35: Confessions of a “failed” launch (Part 2)
In the last episode of ill communication, I shared part one of my two-part series where I shared reflections on what worked in my low-key lazy launch to promote Marie Forleo’s B-School program.
I shared a behind-the-scenes look at how I leveraged some existing assets in my business, like my email list and podcast to basically experiment and test this promotion without spending all kinds of money and investing oodles of time in it.
You'll hear what worked really well for me to have the successes and wins I saw, which weren't just B-school signups. If you haven’t tuned in yet, make sure to check out that episode first.
In this episode, I’m sharing part two of the series. I'm going to share with you the things that did not go well or things I would do differently if I were to get a do-over.
I'm going to share why the low-key, minimum-viable approach to building my business may be the right choice for other Gen X entrepreneurs and business owners.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
The first thing I would do differently if I had a do-over
My mistake when it comes to social media
The updates I would make on the sales page
Why I am so happy with this launch
So often in the business world, we hear about exponential growth and huge successes, but I think we should change the barometer for how we measure success. I’m happy to celebrate my small successes, little wins, and incremental growth.
If you want to see my ugly sales page, you can check it out here. If you want to learn more about why Gen X women are leaving their leadership positions and careers, check out this link. To learn more about Vanessa Lau’s sabbatical, you can read about it here.
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Welcome to Ill Communication, Copywriting, Tips and sales strategies for small Business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and change makers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soulmate clients. Let's get started. Tennis player Serena Williams. Politicians Jacinda Ardern and Nicola Sturgeon. Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki, an online business coach. Melissa Griffin. These are all very powerful and very successful women who've recently stepped away from their positions and careers due to burnout and a lack of balance and support. The demands of their business or careers was not congruent with the kind of life they want for themselves and their families. And just a couple of weeks ago, another very popular, very successful online business coach, Vanessa Law announced she's taking a sabbatical. She off boarded all her high ticket clients. She downsized her team from nine members to just one. She retired her signature programs and canceled her speaking engagements. If you're not familiar with her, Vanessa Law is a young woman who quit her corporate job in 2018 because she was sick of the hustle and grind hamster wheel.
Within just a few years of running her own business, she experienced meteoric growth and success to the tune of having 500 K months. But she realized what she was building was another big hamster wheel where the demands of her business took priority over her life and relationships. And so she closed almost everything down to reflect and reevaluate what kind of business she wants and what kind of entrepreneur she wants to be. And this is one of the reasons why I'm talking about my, quote unquote, failed launch because spoiler alert, it wasn't a failure at all. It was the result of a desire to do things as easily and as low key as possible. Hey there. Welcome back to the Ill Communication podcast. This is episode 35 and it's part two of the two part series called Confessions of a Failed Launch. In part one, I shared my reflections on how I pulled together a low key, lazy launch to promote Marie Forleo's B-school as an affiliate. I shared about how I leveraged some existing assets in my business, like my email list and podcast to basically experiment and test this promotion without spending all kinds of money and investing oodles of time in it. You'll hear what worked really well for me to have the successes and wins I saw, which weren't just B-school signups. So please make sure you listen to that episode first to get all the context and information before you listen to this one. So go ahead and pause right now.
Go back and listen to episode 34 if you haven't listened yet. And in today's episode, I'm going to share with you the things that did not go well or things I do differently if I were to get a do over. And I'm going to share why the low key, minimum viable approach to building my business may be the right choice for other Gen X entrepreneurs and business owners. So let's get into it. If I was to do this promo over again, the first thing I'd do differently is trust my damn self. I would trust my gut and apply to be an affiliate sooner. You see, I waited until the very last minute to apply to the program, which meant I had only three weeks to prep and plan for the promotion. With a little more time, I could have done some list. Building attracted more qualified buyers. I might have planned a pre-launch info session and I probably would have hired someone to help me set up proper landing pages and sales pages with more time. I could have written and sent more emails and created an engaged more on social media. One of the biggest lessons I keep learning and relearning in this lifetime is how important it is to tune into and trust my intuition. I wish I'd trusted my nudge to join the B-school affiliate program and applied sooner. More time might have allowed me to create a higher performing copy and attract more ideal buyers and generate a few more sales.
The second thing I totally failed at was social media. Now, to be perfectly honest, I'm typically not very active on social media. I maybe make 1 or 2 posts a week usually about the podcast and reshare a few silly stories and memes. And with B-school I barely promoted it on social. I made posts and stories about my podcast, as I usually do, which were linked to the launch, but I hardly use stories and posts on Instagram and Facebook and I barely posted anything on LinkedIn. And here's the thing. When I did post on social media, I actually saw lots of engagement. I even saw a few registrations for Murray's free events coming directly from those social media posts. So I know if I'd updated my social media headers, created more posts and got more active on social media, especially on LinkedIn. I might have had a few more signups and sales, but again, this was all a test and an intentionally low key approach to launching. Given the time frame, I didn't have the bandwidth to create and share all these kinds of social media content. The third thing I would have liked is a proper, sexy, conversion focused sales page built on proper landing page software. But in the absence of time and not wanting to spend a huge budget on an experimental launch, I ended up doing it myself in Squarespace. And I'm the first to admit that I am not a designer.
This sales page I had for my bonuses and the program was so ugly. I even wrote an FAQ that asked, Why is this sales page so ugly? If you want to see just how ugly it was and how I answered that question, I invite you to visit the page to behold it in all of its ugly glory at Holcombe School. I'll drop the link in the show notes. But all that being said, the fact that I still got a couple dozen signups to Murray's free launch events and a few sales with a fugly DIY sales page is actually pretty cool. And I think it goes to show you don't have to have all your shiz together and be super techie and sexy and sophisticated to run a beta or a test launch. You can totally do a minimum viable lazy launch with the systems you already have in place. The fourth thing that didn't really work out too well for me was the B-school affiliate launch Support and resources. Now, I don't know what I was thinking, but I had very different expectations for what kind of support Marie Forleo and her team would provide. I expected to feel more like a part of a community. I expected to see who the other affiliates were, and I expected a couple trainings and some templated email copy. In fact, one of the reasons why I actually decided to do the affiliate launch was so little time was because I assumed there would be templated emails I could use and adapt and customize for a shortcut.
But they didn't provide any of that. What team Forleo did provide was some really beautiful graphics and canva templates for social media, but as we've already said, I wasn't able to make much use out of them because I failed on the social media front and I had a pretty ugly sales page. There was also a very helpful point person on Team Forleo, who answered all my novice questions and hopped on a call with me. So when I asked for support, it was certainly there. But I was honestly surprised by how little infrastructure and resources there were for affiliate marketers in this round of B-school. I'm pretty fortunate because I'm a copywriter, so I pretty easily wrote some decent emails and based on the feedback I received about them, they worked pretty well. The lesson for me here is to go into any future affiliate launches expecting to write and create the bulk of my own content and emails, and if there are any additional support resources or templates, then it's just going to be a nice little bonus for me. I think overall that's a pretty good snapshot of what I would do differently if I could go back in time or if there is a next time to participate in affiliate launch like B-school. Perhaps if I'd had more time, a few more resources, I could have welcomed a few more women into the B-school program.
But I want to be very clear. At the end of the day, I am totally delighted and impressed with the four enrollments into B-school. And for any outsider looking in, this small number might be considered a failure. But for me, it's an absolute win. I got four sales from sending a few emails and sharing content I would have had to create and send anyway. And those four sales are 100% ideal buyers. These women are going to see tremendous success inside the program and it's going to benefit their businesses, their families and their communities. I gained so much valuable insight and information into my Gen X audience and the kind of offers that resonate with them. I set up podcast engagement ads which have been on my to do list for months, and I made a few thousand dollars in affiliate commissions. So often in this online business world, we celebrate exponential growth. We celebrate celebrities and influencers with millions of followers. We celebrate continual growth and ten axing this or 100 axing that. But maybe that kind of growth isn't sustainable, at least without having large teams and a big ad spend and a super strong mindset. Why don't we celebrate the small successes, the little wins and incremental growth? If women in positions of power and leadership continue to struggle with burnout, exhaustion and sacrifice, something is wrong with the system. And I think it's particularly important for Gen X women, whether you're in corporate, in politics, in nonprofit or in entrepreneurship, the struggle to balance and find sustainable success is real.
And that's why I'm not going to disregard or devalue my small growth and incremental success. What if we didn't always try to become the next big thing? What if our goal was to be the next small or medium thing or to be a bigger thing, but on a much smaller scale? I think we need a new barometer for how we measure success and new models of what sustainable success looks like. I'm going to continue experimenting my way forward with these low key, lazy launches. This is the direction I'm heading. Want to join me? Hey, thanks for tuning in to today's episode, but before you go, tell me if this sounds familiar. You've just written or had someone else write your website or course or mastermind sales page, or maybe you've had the copy up and running for a while, but it's just not performing as well as you'd hoped. Wouldn't you love to have an expert sales and brand voice copywriter review your copy to flag any concerns that might be creating friction for your ideal client? Wouldn't you love to get a custom list of changes and recommended copy upgrades to immediately increase your signups and sales without having to pay thousands of dollars or wait weeks to get your copy optimized? If that sounds like you, you might be interested in my no BS copy audit. When you book a no BS copy audit, you'll get a deep dive review of your copy, a video review, a detailed checklist report and some copy punch ups you can use immediately, all delivered within ten business days.
Jennifer and Minda recently booked an audit for their conference sales page. They'd hired different people to write and design the page, but it never matched what they envisioned, and the conference sales were practically nonexistent. Within a few days of booking their no BS audit, they had a detailed report of what was working, what needed to be optimized, and suggested copy. They went from barely selling any tickets to selling out 300 seats at their event. They said, We are so grateful for how you went above and beyond in your work for us. You somehow crawled into our brains and were able to put into words exactly what we were thinking and imagining. We've been looking for you for a long time. You over delivered and we can't thank you enough. No BS Audits are delivered within ten business days and are a fraction of what it normally costs to work with a professional copywriter. If you want to book this quick and very effective service, visit khimki.com/audit to download a PDF info sheet that gives you all the deets and a link to book your audit. Within ten days you can have some refreshed conversion focused copy and a roadmap to make other improvements and changes to get more leads, more clicks and more sales. With your copy to book yours, visit Khimki NHL.com Slash Audit.
Resources Mentioned
Read why Gen X women are leaving their leadership positions and careers
Find out more about Vanessa Lau’s sabbatical
Additional Resources
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