The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 259: Launch Metrics to Track

Today, I am covering all about launch metrics to track. I will be diving deep into metrics, what I have learned that works for me over the years and things that could work for your business during launch too!

LAUNCH METRICS TO TRACK

By: Melissa Lin

If you've been in my audience for a while, you have heard me say that your numbers tell you a story, and today you're going to see how your numbers can help show how your launches are actually doing right versus how it feels like it's doing. There's a big difference. And this is reviewing your metrics and your numbers. Your data can actually tell you. And yes, a bit of my engineering background. I love to nerd out on stuff. I love numbers. I love analytics. I love data. And I've always just been such a math person. And this stuff tells you so much about your business. 

I'm so excited to get into this topic and something as exciting because we're prepping for another big launch right now. And so we've actually already started collecting some preliminary data for the launch. And there've been so many times just in past launches and my business where I felt like things weren't always working. Have you ever felt like this before? I know some of my clients have, you know, “Melissa things aren't working. I feel like they're not working. I want to give up” and that's not always the case. Right. There've been so many times, or I felt like things weren't working. And once I took a minute, so well, more than a minute, but once I took some time to look at the backend, I saw that things actually were working and that there was stuff happening during my lunch. And my numbers gave me an idea on what needed to be tweaked in order for me to make improvements. 

So if you're somebody where numbers overwhelm you, I want to help you create a new story around numbers and data. And it's also not something that you necessarily need to do in your business. You can delegate it. You can outsource it. There are tools and systems that you can grab that are going to help you do all of this hands-off so you don't need to touch any of it. However, it can still give you a report that tells you. If you're red, if you're green, what's going on? So, let's create a new story so your numbers can support you in your business, right? New story numbers, data, that stuff, it can support you in your business. And I'm going to share why today in this brand new episode.

Importance of Metrics

So today we are going to cover the importance of metrics during launches. Some of my very top launch metrics that I track and review during launches. And then some of the things that these metrics can actually tell you during your launch and so much more than I can't wait. So over the last few years, I have done my own share of launches. I've done so many launches and I've supported so many of my clients to their first launch, second launches, third launches they're on five figure launches, multiple five figure launches, six figure, and so much more. And you probably heard in the intro of today's episode, we do have a flash sale for my launch course. Five Figure Launch. I highly recommend getting into because you get lifetime access to the course, plus any future updates as well. And so now that I'm kind of talking through this and thinking through this, there's definitely going to be bonuses and new things that we will be adding over the years. Social media is always changing, so we're always going to be making improvements. So you might as well hop in now, so you can grab those future improvements and you won't be able to get it until it comes out of our vault next year at the earliest in 2022. I cannot believe that this year’s flying by so quickly. 

Learning which numbers are important

So anyways, back to today's episode, I would definitely say that I'm an expert in launching. Um, and as I mentioned, I had my launching course and I support all of my clients and all of my coaching programs and with launching their programs as well. And so I will say that when I first started my online business, It wasn't always this way. My first launch was a total flop. I was that person where, at least back then the first minute I launched something. If I didn't get an inquiry or a sale within my first like 30 seconds or 60 seconds of announcing, I felt like it was a total failure, which we all know it's not, but my first launch was a total flop. My second launch wasn't much better and I continue to do more launches. I continued to improve and I continued to learn what was working and what really wasn't working and what was important and what wasn't important in a launch. And so I started to learn which numbers were also important and which numbers could help me improve my launches in my business. So something I do want to say is, if I hadn't started to actually look at what was actually happening in my launch, then I probably wouldn’t be  happening all to get to where I am, as quickly as I was able to. And so there's so much happening behind the scenes that you may not even be aware of in your launch. And so I really want you to start to think about and consider looking into some of these numbers or tracking some of these and turning them into KPIs that you also start to track in your business. Weekly, monthly, yearly. And again, you can outsource this. You can have a different team member do this. If you don't want to be the one actually collecting, but it's important to have a pulse on your budget.

What to look for when not making sales

Okay. So there's a lot going on in your launch. We know that. And what I see so many entrepreneurs do as they launch their first business or as they launched their first program or their first product or their first services, if people don't buy right away, like, remember my story within the first 30 seconds or within the first 30 minutes of your life of what I see as a lot of entrepreneurs, see it as a fail and it isn't right. You only fail if you stop trying. And if you give up, there's a lot that goes into preparing for a launch, which is why we provide so much to our clients like templates, email sequences, social media graphics, things like that. So if you don't get a purchase within your first hour or even two hours or three hours, or even first few days, What we can do is we can start to look at what might be going on by taking a look at some of your metrics that you're tracking. So here I'm going to start to get into some examples. So let's say that you launched your first online course today. And maybe you didn't see any sales come through. Well, what you could do is you could go and look at your metrics and the back end to see what is happening, right? Maybe people went to your sales page while your checkout link was broken, or maybe people went to your sales page and they made it to the checkout page, but they didn't take that step and actually purchased because maybe there wasn't any urgency, right? If people are given forever to spend money, they will take forever to spend money. Maybe they didn't see a countdown on your checkout page or when they needed to purchase. Right? So there's a lot that goes into why people maybe are, or are not purchasing. And your numbers can give you an idea of what's happening. So if either of these two examples are the case, then that is telling you that people are interested. So yes, your launches are working, things are happening. However, there's something stopping. And that information is so useful for you as a business owner, especially when you're in launch mode, right? Because on the front end, you're feeling like things aren't working because no one has bought, no one has purchased. However, if you took a look at some of your numbers, you would see that there's a reason behind that. Maybe there's a broken link, maybe there's no urgency, right? You can see where people are stopping your data can tell you what your customer journey. What your customer is really going through as they go through that checkout process. It's pretty cool. 

Why Metrics are Important to Look At During Launch

So let's get into why metrics are important to look at. So without looking at your metrics during your launch and side note, you know, metrics are something that you can be looking at any time in your business. It's something that we look at the minimum. And I say min-i-mum weekly basis. And normally it's multiple times per week. And we have a few team members that actually look at these items daily. So back to the importance of metrics during your launch. So without looking at these metrics, we really don't know what's actually happening. We feel like we may know what's happening. However, we don't actually know. And I want you to be able to make decisions. In your business and decisions in your launch based off of data, based off of numbers, based off of things that are actually happening, right? Your numbers in your business, they're facts, your numbers, and your business and your numbers and your launch. They tell you a story of what's actually happening. And then you can make decisions as a business owner off of that. And you can make tweaks in your launch offer. So, for example, if we go and look at your metrics and we see that, you know, not enough people are actually clicking your website or your sales page, that tells us quite a few things, it tells us your audience may need a bit more value from you and they may need a few more touch points from you to take that next step. To then take action to actually go and click on your sales page or go and click on your website. And I'm going to share an example in just a few minutes, a little case study for when this was the case for me and one of my launches a few years back.

Examples of Metrics I like to Track

So now that we've chatted about why it's important to look at your numbers and your metrics, let's go into some examples And share some of the actual metrics that I like to track and the metrics that I actually review during my launches throughout the week. So we track quite a bit in our business because I truly want to pulse on how the business is doing in all areas. Right. That is my role. As a CEO, as a business owner, I want to have a pulse of how everything is doing. So I'm not going to go into every single metric because that would take quite some time because we do track quite a bit. However, I will go into some of the top metrics that I like to track and review with my team during launches. Because again, they tell you so much about what's actually happening and then you can go and make decisions based on that information. So the first thing that I would say is that depending if you have a sales page or an application page, maybe of both, we always look at total sale sales page views. And if you don't know where to find this information, if you have a website. Normally there's analytics on the website somewhere for you to see, if not, you can link your website up to Google analytics and that can give you all of the information. You can see the number of people that are on your website live right now. You can see their journey through your website, how long they spend on each of your sales pages. There's so much you can learn about your customer. And the things that they're doing on your website. And so total sales page view, as we look at this every single day, and we actually look at it multiple times throughout the day and record that data. We also look at unique page views, right? Total sales pageviews versus unique page views are different. And unique page views are, these are the number of unique people with different VPN, different IPS that are coming to your website. We do look at if we have an application based program, application views as well, plus unique views. And that can also tell us, okay, this many people are coming to the sales page and this many, many people are coming to the application. If it's a dramatic drop, we know there's something that we get to tweak, whether it's on our sales page or maybe our button is a different call to action, that takes them to the actual application. We also look at applications, submissions, and social media metrics. And when it comes to social media metrics, again, there's a lot that we do track. However, we love looking at what content is performing best right now, and which content is. Pushing people to actually click and take action, right? If we know what type of content performs the best, we can then start to really utilize that type of content. If it's educational graphics, if it's more storytelling, we can go and look at our last launch for the same program and see which first social media posts performed the best and repurpose and reuse. Yes, you can recycle that content and use it again. We also look at email, open rates, email, click rates, and we will do, we have a few different strategies for what we do with our emails when it comes to opening and clicking. And you can see all of that information in your email platform. So we use active campaigns and I absolutely love active campaigns. I've been with them for quite a few years, and you can see all of that data. We also look at the checkout page. But look at conversion rates. And again, these are just a few and they're all so important. 

So here's an example for you. It was about a few years ago during one of our launches. We weren't getting as many applications as we normally did during a launch. So it was an application based program. It was a group program and we started testing a few things and watching the numbers to see what happened. And so what I did was, I decided to add in a few more mini training sessions during the week and show up on Instagram stories more often than I had the week before and what we saw as a huge uptake that our sales page views, our application views and the incoming applications and conversions. So meaning sales. So what that told us was that  I needed to show up a bit more for people to take that next step. However, once they did take that next step and make it to our sales page, the rest flowed, right? The conversion from the sales page application page was awesome. Same with incoming applications. We just needed more people to actually make it to the sales page. And so that's what we did is we bumped things up when it came to value. And we got that information from our numbers. And that is how we came to that decision. So that next week when I started to show up and really lean into my launch every single day, we tripled the incoming application. So every time we launch, we take a look at what happens every single day during our launch. We know that if numbers aren't where we want them to be, it means I can just show up a little bit more or there's something else going on. So your numbers tell you a story. I want to go into another example for you.

How numbers can support you in your launch

Another way that you can really utilize numbers and that your numbers can support you in your launch. So you can look at numbers from your metrics, from your last launch to your next launch. So review some of your numbers from your last launch to help you prep for your next one. For example, let's say that last launch, you had 200 people register for a three-day training series and of those 200 people let's say 50 participated live most of the three days then of those 50, you had 10 convert into your group coaching program, like amazing. And now I'm totally pulling these numbers out of thin air as an example. Actually now I'm curious what these numbers came out to be. Let me grab my calculator really quick. Well, 10 sales on a 200 in your training series, that's a 5% conversion, which is a great conversion. Definitely what most people strive for. And so this information can help you with your next launch. If you want to double your sales, you can either make some tweaks to increase your conversion rate so that instead of only 10 converting, maybe 15 or 20 convert, maybe it's a lot. Training series. Maybe it's a few more bonuses through your fast action bonuses and things like that. Or we already know what works so we can double down and bring in 400 people into your live training. And then it's likely you'll see roughly double the amount participate, live, and roughly double the amount of sales. So if you brought in twice as many people into your life training for that last launch, it's very likely that you'll see, you know, a hundred of those 400 participate fully, and then 20 sales, if conversions are about the same.

Lean into your launch every single day

A few more launch tips. I want to give you because we know how much I love launching and selling is self-care every single day during your launch. Really lean into your launch every single day. If you are full in launch mode, you should be showing up in your Instagram stories. Somehow every single day, you should be showing up with your content. And again, once you've done one launch, you can start to recycle some of your old content on other tips for you. So I said, show up every single day. Keep going, keep leaning into your lunch and have a support system surrounding you. Whether it's a coach, whether it's business besties or a group coaching program to lean into for support, and most of all, have fun, have fun and take a look at your numbers. Don't forget that too. 

So today we've touched on the importance of metrics during lunch. My top launch metrics that I tracked during my launches. Some of the things that these metrics can tell you during your launch and so much more. Thank you for hanging out with me today! I’ll see you next time.

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