Let’s talk about what not to do when your launch goes sideways. Everyone has launches that go sideways, that fail, or that have issues. The real question is, when it happens, what do we do? So this week we’re talking about what NOT to do.
1. We don’t blame our team members (including ourselves).
Storytime! I’ve had very few clients that have had failed launches that I’ve worked on. I’ve had my own failed launch, but when I was working for a client I think it’s only happened once, but it was an epic failure.
This is a project that I was brought in on at the last minute. They’d had a different copywriter, but they weren’t happy with the copy, so I was brought in. I didn’t have a contract, which was a red flag. I wrote all the copy for the sales page, all of the emails, the webinar, registration page, everything. We wrote it all in less than a week (which tells you how chaotic the launch was!).
The launch went live and I think he made maybe two sales. *womp womp* He then blamed the entire team and then ghosted them. At that point I think he owed around $20,000 to his contractors, including me. He had a launch manager. a designer, a Facebook ads person, a tech person, and a copywriter and he blamed all of us.
The truth is that it’s very rare that one of your team members can take the blame for a launch. Mayyyyybeeee that could be the case if someone just completely ghosts you and doesn’t do anything that they’re supposed to, but nine times out of 10, if a launch fails, it’s usually because there’s something wrong with the offer or the messaging.
Even if there IS some kind of issue with your team, it still doesn’t help anyone for you to blame your team members or even to blame yourself. Launches go sideways. So take the blame away. Don’t blame your team members. Don’t blame yourself. Instead, let’s figure out what happened.
2. We don’t ignore the launch.
You’ve seen people hyping up their offer and then they never mention it again. That’s usually because it failed and they just act like it never happened. They just move forward and never acknowledge it again. While there is something to be said about moving forward, you don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen because then we can’t learn from it.
You’ll probably learn more from a launch failure than a launch success, because it’s easier to pinpoint what went wrong than to know for certain what it is that went right. So don’t pretend like it didn’t happen. We need to be more open about it. We need more people talking about the fact that launches don’t succeed on the first try most of the time. It takes multiple iterations, trying different offers and finding your audience.
3. We don’t quit.
You don’t want to quit launching. I actually had a call with my coach earlier this morning about how I’m kind of terrified to launch something again, because my last one failed. But that’s exactly why I need to do it again. But some people launch just one time and when they fail they say, “okay, that’s it. I’m done. It didn’t work for me. I’m quitting. I’m going to go back and get a job.”
And if you want to go back and get a full-time job, you do you. There’s nothing wrong with that. But don’t quit just because you had one failed launch or one launch went sideways. There’s always something else to do.
Instead of quitting, the real thing we need to do though is to make sure that we’re actually learning from this launch. We look at the numbers. We look at our wins. We look at our mistakes. Because we’re going to have both wins and mistakes and tons of data, whatever kind of launch you do.
When we avoid blaming ourselves and others, intentionally learn from our failures instead of ignoring them, and keep moving forward instead of quitting, we set ourselves up for the best chance of success as we plan what to do next.
Now that you know what NOT to do after a failed launch, check out what you should ALWAYS do after a launch. And if you’re ready for help with your next launch, let’s do it!