#163 - Should you stop selling your course?

Hello, hello guys, it is Kate here from hello Funnels and welcome to this week's episode of the Doing It Online podcast. Today, as always, we've got a short, super actionable, super valuable little chat for you. And this is actually a question that. And this always seems to happen, right? The questions seem to come in like in pairs or threes. So it's a question I've been asked a couple of times by some of our amazing clients inside the Ecourse Empire program. And so I wanted to chat about it here because generally if they're thinking it, I know you guys are thinking it too. So the question was, you know, what should I do when either I have an offer that I have on a launch schedule or I have an offer that's on Evergreen or maybe it's a combo, but what the heck do I do with my sales page? Like can people buy? Can they not buy? And there's actually a not straight, super straightforward answer for that. So we're going to dive on into the nitty gritty of that inside today. So let's jump right on in.

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.

Okay guys, as I mentioned today we are talking about sales pages and what to do with them in your non promotion period. So you know, I know everyone listening here has probably got some different combination of maybe you just do launches. So maybe you do like a quarterly launch or you know, twice yearly or every second month, you know, you do a launch or maybe you have an offer that runs on Evergreen or maybe you have a combo of both, which is my personal favorite. So but what do you do with that sales page now?

The answer is and always will pay. Okay, it depends. So there's always the first thing I always ask is let's do a sense check. Okay? So if you are running promotions at different times, automated or not, are you able to tell right now if anyone is actually purchasing just from stumbling across your sales page? Because we are definitely not about turning off things that work. So if you are one of the very, very small percentage of people who has the right type of niche and offer and audience, that people can just stumble across your offer and purchase it and you're getting a lot of purchases. I'm not talking about like one this month to the next month, none the next month. That, that's what I'm talking about. And if you're getting like, you know, a bulk of your sales are coming from people just stumbling across your offer, then do not turn that off. Okay? Like, we would never, ever want you to turn that off. If, however, you're like, oh, well, actually when I look at it as maybe like a handful across the whole year, then it probably, I know you always want to test these things, but my, you know, what we've seen, the majority of the people that we work with in our own businesses is that you will actually benefit and you'll actually make more sales. If yes, that page is turned off. And what I mean by turn off is not turn off the page, that page is still there. So if someone comes to your website and they go programs and then they click on that page, it's going to still take them to that sales page. But in the section where previously you had what your pricing was and a link through to your checkout, you'll now have either oops, you missed out, doors are closed, like just a really simple message, or my personal favorite is to actually have a hey, yeah. Whoops, you missed out doors are closed. We'll be opening them again soon. Pop in your email address below and be the first in line. We'll let you know as soon as the doors are opening again. So what you then choose to do with those is that. That's another story for another day, but at least you would get able to get people then onto your email list. You'll be able to tag them, you'll know they're interested. You can start building up a bit of a wait list for your program. And as I said, there's different strategies around what you then do with that wait list. So that is what I would recommend regardless of whether you are launching or regardless of whether you have funnels. And the reason is a few things. So the number one thing is whenever we are making offers of our services, of our programs, of our products, we, whether it's at launch mode or whether it's in Evergreen mode, we are always trying to create a why now moment. And a why now moment is giving people a reason to make a decision in a certain timeframe. Because humans need timeframes. We need deadlines. Everyone has so many things on their plate at any given time that they are thinking about having to come back to, having to research, having to decide on. And if you don't have a deadline on something if it is not due today or tomorrow or in near future, then you go to the bottom of the list. And that doesn't mean that this thing isn't an important thing. Like people put stuff to the bot of the list that are super important all the time, but it's not due today. So we want people to make decisions, yes or no. Like we want them to make is this right for them? Is it not right for them? But we want them to make that decision. And if the decision is yes, then great, they can come and start working with you and come and start moving forward. And if the decision is no, also great, it's off their plate and they move on with their lives. We want them to make decision, which is why we need to give them a deadline. So when you are creating what I call why now? Moments. But whatever you which is basically the offer, the what it is that you're going to present to someone, whether it's in a launch or in a funnel, one of the give people this urgency of you have to make this decision now because this offer goes away on this date. It becomes so much stronger when it actually goes away on that date. So if you were doing a launch, for example, and you're out there going like come and join us, we're starting Monday. And then on Tuesday they landed on your sales page and they could still buy then all of a sudden one, that people realize that you don't mean what you say. And two, it kind of makes everything just a whole lot less compelling. So the same with Evergreen. Someone comes in to, you know, opts in for something, they're going through your warm up sequence. You have a certain offer that's made for new subscribers only and it's in a certain time period. If they can then just go and click and go oh hey, there's the same thing there. Maybe it's slightly different bonus, but whatever. But I could buy that next week if I wanted to. Then in their head they're like, this is not a decision I need to make today. This is a decision I can make anytime. And you know, you go to the bottom of their decisions list and which means there'll constantly be more important things put on top because there is no deadline and the decision will never be made. So we want to help, we want people to make decisions. We want to help them make the right decision. Like we're not in here trying to manipulate anybody or trick anybody into buying something that isn't amazing for them and isn't going to be really help helpful for them. But we can't deny human nature. And humans need deadlines to make decisions. And for this to be a good deadline, like a true deadline, like, you know, if you're offered to really be buy today because you won't be able to buy tomorrow, you have to shut down your sales page. And the thing is, because I know a lot of people worry about this, they're like, oh, and this is what the discussion was prompted in our group the other day was someone had forgotten to turn off their sales page after a launch. They'd been super busy. And a couple weeks later, one person bought and they're like, oh, well, maybe that means I should keep it open always. But the fact is, if the people in the launch had realized they could buy at any time, they wouldn't have had all those people buy in the launch. And you don't want to potentially decrease your sales by, you know, huge amount, 30, 50%. Like, this is kind of how impactful it can be because one person chose to buy a couple of weeks later. So don't let that one little thing that happen. And this is kind of go, I'm now I'm going off at attention. This kind of applies to any decisions you're making in your business. I see people talking about this a lot with like, oh, I had someone ask some question or give me this feedback on my offer, on my course, or should I completely go and change everything? And it's like, well, if hundreds of people have gone through and haven't had this issue, yes, there's always going to be some people who are going to want something to be slightly different. But we don't go and break our business. We don't go and change everything based off one person's feedback because or because one person bought because of all those other people who was super happy to do it the other way. And if you're going to change it, then they're going to be really annoyed. So that's kind of like a good rule of thumb when making any decisions in business. I know it can be tempting. You get that email or that DM from someone and they're like, hey, why don't you do this? Or hey, it should be more like this. And you're like, oh, maybe it should be. Maybe I should go and completely change my offer. Take a moment. We don't make decisions based on one person's feedback. So. And I've completely kind of gone off track here, guys, but it is all related. So bring it back down to the sales page. Should it Be available always or not. My answer is, as I said, it depends. If you are getting a really big chunk of sales of just from people stumbling across your sales page currently, then sure, leave it on. And you're just gonna have to find a different why now? Moment for when you do do live launches and you do do Evergreen launches, because otherwise those launches are going to be less compelling and less successful. But if you like majority of people who sell things on the Internet, and I'm not talking about E commerce either here, guys, is obviously very, you know, the online course world is a very different world. The education info products, it's very different buying experience and very different buying psychology than someone who needs a new pair of shoes. So we're not talking about E commerce here. But yes, if you are in, yeah, if you're in Evergreen, whatever it is, if you are going to be leaving that open, you just makes it so much more difficult to make any promotion period you do compelling, like you're going to be eating and you know, severely into your conversion rates and into your number of sales. And you know, nobody wants that, particularly when you're doing stuff live because it takes a lot of effort. So if you're not making, you know, tons and tons of sales, like a good percentage of your sales from people just stumbling across your sales page, guys, then shut it down. Either say doors are closed or get them onto a wait list and then only open up that page when you're doing a live promotion and you know, just wait. And if you're on the fence, if you're not sure, test it. That's a great thing about everything we do with online marketing is it can be tested. And then you can, you know, you can look and say, okay, this is number of visits I got on my page. This is number of conversions I got beforehand. I've made this change. Now what happened, what happened with this launch before, what happened with this launch after? See if there is a correlation. See if you if it made an impact or not. And if it didn't change it, you can change it back. Or if it did make a negative impact, you can change it back. Nothing is set in stone, but I'm pretty sure based on the literally hundreds of people that I've helped to do this, that you'll find that from shutting, closing the doors and actually closing those doors, you will find that your launches work better, your Evergreen offers work better, and it's generally a positive thing that you'll never look back from. So I hope this has been helpful, guys, if you have got any stories, whether good or bad, about, you know, closing down sales pages or forgetting to turn off sales pages, Hit us up in the DMs or leave a comment below if you're watching the video. We always love to hear these there's so it's almost like one of those, you know, rites of passage. Like having a webinar crash is forgetting to switch off a link or on your sales page during a launch or doing it too early or something like that. Like we've all, we've all done it So I can 100% commiserate and I love to hear those as well. So anyway, let me know if you think this episode has been useful. Give us a like, give us a share all appreciated and otherwise guys, I will see you same time next week for another episode of the Doing It Online Podcast. Have an amazing week guys, and see you then. 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.