In today’s episode, I’m covering six major launch mistakes. But I don’t want to just make it all doom and gloom. We’re going to be focused on how to overcome those launch mistakes and what to do instead.
It’s all going to be very positive, but I think it’s important that we touch on these launch mistakes because I see these things being advised very often by other launch mentors.
I would recommend that you don’t do them, so I’m going to give you things to do instead.
Let’s dive in!
When it comes to launching an online course, membership or program, there’s a lot of conflicting advice out there about where you need to be focusing your energy and attention, and what strategies work best these days.
That can sometimes mean we get a lot of conflicting information and advice on what to do.
With all of those different opinions, it can be easy to get caught up in focusing your energy and attention on things that aren’t necessarily right for the stage of launching that you’re at, the size of audience that you have, or the model of business that you’re moving into.
A lot of the information that we get online (blogs, podcast episodes, articles and webinars) are very generic advise. It’s not necessarily suited to a heart-centred consent-driven business or all of the different nuances that make our businesses and marketing strategies unique.
They’re not all covered by one generic webinar that teaches the perfect launch strategy.
There is no one perfect launch strategy.
In this episode, I’m looking at six of the most common launch mistakes that I see in our community.
I’ll talk about where they come from and why it can be so easy for us to fall into those traps, as well as what to do instead and how to address some of those launch mistakes.
Mistake 1: Focusing solely on reach
While you’re in launch, you’re completely focused on reach and hoping that that reach will result in conversion.
This often comes because 90% of the business growth, marketing and strategy advice out there is focused on getting you reach – getting you in front of a larger audience.
But getting in front of a larger audience doesn’t necessarily improve your launch results by the same factor. If you 3x your audience size, you don’t necessarily 3x your launch results.
Reach is only one part of the client attraction process.
You’ve probably heard me talk about the client attraction process before. If not, I highly recommend you check out my latest podcast episode on the client attraction process: Episode 336: The most common gap in our client attraction process.
In a nutshell, the client attraction process maps out the different stages that people go through before they buy from us…
1. Reach
We need to get in front of as many of the right people as possible.
2. Nurture
We need to build a relationship with each of those audience members. We want to nurture that relationship.
That can be done at scale through things like free content, resources and email marketing. Or it can be done very effectively on a one-to-one basis – having conversations, being of service, answering people’s questions, etc.
3. Lead generation
This is probably the most forgotten part of the client attraction process (as covered in my recent podcast episode).
This is where you invite people to lean closer to investing, and they do so.
It’s not where you:
- Invite people to sign up to a freebie that’s unrelated and they do so
- Bribe people onto your mailing list with some kind of random checklist and they do so
That’s not lead generation, that’s list growth. That doesn’t necessarily equal lead generation.
Lead generation is a specific step towards buying something.
That step could be:
- Booking a sales conversation with someone
- Someone sending you a DM saying they’re interested in your program
- You inviting people to connect with you to discuss how you might be able to work together
- Getting people on a launch webinar where you’re specifically qualifying people as to whether they would be a good fit for the program. Then presenting the program and they stick around to hear about the program because they’re interested in it
A little quick aside here: I see so many people trying to bribe people to stay until the end of the webinar so that they can hear the sales pitch. They try to trick people into hearing a sales pitch. In my opinion, that comes from a space of fear. But also, why do you want to force people to hear a sales pitch, if they’re not interested in buying from you? Or if they don’t think it’s the right fit for them right now?
My approach is to be upfront.
I simply say, “Now I’m going to tell you how I could help you with this through my program. If you don’t need to hear about this, then you’re welcome to leave. If you want to hear about it, stick around.”
Just that one little out, tells me that the people who stay in the room are the ones who really want to hear about my program. That’s good!
Why would I want to bribe the other people who left the minute I said I was going to talk about my program? Why would I want to somehow bribe them to sit and listen to my pitch, when they don’t want to hear it? Is it because I think I can trick them into buying it? Is it because I’m going to use psychological tactics and strategies to make them feel like a failure if they don’t buy from me? That’s what some people do. But that’s not my choice. That’s not how I do it.
Lead generation is inviting people to lean in to find out more about working together, and they do it.
4. Conversion
One of the launch mistakes that I see people make is that they’re focused so much on reach that they don’t have a balanced client attraction process.
In reality, reach is the most expensive and time-intensive part of the client attraction process.
The more people you lose at each stage, the more expensive your cost per sale becomes, and the lower your profit margin.
Rather than have everything focused on reach, what I would recommend is in your launch, ensure you’ve got a balanced client attraction process. Spend a quarter of your time on reach, a quarter of your time on nurture, a quarter of your time on lead generation, and a quarter of your time on conversion.
This means it’s not 90% just trying to reach people and make the pitch. By doing that, you’re reducing the percentage of people who will buy from you by not understanding that it takes that process of building a relationship, getting people to lean in, and then presenting your offer.
That’s the first of the launch mistakes I see – all reach and no balance in the client attraction process. The way to fix it? Get that balance back in.
Mistake 2: Launching built on theory
Woman working on plan to avoid launch mistakes
There’s a balancing act here. Sometimes the first time you launch, you’re going to have to make some estimated guesses. But the more that we can get tangible evidence, the more effective the launch is going to be.
We want to get information and insight into what:
- Our audience wants
- Their drivers are for wanting to achieve this particular goal
- Barriers are going to get in the way
- It is that they’re actually looking for
- Important to them
- Not important
It’s one thing to say that you know a lot about your niche and what they think the solution to the problem is, but you know what the deeper thing is, versus saying that you think people want to be happier and that you think your workshop will improve their happiness rating. Everything is coming out of theory.
The more you can have proof of each of your launch elements and the product that you’re selling, the more effective your launch will be, the more confidence you will have in it, and the more confidence you’ll have in speaking to the promise of the thing that you’re selling.
There are far too many people out there trying to launch a program with no promise behind it.
I don’t mean making a promise as in guaranteeing someone will make X amount of dollars after doing your program. But what is a reasonable expectation of what they’re going to achieve as a result of doing this? What would be a reasonable expectation? Not a guaranteed expectation, but tell them what they’re actually going to get out of this.
So many people don’t even talk that that at all. All they talk about is the process. They don’t talk about the outcome.
They just tell you about the modules and what the big picture is (ie. you’ll feel more confident, you’ll feel more at ease, or you’ll live in flow). But what does that mean? What am I actually going to get out of this?
Rather than building on theory, the antidote is to get as much proof as possible, and limit the amount of theorising that you need to do because you’ve collected evidence of what people want, what they don’t want, what their goals are, what gets in the way, and why they would be driven to purchase something that would help them solve that problem.
No more launches built on theory! Let’s actually collect some evidence and avoid these launch mistakes.
3. Over-pricing the offer compared to the value proposition
This might sound a little different to advice that you’ve heard before.
Every business mentor I’ve ever worked with, every launch strategist I’ve ever listened to, every webinar I’ve ever been to, has always said to put the price up, put the price up, put the price up.
I am a big fan of being a premium in the market and consistently increasing your prices. But you need to ensure that the value proposition of what people are getting out of this is relative to the price point.
If you haven’t heard my definition of value proposition before, value proposition is the value of the gap between before doing your program and after doing it, through the eyes of the buyer.
You might feel that it’s very valuable for people to get a better night’s sleep. But if your audience thinks it would be nice but it’s not important for them right now, they are going to attach a very different value to that transformation than the value you attach.
The answer to overpricing for the value proposition is not necessarily to reduce the price.
Step 1: Have a strong value proposition. Map it out and be very adept at articulating that value proposition.
Step 2: Look for opportunities to improve the value proposition by getting more niched, getting more tangible, and being more clear and concise about that journey. There are lots of ways that we can improve the value proposition.
Step 3: If the price still outweighs the value proposition, we may need to bring the price down a little.
When it comes to making a decision about whether people are going to buy from you or not, there needs to be two things:
Firstly, they need to have the capacity to buy at that price point.
Some people are eliminated because they don’t have that cash, they’re not willing to do a payment plan, or they have the cash, but they’re not willing to prioritise investing in this.
You won’t change their mind, change their financial situation, or change someone’s priorities. If someone prioritises their children over their work, you can’t change that. You just can’t. You can connect what you do to their number one priority, but you cannot change someone’s number one priority.
We are who we are, we prioritise what we prioritise.
We might say we want to prioritise our health and wellbeing more, but if we default to prioritising our business over our health, then when things get hard, we prioritise our business over our health. You can’t change that.
Rather than trying to change people’s priorities, rather than trying to force people to see the value, instead, acknowledge that some people will value that transformation more than others. We can focus your messaging on speaking to those who do value that transformation.
The second factor is: Do I perceive the value I’m going to get as higher than the price I have to pay?
I have to have the capacity to pay and the desire to spend that amount of money. And I need to perceive that the value I’m going to get is higher than the price I have to pay.
When it comes to purchasing a course on Facebook ads, if that course is $1,000, do I perceive the value I’m going to get from doing that course and implementing the strategies as more than $1,000 for me in the short term? Do I expect a short-term return on investment of $1,000 or more?
If yes, I’m likely to buy. If no, I’m unlikely to buy.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a dollar value in terms of their perception of the value proposition. But it does come into consideration.
If I have the choice between spending money on something that will bring in income, and spending money on something that will feel good but not bring in income, chances are, I’ll be more focused on bringing in the income if I am someone whose top priority is income.
If I’m someone whose top priority is pleasure and enjoying myself, I might perceive the value of something in that space as being higher for me, so I’d be more likely to buy that thing.
You can see it comes down to the individual, their priorities and their perception of that value proposition. But you as the seller need to ensure that your price is appropriate to the value proposition as perceived by your niche.
That is there third of the launch mistakes that I see – over-pricing for the value proposition through the eyes of your clients.
The antidote is to clarify the value proposition and learn how to articulate it well, improve the value proposition, and then reduce the price if necessary.
I’m not someone who tells people that their price is too high. I’m absolutely on board with being a premium in the market. But if it’s not converting because the value proposition is not there, and there’s nothing else you can do to improve that value proposition beyond completely re-tooling and overhauling what it is that you’re offering, then sometimes the best strategy is actually to price appropriately.
Sometimes the best strategy is to bring the price point down.
Sometimes the perception of the value proposition is impacted by your expertise, your experience, your time in the market, and your branding. There are other things that can increase the perceived value – it doesn’t just come down to what’s inside the course. But a lot of those things cost money, and a lot of those things take time that you don’t have.
If you’ve been teaching tarot card readings for six months, and someone else has been teaching tarot card readings for 25 years, they’re the best known in the industry, and most of their clients end up becoming very in-demand tarot readers, then the perceived value of working with you is going to be less than the perceived value of working with that other person in most cases.
There are ways to increase the perceived value of working with you.
If I was in that situation, I would be highlighting the fact that someone who’s been in the industry for 25 years and has 600 students at a time isn’t necessarily going to get to know you on a personal basis. That high touch high connection part of working with me increases the perceived value of my offer compared to their offer.
You need to be clear on what that value proposition is, what the perception is, and where the gap is for you in the price versus the value proposition.
That’s the third of the most common launch mistakes I see.
Mistake 4: Being too process-oriented
Your promo and your messaging is all focused on the process. You don’t actually talk about the promise or the outcome
Particularly for heart-centred entrepreneurs, we don’t ever want to promise something we can’t deliver on. We don’t ever want to say that someone is going to make $10,000 from doing our program, when we don’t have concrete evidence that that’s actually going to happen for 100% of the people who do it.
That doesn’t mean we have to be so process-orientated.
We can still speak to outcomes without making guarantees of certain dollar amounts, certain results or certain outcomes. But we can still talk to the outcomes.
For example, I don’t promise that anyone who does my Take Off program will have an $8,000 month. But I know for my ideal clients, their goal when they join the Take Off program is generally to get to that consistent $5k to $8k months. I know that that’s what they’re looking for.
If someone does the Take Off program, they go through the process, and they engage and work with me (it’s a group mentoring program, it’s not a self-study program), is it likely that I can get them to the point where they’re going to make $5k to $8k? If they keep showing up and they keep tweaking and changing and we work together on it, is it likely that they’re going to get to that consistent $5k to $8k month? Yes, it is.
Do I have a huge percentage of my students who have already achieved that and moved on with their lives? Yes, I do.
When I talk about Take Off, I don’t guarantee that you’ll get to $5k to $8k a month.
But I do say that the type of goal that people who join Take Off are looking to achieve is that consistent $5k to $8k months.
I haven’t promised that you’ll get it. But that’s a reasonable goal to set. When you join the Take Off program, it’s reasonable to set the goal of getting to $5k to $8k months consistently. Follow the process, do the modules, and keep me informed. It’s not going to magically do it just when you buy it. Of course, you’ve got to do the modules, you’ve got to put the practices into place, and you’ve got to try some things and see what works and what doesn’t.
But one of the promises that I do give is that if you keep showing up for your business, so will I. You don’t get booted out after 16 weeks and “too bad if you didn’t make it”.
You can talk about the outcome and the promise without making promises.
There’s a big difference between the promise versus making a promise.
I like to talk about it in terms of outcomes, benefits and the value proposition. What is life going be like afterwards, when you have completed this process?
Not just focusing on process and what they will be doing, because all you’re doing is telling people what the jobs are that they have to do and what the workload is. You want to focus people on “When I do that workload, what’s that going to create? What’s the outcome going to be? How is my life going to be different?”
That’s what we want to make sure that we’re also focused on with your messaging – having a balance between process and outcomes.
That’s the fourth of the launch mistakes I often see. Make sure to have bring in that balance!
Mistake 5: Overcomplicating your launches
I think this comes mostly from the conflicting advice that’s out there – this constant stream and bombardment of things you must do to get results in your launches.
“If you’re not doing TikToks, you’re leaving money on the table. If you’re not doing challenges, you’re leaving money on the table.” And so on.
That table is covered in money, I know. But sometimes it’s not worth the effort to get that extra little $5 off the table.
Rather than creating a large, unwieldy and complex launch strategy, I actually recommend that you simplify it as much as possible.
20% of what you do in a launch gets you 80% of your results.
Your job is to find out what that 20% is and eliminate the rest. Just do the 20% that gets you 80% of the results.
Keep your launches streamlined and simplified. Stop burning yourself out trying to do every single thing that you could possibly do to get that launch working.
Instead, remind yourself of why you started this business in the first place. It was not to work 80-hour weeks, I guarantee you.
Be tenacious in finding the launch strategy that works most effectively for you without having to make it complex, unwieldy and require that you’re online for 12 hours a day, every day for six weeks.
One of the things that I talk about a lot is creating a leisurely or lazy launch that you don’t need to take a holiday from.
When I’m in launch, my life is no different to when I’m not in launch.
I work the same number of hours and I do roughly the same activities, it’s just that it’s focused on a different outcome. That’s it!
I show up online, I make videos, I create content, and I look after my team. It’s all the same.
Making a launch feel like it’s part of business as usual and making your business as usual as streamlined and leisurely as possible, that’s a fun goal to set.
Rather than finding all the new and complicated ways that you could add more complexity to your launch, just look for the ways you can simplify it down instead.
This brings me to the last of the most common launch mistakes that I see…
Mistake 6: The disappearing act
There is a little chart that I like to share, but I understand that you’re reading this and unable to see it.
Rather than try and explain it on a podcast episode, I’m just going to let you know that my reach-energy chart when it comes to launching is covered in my free Launch Basics training.
In that training, I take you through a simplified structure of launching, the core elements of launching that need to be covered, and I talk about this disappearing act and the reach energy chart.
Make sure you register for that free Launch training here: tashcorbin.com/launch
In essence, one of the biggest launch mistakes that I see, particularly for heart-centred entrepreneurs, is that if the launch doesn’t look like it’s going magnificently every single day, they disappear.
In the early stages of a launch, it takes a while for the launch to get momentum. It’s also the time when you’re most excited about your launch. You’ve just started it and you’ve got all this energy.
What happens in the early stages of your launch, is you tend to show up the most.
You’re generally talking about a free lead magnet in the early stages of your launch so it’s far easier to talk about, you just want to give value, you want people to come to this free thing, and so there’s a lot of energy for it.
What then happens is sometimes even before you’ve done the free thing, the signups start to dwindle off and start to slow down. You start to think that you’ve told everyone thousands of times so there’s just not going to be anyone else signing up.
In the six days before your webinar or your challenge (which are the most important six days of promoting that free lead magnet), you stop promoting it because you feel like you’ve spoken about it too much. Everyone’s already heard about it. Your signups are starting to dry up, so why bother?
You disappear before you even get to your first lead magnet.
Then you run your first lead magnet, you get a couple of sales straight out of the gate, and then it goes a little bit quiet.
That quietness creates a little mindset spiral of believing that the sales you’ve made so far are all you’re going to make and that no one else wants to buy from you.
But you actually haven’t promoted the product beyond talking about it on your lead magnet!
You haven’t actually shown up with as much vim and vigor and excitement talking about your paid offer, as you did your freebie.
This is what I call the disappearing act.
When you finally get to the crunch time of making the sale, you disappear. We don’t see you as much. We don’t hear from you as much.
At the very time when your presence and reach are starting to peak, and you’ve got the biggest audience leaning in to hear about it, you’ve disappeared.
There are two peaks in sales whenever you have a lead magnet or a launch.
The first peak is when you first present the offer (on the webinar or on the challenge or wherever it might be). When you first pitch your offer, your early adopters will jump straight in.
In Sacred Money Archetypes, those early adopters would be Romantics, sometimes Mavericks, Alchemists, and Connectors if it’s a connection group program. They’re the ones who jump in straight away.
Then it dwindles a little bit.
But your second peak comes with your last-minute peeps (that’s sometimes me). Often those last-minute people will be Accumulators who have had to think about it and add up the ROI.
It might also be your Romantics and Celebrities who have probably just been meaning to get to it and then finally do it at the last minute.
There’s generally a peak in sales at the very end… if you’ve been consistent.
Something that I witnessed happening in a Facebook group a few weeks ago, was someone came into the group talking about their launch and they said they ran their webinar, had three people sign up, promoted it for a few days and then got crickets. No one was responding to their emails and no one was engaging with their posts. They felt like everything was done, even though their cart wasn’t closing for another 10 days.
Everyone in the comments of that post jumped in and said that most people join during the last 48 hours.
Of course, this person then felt like they didn’t need to do anything until the last 48 hours. But that’s not true! It’s not that you don’t need to do anything until the last 48 hours. It’s that the action that you take in the 10 days between, will drive a spike in sales in the last 48 hours.
If you only show up and run your webinar, and then you only show up and say “Last day to buy”, you’re not maximising the number of people who buy it that last minute.
In fact, the surge that you were expecting in the last 48 hours may never actually materialise because that last-minute surge relies on you consistently showing up.
I’m not saying you have to be everywhere for 12 hours a day every day of your launch. But it needs to be consistent. We need to hear from you consistently during the sales part, to the same extent that we heard from you consistently when you are promoting the free event.
The disappearing act is definitely one of the biggest launch mistakes that I see happen quite a lot.
It generally happens because the launch results initially weren’t what you were expecting, some mindset blocks came up, you hit an upper limit, or a bit of self-sabotage snuck in.
Just understanding that reach-energy chart that’s in the Launch Basics training, and being able to see that it’s better if you’re just consistent throughout your launch, will make a significant difference to your launch results.
Make sure you go and register for that free training: tashcorbin.com/launch
That’s it for today’s episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast! Thank you so much for joining me today as I shared with you the most common launch mistakes that I see.
Just to recap, the six launch mistakes are:
1. Focusing solely on reach
2. Launching built on theory
3. Over-pricing the offer compared to the value proposition
4. Being too process-oriented
5. Overcomplicating your launches
6. The disappearing act
If you have any questions about launching, or creating group programs, I am going to be doing another big batch of podcast recording shortly.
I am about to go into the launch of my Leverage and Launch program, so any questions that you ask will help me to know how I can support you further, as well as create more amazing free resources and content for the podcast.
To submit your question and get a shoutout on the podcast, simply head to tashcorbin.com/question.
I really love getting your questions. It’s a great opportunity for me to give you a bit more reach, give you a little shout-out, share the word about who you are and what your business is about with my podcast audience (which is in the several thousands).
It’s a win-win little situation we’ve got for ourselves there!
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the podcast where I shared with you the biggest six launch mistakes that I see heart-centred entrepreneurs make.
I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about these launch mistakes. As always, if you have any questions about this episode or want to share your launch mistakes or aha moments with me, feel free to DM me on Instagram or Facebook.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
