Do you need a better way to launch?

Maybe you’re getting ready to launch your first program, but something about the whole concept of launching just doesn’t feel quite right.

You have a program which, by its nature, needs a launch. It’s not evergreen. You can’t keep it available all the time. In order to deliver the value you want, you need a group of people to join at the same time, and you need that group to be big enough to make running the product worth your time (at least right now).

But if you feel like launches aren’t working anymore…

And you’re not wrong.

True, some of the biggest names in the industry are still running big launches. Some of them are still seeing big success.

But a lot of online entrepreneurs – even those with big lists, who’ve run significant launches in the past – agree that launches aren’t as successful as they used to be. Email open rates are down. Webinar attendees are fewer. Unsubscribes are up.

It’s not just you.

There are a few reasons why formulaic launches are less effective than they used to be. 

Your customers are smarter.

Five years ago, online courses were the hottest thing around.

You barely even needed a list to launch one. 

And you certainly didn’t need any knowledge of teaching or instructional design.

You could throw a few videos online, send a few emails, and voila – profit.

Happily, that’s no longer the case.

The market for digital products, and especially for information products, is saturated. People are tired of spending money on pure information that doesn’t actually get them where they need to go. They’re still willing to spend money to learn (and that will probably continue to be true for a long time), but they need to know there’s personal attention and real value.

They need to know your offer is worth the money.

But let’s assume your product is really good. Let’s assume you’ve worked with an instructional designer and with other experts in your industry to make your course as good as it could possibly be. Let’s assume you’ve been teaching people your process 1:1 for years, so you know exactly what it takes for them to learn it in a group format.

And let’s assume you’ve sold this in a different format enough to have a pretty clear idea of your customer language and messaging.

None of that means you’ll have a successful launch.

Because it isn’t just online courses themselves that customers are wary of; it’s the whole launch process.

Your launch is predictable.

Years ago, when launches first became popular, it was a novel concept to make a product launch into a storytelling event. It was exciting for customers to get lots of free content that led them through a story that climaxed in the product itself. It was buzzworthy to create live events around an information product. 

That’s no longer the case.

All these techniques have been used, a lot, and customers are savvy to what’s coming. They’re not as fascinated by your 3-part free workshop; they’re not eagerly anticipating what’s coming next. They know exactly what’s coming next: the pitch and the hard sell.

And that doesn’t interest them.

The digital world is saturated with free content, and if customers are going to get interested in a your free stuff, it’s going to need to be a lot better than a few videos with teaser techniques.

You think your launch can do all the work.

When the whole concept of a launch was relatively new, a launch by itself could do more than it can now. It used to be that the mere excitement of putting on a launch was enough to bring at least some sales. Free content was a more exciting thing ten years ago than it is today.

Now, though, a launch by itself can do very little. A launch can build on your existing relationships and the trust you’ve already built over time…but it can’t create that trust from scratch. It needs to be the culmination of things you’ve been building – not the beginning of it.

Your “new” product isn’t really.

On the other hand, sometimes the problem isn’t that you want the launch to do everything, but that you’ve already done so before you try to launch. If you’ve been selling a product that’s very similar to the thing you’re trying to launch, your audience may not see enough value in your new product to want to buy. They might feel that they’ve already gotten the thing you’re launching through your free products, and there’s no reason for them to buy your new thing.

To launch something new, you need to have both an existing audience that trusts you, and a product that is different from the things you’ve offered in the past – different enough that your audience will understand why this new thing in this new way is worth investing in. 

So what if all these prerequisites are true for you? What if you have a new course you want to launch that’s truly worth sharing? An offer that’s actually buzzworthy? Something that both needs and deserves the attention and excitement of a launch?

You could push through and launch your course using the same old formula that everyone’s been using for years. Or…