March 2, 2021
Have you ever thought about launching a course or a digital product?? Selling digital content (courses or products) is a great way to scale your business, duplicate yourself + the value you bring, and reach even more people with the expertise and knowledge you have to offer.
Launching a digital course or product can be pretty intimidating if you don’t have any prior experience. Today we are breaking down 3 of the top tools, strategies, and ideas you need to know and implement to have a successful launch.
If you’ve been flirting with the idea of launching something but you feel utterly lost in the sea of digital marketing for something of this scale, we’ve got you. We’re breaking down how to create the right product that offers value AND will sell well, how to create brand loyalty to guarantee a successful launch, and the importance of understanding marketing funnels and how to implement them into your launch, all while using examples from our past launches and experiences.
The thing that most people think is they will create a product because they want to make money. It might work if you are lucky, but probably not. You need to have intentional thought. What are you an expert at? What do you know well that other people want to know? Do you have demand or proof of demand that people want to learn from you?
Not only make sure there is a demand there but also know what you’re talking about. You don’t have to know everything right off the bat, we’re not saying you have to have twenty years of experience and a Ph.D. in the subject. But make sure you do have the expertise and experience about what you’re about to share and they need it. Make sure it’s quality, easy to use, digestible.
If you are creating a product that is easy to customize or navigate if you are creating a course that is easy to ingest in the information and then utilize that information.
With courses, we have been learning that people don’t finish them. What can we implement and what can we do better as an educator or teacher to help our students go through the material at a regular pace? This is a problem in the industry, so many people want the knowledge but then they have trouble finding time to implement it. Not that they don’t have the time, but prioritizing the time to sit down and take the course.
Something we did do at the beginning, this could be for any downloadable product, how are people ingesting it, how are they learning it, and how will they learn best? Either themselves or specifically from you as the educator. From our first course, we knew that we wanted our first course to be a video course, but with that, we also knew some people don’t learn best through audio or visually. So we added a course workbook that wasn’t an exact transcription but it was a summarization of what we were saying. That way you are giving people multiple ways to learn the information. Not everyone learns the same way.
It comes down to make sure there is a demand for what you are going to create. Know what you are talking about and then talk to friends and figure out ways you can set up your course. Make sure you are creating the right product and not just because you have seen somebody else do it. Have a strategy that goes into what you are creating and why. Give it time and energy and be aware there is going to be a learning curve.
Take feedback from your community. There is always more to learn but fight for excellence from the very beginning.
Brand loyalty means anybody that has ingested content from you whether that is free on social media, downloading a guide, or they bought something in the past and they are obsessed. They love you and they know the value you can give. Somebody loyal to your brand.
Ideally, before you start selling something, especially a high ticket offer that is digital. Lower ticket offers you can get away with not having as much brand loyalty, but regardless if you are asking people to put money down ideally you want to have served them and they know that your products are of value.
You have to keep in mind the factor of know, like, and trust. Which is so central to all sales and to do sales well. You can do this two different ways with an online product.
Cold Leads
You could start with no audience-based, no social media following or email list and just go for Facebook ads. Target cold leads where they have never heard of your brand before and then you are bringing them into your brand and nurturing them through so that they get to know, like, and trust you. Then selling them at the end. That is kind of a funnel.
A cold lead is putting your ad in front of somebody who has never heard of you, never seen your face, or your content ever online. It costs more for a Facebook ad to do that because that is the entire world.
Warm Leads
A warm lead is showing ads to people who Facebook knows have interacted with your website, followed you on Instagram, or engaged in your content in any way.
When we say it is your first time to sell and you don’t have an audience or brand loyalty towards anything. If you are just starting with a cold lead, never start and just sell your product through cold leads. You haven’t nurtured that relationship or grown that trust so that they will buy from you. If you are going to do cold leads it is smarter to do a cold lead to a freebie, that way they ingest your content, they download it, then they like you. Now they are slowly closer to the path of buying your high ticket offer. If you just did the high ticket offer to a cold lead they most likely won’t buy it.
Creating a process that nurtures that cold lead through your systems and even the warm lead that gets them to that hot stage. Where they are ready to put the money down and create that nurture sequence that knows, likes, and trust factors. That offers them value before you are even asking them to pay a dime.
You can also ignore ads altogether and do it organically via your social media or your email list. There are so many different ways to do it, but the point is to pay attention to brand loyalty. Don’t immediately try to sell someone something, make sure you are showing up and nurturing them through a process. Offering value and creating a relationship, the know, like, and trust factor, is there before you sell. You can do that at ground zero through funnels but you can also do it organically.
What is a funnel? A funnel is a strategic, step-by-step plan to guide your ideal customer from point A (finding your brand) to point B (becoming a brand loyalist). This looks like a lot of nurturing and guiding your customer through each phase of getting to know you, like you and your offer, and then trust that you know what you’re talking about. You can use a funnel as an overall brand tool OR to launch a specific product or item. But overall, understanding funnels is vital to successful marketing!
If someone is talking about a funnel for selling or launching an online product, they most likely mean an email funnel. Which is the sequence of emails that are sent out during the launch period when your product is live. That also usually means Facebook ads, text message marketing, it is all kinds of unified front of how to target and retarget your ideal customer during your launch.
When you are planning a launch for a product the main question you want to think about is, “How can you bring people into my launch funnel?”. Basically, how do you get them into this funnel that leads them into buying the product you are selling.
How to guide your customer to buy
First, you want to give them something of a free value item and maybe you are already doing that through your social media or email list. However specifically for a launch or a course you want to give something to get them into that funnel that is REALLY valuable that they can’t believe you are giving away for free.
For example for our first photography course launch, what we did for that freebie opt-in, we gave away our best content from our course- the posing minor.
If you give away your best content for free, when people consume that, they’re going to be like if this is free then I want the whole thing. That gave them so much. You want the free content to be so freaking valuable that people want to sign up right away because it changed their life.
Make sure you’re not giving away all your valuable product content. Think about your target audience for your offer. Our offer was a photographer course, our freebie opt-in was a posing episode. Posing is something every photographer wants to be better at. It’s usually a big pain point in a photographer’s life. That again is why we chose that episode.
From there funnel curates and creates a game plan of now that they are in the door, they are interested, they are kind of a warm lead. You’re now going to continue to nurture this lead, give them social proof (which means testimonials or reviews from past students or customers). Offer them even more value. Taking them through the whole process of explaining what they are going to get, confronting their hesitations of spending that money, but then asking if they would rather spend that money frivolously or rather invest it back into their business where they will see more return on that investment.
A funnel is a strategic game plan of how you are going to continue to speak to that person once they are in the door. Guiding them through. Kind of like a house tour, once someone is in the door, taking their hand and showing them each room of the house.
Know each pain point and address each one in an email funnel. With an email launch, you don’t want to overwhelm them. Don’t send multiple emails a day. The only time we would say to do that would be day one of your launch with the freebie opt-in and a reminder. You could then do the last day of the launch as well. People will get very annoyed if you send multiple emails a day throughout the whole launch, don’t do that. That will lose the trust and the like factor. You want to remind people what you are launching and why they need it, but don’t hammer home that point.
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WASSUP FRIENDS. We’re Evie + Lindsey, co-founders of this wild partayyy called The Heart University. Our goal is to empower entrepreneurs to kick freaking BUTT in their businesses, dive down into the heart of their why and how, and serve you with all possible tools you’ll need to up-level your business game and CRUSH those goals of yours.
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