Most people treat “launch day” as an event tied to putting something new out into the world. A day to celebrate!

And it is. Launch day is a personal win, and a day worth celebrating.

But every single day that your “thing” is out there in the world, your “thing” will be new to somebody who just discovered it.

What if you started thinking about every day as launch day? Or even better, as every interaction with a prospective customer as a part of a launch that they are experiencing?

To change the way I think about launch, I’ve found that it helps to start thinking about what actually happens during a launch, and asking myself questions lie “Why does that matter? What result does that create?”

Once someone discovers or is reminded that you exist, what needs to happen before they turn into a customer?

There are at least 7 steps that every person needs to go through in order for a sale to happen:

  1. they need to believe you understand their problem

  2. they need to believe you’re capable of helping them with your problem

  3. they need to know that you have a thing they could buy

  4. they need to understand why that thing is right for them

  5. they need to have their objections heard, understood, and answered

  6. they need to have a reason to take out their wallet/credit card NOW

  7. they need to complete the purchase now, and not set it aside as “something they’ll do later”

No matter what your business or product, and no matter what your source of traffic or attention, it’s your job to make sure each of these steps are addressed.

Even if we’re talking about launching free stuff, you can swap the “buy” steps for things like read, listen, watch, try, subscribe, etc.

Anytime you launch anything, most of the people who will ever see it won’t see it on launch day. And yet, almost always, we put 99% of the emphasis on that first day rather than the ongoing experience.

You might think of that as depressing, but I think it’s exhilarating.

It means every launch leaves neatly infinite opportunities to improve for the next batch of people who are seeing my thing for the first time, and to remind people who weren’t ready or fully paying attention the first time.

So…here’s a thought experiment….

Who is the star of your launch?

Is it you? Is it your product? Or is it your customer?

What would you change to make it more about them?

What would it look like if your launched more often?

What are the individual elements of launch that you could make happen automatically, or semi-automatically?

There's more where that came from

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