Episode 101: Are Your Launch Numbers Normal?

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Frustrated by not meeting your launch goals? What's normal and what should your organic business growth expectations be?

Do You Have “Normal” Expectations for Organic Business Growth?

You launched a course, group coaching program, or 1:1 service. You worked hard to create your offer, set up the correct systems, and perfect the sales page. You officially launched it into the world with butterflies in your stomach and hope in your heart. You couldn’t wait to help serve your new students or clients. And then? Crickets. A few sales trickled in, but nothing like you expected. Nothing like the mad dash you’d been promised if you just created THIS type of offer. After cart closed, you quietly served those people and then retreated to lick your wounds. Declaring that that wasn’t the right product and that that type of offer just wasn’t for you.

My friend, I’m here to tell you that it probably wasn’t your offer. Or your sales page. Or the type of product you were selling. The problem? It was likely your expectations.

As business owners, it’s easy to buy into what someone is telling us worked for them – ooo this coach I follow did this tactic and look at what it did for her! I’m going to do that too and get the same results. Only, we don’t take into account the factors we need to, and then we end up disappointed and frustrated – both with ourselves and our business’ organic business growth. We wonder if we were just not cut out for this. (Spoiler: you are).

So, today, on episode 101 of the Chasing Simple podcast, I’m sharing everything you need to know about realistic launch rates, and I’m walking you through exactly how to calculate your own so that you can go into your next launch with realistic expectations. Let’s dive in.

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Grab Your FREE Ticket to Chasing Simple: The Summit
This week’s action step: I want you to work through those numbers and get real about what you can expect with your next launch!
This week’s book recommendation: The Wish by Nicholas Sparks
Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield

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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate.

You launched a course group coaching program or one-to-one service. You worked hard to create your offers, set up the correct systems and perfect the sales page. You officially launched it into the world with butterflies in your stomach and hope in your heart. You couldn’t await to help serve your new students or clients.

And then crickets, a few sales trickled in, but nothing like you expect. Nothing like the mad dash that you had been promised. If you just created this type of offer. After cart closed, you quietly served those people and then retreated to lick your wounds, declaring that this just wasn’t the right product.

And that that type of offering is wasn’t for you. My friend, I am here to tell you that it probably wasn’t your offer or your sales page or the type of product you’re selling the problem. It was likely your expectations as business owners. It is easy to buy into what someone is telling us, work for them.

Ooh, this coach that I follow, they did this tactic and Ooh, look at what it did for her. I’m going to do that too and get the same results. Only we don’t take into account the factors that we need to. And then we end up disappointed and frustrated both with ourselves and our business. And we wonder if we’re just not cut out for this spoiler.

You are. So today on episode 101 of the Chasing Simple Podcast, I’m sharing everything you need to know about realistic launch rates, and I’m walking you through exactly how to calculate your own so that you can go into your next launch with realistic expectations. Let’s dive in.

I want to tell you a story about the first ever product the first ever offer I created after starting my business, it was a, it was like a 20 page workbook full of teaching and journaling workbook prompts, full of questions, full of copy. And I spent months designing. Writing the copy, beta testing, this thing, getting testimonials, putting together the email funnel and the landing page and the sales page and all the things I spent months creating this thing.

And I even created a thermometer printable over on Canva. You know, one of those things where if someone’s fundraising, they have this thermometer and as they raise more money, they fill it. And then it explodes out of thermometer. I had grand visions of exploding that thermometer and I was. Sure that I was going to sell a hundred of these.

And when I didn’t, I was so disappointed. I scrapped the product completely. And I told myself that I just wasn’t doing the right thing. I needed a better offer. I needed something different. this isn’t what I was supposed to be doing. But here’s the thing. My launch it was actually a huge success.

Looking back now, I want to kick myself for how upset I was and for the crazy expectations I had this tiny workbook, I made $109 in revenue with this workbook. I had nine sales and there were less than 200 people on my email list and a decent chunk of those people were friends and family that were well-wishers and just excited to support me in my new business.

I had an 8.25% conversion rate. Keep that in mind for later, my launch was actually a huge success, but my expectations kept me from enjoying that. So I want to make sure that your business growth goals are realistic and that you know what to expect going into any kind of launch because I don’t want the same thing to happen to you because yes, well, every launch should have some kind of Legion piece.

You cannot expect to see insane growth with that, or you can’t even necessarily expect that the new people on your list will convert this time. Everything with business is a long game, and this is what I did not understand when I had this first launch. If I had known what I knew now, I would have been so excited about that.

$109 in revenue about those nine sales, about that 8.25% conversion rate.

Well, my expectations got in the way, and I don’t want that to happen to you. I want you to understand that slow growth is normal. That low conversion rates are normal, and we’re going to go over what some of those look like and what current averages are. So let’s say your let’s start with the top of the funnel social media, you over on Instagram, let’s say that you have a thousand followers.

And let’s pretend that every single one of your followers sees your post about your new product or your new offer. They won’t let’s pretend current social media click-through rate averages are 1.3%. So if you have 1000 followers, seeing posts, that means that only about 130 people are actually going to click over to your landing page.

And then. Once was 130 people get on your landing page. Now we have to look at what that converts at. So again, average landing page conversion rates. That’s about 2.35%. So of those 130 people, that means about three of those people are going to join your email list from the thousand people that you have on social media.

On average, when you’re talking about a freebie, about three of them will actually join your email list. Does that make you feel better? We’re not done, but does that make you feel better? Does that make it feel like you’re not doing anything wrong? It’s just numbers. I hope that that’s encouraging for you now.

You’ve got your email lists. Let’s say you have, you’re getting ready to launch and you have about 200 people on your email list. Well, an email click-through rate is anywhere from two to 5% typically on average. So if you have 200 people on your email list, you’re looking at about four sales, which if you have about 200 people on your email list and you’re expecting to sell a hundred workbooks, the math does not compute. Right. You see where I went wrong with my original launch and my unrealistic expectations? So, what does all this show us?

What does it tell us one? We have to talk about our freebies over and over and over and over again. Not just when they first come out, it needs to be a regular part of your content marketing to tell your audience about the really cool freebie that you have created for them. The really valuable freebie that you’ve created for them.

Not just when you first launch it, you have to tell them over and over and over again, because I know we’ve heard the, it takes seven to 10 times for anyone to take action each time you talk about it. That’s another touch point and another three people. Again, if we’re using the numbers we used earlier, another three people will join your email list.

It also shows us that our expectations are probably way too high. If you sat there and you did the math right along with me, what can you expect from your next launch? Do you have 500 people on your email list? You’re going to spend maybe eight sales. Do you have 300 people on your email list? Actually, that’s a lie.

I’m not gonna do that. Quick math. you get the point. What can you expect that right there is how we know what our expectations should be.

This was a very short and sweet episode. I know that,

now your action step for this week is I want you to go back relisten and I want you to work through those numbers with your own numbers and get real about what you can expect with your next launch. And now that you’ve got your expectations set more realistically. I know that you might be feeling discouraged, but Amanda, this is never going to be enough to support my business.

Don’t worry. Next week, I’m going to be sharing what you can do to see more growth in your business in order to prepare for your next launch. I’m also sharing how I replaced my teaching salary with less than 300 people on my email list. So I’m blowing those conversion rates out of the water, those average.

We’re going to skyrocket what those averages look like for you. And we’re also going to talk about how you can see actual growth, but for now I want you to set realistic expectations. So go back, listen to those equations and then do it with your own numbers and set those expectations.

But don’t be discouraged because now we know how to be realistic about our expectations. We can learn how to blow those expectations out of the water And this week’s book recommendation is The Wish by Nicholas Sparks. Now I have not been a huge fan of his last few books. There are very few of his books that I don’t love, but I have not been a fan of the last few, but the magic was back with this one.

And I don’t want to give anything away at all with this one, because there’s a lot of twists and turns. So I’ll just say this. If you have ever enjoyed a Nicholas Sparks book, this one is a must read, but grab the tissues. And until next time I hope that you go out and Uncomplicate your life and biz.