Sales Slump? Launch Flop? 5 Factors to Assess Before Making Radical (Or Random) Changes

Ever had a launch completely flop? Or has business for a once-popular offer suddenly dried up?

(We’ve all been there!) 

When a new offer doesn’t sell, it’s tempting to go at it with scissors. You might dramatically decrease the price. Pile on more features. You might even throw out the idea altogether, furious that you’ve wasted countless hours on something no one wants.

When a once-popular offer doesn’t sell, it’s more of a head-scratcher. Is it the economy? Have I worn out my existing (and relatively small) audience with this offer? Does my breath stink?

The former can be deeply disappointing—possibly embarrassing. The latter is more likely to inspire panic. After you’ve let the emotions wash over you, what can you do about it?

💭 Before you start taking action, it’s worth taking a moment to check in with yourself. Is this offer still something you’re excited about? Is it aligned with your values, energy, audience, and goals? The market is crowded enough as it is—if it’s not something you love doing, put your energy elsewhere.

Assuming you are excited about your offer, and you know it’s something your audience needs, then you have a solvable problem on your hands.  But what needs to change? There are a few possibilities:

• Your offer
• Your audience
• Your marketing strategy
• Your sales strategy
• Your messaging

With so many possible solutions, it’s hard to know what to change first. Change the wrong thing, and you’ve just got a different flavor of the same problem the next time you promote your offer. Change too many things at once, you won’t know what worked (if it works). Or you risk changing something that doesn’t need to be messed with.

There’s no 100% foolproof way to untangle and solve a sales slump. It’s more like an experiment. But as any scientist would tell you, there are methods for approaching an experiment that enhance the likelihood that you come to a reliable conclusion.

In this blog post, I’m going to dive into each of these five variables. Specifically: 

• How they’re distinct from one another
• What you might tweak for each of them
• When to tweak them
• And how to hopefully avoid making the wrong changes

And spoiler: your messaging is impacted by all the rest, so be sure to read to the end.

Factor #1: your offer

When your offer launch or marketing is met with crickets, changing up the offer itself is the first thing most people try, because it’s the easiest thing to change. But as I mentioned before, it’s not always the answer.

That said, here are some changes you might consider, and how to know if making these changes is right for your business.

What changes should you consider making to your offer?

Here are a few ideas:

Adjustment to consider: Adding features that enhance results or fill a gap

Features that address adjacent needs or barriers

What related pain points or objections does your audience have? If those needs remain unfulfilled, will that impact your audience’s ability to achieve results (even if your offer’s great)?

An example: If you’re a web designer, it makes your client’s experience better (and your job easier) if they come to you with well written sales copy. But if they can’t afford to hire a copywriter, and you don’t have one on your team, that’s a barrier for you both. 

To address this, you could hire a copywriter to create a DIY website copywriting template to help your clients write their own copy.

This example is effective because the need for both design and copy are directly related to their audience’s ultimate goal (having an effective, high-converting website that represents their brand). It wouldn’t be nearly as effective if the web designer threw in a random bonus that fulfilled a different need.

​Features that deliver a quick, satisfying win

Unless you’re delivering overnight results, your clients may need to be patient before they experience the transformation your offer promises. It’s hard to be patient!

​What urgent or irritating problem do they have that you could help solve right away? See if you can add in some quick wins along the way that satisfy a pressing need from day one.

Features that showcase your unique method, perspective, or framework

Your audience has a million options. If your offer sounds like all the others, it’s hard to stand out.

How can you put your stamp on this offer? What unique approach do you take to your work? What energy do you bring to the table?

​You likely already do something or have features that accomplish this. Your messaging around them may just need to be tweaked.

Features that address current trends or industry disruptors

As online business owners, we have to stay relevant and up-to-date on what our audience is paying attention to if we want to remain relevant.

For example, if you’re selling a course and AI is shaking up your industry, you might introduce a new module that teaches your audience how to use AI tools to make a step easier.

Not all potential features are going to be equally valuable to all types of audiences. (For a B2B marketer like me, an audience of mostly solopreneurs trying to do everyone themselves is very different from an audience of marketing directors who want to look good to their bosses.)

If you bulk up your offer, make sure it’s something your audience will actually want.

Or consider: Stripping away excess features

Before you go adding lots of features, a word of caution: expanding your offer can sometimes have the opposite intended effect.

Add-ons can start to feel cheap and overwhelming when there are too many of them. (How many courses or memberships have you seen promising a million tools, templates, and calls? Is that really what you want?)

Instead, take a hard look at your offer to see what people aren’t using or raving about and ask yourself whether it’s necessary. There’s a reason minimalism has its allure. Sometimes less really is more.

…Or making your offer more accessible or digestible

Could your course length be cut in half and still get great results? Do your program’s live calls really need to be live? Do people actually read those long PDF resources? Could you make it more accessible for people with disabilities by offering things in video AND written format?

​For example, in my copy consulting program the Draft House, I host twice-weekly Office Hours in Slack. Members can drop their questions any time, so they don’t even have to be there when I’m answering questions.

My Copy Hot Seats are recorded on Loom. Members can watch the videos any time they want. They can watch each other’s, too, if they want. But they don’t have to sit through them if they don’t want to.

​We still get plenty of facetime in other ways. But this spares both Draft House members and myself a lot of extra Zoom time and actually offers members more support because I can host twice-weekly office hours instead of weekly or monthly office hours.

​Get creative. Just because everyone else follows the same format doesn’t mean you have to.

… Or changing the price

This is the last thing you should change. Your price could go up or down depending on market demand and your audience. 

If your prices are on the lower end of your industry, but you provide a level of service or quality on par with higher-end competitors, you’re confusing your audience and undercutting yourself. Sophisticated audiences are skeptical of suspiciously low rates.

On the flip side, if you’re charging relatively high rates for an audience that can’t quite afford them, you have two choices: lower your prices or market your offer to a slightly different audience that can afford your rates.

Here are some clues that you should tweak your offer:

Considering adjusting your offer if: You’re getting feedback and questions that hint at audience concerns

Questions are a form of feedback, too. If someone asks what they’re supposed to do, for example, then they’re confused.

…Or you’re getting traffic and interest, but no conversions

This could point to a pricing issue, or a gap in your offer’s features. But this could also point to an issue with your sales strategy. That’s why asking for feedback is so important—you need to find out rather than making changes based on assumptions.

…Or you have a lot of turnover, cancellations, or refund requests

This applies to offers like memberships or digital products.

When you SHOULDN’T tweak your offer (yet):

Don’t make changes to your offer yet if: Your offer is still new

Unless you’re getting lots of feedback as to why people aren’t buying, focus on your messaging and marketing strategy first. Especially if you created this offer based on (formal or informal) market research.

…Or if it has sold well in the past

If this used to be your best-selling offer, it’s possible some updates are necessary to keep up with changing times. But offer tweaks aren’t the default answer.

Look to your data from past successful selling seasons. When were they? How were you marketing your offer leading up to the busy season? Who was raising their hand and buying at the time? Find out what’s changed since then.

…Or if you’re not seeing enough traffic and interest to measure results

You don’t have enough data to measure. How would you know what to change about your offer? You’d be throwing darts blind.

​Try to get more feedback from your audience and focus on your messaging before making radical changes to the offer itself.

Note: If you do end up making significant changes to your offer, keep in mind you’ll likely need to make adjustments to your offer messaging, too.

Factor #2: your audience

Even if you’ve been doing your thing for a while, it’s natural for your audience to evolve and change over time. 

Sometimes it’s out of your control—e.g., your audience’s behaviors, needs, or demands change with the times. (In which case, you either adapt and change with them or find a new audience.) Sometimes it’s an intentional change on your part, like when you niche down or expand to serve a wider audience.

Then there are the subtle, incremental changes that are within your control. Changes that, over time, appeal to a very new group of people. Like:

• You create and promote new offers that address the needs of a slightly different audience
• You raise your prices, pricing out your previous audience
• You market on new platforms where different audiences are hanging out
• You honed your messaging (the way you talk about your business) over time, appealing to a different audience

All this to say, if your offers aren’t selling, maybe you need to make adjustments to your audience. Or maybe you already have without even knowing it.

If you’re in a slow season now, it may help to look back at the last time business was really good:

• Which offers were selling well?
• Who was signing up for them?
• Where did those people find you?
• Which pain points, desires, and benefits were you talking about in your marketing during the weeks/months leading up to that period?

Compare the answers to where you are today, and you might find you’re now talking to a very different group of people. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing! You may have simply enhanced your offer messaging over time and/or outgrown your audience.

There may also be inconsistencies in whom you’re addressing across your marketing channels. And that can confuse your audience. (Which is super common.)

For the sake of covering all our bases, here are a few other changes to consider:

Audience adjustment to consider: Serving a higher-end clientele

If you’re a service provider, you may need to raise your rates as your expertise becomes more in-demand. Raising your rates may mean needing to target bigger clients who can afford them. 

…Or further niching down

If you’ve been serving a wide range of clients, it may be a natural time to focus on serving one type of audience. The good news is this allows you to get a lot more specific in your messaging.

…Or expanding your audience

If your capacity and experience have increased, you may want to actually expand your audience to serve more people. This can be great for business, but it also presents a challenge of how you talk to multiple audiences at once. Finding common pain points and desired outcomes is key so you can avoid diluting your messaging.

…Or addressing changing needs

Sometimes it’s not your audience that’s changed so much as their needs and priorities. Economies shift, technology advances, people get older. How can your business change with them?

When do you know your audience has evolved (or when it’s time to make an intentional change)?

You can start by asking yourself a few questions: 

• Do I want to continue serving the same audience?
• Am I bringing the energy and value these individuals deserve?
• Am I trying to be too many things to too many people?
• Do I actually have two distinct audiences (with slightly different challenges and desires)?
• Is my audience asking me different questions than they were a year ago?
• Can my business grow and scale while serving this audience?

After you’ve done some soul-searching, it’s important to also have conversations with people you identify as your ideal client or customer. Face-to-face conversations are best.

Find out if your current messaging and offers are resonating with them. Ask them about their challenges, priorities, desires, and failed attempts at solutions. Pay attention to the language they use.

The key to getting honest, in-depth answers is asking lots of follow-up questions (even repeating questions when necessary), shutting up, and letting them talk. Most importantly, make clear that it is not a sales conversation and that you’re simply trying to get to know them better.

I talked to my Instagram friend and systems strategist, Jacki Hayes (who just released a podcast called  Launch Lessons), about this and she agrees:

“We tend not to actually talk to the people we’re making offers to. We come up with these brilliant ideas but don’t take the time to ask our people if that’s what they need.”

She said that reaching out to people who didn’t buy your offer can be helpful and recently conducted her own voice of customer research. One question she asked gave her a ton of insight:

“I asked what they needed from my industry, what their frustrations were. I didn’t ask what they needed from me. Rather, if they could wave a magic wand, what could my industry provide that would be most helpful for them?”

By asking questions like these, you’ll likely learn one of two things. Either:

1. you have a simple messaging problem and just need to tweak how you talk about your offer using your audience’s language, or
2. your audience is asking for something you don’t currently provide and either your offer or audience needs to evolve

And if it is, in fact, your audience that needs to change, so will your sales, marketing, and messaging strategies.

Factor #3: your sales strategy

Your sales strategy makes up part of your funnel, which also includes marketing. 

If your funnel is an upside-down pyramid, then sales is the pointy part at the bottom where your prospects take action—like hit that “buy” button or pay your deposit.

The line between sales and marketing can be blurry because they are inextricably linked, but I’m parsing the two out to get more granular.

Tweaking your sales strategy might look like…

Sales strategy adjustment to consider: Adding a supportive step before the sale

What you’re selling is an investment in time, money, and faith. If it’s no small investment, the leap from interest to action may be too great.

Do people need help seeing how your offer will help them? You could offer a demo or walkthrough, a free consultation, or a paid audit.

Are you sending your prospects straight to checkout without having a sales conversation first when one would be appropriate? You might want to add a discovery call to your process.

I once inquired with a photographer who didn’t suggest a discovery call OR even send me a proposal—she just sent me a little bit of information along with an invoice.

With certain offers that might have been completely appropriate. But considering I would’ve had to drive to an unfamiliar warehouse to meet her, a stranger from the internet, alone in person, to have my photograph taken? Ah… no.

…Or removing barriers to the sale

If your offer isn’t highly tailored and personalized e.g., a group program, and you have enough social proof and results, you can often skip the sales conversation or make it optional. If their next steps are vague, confusing, or overwhelming, that’s going to be a barrier, too.

Likewise, if you have any tech that adds unnecessary clicks or steps to getting started, it’s going to frustrate your audience and increase the odds that people bail.

Go through your own sign-up or purchasing process through the eyes of your client to experience what they’re seeing.

…Or strengthening sales conversations skills 

When people ask questions or object, do you have a clear and confident script? Or do you stumble over your words?

When people are talking, are you actually listening, or are you thinking about your response? Are you asking the right questions to uncover the true source of their problem to make sure your offer is right for them? (And do you ask as many questions as you need to in order to get there?) Or are you avoiding asking questions and just hoping to get the sale?

I think you can tell which ones are better.

…Or enhancing the follow-up

Are you following up with leads who disappear? More than once? Or are you afraid you’re bothering them? Follow up more than you’re comfortable with. People appreciate reminders.

If you are following up, is it a just checking in, but no pressure!! kinda vibe? Or a confident, clear one? Keep your follow-ups short, remind your prospect of their goal, and give them a clear next step.

For e-commerce and digital products, enhancing your follow-up might look like an abandoned cart sequence or retargeting ads.

…Or sweetening the pot

You could add an incentive for your most loyal audience members like past clients or your email subscribers. Giving them special pricing, exclusive access, priority treatment, or complementary elements can help make the sale a no-brainer.

What are some clues that your sales strategy might be the issue?

Considering adjusting your sales strategy if: You’re getting attention and interest but fewer conversions

If your marketing is bringing people to your doorstep but your prospects are ghosting you (and they’re the kind of prospects you want to attract).

…Or if clients/customers are dropping out, canceling, or asking for refunds

This isn’t a definitive clue, because misaligned messaging could also be at play here. (Read: You promised one thing and your audience interpreted it as another thing.) But there’s also a chance something went awry in the sales process.

…Or if you feel out of touch with your ideal audience

This would apply if you’re hands-off during the sales stage because you’ve automated the process. If you’re not regularly having conversations with your audience somewhere—in sales calls, in the DMs, in email conversations, or in your community—then you don’t have a lot of information to go on. It’s going to be harder to tailor your sales approach to their behaviors and needs.

Don’t make changes to your sales strategy yet if: Your offer isn’t getting a lot of traffic or inquiries

If there’s not much attention or interest to measure, it means the problem lies elsewhere.

…Or if you’re having sales conversations with misaligned prospects

Something you’re doing is attracting the wrong crowd. The problem is likely either higher up in your funnel (marketing) or with your messaging.

Factor #4: your marketing strategy

This one’s tricky for a couple of reasons:

#1. What makes for an “effective” marketing tactic is constantly changing. (Especially for launches.)

Instagram reach isn’t what it used to be. TikTok might be banned soon. Audiences are increasingly wary of freebies and masterclasses. Blogging is dead. Just kidding, no it isn’t.

And don’t buy the hype from anyone who says “I grew to 100k followers in a year and I can teach you, too” because guaranteed they’ll be selling you an outdated strategy.

It’s essential to have a well-rounded marketing strategy that goes beyond posting on Instagram 3x a week and only emailing your list when you have something to sell. But…

#2. Unless you’re outsourcing somewhere in your business, it can feel near impossible to add a new layer to an already time-consuming marketing strategy when you’re a solopreneur.

Which is why you’ve got to be thoughtful about it. And why it’s important to remember that, like everything else, your marketing strategy is an experiment—one you should constantly measure to make sure you’re getting a return on all that effort.

Rounding out your marketing strategy might look like:

Marketing strategy adjustment to consider: Getting in front of other people’s audiences

You can absolutely get booked out or have a successful launch with less than a thousand Instagram followers or a couple hundred email subscribers. But you can grow a lot faster when you leverage someone else’s audience.

Think: workshop swaps, guest speaking, participating in summits, creating an affiliate program.

But before you go pitching yourself all over the place, decide on the goal. Visibility for visibility’s sake is not the goal. Yeah, you can get an influx of followers from exposure via a podcast appearance or summit. But once you have those new followers, what’s the plan to introduce your offer to them? What’s their natural next step, given how and where they found you?

Chart the course accordingly.

…Or trying a different kind of live event

Does your masterclass need to be 90 minutes, or could you teach the same topic in an impactful 30 minutes?

Is your audience suspicious of free masterclasses, or is your no-show rate getting higher and higher with every launch? Could you instead offer a paid hot seat event and attract a smaller number of people who are more committed to results you offer?

Do you even need a traditional “event,” or could you offer a behind-the-scenes sneak peek, office hours, or Voxer chats instead?

… Or lengthening your pre-launch phase

If you’re launching your offer, you may need a longer runway to the “doors open” date to get your audience in the right frame of mind. 

You want them to be receptive to your offer on Day 0, and that means addressing any misconceptions they may have about their problem and your solution before the hard sell. Your pre-launch phase could be anywhere from 2-6 weeks depending on several factors, but I usually find four weeks to be ideal.

…Or pouring more into the “interest” and “consideration” stages of your funnel

Often, much of our marketing efforts go into social media, podcasting, or blogging. Or, the top layer of your funnel known as the “awareness” stage. It’s easy to forget about the people who are somewhere in the middle: the ones who are already interested in and considering working with you, but who need more nurturing.

Emailing marketing is the most common and often the most effective form of marketing for that middle area.

But if you’re working with a small audience and limited time and the thought of writing weekly emails feels like a stretch, you might consider updating your welcome sequence (the emails you send after someone signs up for your freebie) and creating a long-term nurture sequence. 

A long-term nurture sequence is a natural extension of your welcome sequence. You can set it up to be evergreen (so it works for you on repeat), and you can add to it over time, so you don’t have to create it all at once.

…Or showing more than telling

Stop telling your audience how you can help them. Show them. Unless you’re brand new in business, you can let your work speak for itself by sharing things like:

• Examples of your work (like a portfolio or behind-the-scenes look at your process)
• Testimonials and feedback (the unedited screenshots are especially effective)
• Case studies and results (demonstrate what’s possible for your audience)

This may sound obvious to an experienced business owner, but sometimes we forget that sharing knowledge isn’t always enough. Some people need to see your expertise in action or see some social proof before they feel good about moving forward.

…Or creating a content repurposing strategy

This is something I’m currently thinking about thanks to people like my content strategist friend, Natasha, who specializes in content repurposing.

You may want to expand your marketing efforts to include a new platform or simply make showing up where you already are marketing way easier.

Content repurposing isn’t just copying what you posted on Instagram and pasting it verbatim over on Threads. It’s taking the seed of an idea and turning it into multiple versions of content appropriate for the platform on which they appear.

When to change your marketing strategy:

Consider adjusting your marketing strategy if: You’re not enjoying marketing

Marketing is a long game, so you’ve got to find a strategy you can happily stick to.

…Or if your audience has changed

Either because your niche has changed or their consumption habits have.

…Or if you’re not getting the reach you used to

When Instagram decides to be a jerk and put you in jail so your reach tanks just before launch time, that’s a clear indicator something’s not working.

…Or if you’re certain everything but the marketing strategy is working

I mean, sometimes you just know when it’s time to try something different. Your marketing strategy is the one variable that’s likely to change the most.

When not to change your marketing strategy:

Don’t make changes to your sales strategy yet if: You’re getting reach and/or traffic, but no conversions

This is a sign it’s likely a sales or messaging instead.

…Or if there’s a deeper reason you don’t love marketing

Before you archive all your Instagram posts and go all-in on a new platform, check in with yourself: Would you enjoy this platform more if you took a more playful approach? Would marketing feel easier if your messaging were stronger? 

Note: More marketing isn’t always the answer. Sometimes it’s about refining what you say, which leads us to the final variable: your messaging.

What’s the takeaway? And where do you start?

After a launch flop or a dry spell, what do you DO? How do you know which of these things to adjust?

Radical changes help us feel more in control, but they don’t help us understand what actually works and what’s just spinning our wheels.

As solopreneurs, we base so many of our decisions on emotion, gut feeling, what our business coaches tell us, or what we see our peers doing. Instead, we need to take a detached, systematized approach to analyzing a few key factors.

I’ve done launch audits with my clients in the past, and my friend Tracy, a business coach for moms, has her own 6-step process she calls the Bounce Back method.

Tracy says the key to actually following through with this process is making it fun and figuring out what will motivate you to actually sit down and do it. (Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies is a great tool for this.)

“I came up with the method because I wanted to stop people from throwing the whole thing out and starting from scratch, hiring a coach, or getting on a new marketing channel. The goal is to make sure we are  tweaking one dial at a time to find the one thing that’s going to make the biggest impact.”

Some of my own launch audit process includes looking at:

The cold, hard numbers 

If it’s an evergreen offer, what percentage of your content marketing is directly selling? (Hint: both over-sharing and underselling your offers are possibilities.) 

How many people are on your email list? How much has your list grown since the last time you promoted your offer?

If you’re launching, how many launch emails did you send? How many people are opening and engaging with your sales or nurture emails?

What percentage of your IG following is actually seeing your Stories?

What percentage of people are converting from your emails, live events, sales page, and/or sales calls?

Looking at the numbers can actually be empowering and take the emotion out of it, giving you a more objective view of your launch and/or offer.

As my copywriting coach Belinda said on Threads when I posed a question for others to chime in: “I ask myself: is this a traffic problem? Or a conversion problem? And if it’s a conversion problem, where is the breakdown? The numbers don’t lie.”

The energy and effort you’re bringing to your marketing

When we’re feeling tense, anxious, and overwhelmed about selling out our offer, it’s worth examining. Yes, launching is stressful. But if you’re not having any fun doing it, do some reflecting and brainstorming to see how you can make the next one more enjoyable.

Voice of customer and market research

Now I sound like a broken record, but this is always what it comes back to. This is the number one thing that should be influencing your offer messaging. Initiate conversations with your target audience, send a feedback survey, and pick your clients’ brains when you have the chance.

Final thoughts

I want to highlight how incredibly common this challenge is.

Let’s all give a big shoutout to the business owners who are transparent about their quote-unquote failures and helping to normalize anemic launches and slow seasons. They are in the minority (who enjoys broadcasting their disappointment?), so you can only imagine how many more people are silently struggling to bounce back from low-revenue periods.

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart, man. But this series is a) a reminder that you’re far from alone if you’ve dealt with this and b) you can take back some agency and adjust accordingly, one variable at a time.

This blog post was originally published as a series for my newsletter, The Speakeasy. Get on the VIP list so you never miss an email.