#102 - ”How the heck do you launch an online course in 2022” - Part 4

Lots of people will say, yeah, that sounds great when you ask them, but the only way to truly know is people need to vote with their credit cards. If people are not actually willing to pay for it, then something is off, something's not quite right and you may need to make some changes.

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 online. But better, easier and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hello. Hello everybody and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. I'm your host Kate from hellofunnels Co and welcome to episode number 102. Now this is actually the final part of our four part miniseries where we've stepped you through everything you need to know to create and launch an amazing and highly profitable online program online course right now in 2022. These are the things, the big questions you need to ask, the things you need to set up and some of the things you don't need to do as well. And today we're going to talk about the, like the final puzzle piece and that is how do you launch what is working right now, particularly with new offers? Because, and I think this piece here is really, really important because you, if you go out there and you do your first launch and you don't get it right or it doesn't work as well as you hoped, and this does happen quite commonly, guys, even with courses that do go on to become a big success. So I just want to make sure you guys have that caveat, right, have that frame first. But if you have spent all this time and this effort and potentially money as well, and you launch it and you know, as I said, that launch isn't a success and the reason it's not a success is because the actual launch itself wasn't done properly. And I see this a lot. Then you're going to probably go, well, I guess my program's no good. I guess this isn't for me. I guess I'm no good at it. All of those things you've been telling yourself all this time, they're going to be, you're going to think that they will, they were correct. And nine times out of 10, it's when people go, oh, well, I'm going to walk away this, I'm going to, I'm going to throw my hands up, I'm going To go back. I spent all this time on this. I'm now so behind with everything else. I don't have time to fix it. I don't know what to do. And this is quite often where a lot of people come to us inside our program ecourse Empire. And it's our job is to obviously to help them to fix it and to go on and have really amazing launches. I wanted to basically in this episode I want to talk you through what we recommend for a first launch. And there's two different strategies and you can do one or either or both.

And also some of the common things that I see people having issues with or getting wrong and how to avoid those. To make sure that your first launch is as successful as humanly possible. One big question that you need to think about and need to really weigh up is whether or not you actually create your program before you launch it. And by create it I mean actually like you know, go in there, do the videos, do the worksheets, have the actual program done and dusted. And I know for a lot of people it is something that's really tempting to do. And while I'll share my personal preference with you guys, I think it does have to come and why I encourage people to do it one way rather than the other. The energy gets spent regardless. So I know a lot of people, they feel like they have to get their course done, that they then are going to be able to go and launch and have all the energy for the launch. And I get that that's totally fine. They don't want to be rushing coming out the other side of it now. Just so you know guys, creating a program takes a lot of time and energy. Creating a launch takes a lot of time and energy. And you have to do them regardless of whether you do the creation first and the launch or the launch then the creation. You got to do them both in a pretty short period of time. You have to be very mindful of your energy here. And that's, that's why I do get it. If people are like, oh, I don't think I'm going to be able to show up and give my most that my best tool launch. If I know I've got this thing hanging over my head that I have to go and create a program, I do understand that sort of rationale. The reason however, though I do recommend that people don't create their whole program usually what like what I recommend is you create your pre work and then maybe your first module so you at least you're Ahead that you can from once people buy they're going to be able to go in. Traditionally when you have a launch and it's a first program, the doors will close and then the program doesn't necessarily start like the next day, it might start like a whole week later just to give yourself a bit of a break and a buffer. And when it's a first launch and we call a first launch a beta launch and we're very, we really encourage people to be really transparent and honest and say this is the first time I'm launching this guys, I'm so excited. You know, while we're still busily putting the piece, bits and pieces together in the background, you know, like let them know it's still, it's a work in progress and then that's, they're going to be sort of had their expectations set coming into it.

So sorry, I've got, I've gone off on a tangent, but yeah, so that's, that's sort of traditionally what you do. You have your, your launch period, the cart closes on the launch, then you give yourself a bit of a break. And if our recommendation is that you have got your, obviously your welcome and maybe any pre work ready to go and that first module, if you really, if the modules are short and you really feel like you've just need that extra buffer, second module as well, but don't do any more than that. And there's a big reason for this guys, because the main, and the main reason is that this very first launch that you were doing it is a test, it is actually going to market and seeing if did you get it right. There's a whole lot of assumptions. Like even if you've done the most research, you've worked with clients inside and out on this topic before, you're still making a lot of best guesses, a lot of assumptions here. And there's a lot of different pieces that need to come together. Like the pricing needs to be right, the messaging needs to be right. The way that you're delivering it needs to be the way that your client wants to learn and wants to receive it. Like do they want a one day, get it done intensive or do they prefer something that's more at your own pace over 12 weeks? Do they want a lot of support and do they need one on one attention or do they want to do this by themselves? Like there's, there's lots of different ways that you can to solve any problem. Like you can wrap it up and package it up in a thousand different ways. And some of those ways are going to be work really well and they're going to be a match for your client and what their, their value, how much they value it, how much they're happy to pay for it, all of that stuff and others are not going to quite be there. Right. And it might need just a tweak or two of a couple of different things. Whether, as I said, whether it's pricing, whether it's the messaging, whether it's the delivery. This first launch, like, even though most people, when they get to this point, their main objective of this first launch is to earn as much money as possible because they've already spent all this time and they're usually, they've had to not do maybe some of the one to one stuff to free up the time to get this ready in the meantime. But actually the real purpose of this first launch is just to test, is just to make sure is this the right combination of things, of all these things we've talked about in part one, part two, part three of this series, and if it is amazing, next time you're going to go, then you're going to launch it again. You're going to put set up your marketing plan to figure out how often you're going to launch it. You're going to potentially set up a funnel for all that stuff. It's like all systems go. And of course you're going to finish creating it and run it and get some great testimonials and all that stuff. But I would say almost, almost as often as 50% of the time, something was off, something was missing. Sometimes it's a complete miss, other times it's just one or two of those pieces. This is why we don't want you to have spent weeks and weeks and potentially months, depending on how much of a perfectionist you are and how busy you are with the rest of the things you're doing, creating something, because you don't actually know it's the right thing to create yet. This is why we want to first of all test, do people want this? Are they willing to buy it? And it doesn't matter if you've asked them. Lots of people will say, yeah, that sounds great when you ask them. But the only way to truly know is people need to vote with their credit cards. If people are not actually willing to pay for it, then something is off, something's not quite right and you may need to make some changes. And that changes may include what is in the content of the program. This is why our recommendation is I said create your pre work, create module one, Module two if you really have to, although I prefer that you don't because module one's normally your intro, right. And that's probably not going to change that much. And then launch it and launch it. And so we're going to talk about in the rest of this episode, launch it in as light and lean and quick and dirty way as you possibly can just to check that it works first. And the reason again we recommend that you do the quick and dirty launch for this first launch is because as I said, I'm very mindful of your energy and how much this is going to take and because all, all we're, what we're wanting here is just to know, get that, that tick, that green light. This is the right offer. We can go ahead now next time we can do the big all singing, all dancing launch. Now some people, as I said, want to do the all. They want to create the program in advance. They want to do the all singing, all dancing launch. If you've done a lot of programs before, if you've worked with clients really, really closely, if you're like 99% certain, sure, do it. But for most people it's your first program, you've never, you've probably had a few different ideas. You're still in that very much beginner learning phase. Do, do the beta launch, do the quick and dirty launch first. So what does that look like? Well, now that I've hopefully convinced you not to go and waste all this time or potentially waste all this time creating a program first, what does that actually look like? For beta launch we recommend a few things. One, obviously usually while you're doing this process coming up your ideas, you hopefully are focusing really heavily on list building and showing up on social media and warming up your audience because you're going to want them to know who you are and be excited for when your program comes. So first thing you need to know is you have a big enough audience to launch to. So we normally recommend you have at least 1,000 people or close to on your email list and that you have been communicating with them consistently for not just like the last week or so, but for the months that they know who you are. They get your content's getting opened and read and all of that stuff. If not start that now, start that first. The next really important piece to be able to do a quick and dirty launch is a big discount. Now this is not to say that you ever have to discount your offer ever again, but for the very first time you are running it, particularly if it's a program that is new and it's going to be being created as they're moving through it. Potentially there might be some pieces that are missed, as in. And generally you can't know that your curriculum and what you've taught is everything that they need or too much or whatever until you've seen people go through it. It's really common for people the first time they run a program to have realized that people get stuck in a certain point or a lot of people asking a certain question, or people have gone off on a tangent because you said something in a video and have to go back and either add extra stuff, take things out, reorder it. So know that this isn't going to be your best, most perfect delivery and that's okay, but let them know it too. So we say it's founding members, we say it's new, we make sure that they're aware of that and that is why they're getting this crazy amazing price. So and when I say crazy amazing price, a discount of a minimum of 30% if not 50%. The other reason that we recommend you do a big discount here is because that discount is going to do most of the heavy lifting for you. Okay? It means you don't need to worry about doing webinars or Facebook ads or any of the other more time consuming, more complicated stuff. You can let the discount do the heavy lifting in this promotion. Another really common mistake we see people making with the beta launch is again thinking that they have spent all this time on creating a super fancy sales page you actually don't like. We are big believers in having a killer sales page. It's one of the things that we loves. We have certain template for sales pages, what needs to go where and when. And our amazing keely loves to do sales pages, reviews and audits inside equals empire to help people nail it and increase their conversions. But again, like I said, we're mindful now of making this allowing you to get to market quickly and test this quickly without wasting too much time and spending a couple of days because that's how long it takes usually on creating a sales page for what isn't necessarily going to be the end result offer. Again, it's potential waste of time. So if you have the time, you have the resources, do it great. But if not, your first sales page can be as simple as a Google Doc. I kid you not. We've had many successful launches where our sales page was literally a Google Doc. Now the Google Doc is, it's got to include the right things, it's still got to tell the story, it's got to give them the details, it's still got to get them excited. But it's a lot quicker and a lot easier to put together than a full on sales page. The third mistake we see people making with the beta launch is again, and this is just through lack of experience because usually if it's your first launch, you haven't by default that means you haven't launched before. So you don't realize just how often you need to be communicating with people for a launch to be effective. Generally if it's a seven day launch, maybe open cart on a Tuesday, closing cart on them. Well actually I wouldn't recommend that. But usually Wednesday to Wednesday is the preferred open, close cart kind of span because you don't want to be opening or closing at the on a weekend or end of the week but usually within that time. Like I've seen people do their first launch and they go, oh, I sent two emails, no one bought what happened. No, you need to be sending about 10 emails in that period. I'm not even kidding. You need multiple emails on your first day, multiple emails on your final day and then emails throughout. And those emails need to be talking to the emotional buyers and to also the logical buyers. And they need to be answering the questions, getting them excited, educate. Like that's why you need to send so many emails. There's a lot of different things, particularly for a new program. People haven't heard of it yet. There's a lot of things they need to know about it. There's a lot of, you know, they need to know why they need to buy it. They need to know how it's going to help them. They need to know they can trust you. So there's lots of things that need to be ticked off. Don't under communicate. You need to make sure that said minimum 10 emails, guys, plus showing up on social like this is a big doing a launch, even a beta launch, that's probably going to be your, your chunkiest piece. All right now, final piece, we talk about beta launches. This is optional but we do love, love, love, love. This strategy is adding a wait list to your first launch. This is kind of adding a little mini launch before your launch. And with this waitlist launch it allows you to really just give you something else to make it a bit of an event and also create something that's got a really good short time frame to get people to really take that first action. And also means that it kind of ensures that when you open your car, you make sales like right away. And that I think is really important, particularly for your first launch, just to help you get some confidence, just to help you get that good energy to tide you through the rest of the launch. You are happy to show up, you are happy to do reels and lives and God knows what else is. What else is the cool thing or that's working. Whenever you're listening to this episode, I think that this waitlist launch is. It can work really well. It doesn't work for every offer out there. Typically we've seen it work best for offers where, as I said, you're happy to do at least a 50% discount and the price is then under $500, that discounted price. You can still do it for higher ones, but it's usually it's a bit. Because those ones normally take a bit more warming up, a bit more information, a bit more thinking about. They're not such a sort of candy aisle, impulse kind of buy. If your product when you're first launching, it is going to be sub $500. Earning a waitlist launch can be amazing. Now, this isn't my strategy. My friend Alex Beaden taught me the strategy. I know she got this from someone else, so I always credit where credit is due. But we have found it to be amazingly effective. What this really looks like is that around about a week and a half out from when your main launch is going to kick off, you actually start inviting people to join your wait list. This isn't just a, like, hey, get on my waitlist. And you don't tell them anything about it. You're going to say, no, guys, this is get on the waitlist. Because if you're on the waitlist, you're going to have access to a VIP only offer you can't get anywhere else. It's going to be 48 hours only and you let them know what the offer is. I've got a new program coming. I'm really excited about it. I want to kick it off the big bang. We're doing this amazing 48 hour offer only for people who are on the waitlist. It's kind of like an early bird offer, but like on, you know, like on speed or some kind of crazy. I said you're going to spend about seven days going out there to your list to everyone telling them to get on the waitlist because if they're on their waitlist, they get access to this deal that they can't get elsewhere. And that deal is going to be the biggest discount. It's going to be probably a bigger discount than the rest of when you actually open up to the rest of the list and chuck in some, like, if there's some bonuses now, you're going to make this the best, most amazing deal. And I said you're only going to do this necessarily once. So, like, feel free to go above and beyond here. But the real sort of icing on the cake of this promotion and why it works well is, is you're going to let them know that the very first person to purchase well, as well as getting the whole deal, they'll actually get their money back. And some people even throw in an extra sweetener because you want to have people sitting there waiting for that countdown timer to tick over and for them to be able to purchase like you want to have it be like a little buying frenzy, like the second that your doors open. That is what you're going to do with this promotion. And it is a great. And I've known people who, when they do this little waitlist offer, they might even do a week or two out from their main launch and then they use the funds from that waitlist offer to then allow them to run some ads for their main launch. Like it can be. It's a really, really effective one, but particularly for this beta launch, because it just gets that first sale in right away and that just removes so much of the stress around. Like, there's nothing worse than going, all right, guys, here's my offer. Doors are open. And then waiting and waiting and waiting for that first sale to come through. So this means the sale. Well, unless you've completely fudged it, the sale should come through right away and you should get a bunch of them. You'll get that little dopamine hit, you'll get that bit of conf. You'll get that instant sort of verification and then you're on your way. That's it, guys. That is the end of part four. That's the end of our how to create and launch a successful online program in 2022. I really hope that you loved it. If you did, make sure you let us know over at hellofunnels on Instagram. Feel free to share this with any and all friends that you know are potentially thinking about starting a program or about to launch a program who might want a little bit of these value bombs. And of course, if you want help, if you are thinking about starting a program and you would like our help to help you map it out to help you map out your launches, including launch plans, email templates, absolute sales page reviews, everything that you could possibly need to create and launch your online program. Get it up, get it running, get your launches working, get them automated, get your funnels working and scale that program six figures and beyond. That is what Ecos Empire is all about. We also help people, of course, who already have a program and they wanted to skip the first couple of steps and dive. Dive straight into the launching, the automating and the scaling. But all you need to do is head to ecoursempire.com apply, pop in your details and hopefully we'll see you inside soon. That's it guys. Have an awesome rest of your week and I will see you back here same time next week for more nerdy goodness. In the meantime guys, keep doing what you do and we'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.