14: Know Your Numbers: How to Determine Your Launch Goals

Wondering how to set goals for your upcoming launch? By understanding launch conversion rates, you can create a plan that will help you achieve your launch goals.

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Get our free Launch Calculator to determine your launch goals: https://www.banishbusinessclutter.com/calculator 

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Transcript:

Welcome to the Launch Perspective podcast. I am so excited to chat with you today about something that I really enjoy, and that is numbers. Are you a numbers person? You may be, you may not be, but whether you're a numbers person or not, we all need to know our numbers, those important statistics, conversion rates, all the things that we need in order to set goals effectively. And today I'm going to be talking about how to set, specifically, your launch goals. So, if you're new to the podcast, or if you're watching here on my blog or on my YouTube channel, a big welcome to you.

I'm Lydia Martin and I love helping business owners turn clutter and confusion into clarity and confidence, especially when it comes to their business, their online business, and launching whether it's a course, a membership, or a coaching program. And I always have to smile because I remember what it was like when I was launching my first offer. I launched my first offer, a course, with a five-day challenge and when I was setting the goals for that launch, I remember thinking how amazing would it be to have a 10K launch?

And my course was only $97, which means I was going to have to sell a hundred of them. I was going to have to get a hundred people buying my first course. And that number is easy for people to figure out, but what they don't figure out is what it's actually going to take to get those hundred members. Right. How many people are going to need to be actively involved in your launch, whether that's a webinar launch, an email series that you're doing, a video series, or my favorite way to launch, a challenge? How many people would need to be in my challenge in order to have a hundred new students into my course.

Well, these conversion numbers vary. They vary based on your experience, your audience, your niche, and also on if your audience is warm or cold. And in my first launch, I did invite a lot of people that were already familiar with me, my teaching style as a corporate trainer and coach. So, in that launch, I ended up having four hundred people sign up for my challenge and ninety-five of them bought my course. So, I almost hit my goal of a hundred students, and I did hit about $9,200, $9,400, something like that.

But what I really learned is that my offer converted. And once you have an offer that converts the sky's the limit. Right. Because all I needed was validation and proof that what I was creating was something that people wanted, needed, and would pay me for. Now I definitely underpriced my course as many new course creators do when they're first launching a business. That course now sells for $597, and it's only offered a few times a year and I also have an Evernote edition of that course, the Digital Clutter Cure, that I sell year-round that is $297. So, they're lots of different types of offers and courses and prices.

But what I really want to jump into today is helping you determine the three main numbers that you need to hit to reach your revenue goals in a launch. And that is whether you launch with a webinar, a challenge, maybe you're a coach who sells a high-ticket coaching program. How are you going to generate enough sales calls which is what you do to generate new clients into your programs. This is going to help any type of business owner like this.

Now, what you're going to want to do is go get the calculator that I'm going to show you today. Especially if you're listening on the podcast, this is one of those episodes that you're actually going to want to watch. Or just go get my calculator and when you click on the link in the calculator it will bring you to the video here on my blog so that you can follow along as I show it to you. So, the link you want to go to is banishbusinessclutter.com/calculator. This link is going to be where you can put in your email, and we will instantly give you access to a customizable Google sheet that you can use to plan your next launch. And it's a great visual of the numbers you need to have to reach your revenue goals.

So, let's go ahead and jump into the calculator and I'll show you how it works. All right. When you get your link, you're going to click "Make a Copy" and this is going to load the Google sheet into your Google drive account. And you'll see that we have set this up to make it super easy for you to set your launch goals. And before I go into entering some numbers here, I want to go ahead and go to the examples so that you can really get an idea of how this works and what numbers to look for as you're setting your launch goals. Knowing your goals and what it takes is only going to make that goal more attainable, because you're going to be able to be proactive in the steps you need to take.

Many of you have probably heard of SMART goals. Right. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic or Relevant, and Timely. These are the five metrics that you really should have when you're setting a goal. But so many of us struggle because we're like, all right, we know we need to measure our goals and we know we should be setting goals that are achievable but what if we don't know what it takes to achieve a goal. All right. That's where the challenge comes in.

So, in my launch calculator, we have set up some examples and we've kind of put in some suggestions of conversion rates just to get you started, especially if you're doing your first launch and you're not exactly sure yet what your conversion rates are. So, in example number one you'll see that I have a revenue goal set in this launch, could be a webinar launch or a challenge launch. But if my revenue goal is $5,000 and I have a $200 offer, maybe it's a course, maybe it's a coaching session, whatever the offer is, how many do I need to sell to hit that revenue goal? I need to sell 25 offers. But here is what we need to figure out. In order to sell 25 offers, how many people do we need to promote that offer to? So, if we have a 10% conversion rate, which could be standard based on, again, this varies on many things. If we have this 10% conversion rate, then that means we're going to need to promote this offer to 250 people.

Now, a lot of people when they're figuring out their goals, they get this far. Right. They know what they need to sell, how many they need to sell. And they're like, I know I might only convert 5%, or 10%, or if it's a warmer audience, or a lower priced item, or something you've sold before that converted really well. Maybe you have a higher conversion rate, but this tells us how many people we need to have eyeballs on our offer. Okay. So, this is people that are on our webinar, hearing our promotion, are in our challenge, hearing our final promotion and invitation to join our program.

But one thing we haven't probably thought about is the show up rate. So, many people are thinking, okay, well I need 250 people in my launch, but they're not realizing that just because 250 people register, it doesn't mean 250 people will show up. And I like to set my conversion rate based on who shows up. Some people will figure their conversion rates based on registrations, but I know that I have a higher conversion rate if the person shows up live on my webinar or live in my challenge. So, for that reason, I like to set, you know, a 10% conversion rate, but I know that typically about 30% are going to show up in my launch.

So, you'll see in our examples above where you can set your goals. That's why we've set the show up rate at 30%, but you can adjust this number to what you expect. So, in this example number one, I've put a 40% show up rate. Maybe the topic is on point and your messaging is fantastic. And you're like, you know what, I'm doing this challenge, everyone's excited, I probably have about 40% of my registrations who are going to participate. And that means I would need 625 people registering for my challenge or for my webinar. Okay. Do you see how this works?

So here we are. We only need to sell 25, but now we know we need 625 registrations to have a really good chance of selling 25 offers. Now, for some of you this is starting to feel disheartening because you're thinking how in the world am I going to share, you know, or get 625 people registered, especially if I'm new. And we'll talk about that here in a minute. But we are not done yet. There's one more number that you need to think about when it comes to setting your launch goals. And that is how many people need to see the registration page for my launch. Because there's another conversion rate to consider, and that is the conversion rate of your registration page.

So, if a hundred people go to my registration page, how many are actually going to sign up for my webinar or my challenge? Industry standard is 20 to 30%. It will be higher with a warm audience. If you are running ads to a cold audience, it will be on the lower end. At Banish Business Clutter we like to shoot for 25%. But that means if I need 625 people in my challenge, and I have a 25% conversion rate on my page, I'm going to need 2,500 people seeing my registration page. And this is the number where people go, wow, I had no idea that I would need that much traffic in order to sell 25 offers.

But don't be discouraged by this, be encouraged. Because I have had so many business owners come to me and they say, "Well, I did a challenge, but I didn't get the best results." And usually they'll say, "Because I only sold one course or three courses." And of course, my first question is how many people registered for your challenge? And then this is when they tell me about a hundred. And then I say, "Well, how many people participated in your live fourth day or fifth day where you presented the offer?" And they'll usually say, "I had about thirty join me live." Well, that's a 30% show up rate. And then if they sold three courses, they actually did amazing because they converted 10% of those who showed up on that live event.

So, they actually have a lot to celebrate. It's not that their challenge didn't go well. It's that they didn't set their goals properly. They said, "I want to have a 10K launch." But they didn't realize to have a 10K launch how many people were going to need to register and then how many people were going to need to actually get to that registration page. So, this information empowers you to look at it and number one adjust, if necessary, because you need the scales to balance.

And this is what I mean. When I was in my direct sales career, I used to have consultants join my team. They would be brand new, and I would always ask them, you know, what is your income goal for the month? How much money would you like to bring home in your new business? And they might say a thousand dollars a month. And so, I'm like, great you want to earn a thousand dollars a month. We then would say, "Well, how much then will you need to sell in order to earn that thousand dollars?" As a new consultant, maybe they needed to sell $4,000 in product. Well, how many parties would they need to do to sell $4,000 in product? They'd have to do two $500 parties a week. Right.

So, we were always breaking it down and it was always interesting because we'd go through this whole process and then they'd be like, okay, yep, I know I need to do two $500 parties a week. I'm going to sell $4,000 in product. I'm going to earn a $1,000. And then I would say, "So how many hours are you committed to working your business each week?" And then they would say, "I can probably do about five to ten." And this is where the scales went off balance. Because in order to get enough leads, book enough parties, have enough customers to sell a thousand dollars a week, you're going to have to put in more than five to ten hours' worth of work a week.

And so, I didn't laugh, or I didn't say you're crazy. What I said was well, in order to reach your goal, which is up here your time commitment is down here, we need to make a choice. Because in order for the scales to balance, we need to either lower the revenue goal or increase the work commitment. Okay. And that's what I want you to think of as you're working inside this calculator. I don't want it to discourage you. I want you to be honest with yourself and say, am I committed to what I need to do to get what I need, or do I need to be a little more realistic on my goals? Okay.

And of course, you can see in these examples, how numbers change based on the price of your offer. Okay. If you sell a $1,000 course versus a $100 course, it's going to look very different. Right. Because in order to reach a 10K goal with a $1,000 course, you only need to sell 10. So, then you do the math with my calculator, and you see. Okay. If these are your offer conversion rates, your show up rate, and your page conversion rate, then you're going to need about 1,600 people viewing the page. So now you ask yourself, will I be able to commit to the work required to get 1,600 people on that page? If you have a strategy and a plan with either organic or paid traffic, you can a hundred percent get 1,600 people viewing that page. But now we know the goal. Now we know how we need to spend our time.

And maybe this is dependent on the size of your email list, the size of your social following, whether you're going to use paid ads or not. Everyone has a choice at this point on what their next steps are, but now we can take action. So, I would encourage you to use the Launch Calculator. You're going to come up here and you're going to set your revenue goal first. So, let's say this is my very first launch and I would love to make $5,000 in my first launch and my offer maybe is a $500 course. So that's the first thing you do when you're in the calculator. So now that I've done that you can see I only need to sell ten to reach my revenue goal. Let's go ahead and leave the suggested conversion rates in here, but remember, if you think you're going to have a higher conversion rate or a lower conversion rate then you can change this.

So, I'm going to go ahead and change the 10 to 5% for now, because maybe this is the first time I'm launching. This is a new course. I'm not really sure how it's going to convert, so I might want to be a little conservative here. So now it's telling me, okay, I need to be promoting this to 200 people. But probably only about 30% are going to show up, so I need 667 registrations. And with an average conversion rate of the page, I need about 2,600 people seeing the registration page. So, you see how this works. And every one of these conversion rates, if I change the show up rate to be lower or higher, it changes the number of people you need seeing the page.

So, I always tell my clients and students, if you set your goals and you see, oh my goodness, I just have so many people that I need seeing this page, then you have to choose either a plan to reach that number or a plan to increase the conversion rate. That is another way to reach your goal. So, for example, it's really going be a struggle for me to get 2,000 people viewing my page. So, what I'm going to do with those who register is I'm going to really nurture this group of registrants, so that I increase my show up rate. I'm going to send them a workbook because if they get a workbook, they're going to be more likely to show up. I might offer a free gift for those who show up live.

There's lots of things you can do to improve your rates, your conversion rates. But in the beginning, I love using a calculator like this just to set some goals. I also have a spot on the calculator to set a stretch goal. Maybe a stretch goal is a 10K launch with your $500 program. And now you can see the difference. Okay. Maybe a stretch goal in this case you may convert 10%. Right. Maybe you have a higher show up rate, and you can see how it affects the numbers. Even those of you that are selling higher ticket programs through a sales call, I have an example down here that you could use. In your case we're trying to see how many sales calls we need to hold, how many sales calls need to be booked, and again, how many people need to view your page where you invite them to book a discovery call with you.

This calculator can be used for different types of offers, different types of launches, but what I encourage you to do is set a goal, set a stretch goal, and then you can also use the calculator to enter your actual results. And then I would recommend coming down here for each launch and simply duplicating the sheet and then renaming this your launch. So, you can rename this June 2022 and then duplicate the sheet and then have one for the month and date of your next launch. The great thing about tracking each and every launch is you'll be able to go back to see your actual results, and that will help you set your next launch's goals.

I hope that this has been helpful. I know sometimes as a new business owner, or someone who's launching a program for the first time, you may not know which numbers are important, so use the calculator. Go to banishbusinessclutter.com/calculator. It's completely free. Check that out and use it to determine your goals for your next launch. And I wish you all the best as you achieve those goals.

See you next time.