The marketing podcast where online service providers learn how to write copy that sounds like them, but converts BETTER.
I’m Sam Burmeister, your guide on this copy adventure. As a conversion copywriter & sales psychology expert, I learned the ‘right way’ to sell in my decade-long sales career.
Now, after spending the last 6+ years writing copy for hundreds of successful launches and helping dozens of entrepreneurs write better copy every week…I know what sells and what’s working in online business right now.
And what’s working is copy AND – Copy and messaging, design, strategy, navigating AI and more...
Together, we’ll put the pieces of the marketing puzzle together - and you will write copy that both serves AND sells.
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10:32
In this episode, Samantha discusses what happened when she ran a flash sale workshop that got tons of engagement, lots of DMs, and only five sales, against a goal of twenty. She walks through the launch timing strategy lessons she pulled from the flop, including why running a promotion the week before Labor Day (with kids heading back to school on wildly different schedules) tanked her conversions even though the offer and messaging were strong. This episode is for anyone who has ever launched something they were sure would sell, watched it underperform, and wondered if the problem was the offer itself. Spoiler: it usually isn't.
Key points covered in episode:
Why the middle of an open cart period is almost always the slowest stretch of a launch (and why that's normal, not a red flag)
How to tell the difference between a messaging problem and a flash sale timing problem
The exact questions Samantha asked non-buyers to figure out why they didn't convert
Why "everyone loves a Labor Day sale" is a launch myth worth questioning
How to turn a low-converting launch into usable data for your next one
Hello, and welcome back to Copy The Marketing Podcast, where I teach you how to become a better copywriter in your business, or how to write copy that sounds like you, but converts better. My name is Sam. We are officially towards the end of summer, and this is episode 53, which feels kind of bonkers because it means that I have been doing the Copy Podcast for over a year. Please clap. Please, at least somebody reach out from the ether, shoot me a message on Instagram and let me know that, you're proud of me. Today we are going to talk about right message, wrong time, and I'm going to tell you a slightly vulnerable personal story from my own business and my own copywriting. Honestly, this is gonna be pretty short. I have it very loosely. I have a couple of notes of things that I wanna touch on here on my phone. I don't typically script my episodes. I think that's probably pretty clear. But I usually have a little bit more structure than what I'm doing today. So buckle up, lean in, and, let's go So when we talk about copy, it's always copy and. That's the name of the podcast. It's copy and how does it interact with the design? What is the user interface? Copy and the data behind it. What are people clicking on so that we know to do more of that? What are people not clicking on so that we know what to avoid? There's always so much going on with copy, and I am no different. A couple of weeks ago, you heard me talk about it on the podcast, I was stoked to help a bunch of people run a flash sale. I asked my audience how they would like to learn about a flash sale. Everybody said live. So I said, "Great, I'm gonna run a live workshop, and i'm gonna give away my templates and my bots. I'm going to sit there with you and help you write it, and on top of that, for VIPs, I'm gonna give you one-on-one feedback on your copy." I was jazzed about it. Other people were jazzed about it. I launched it to crickets. So let's talk about what I launched, 'cause it was also kind of just a flash sale that I ran to my flash sale workshop. So good luck with those mental gymnastics. But over the last couple of months I've had this idea. I did market research. I spent hours talking to people about it, and I wrote... I'm looking at my numbers. I wrote eight emails about it to my list of over 2,000 people. I made about 10 reels and 10 threads posts. Most of those reels were pre-planned. I put kind of some production into them. If you follow me on Instagram, I thought they were pretty darn good. I got lots of likes. I got lots of people messaging me the word flash so that I could go send them the flash sale workshop. And in total, I made five sales. I had planned my minimum goal on this was 20. I wanted 20 people in VIP, and I sold to five So I put all of that work in for about $700. Some people bought VIP, some people didn't. But I had thought that this was gonna be a five to $7,000 thing that I was running. Honestly, throughout the whole sales period, I had it open for about two weeks. I knew that because it was live, people needed time to be able to put it on their schedules, or at least block time later in the day for the replays. But throughout that two weeks, I got five sales. And there was a time where, quite honestly, I thought about, "Do I just refund the people?" And then at some point I thought, "No. What would I tell one of my copy on-demand clients if they were going through this?" And the first thing that I would tell people is that right in the middle of any active open cart is typically the lowest period of launching, and that was the same for me. I had three people join pretty quickly after I released it, and then the last two people joined in the last couple of days that it was for sale. So what would I do is I would tell people to keep pushing, so I kept sending emails. I kept trying to figure it out. I was having conversations in the DMs, and I realized pretty quickly I probably wasn't gonna hit my goal, but that I was gonna control what I could control, is that I was going to get as much data from this sale as I possibly could, and that's exactly what I did. I am so proud that I ran this workshop this week just as intensively and intentionally as I would have if there were 40 people in this group. Each day, I had one person show up live, so it felt a little bit like I was yelling into the ether. It's always kinda weird to record something and say, "And for those of you watching this later..." But I did it, and I did a really darn good job. And the feedback that I got from the people who did show up each day were so stoked and so wowed by the things that they learned and the way that they were able to suss out either mini launches or flash sales. They walked away with a ton of ideas. They were grateful. They were kind, and honestly, I think they were stoked that they got one-on-one time with me, rather than being in a group of potentially 40 people live on a call. So now that I'm on the other side of this, I'm like, "Okay, so what went wrong?" When all signs pointed to, "I'm pretty sure that I could sell at least 20 spots at $200 plus more." I am not mad. I wanna be so clear. I'm not mad that I made 750 bucks. Like, not everybody is so fortunate to send out a few emails to their list and make money, and I was able to do that. But I still wanna look at the data and say, why were my predictions wrong?" Because I can typically look at a client launch and tell them before they launch where the gaps are, so that they can either close them or postpone a launch. And I looked at mine, and again, the data pointed to it. I didn't have a wait list, so I didn't have anybody that had truly raised their hand. But I was able to reach out to the people that I was having private conversations with and say, "Hey, listen, you're also a business owner. I trust you. I'm not gonna push anything on you. Real talk, you asked for the link. Why didn't you use it? Why didn't you join?" And every single person that I asked did not have time this week. This was a bad week. So I'm releasing this episode on American Labor Day. That's September seventh. I am recording this just a couple days in advance. So this week was leading into a holiday week. A lot of people's kids aren't back in school yet. A lot of people's kids are back in school. So for a lot of people, this was the last opportunity to travel this summer. It was the last opportunity to spend a bunch of time outside. A lot of people's back-to-school schedules are freaking wild. I had a girlfriend telling me that her kids go back to school like thirty minutes in the morning, day one, thirty minutes in the afternoon, day two, then they go up to sixty minutes, and they do that whole like rigmarole for like a full week before sending the kids back to school. She's like, "I can't commit to anything that isn't shuttling my kids back and forth from school this week." So where I thought that, okay, great, this is a week where everybody in my neighborhood here in California is back in school, I didn't realize that like everybody wasn't back in school. I'm childless by choice. I looked back at my hometown, they're back in school, and I checked locally. That's all the research that I really did on that. I thought that leading into a holiday weekend where a lot of people love to run a flash sale, or they could do something really experimental, would have been a huge selling point, and it absolutely wasn't. So all of those people said, "If you were to run this in October, if you were to run this pre-Black Friday, I'd be stoked about it. I'd be set, especially if you start advertising it, that I need to block my calendar like a month in advance." So what am I telling you? I am telling you that all of the data ahead of this pointed towards this was a great idea. All of the messaging was phenomenal. I got so many clicks on my emails. The gap in efficacy was in the timing. So truly, it was the right message and the wrong time. I was able to get data, both qualitative and quantitative, that says that this is something that I could or should do again, and I am gonna keep playing with it. I now have these assets. I still have the template, and now a recording of the call that I sent out to the people who did sign up, and I'm offering it again. I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is and run a Labor Day flash sale and make it available to people who wanted to join but didn't because the timing wasn't right. Great, now they still have all the assets. I need to look at my fall. Probably gonna run it again, but more specifically, rather than just an anything flash sale, for Black Friday sales. The lessons are the same. The ideas about all these super unique flash sales are still the same. The coaching is still the same. The launch concepts and the sales psychology don't change. I had the right message at the wrong time. I tell people this all the time, and I think everybody thinks it's an empty platitude, that there's no such thing as a failed launch. Because there's no such thing as getting, bad data. The data might not say what you want it to, but getting data is so helpful for us as business owners. So today, I am saying that it is copy and the data behind it. I am saying that if your people aren't buying, maybe you need to change your messaging. Maybe you need to change your timing. Maybe you need to change the way in which the offer is delivered, but still giving them the same information. I don't know that without looking at your business and having that conversation with you. So I'm gonna put a link in the show notes. If you want me to help you look at your launch, I do offer launch strategy. I will put the link to that below so that you've got access to it. But really, I just wanted to have an open and honest conversation, 'cause I think a lot of people get on podcasts, myself included, and only tell you the highlight reel. And it was still a really fun time to make and deliver the flash sale workshop. I don't see it as a failure, but I am talking about it vulnerably here because, again, I think we expect the people that we learn from online to get it all right all the time, and I think nobody gets it all right all the time. We just don't publicize when we don't get it right So with that, have a phenomenal week. If you are listening to this on Labor Day, put down your phone, Go experience the fruits of other people's labor, which is our foremothers fighting for the right for us to get paid for our work, for the union workers who had Labor Day instated in, what, 1866, so that we do get these days off. And if you're a business owner I really still hope you're not laboring today. All right, take care. I'll be back in your ear balls next week
