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03/20/15 | Uncategorized

3 Reasons Why You Can’t Copy Someone Else’s Launch and Be Successful

If you want your launch to succeed, you have to go your own way.

By Melissa Anzman (Executive Coach and Launch Coachsultant)

This post originally appeared on Launch Yourself.

We’ve all seen it happen. Maybe you’ve even done it yourself. You see someone else, maybe someone “big,” run an amazing launch and you want yours to be just as good.

So you copy their launch. Copy is the biggest form of flattery, right?

Obviously they are successful – so why can’t you just plug and play into their launch plan/sequence and get the same 6-figure results? They’re the “big guys” for a reason.

Except when you copy their approach, you don’t get the same results. Perhaps you sold less products than last time.

It’s an easy trap to fall into – copying someone else’s launch for a similar product of your own. But it’s one of the worst traps you can fall into for the success of your product.

Here are three reasons why copying doesn’t work:

1. Your Biggest Differentiator is YOU

There are a lot of plug and play systems out there that provide you with the framework and even scripts, to ensure your success. But in those systems, much like if you simply copied your favorite online marketer, you lose your “special sauce.” You don’t incorporate what makes you likeable to your audience in the first place – you.

We all have our own point of view, voice, thoughts, theories, and so on. Your audience signed up to your list or come back to your blog or buy your products and services because of your unique point of view. So why would you ignore that element?

Let me use a real life example. I have a friend who runs a very successful coaching business. She had successfully launched her product three times, but wanted a bigger launch for her fourth. So following “advice,” she copied a mentor’s launch which was more of the plug-and-play launch method.

She spent time, money, and hours working on this “new” launch plan to help her get more sales. Unfortunately, it ended up being her lowest selling launch for that product – with a bigger list and a bigger reach. Why? Well when she asked her audience, she received feedback like:

“Your materials didn’t seem very authentic.”

“I love what you do, but it just didn’t feel right like the other product.”

“It felt like you were hard selling… I’m not into that.”

Are you seeing a theme here? Essentially, her people thought she was… phoning it in or trying too hard. Not being herself. Not operating from the perspective she had consistently delivered over time.

Remember that your unique voice is critical to sell products that you stand behind. Don’t swipe copy from someone else hoping it will work for you – it won’t. You are not them and more importantly, your audience is not their audience.

 2. You Have NO Idea…

It’s kinda like magic – you watch someone else’s launch from the sidelines, taking notes, trying to figure out exactly what they’re doing so you can duplicate it… except, you have absolutely no idea what is going on behind the scenes.

What is presented publicly is usually the tip of the iceberg of the overall launch plan and components. And to add to that tip, you are only seeing a portion of what’s going out.

Let me give you an example: in a 6-figure launch, likely the following things are happening…

  • Message list segmentation – so you are only getting certain types of communications based on what you’ve signed up for, how you’ve interacted with their list in the past, and so on. In other words, you aren’t even seeing all of the email messages.
  • Affiliate participation – even if it’s not a huge affiliate launch, most launches have some sort of outreach to other online peeps, to help share and spread the word.
  • Guest posts – maybe you are seeing all of the content marketing and guest posting that the person is doing, but it’s highly unlikely that you will be an avid reader at all places.
  • Testing – most of the products and communications have been tested, at length, before they are delivered… you didn’t see any of the things that didn’t work, or weren’t working as well as what they ended up with.
  • Social media – sure you probably follow the person’s social media accounts, but how closely are you paying attention and are you seeing everything they’re doing… with all of your feeds, the answer is no. Not to mention all of the individual questions, RTs, etc. that are occurring.

I think you get the point here.

If you copy someone else’s launch, you are only copying about 20% (give or take), of what they are actually doing to make the launch work. So of course 20% isn’t going to bring you to the same level of profits as you had hoped to copy.

3. Your Audience

The most important reason why you can’t copy someone else’s launch, is that your audience and buyers, is not the same as someone else’s. You cannot recreate their list, network and connections, just like your list, network and connections can’t be recreated for someone else.

The actual people who are your fans and followers are looking for different things from you. They come to you for a different reason than they go to someone else.

I’m not talking about your special sauce here (although that’s definitely a factor); they want to gain specific knowledge in a specific way, when they interact with you. And you see that reflected in things like your open rates, click through rates and various other metrics – they are different than someone else’s.

Here’s an example: I had two clients who are health coaches. Their areas of focus are different: one specializes in mind/body/spirit, the other on exercise programs. Their list size was just about equal and both wanted to cross-promote their new products copying a fitness expert’s launch plan and copy.

Well, you can imagine what happened… it was a big fail on both sides. Their open rates were dramatically lower and their unsubscribe rates were higher for this promotion.

Why? Because the way you plan and communicate to people who are into mind/body/spirit is quite different than the way you communicate to people into hard-core exercising. Maybe the product wasn’t quite a fit… but if their launch plan and communications were more focused and unique to the needs of each audience, the launch would have been more successful.

Bottom line: the needs of your audience are vastly different than anyone else’s audience – so the ways you sell to them, the products you provide, the messaging and content, all need to be unique to their needs.

Photo credit: Kenneth Man via Shutterstock.

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