#101 - ”How the heck do you launch an online course in 2022” - Part 3

And at the end of the day, that's what it comes down to. Pricing, creating a fair exchange, creating a win win exchange. An exchange where people go, I really want this, I want this outcome and I want it more than I want this money in my pocket.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben. Where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do. But better, easier and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hello. Hello everybody. It is Kate here from HelloFunnels Co and welcome to the Doing it online podcast, episode 101. No Dalmatians were involved or injured in this episode. Sorry, couldn't help myself there. No. Today we are picking back up where we left off with part three of our how the heck do you create and sell an online course in 2022 little miniseries. And today I want to dive right on into one of the juiciest parts of creating a program. And it's got not a whole lot to do with what actually goes inside your program. It's the pricing. Because pricing is something that it should be simple, right? Like it should be a very fact or information or research based process. But there are so many layers involved in pricing. It's never that simple. And it is definitely one of those things that you want to make sure you are getting right because it can really, really impact your sales. If you price something way too high for your target market, for how they value or perceive this outcome, how they perceive where you sit in this particular sort of scale of things, then you're not going to make sales. People are going to be like, well spending this amount of money is not worth what I'm going to get back. So I'm not going to make this exchange. And at the end of the day that's what it comes down to. Pricing, selling, anything. It's about creating a fair exchange, creating a win win exchange. An exchange where people go I really want this, I want this outcome and I want it more then I want this money in my pocket. I'm happy to, to swap and vice versa. And for you, when it comes to pricing things and putting a price on your time and your knowledge and your, the energy that you're putting out there, it has to, you have to feel equally good and go, okay, I'm just as happy to put this out and to share this and to give this and I feel really good. When someone pays me this amount in exchange for this, like it has to flow both ways. If you're feeling like, you know it's not enough, like you've undercharged, you'll start to feel resentful and you won't want to show up. You won't give your best service. If you feel like you've overcharged and that you're ripping people off, that will come through as well. It's a little bit of a delicate dance and it's definitely not something that you necessarily get right first time. I do have a little bit of a process for you guys for how we recommend like inside our ecosysempire program, how we sort of guide our clients to price their programs and price their offers. I'll run you through that, but I want to give you a couple of examples of how I've seen this play out in real life. We had one client and I'm not going to use any names here, we had one client and they, when they started working with us, they had a. I think it was about a $4,000 program, very high touch, a lot of one on one. And they were super. It wasn't converting. They were doing sales calls to sell it and they weren't converting those calls. And when we sort of broke it down and chatted to them about it, it was like, well, okay. What it really came down to was one, they were super time poor, really burnt out. They didn't actually want to deliver this program because the program basically was, I think it was like ten one to one calls or something. And they didn't want to actually sell them because then they would have to deliver them. So it didn't feel like a fair exchange to them. And on the flip side, the people that they were marketing to was busy and time poor mums. And even though the mums did want that outcome, they didn't value because it was an outcome for them to do their own health in that particular phase of their life when things were very expensive and they were generally putting themselves pretty last priority. They were not valuing that outcome, the impact of that outcome on their lives to that high of an extent. And they also were not valuing having to spend 10 hours on a phone to somebody when they really didn't have any spare time. There was this huge disconnect and they instead they went back, they looked at the. Because it was the same process, each call kind of had a series of questions and like almost little trainings alongside it and they turned it instead into a much Lower touch, much more leveraged online program and they brought the price down to $500. And where they gone from maybe barely selling one a month, previous to that they went to selling up to 40amonth completely on autopilot. It's, you can see the difference. And obviously that's quite an extreme case. And I have used this example before, so some of you probably are familiar with it, but that shows you how it has to match. How like if you're not wanting to, like I said that they, they didn't want to have to deliver it, it didn't matter that it was a high price point, they didn't want to do it, they were never going to be able to show up and sell it well and vice versa in a flip side of that. Because I never want people to think, oh, it's just about reducing, you've got to just cut your prices, that's how you make more sales. Because that is not it at all. It works both ways. If a client looks at your price and like I said, if there's a disconnect between the price and, and where they think it should sit on like the value scale, they're either going to go, well, it's too cheap, therefore it's no good, or it's too expensive, therefore it's, it's not for me. Like they make assumptions based on that number, so that's why it's so important. So I said I've got a opposite example. This is a friend this time, not actually a client, but they had a thousand dollars program which sold pretty well. They did regular launches throughout the year, but they were kind of hitting this plateau. They couldn't grow it. Their ads costs were getting more expensive and they decided to turn because they were noticing they were getting a lot of people were always still asking like could we maybe do like a one on one call? Like they really wanted for this particular outcome, they just really wanted a bit more of a VIP experience, bit more of a high touch kind of experience. And they were asking for it. They were trying to book in like one to one sessions. They were wanting to have events and meetups and things. Like they were actually seeing their clients kind of request this. So they created more of a mastermind sort of set model based on the same trainings, based on the same outcome, same client, you know, same target market. And this mastermind was $12,000 a year. And they actually now sell more of the masterminds than they did the thousand dollar programs. So and the people in the mastermind who were the same people who are buying the thousand dollar program, they're getting better results because they again, like I said, psychology and stuff behind pricing is I find so fascinating. But for some target markets, for some outcomes, for people to actually make the value it enough, like even though they've paid for it, for them to value that thing that they've paid for enough to show up and do the work, they need to sometimes have a bit of skin in the game. And for these people, that thousand dollars wasn't a lot of skin for them. It was kind of like, oh well, I don't do it, I don't do it. Never mind, just another course I've bought, never opened kind of thing. But $12,000, that's a whole different thing. That made them feel that they were in a very exclusive club. That made them feel like, yes, I've paid this money, I better go in and get my value out of it. As I said, layers, so many layers. So how do you figure it out? Okay, let's break it on down to a nice little doable process. First thing is I always, and this is like, as this is like a simplified process from what we do inside our ecosysempire program. But I always get people to go out and do some research, go and find what I call the range. So go and look for what is out there currently, that is selling that you to be selling and see what are they, what are people roughly pricing at. There's always going to be like a top and a bottom. And the top is like obviously the more premium stuff and the bottom, maybe it's ebooks or things like that. But you want to go out and see what is the range. What are people currently paying for this solution? People in my target market, you need to do that. And for anyone who's like going, oh, but I haven't been able to find anybody. You're just not looking hard enough. 100% guarantee there is somebody out there. The Internet is a very big place. Sometimes people just not particularly good at SEO. It might just Google might not be finding what you need. But you know, there's some great places to go and have a look. Find some different types of programs, different types of offers. Ask in Facebook groups. So say, hey, does anyone know if any has seen a program about this topic? Does anyone, can anyone recommend a good program or a good book or a good mastermind for this? Like go and ask. That's a great thing to do. You can also go inside Facebook, go and search for Facebook groups because you know, most Programs have a Facebook group as the support for their program. So if you go into the Facebook groups, search for different topics, you're bound to find something. Go and have a look on Pinterest. You're not looking necessarily for the courses, but look in for, look for guides for trainings, for masterclasses around that topic. And then if people have an opt in on that topic, most likely they have an offer. So you just gotta go get your detective hat on and go and find them. Go find. What is that big first initial range, Then we need to bring it in, right? We need to figure out where does your program sit. I want you to look at that range and think about it and go, okay, well obviously at one end of the range you've got the more premium, maybe the more high touch and another end you've got probably the more mass market, the more leverage, the lower touch. Where do you. And if you've been following along with the other sort of steps, you should kind of have a bit of an idea of where your particular offer is going to be. Like is it a mastermind or is it a membership? Is it a done with you program? Is it a done for you program? Is it a completely diy, no support, self paced program? Like these things will all kind of fit somewhere else. And the way that it's delivered, like what kind of special magic are you bringing to it? Are you adding something that's a bit more premium, a bit more special? Are they getting any feedback? Are they getting, you know, some exclusivity? Is it going to be part of a special club that you can't get into elsewise? Or is it open for everybody? Have a seat. So you're going to now go and basically bring that range in and find your range within the range where your program should sit next. You want to now really kind of feel into within like your second range where you want to start your pricing. I normally recommend people, particularly if you haven't been, you know, haven't sold many things online before, it can be quite confronting and usually to kind of let you dip your toe, let you get some confidence. Even though I'm not about people undercharging and we generally everyone like every now and then I find someone who's, who comes in and goes I'm going to charge 20 grand for this. And you're like really? You've never done it before but. And they have this amazing confidence to do that and that that's fine. But as long as you can back it up and give that amount of Value, then I'm all good with it. But most people are not ready to jump straight to there. Most people, they build their way up. I mean myself, my first online program, I sold for $197. And now most of our programs are multiple thousands of dollars. You work your way along as you see the results you can get for people. As you kind of build your confidence, as you feel good about the outcomes and things like that, you, you build your way up. So what I recommend is like within that range, you kind of got to feel into it now like I said, like it has to feel good. And you'll probably find even like, like a third range, like a range within the range. Within the range of you go like I kind of feel like I should be pricing it at this. Oh, that feels a bit too scary. And you know, so somewhere in there, so feel how does that feel in your gut. And I would sort of recommend that you don't want to go with a price that feels easy because there is no such thing. Making something cheaper doesn't necessarily mean it's going to sell better. I have seen this, trust me. It's just generally just like, particularly if you've got a range that's like of a couple hundred dollars, it's generally just as easy to sell something that's $300 as it is to sell it at $500. I don't think you're going to necessarily make it a heap easier on yourself by going that lower end. But feel free, like don't massively over. I'm not one of these people who like every time I see it, it just makes me cringe. Online where people like you need a premium product, you must charge a hundred thousand dollars for, you know, take your ebook and turn it into a hundred thousand dollar mastermind. I will show you how to sell this to people. I'm like, but until you can get those results for people, until you have that confidence too in your soul, you can't sell that. You shouldn't sell that. It's not, that's I. That falls under my naughty list of marketing tactics. So you know, it's gotta feel like, it's gotta feel fair. It should feel as most people do tend to go on the lower end of things first just because it's scary and they think it's gonna be safer. I kind of encourage you to pick a price that feels like it's fair, but possibly a little exciting, possibly tiny bit scary. Not terrifying, but a little bit scary. It should excite you, your pricing and then the final step now that you kind of go, okay, I think this is, this is going to be my pricing or somewhere within here. Go and try and find a nice price. Don't just go, oh, I think $348 is what it's going to be. Like it's 349 or it's 347 or it's 397. Like, you know, there's a reason that nice round prices or the prices sort of all look a certain way. But no. Now the final thing you need to do and please, please, please do this before you go and try and sell anything is you got to do your numbers. You've got to run your numbers. This is actually the first one, the first things we get people to do inside ecosystempire. It's part of the design phase where we get people to really sit down and map out like what is your business going to look like? And then kind of work backwards like where do you want to go? What do you need to do that? What does this mean for your business, for your offers? What kind of offers do you need to have? How many kind of go through this whole process so people can see it really, really clearly. I need you to just do a really quick sense check calculation and go, okay, well if my course is this and I want to be in earning X amount per year from my course and I'm going to launch it, like let's just pretend it's a brand new course, you're probably not going to have a funnel for it for a while. If you are, it's going to be launched. Usually people launch something two to three times before they funnel it. Say I'm going to be launching it four times a year and I want to earn X in the first 12 months. Therefore if this is my price, you do the backwards maths. How many do I need to sell? And then look at your list, look at your following, look at how much you're happy to spend on ads and what the skills you currently have around going out and list building and get people into a launch and things like that. And go, does that feel realistic and doable? And does do I give this example because I see a lot of people go, okay, well for my first product I'm going to create a $37 whatever and I'm going to use that to be my first product. And they kind of think because only $37 they'll be able to sell it really easily. But when do the numbers, they go, oh, I actually need to sell like 10,000 of these or something crazy to hit my numbers. And I've only got 800 people on my list and it took me a year to get those 800 people on my list. Or maybe I'm not going to get, you know, if I've only got a $37 product, this isn't the right thing for me to focus on right now to actually start being profitable and start making an impact and start doing what I want to do in my business. Maybe I need to look at go back to the start of this process. Find something that is going to be more premium, it's going to be more people going to value more that I can deliver at a much higher level and that's going to be more impactful for me. That's my process. Guys, start go do your research. Find the people out there who are selling similar things to similar people. Get your range. Step two, think about where you're going to strategically place yourself within that range. As far as like how premium you are, your delivery, all that kind of stuff. Create your second your next range within the range. Step three, feel into it. Bring it in a bit further. You should probably have a range of between a couple hundred dollars or maybe $1,000. And then sense check it, make sure it makes sense. Make sure that if you go through all the effort of doing this, of of creating this program, of going out there and selling it that it's going to be worthwhile. Because I do not want you wasting your time on anything. It's far too precious. Once you should have that, you should have like I said a you should have a price. You should be ready to go and put it out there into the world. There are a few other things we like usually talk about side equals empire like allowing a margin for marketing. Allowing for like I said, there's some price points that convert better than others. Even ones that are really similar and how to break that down into like the right what is the split payments should be and all of that kind of stuff. And if you want to find out more about that, if you want some really help around this, we love helping people with it. Inside our ecosysempire program. We do have a couple of spots open at the moment. Come on, apply jump on in. The link will be below. You can jump in and join us. One last little tip that I always like to give whenever we're talking about pricing is okay for those of you who are like well I've already got a program. How do has a price? Like how do I know if I If I chose the right price, what I find is usually a really good indicator. Although in times of end, at times of turmoil, without sounding cheesy, this doesn't really apply when there is things like when Covid first started or there's things that financially are happening and people are kind of a little bit tightening the belts or a little bit feeling less safe with how they are spending this, this rule doesn't apply so much. But in times that are quote unquote normal, when you do a promotion or you do a launch or even just look back at your last X months of sales and then just look at the number of people who paid in full versus people who took a split payment and look at what percentage those are. If more people are paying in full than taking your split payment, then you probably could increase your price quite safely and still convert really well. If most people are taking the split payment and hardly anyone is taking the pay in full, then potentially you are already on the the highest end of the scale and maybe you could even bring that down a little to increase or maybe introduce like an early bird phase that has a discount to help to convert some of those people who are a bit more price conscious. Final tip on pricing. But yeah, that's it for part three. Make sure you jump back in same time next week where we are going to talk about how to launch your brand new online course. I can't wait to share some of our favorite launch tactics, particularly for beta launches or first launch. Because you've already spent enough time getting this thing created or just even mapping it out. You don't need to be wasting time on unnecessary things in a first launch. Check back in then if you have found this useful. If you love this episode, please let us know over at ellofunnels on Instagram or share it with a friend. Otherwise guys, keep on doing what you do and I'll see you online. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.