8: How to Plan your Social Media (for your next online course launch)

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Welcome to the Course Creators MBA Podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp. And in this podcast we are covering actionable tips to grow your online course better business. And today we're going to be talking about social media. Specifically, we're going to be talking about the social media marketing plan that you need to put together for your next online course launch. I have course creators coming to me all the time and they tell me, you know, I posted my course on social media but no one bought it. I have tens of thousands of followers but no one bought my course course and that is not a surprise to me. Your followers on social media don't care about your online course, but what they do care about is the transformation that you can provide for them and how you can help them. So we're going to go through a step by step process today to prepare your social media strategy for your next online course launch. I want to make it easy for you to attract and connect with your prospects. But step one, and this is the first thing that you need to do. I want you to make your key launch decisions because these dates that we're going to be talking about, they're going to drive the schedule for your social media marketing plan. So before you begin on your social media marketing plan, I want you to put a stake in the ground and schedule your launch date. So your launch date is the date that you're going to do your first webinar. It's going to date that you. It's going to be the date that you present your offer. Maybe in your challenge, maybe you're doing a three or five day challenge and at the end of it, you present your offer. So that's your launch date or maybe you're doing a video series. So it'll be the date of that. That is also the cart open date for your sales funnel. So you want to make sure that you give yourself enough time to ramp up and create all of your webinar slides, your sales page, and all of your emails for your launch. So give yourself enough time. But I want you to write down your course launch date and your calendar. And that is a very important date and we're going to reference that as we go through this. Then next, I want you to decide on your cart close date. So your cart will open during your first webinar and and then your cart will close sometime after that. So it's very important to make sure you have a cart open and a cart close date because that's going to create urgency for your offer. And it also lets potential students know that your course is not open to buy at all times. So the cart open and close time frame really can last anywhere from, you know, I've seen five days, I've seen seven days, those are probably the most popular, but I've also seen even up to 14 days. So your action item is to write your cart close date in your calendar. Okay, moving on to step two. In step two, we're going to make sure that all of your social media profiles are optimized for your call to action. So remember that your goal is to get them off of social media and onto your email list so you can continue to build that know like and trust factor. You need to make sure that you have a lead magnet that is related to your online course and it can be posted in your bio for you to point them to and encourage them to, you know, sign up for it. But always don't forget, email marketing equals revenue for your online course launch. And once they're on your email list, you're going to start your welcome series. So the key here is you're going to want to make sure that you're reaching out to your new subscriber, your ideal customer immediately, and start building that relationship with them. Moving on to step three. In step three, you're going to plan your social media strategy around the buyer's journey. So the buyer's journey is a step by step process that people go through when making a purchase decision. In fact, you go through the buyer's journey for many of the purchase decisions that, that you make, and in particular, the ones that cost, you know, a little bit more Money. So each stage of this, you know, process is divided by the buyer's journey. And you are going to tailor your social media posts to answer the questions for your ideal customer so that you're speaking their language in your social media post. And the buyer's journey is consists of three different steps. The first is the awareness stage. Next they move into the consideration stage. And then lastly there's the decision stage. And we're going to talk about each of these in detail today. But right now what I want you to do is get out your calendar and use the bullet points and map out your social media plan. So here's what we're going to do. You talked, you know, a few minutes ago we talked about the launch date, which is your webinar launch date and that's your cart open date. That date will drive this entire social media promotional plan. This date starts your decision stage, which is the last stage of the buyer's journey. The decision stage is your cart open and your cart close date. So map that out on your cart calendar. Moving back a little bit to the consideration stage, which is the second stage in the buyer's journey. That is approximately seven to 10 days prior to your cart open date. So mark that out on your calendar. And then lastly the awareness stage. And that is the first stage of the buyer's journey. That's the time frame. It can be, you know, like two week time frame or however you want to do it. I generally think like a two week time frame is good. The awareness stage is the time frame prior to the start of the consideration stage. Now we're moving into step four. Step four is when you plan your awareness stage post. So at the beginning of your online course launch you are focused on the awareness stage. This is when people will get to know a little bit about you and how you can help them. You are attracting them on social media at this point by speaking to their pain points or helping them to clearly identify their problem and how they may solve it. So before you begin preparing your post for the awareness stage, I want you to take a second and make sure that you are answering these questions, questions about your ideal customer. So number one, think about how does your ideal customer describe their problem or their migraine. Secondly, how does your ideal customer conduct research related to these problems? This is very important because they might be going on Instagram and searching for specific hashtags or looking for information on Facebook or Pinterest or LinkedIn social media. So think about how do they conduct research to find out more information about the pain that they're experiencing. Also think about what are the consequences if they don't act or do anything about the problem or migraine? And also think about are there any misconceptions that they have about addressing this challenge? And this is one of my most favorite ones because there's a lot of educational type content you can do. Facebook lives, there's a lot of, you know, blog posts, there's a lot of, you know, posts that you can put on Instagram that really kind of address those misconceptions. They make absolutely great social media posts. And also think about how does your target customer decide whether the problem or migraine should be prioritized? And then think about that as you're addressing that in your social media post. Moving on to step five, which is where we are planning our consideration stage post. So in this stage, your prospect, they understand the problem, right? They define the problem, they know what the problem is, and now they are actively researching solutions to fix it. In the consideration stage, you are now promoting your webinar, your workshop, your training, your free challenge, whatever you're doing. And this gives them the opportunity to consider your solution to solve for their problem. So they're getting to know you. You're continuing to build that no lock and trust factor. You know, the other thing you can do as you have your training, your workshop, you can speak to the pros and cons of the various solutions they're considering. You can talk about that too. On social media. Customer testimonials are great to use in this stage also, as well as a decision stage, which we'll talk about in just a second, because that also continues to build that trust factor and demonstrates to your prospects that you can actually deliver the results that you're promising. But before you get started in planning your social media posts for this stage, I want you to take a second and answer these questions. So consider what options does your prospect or your ideal customer have? You know, to what do they have to consider to fix their problem? You know, what are the options out there? How does your ideal customer educate themselves on those problems and options, excuse me, on those options. And then how does your ideal customer perceive what the pros and cons are of each option? And then how do they decide which option is right for them? And in your social media post, you can answer these specific questions. In step six, you are planning your decision stage post. Okay, so in this stage, your online course prospects, they have a long list of alternatives, and right now they are narrowing down their list to solve it. So there's a lot of different brands, there's a lot of different vendors maybe that they are looking at to help them them with the problem in here. In this stage you are answering questions about your program and you're helping them evaluate your offer. So I want you to make sure that you are highlighting your key differentiators that you're addressing their concerns. Also, as I mentioned before, customer testimonials are great to use in the stage as it provides evidence that your future students will achieve your promise transformation. But before you begin to work on your social media posts for this stage, I want you to consider these buying decision questions for your ideal customer. So think about what criteria do they use to evaluate the available offers, maybe ease a solution or price. So think about all of that and also when your ideal customers, when they investigate your offer, what do they like about it compared to what other options they have, what concerns may they have with your offer? And also think about who needs to be involved in the decision. So for each person involved, how does their perspective differ? And also does your customer have expectations around service guarantees so you can talk about that and what you may or may not offer related to that. And then outside of purchasing, do they need to do any, you know, anything else? Do they need to make additional preparations prior to actually purchasing your solution? And this may be the case with your particular product or offer. I actually I have a program where they need to have already built or almost at the point where they have already created their online course before I can actually help them them with my solution. I hope all of these steps help you in creating the, you know, the awesome social media plan for your next online course launch. If you would like to have 31 days of social media posts to help you create original content that makes it easy for you to connect with your online course prospects, go to destinycop.com forward/social and I have a social media toolkit that you will absolutely love.

Bye for now.