107: How to Create an Effective Marketing Plan for Your Online Course Launch

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Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Destiny Kopp, and I help business owners increase their revenue with digital products and evergreen sales funnels.

In this podcast, we go deep into.

The product and marketing strategies for digital product creators. We cover everything from digital product creation, how to market and sell your digital products, and just as important, how to find your ideal customer. Before I begin our show today, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by our popular Evergreen Funnel program, which helps you turn your digital product, which is your online course, or membership, into a revenue generating machine with an evergreen sales funnel that runs on autopilot. You can learn more about the Evergreen Funnel by by visiting the link in the show Notes let's jump right into our show.

Are you ready to sell your online course? You have probably spent weeks, if not months, creating a perfect course for your future students and marketing. Your course doesn't have to be super, super complicated or stressful, but you do need a solid plan and pace. And in this podcast episode, I'm going to cover how to create an effective marketing plan to sell your online course in your upcoming course launch. And I want to let you know that everything I'm going to talk about today, you can use it for a live webinar launch, you can use it for a challenge launch, you can even use it for an evergreen launch to your email list. So let's just say you have a recorded webinar and you want to launch that to your email list and you're setting up like an evergreen sales funnel. You can use all of this that I'm going to talk about today to warm up your audience and to get them ready to to buy. Now, before I begin, I also want to let you know that every course launch has three distinct phases and we're going to talk about these phases today. The first phase is what I call the pre launch phase, and this takes place approximately eight weeks before your launch. And that kind of depends on how warm your audience already is and how much the investment is in your online course. The next phase is what I call the launch phase, and this is the period of time that your cart is open and your course is available for enrollment. And this phase typically lasts about one to two weeks. And then we have the post launch phase phase and this takes place a few weeks after your launch is over and your cart is closed. So before you plan out the content for your online course launch, I want you to put a stake in the ground and determine your cart open and close dates because these Dates will drive all the other activities and deadlines for your launch. Another decision that you're going to need to make at the beginning of your planning is what type of launch do you want to do? Are you going to do a live webinar launch? Maybe you're going to do a challenge launch, or maybe you're just simply going to launch to your email list and do something like what I talked about earlier. Maybe do a recorded webinar and set up an evergreen sales funnel and then launch that evergreen sales funnel to your email list. Okay, so let's dive in into each of these phases to know precisely what you need for a solid course launch marketing plan. So for phase one, which we are in the pre launch phase and this is the most essential phase of your launch and it is the and it's the longest phase. So how well your pre launch is planned will generally determine how well your launch does. So in this phase, the most important part is showing up, showcasing your expertise and building that know like and trust factor with your audience. So this phase usually includes promoting a lead magnet, such as a new guide, a webinar challenge, a quiz, something that fits and will lead into your online course. So if your audience is small, this phase can also focus on nurturing and bringing in new leads via collaboration with other business owners in your niche. You can also use Facebook ads or some other type of paid promotion and use a lead magnet to grow your email list there if you have the budget for it. During this phase, you are promoting content that you have created related to your online course content. This could be blog posts, podcast episode, Facebook Lives, YouTube video, Instagram Reels, TikTok videos, or other similar types of content. So during this phase you are posting on social media and you're focused on building your email list for your upcoming course launch. You're also warming up your audience so that they are ready to buy when your cart opens. In addition, in the pre launch stage, you are getting everything ready for your upcoming cart open phase. This may include finalizing your sales page and preparing any live webinar and challenge material. If you're still, you know, putting the final touches on your course content, this phase is a really good time to finish that too. So now we're moving on to phase two, which is your launch phase. So now the doors are officially open and all of your launch planning is paying off. So during the cart launch period, you're going to focus on two main areas. One thing you're doing, you are showing up and you are talking about your course Everywhere and all of the time. So I don't want you to worry about annoying your audience because you know the statistics. People need to see something seven or more times before taking action. So talk about your course. Nobody is going to be as excited about it as you are. So so I want you to share that excitement and the second focus is going to be on connecting. I want you to be responsive to messages on social media or email. I want you to make any inquiries feel heard and deliver excellent customer service. I know they're not customers yet, but just responding to them, that's delivering what they will know you will deliver once they purchase. You can even send warm leads who click on the link in your launch emails or maybe people who signed up for your wait list, a personalized video. Another option to have that connection there is to add a live chat box to your course sales page. So focus on building those relationships and and those authentic connections. Be sure to send out all of your launch emails to your list during the cart open phase to promote your course and encourage your email subscribers to take action while the cart is open. So let's suppose that you're doing a live webinar launch or a challenge launch in that case. That is your opportunity to engage with your audience in real time by engaging in the webinar chat or via a private Facebook challenge group. Okay, so now in phase three, we are in the post launch phase and this is in a very important stage. So after your launch, no matter if you hit your goals this time around or not, I want you to take a break and celebrate. Launching is a lot of work, just like setting up an evergreen sales funnel is a lot of work. And the post launch phase is essential for making your next launch even better. I want you to check out your numbers, see what went well, and then make notes on what could be improved for the next time. And during this phase you are focused on onboarding your new students to ensure that they know how to navigate through your course material and feel comfortable asking questions when needed. You will thank yourself in the long run if you take the time to perform a launch audit to see what worked well and what didn't. Because everything is always a valuable learning lesson. Now, one of the things that I wanted to let you know that just dropped in our one click MBA membership is our digital product launch content box. Now this content box is a little different from what we've done in the past with our products rewritten content. This content box is a little bit more script and template content because you're going to customize this content for your online course launch. Now in this content box we focus primarily on the content that you'll put together in your pre launch phase to warm up your audience and to take them on what we call that buyer's journey. So take them from that awareness stage to the consideration stage to the decision stage and that is very, very important to take them on that journey so that when you are ready to open your cart, your audience is ready to buy. In addition, in the Digital Product Launch content box we have other content in there to help you promote a webinar, to help you retarget people after a webinar, and also to put together a webinar presentation if that's the type of launch that you're doing. So to learn more about the one click MBA membership or I will put that link in the show notes, but if you are launching soon, definitely test check out this content box and if you have any questions about the one click MBA membership or the Digital Product Accelerator program that we are currently taking applications for, let me know. You can DM me on Instagram at Destiny Copy or if you're on my email list, just respond to one of the emails. I'll be more than happy to answer any questions that you have. And I'm also doing what I just taught you in this episode on our sales pages or information page. Especially for the Digital Product Accelerator. There is a live chat box on there where you can just click on it and ask me a question and it will send me an email and I'll respond back to you via email. I am so excited about your launch. If you do a launch with our content or following what we talked about in this episode, let me know how it goes. I would love to know more about your launch and how everything went. Bye for now.

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