8 Reasons Your Product Isn’t Selling (And How to Fix It)

When you launch something new – a course, a membership, a digital download – the expectation is clear: sales. But when those sales don’t come in, it’s easy to start questioning the product, your audience, or even yourself.

Sometimes it is made even worse when you’ve put a lot of work and preparation into it – all while imagining what could be. Then, when you hit that proverbial “launch” button, it goes by with little more than a whimper.

You’ve written the emails, polished the sales page, even dreamed about that first Stripe notification ping. Then launch day comes… and all you hear is crickets.

Why isn’t anybody buying? Below are 8 of the most common reasons your offer isn’t converting.

Reason #1: You Don’t Actually Have Product/Market Fit

By far, the most common reason for your product not selling is that you haven’t actually nailed the product/market fit. You may have created something that you think is great, but your market isn’t feeling the same urgency.

Too often, what I find are creators who end up trying all kinds of sales tactics like price decreases, sales and countdown timers… but the deeper issue is lack of product/market fit.

All the sales tactics in the world will have limited (if any) results in the face of a bad product/market fit. For most anything to work, you’ve got to KNOW you’re selling something that the people you’re talking to actually need and want.

What To Do About It

Your mission is to find out what your market needs and wants. Simple as that.

There’s a good chance you assumed what they wanted. You may have jumped to conclusions. The only way to know for sure is to start having conversations and start talking to them.

Run surveys, schedule quick Zoom calls, or even send out a single email asking, “What’s the biggest struggle you’re facing with [topic]?” Then, adjust your product to better match that need.

If you’re still in the beginning phases and don’t have much of an audience yet on your own, then go out and find where they’re hanging out and start conversations with them. Find them on other sites, in social media groups, forums, whatever makes sense. You may even consider using paid traffic to offer a free lead magnet to them and then immediately engage them in conversation.

Whether you find them elsewhere or on your own list, your mission is to have conversations. Find out more about the problem(s) they’re having, what they’ve tried to do about it, and what they’d really like as a potential solution.

Reason #2: Your Offer Isn’t Clear

Confusion kills conversions. If a visitor can’t immediately understand what your product is, who it’s for, and what result it delivers, they’ll bounce.

The keyword there is “immediately“. One of the biggest issues I see is creators trying to sell products with pages that are WAY too much work for the end user to learn what it is you’re actually offering. Things such as:

• A big long sales page that looks like a wall of text. Nobody wants to read it! You may think it is great copy and you put a lot of work into it, but it is easy to assume your visitor is going to do EXACTLY what you want them to do. But, they won’t. 🙂
• A sales page that has way too much fluff at the beginning.
• A sales page with so much fluff that the reader (if they read it) still doesn’t fully know what it is they’re going to get.

Offers need to be simple and easy to understand. If the sales page makes the reader think they’re going to need to sit down with a cup of coffee and read for awhile, they’re likely to just move on. For such a page to work, you’d need to be talking to a person who is already warmed up and prime to want what you’re about to offer. If they’re still a cold lead or not primed for such a thing, they’ll just move on.

What To Do About It

You need to make your offer clear and easy to understand in as little amount of time as possible. So, ensure your offer is simple and easy to understand.

If you have a long sales page which takes a fair amount of time to read, then try a shorter version. You can preserve the longer version in case you want to revert to it or even split-test the two.

You may even try using a sales video. Videos are more personal and hold attention far better than a big wall of text. I know many people see videos as a lot of work or may not even be comfortable making such a video. But, you may want to give it a try. The more videos you make, the better you get at it.

Reason #3: You Don’t Know How To Talk To Them

This one goes hand in hand with product/ market fit. See, with reason #1 above, we want to make sure that WHAT we’re offering to them is right for them and something they’re seeking. Closely related to that, however, is to ensure that the WAY we’re talking to them about it makes it clear that what we’ve got is the right thing.

You can have a great solution for them, but if the way you’re talking to them doesn’t resonate then they may not even know.

One of the most common mistakes I see are sales offers written in a generic way because they were trying to accommodate everybody. This is why it is important to know exactly who you are talking to and talk TO that ONE person.

What To Do About It

First, it comes down to all of the solutions addressed in reason #1 above. Have conversations. Talk to people directly and find out what they need and want. But even more specifically…

Find out what it means to them. Find out HOW they think about it and the language they use to address it. To craft a compelling offer and position it just right, you’ve got to be able to see the world from THEIR perspective. You’ve got to get right inside their head, look at the world as they see it, and talk TO them.

You can’t lecture them. You can’t tell them what they’re problems are. You can’t sit in your ivory tower of “expertise” and preach. You’ve got to connect with them with empathy and understanding for where they’re at, how they look at things… and present a solution to them they feel will actually help.

Reason #4: You’re Not Reaching Enough People

Sometimes the product and offer is fine, but you simply don’t have enough eyeballs on it.

You can try all kinds of sales page tactics and tweaks to your offer, but if only a trickle of people are even seeing it then it doesn’t matter all that much. You could end up wasting all kinds of time trying to fix something when instead you just need to get it in front of a lot more people.

What To Do About It

Traffic is fuel. To really test pretty much anything about your offer, you need to pour on the traffic.

First off, make sure your website analytics are specifically tracking traffic to your sales page. You want that number to be one you are tracking closely over time. And then you focus on making that number bigger.

Step up your promotion. Add an evergreen funnel, run retargeting ads, create content that naturally leads into your product, or partner with affiliates.

Be willing to invest in paid traffic campaigns to send traffic through your funnel. Remember, traffic is fuel. It also removes the TIME from everything. You will speed everything up by using paid traffic. It means you can test things faster, make adjustments and see results faster. Everything is FASTER.

Promotion means OUTFLOW. You can’t just sit there passively and hope people find their way to your offer. You’ve got to be out there communicating and getting their attention.

Reason #5: Trust Isn’t There Yet

As the old saying goes, people will buy from people they know, like and trust. And one of the things I’ve seen people do is present an offer to somebody too soon or without enough trust being in place yet.

I once had a client that was trying to move cold traffic from paid traffic campaign straight into an offer that cost almost a thousand bucks. There’s no way that’s going to work!

You have to establish a rapport with people. You have to build trust.

What To Do About It

There’s two different avenues to look at here. One is more of a short-term thing and the other plays the long game.

First, you should establish trust right within your offer. This is the short-term trust for cold traffic and people who don’t yet know you very well. You can establish trust by just being yourself, being personable, and showing why you might be worth listening to. Videos and photos can help so they can see who you are. Use testimonials to establish third-party proof and a strong guarantee to reverse the risk. Make them comfortable to do business with you.

The long game here is… build out your content marketing engine. Regular blog posts and videos. Compelling email sequences that people actually look forward to. Perhaps even a compelling newsletter. Over time, this content builds rapport that lasts because you come up over and over again and you’re providing value.

Reason #6: The Price/Value Equation Feels Off

Either the price is too high compared to the perceived value, or the product feels “cheap” and doesn’t inspire confidence. But, I will say this…

Don’t focus too highly on the number itself. I see far too many people playing with price as if it is the only lever they’ve got. Usually, they end up just lowering the price out of desperation. But, it is important to look at price in context with the entire offer.

The price is seen in conjunction with the VALUE of your solution. It is seen in context with the deliverables and what they’re going to get. If the value they’re being promised is much higher than the price they’re being asked to pay, they’re way more likely to take you up on your offer.

Keep in mind, too, that all of this is dependent on your offer being simple and understood (see reason #2 above). If they don’t clearly see what they’re going to get and the value it presents to them, then the price equation will seem off to them even if it isn’t.

What To Do About It

Re-visit reason #2 above first and ensure your offer is simple and understood. Make sure they know the exact deliverables they’re going to be receiving from you. Then, consider the following points:

• What is the real value to THEM of each of your deliverables?
• Can you add more deliverables (i.e. bonuses) to sweeten the offer and tilt the value equation more into their favor?
• Can you reframe existing deliverables in a better way to make it more valuable from the outside? Give it a better name, perhaps? Focus on the exact problems it will solve?
• How can you reframe deliverables in the direction of QUICK solutions? Remember, people don’t always want “more”, they want “speed”.
• Can you strengthen your guarantee to reverse the risk?

Remember, price is a balancing act. It isn’t just a number. It is seen in context with everything above and if that equation feels like it is in their favor.

Reason #7: You Stopped Selling Too Soon (Or Never Even Really Tried)

I see too many people trying not to be “salesy”. They don’t want to be perceived as “selling” and so they approach the entire thing with one hand tied behind their back. They’re almost afraid to actually try to sell.

You can’t do that. If you have an offer you feel will legitimately help them, why not do everything you can to get them to take you up on it? And if you don’t have that kind of confidence in your offer, then fix that! 😎

Also, remember that selling is a process, not a one-time event. You can’t just send out one email to your list to make the offer and then just go silent afterwards. You can’t just present an offer once. It needs to be in rotation. It needs to be made over and over again, in different contexts.

What To Do About It

Get out of your comfort zone if you have to…. because you’ve got to start selling in order to make sales. This isn’t just going to fall in your lap.

It is only “used car salesman” if what you’re offering to them is crap. But, hopefully your product or service is actually great and you are confident it will serve them well. When that is the case, you shouldn’t approach sales with your hands tied. It doesn’t mean you get spammy about it, but you do need to be confident.

• Send multiple emails to make your offers.
• Build your offers into your content marketing engine. Make many entry points to your offers. Make sure that people who don’t buy from you will see the offer again over and over. Many times, people will buy months (even years) later. It happens all the time.
• Ensure you make the offer in different contexts over time, in newsletters, blog posts, etc. You can’t just repeat the same exact call to action every single time because people will go blind to it and ignore it.

Reason #8: You’re Giving Them Too Much Work

It may sound harsh, but people are generally lazy. And we all live in a world of major competition for our time and attention. Life can be overwhelming as it is. With that in mind, you coming in offering a big 10-module course with a bunch of videos and worksheets isn’t going to sound like a real solution. It is going to seem like work!

Many people are willing to put in the work if they’re seeing results. But, those results…. they want those quickly! They don’t necessarily want to enroll in a PhD level course to have your expertise downloaded into their brains. Frankly, they don’t care. All they want is their problem solved in the quickest possible way.

So, are you offering a product to them that feels a lot like work? Does it sound overwhelming?

In the “old days” of internet marketing, people talked about the “thud factor”. You saw product launches with hours upon hours of videos, tons of transcripts and worksheets. You saw marketers pile on so many bonuses and put so much on there that the goal was to make the person feel like they were getting so much stuff that it is almost impossible to say no. Since that did indeed tilt the value equation in the buyer’s favor, it worked.

Times have changed. It is a lot harder to tilt the value equation that way today because people are already so overwhelmed with content. People have experience with their hard drives getting chocked full of downloads of stuff they’d do later… but never did.

What To Do About It

Less is more. Speed is king. People want results and they want them fast.

So, look for ways to reframe your offer in ways that will communicate the results and the speed which they will be gotten. If you’re giving them a lot of material, at least spell out for them the kinds of things they’re going to find out while consuming that content that they can immediately apply and see quick results.

Can you take material out of your larger pool of content they’re getting and reframe it for quicker application? Things like checklists and quick-start guides?

Can you add additional bonuses to your offer specifically to make things faster, easier and more predictable?

Don’t focus on quantity in your offers as your primary selling point. Focus on speed.

Final Thoughts On Why Your Offer Isn’t Selling

Too often, I find people making offers with a kind of tunnel vision. They’re focused on what they think people want to see and what people need, but it is mostly coming out of their own head instead of just listening to the people and letting them tell you want they want.

I also see people who try to make offers in some formulaic way based on what they’ve read with “gurus” around the internet. They need a “squeeze page”, and a “sales page with certain components”, a 3-day email sequence and a price that ends in 7. 🤣 It is too much focus on the FORM of the offer and the pieces you think you need…. and not NEARLY enough focus on the actual human being you’re speaking to.

Those are real human beings we’re speaking to, not just pixels on our traffic graphs. They have certain things going on in their lives, certain problems they’d like to address, certain opinions and attitudes about life.

The better you understand THEM and can speak to them, the better your offers will sell.

So, if your offer isn’t selling as well as you would like, I hope the reasons above will help shed some light as to why it is likely happening.

Rotating the graphics on your sales page, changing button colors, or just fudging around with the price are often just stupid things that don’t even matter.

Your product isn’t doomed. Fix the alignment between what you sell and what your audience wants, and you’ll see sales follow. Forget the hacks and focus on humans.