to remind you about my first launch of my podcast plan, my A-Z podcast plan, that first launch brought in like $3,000. And then within that first 12 months, it had brought in $750,000. Because even though the first launch was small, I looked at those numbers, and I knew that it was profitable and that I could invest in Facebook ads to scale it up and I wouldn't lose money. A lot of people would look at that and be like, “Oh $3,000, that's a tiny launch. I want more than 20 students.” They think, “Well, it failed, that's pointless, let me go create the next product.” They would've left so much money on the table. That's a lot of money I wouldn't have brought into my business if I'd straight away moved on to the next product. So remember, I don't care about how small your launch is, I care about how well it converts.

 

Pin this?