MBA2041 Why You Should Open & Close Your Courses

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Doll. Because your business needs you at your best. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's lesson you will learn.

Why you should open and close your courses.

If you have an online course, whether it's a live or on demand course.

And you're not happy with the number of sales you're getting, there's a good chance the reason why is how you offer it.

Having your course available at all times.

May seem like it makes sense on.

The surface, but that's just not how people buy. Human beings by default are on procrastination mode. On top of that, when we're given.

Too many choices, we don't make a choice at all. And when you tell somebody you can take my course anytime you want today.

Tomorrow, the next day.

This causes people to have what's called paralysis, right? They just basically say well if I could take it tomorrow, let me think about it tomorrow. If I could take it the next.

Day, let let me think about it for a while. You're not making it easy to make the choice to take your course.

So in today's lesson, I'm going to.

Show you why you should open and close your course, how to do it.

And what are some of the best practices I've seen out there by some.

Of the best course creators out there.

So let's get into it.

Let's get down to business, guys.

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One of the principles in sales is that you gotta give a reason to buy now. You gotta make it easier for your.

Potential customer to make the decision to sign up. Let's step away from our business for.

A moment and give a real life example.

In Australia, the ski season is only.

90 days from mid June to mid September.

Yep, they're skiing in Australia and it's pretty decent.

The busiest months are July and August.

So most hotels don't really need to.

Do any offers because they're going to sell out those months anyway.

But the last two weeks in June and the first two weeks in September are kind of like the shoulder seasons. Many people in Australia go on little.

Ski breaks for the weekend. So what a lot of hotels do for those weeks I just mentioned in June and in September is run some offers, some special deals for those weekends in those weeks. So as a skier or snowboarder in.

Australia, when you get an email saying.

Hey, we have an offer for these four weekends, immediately what happens? The customer who is interested in taking this offer is now not asking themselves, should I take this offer? They're now asking themselves, which weekend do I want to take? They've narrowed down the decision to four weekends. Literally, the person's going to go to the calendar, look at those weekends and say, which one is best for me? I think the first weekend in September works well.

And because it's a limited time offer.

And there's a time limit, they feel the sense of urgency to grab and buy this offer immediately.

So two things are happening here.

Okay? Number one, the choices of when to take this offer are limited. So therefore, it makes the decision Easy. As well as the fact that now they're actually making buying decisions and not even thinking about maybe I should hold off or procrastinate.

And secondly, because the offer is for.

A limited time and I have to sign up before a certain date, I feel a sense of urgency to make a decision.

This makes total sense to us as consumers.

It works like a charm.

But for some reason we don't do.

This with our courses, but many course experts do. And I'm going to show you how they do it, why they do it, and how you could do it too.

It's very similar to what a university does.

They open up enrollment before the semester starts and then they close enrollment before they begin.

Right. Most universities are not going to let.

You just join at any time right in the middle of the semester.

Now with an online course. The reason why this makes total sense.

And why course creators that do well do this is that if you have your course available all the time, this means you're going to have to market and sell this course all the time. And that can get really expensive financially.

And in terms of the time and.

Energy that's going to require.

So instead, what's a smarter strategy is.

To open up your course or launch.

It three to four times a year. Now you might be thinking, well, if I only sell three to four times a year, maybe I won't make that many sales.

This is where your irrational fears kick in.

In fact, by doing this, you make more sales because people don't want to have to wait till the next time.

When you have real scarcity and a real deadline.

People feel the need to take action.

Just like those holiday packages I talked about with the hotel and ski season in Australia. Typically, what some of these coaches and course creators do is that when they.

Open it up, they open up enrollment for about two.

They spend those two weeks marketing and selling this course. Whether they're running ads, whether they're creating content and videos and email marketing to bring in people to sign up during those two weeks, whether it's running live webinars to show people what's inside the course and the training to answer questions. And at the end of the two week enrollment period, guess what happens? The course closes.

You can't enroll. If you want to see an example.

Of this, our friends Jason and Caroline Zook run a great coaching and course program called Wandering Aimfully. If you go to wanderingaimfully.com join, you can see that their coaching program is actually closed right now and they tell you when they will open it up. Again, this means that Jason and Caroline in this example, can just focus on selling and promoting their course a handful of weeks during the year when they open up the course again.

And guess what? They get to focus on the rest of the year, delivering their content and.

Doing a great job for their clients. What We All Actually Want to Do.

Now, this strategy of opening and closing.

Your programs or your training will work even if you're not running a cohorted type of course, meaning it's okay if it's like a continuity program or a coaching program. It doesn't mean that everybody has to kind of graduate at the end of the cycle or finish the actual course. You can do this for group coaching, you could do this for training programs that are ongoing, membership programs, communities, things like that. What's brilliant about this is that you can just focus on giving great content to your audience, including your non members, people that have not bought your non customers on your email list. You don't have to bombard them with marketing materials every single week trying to sell your course. You can just focus on giving them great content, building relationships and making it just an enjoyable experience to be on your email list.

Then a few times a year they'll get a few emails telling them, hey, heads up.

The program that we offer, the one that you might be interested in if you're on our email list, is now open for sale.

This is also a strategy that's utilized.

By Pat Flynn, founder of Smart Passive.

Income, who sells a whole bunch of.

Courses on his website using this same strategy.

Now, creators like Pat Flynn not only.

Open and close their courses, but they.

Offer types of bonuses and special offers.

Throughout that open period. So let's say for example, the course is available for two weeks to be purchased.

There are special bonuses for people that sign up in the first week versus.

The second week, encouraging people to sign up early on. Many people also add another component, limited.

Seats, meaning you're only taking X amount.

Of students every single time. I've seen this in coaching programs and.

Some people even display on the website.

How many spots are still available.

Now this only works if you're being.

Truthful and if you're listening to this podcast, I am pretty hopeful and confident that you're going to be doing the right thing. False scarcity never works and always bites you in the butt. You're trying to build trust with your audience, not break it. Now there are some risks involved with this model just like any strategy, and.

It'S my responsibility to highlight them to.

You if you're opening your course only a few times a year. The pressure is on to make sure that you sell enough spots each time to make it worth your while or make enough money to keep the business going. You don't have a lot of times to actually make those sales, but I would argue it's easier to do that with an open and close than having it open all the time. So to further elaborate my point, let's say you're opening your course three times a year, once in March, once in July, and once in November.

And let's say, for example, you need.

100 students paying $500 for your course or your program every single year so you can make $50,000 in revenue.

If you make less than 33 sales.

In March, you are behind.

Ideally, you want to make 50 to 60 sales so that you feel comfortable.

You can hit that target in the next two times you open it. But a little pressure at a certain amount of time is actually a good thing.

It's going to motivate you to think.

Of innovative ways to market and sell your course to build your audience large enough so that when you do open up, there's a lot of people waiting to buy. I can also argue that there's a.

Lot of pressure of having to sell.

Every single day of the year versus a concentrated amount of time throughout the year and then every outside of those windows. You can just focus on building a very strong email list so that when you open up, you have awaiting customers.

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A few quick tips when it comes.

To opening and closing your courses.

When your course is closed, make sure you have a way for people to.

Sign up to a waiting list.

Some people are going to click on.

Their offer emails when the course was open a little late or they might find you on Google and land on your course page.

They might be disappointed.

Hey, I missed the window. But the first reaction is like, how can I make the next window? So don't miss this window again. They're going to pop their email or look for a place to pop their email. So make sure you give them a place to do that.

Number two, I like to do an.

Automation linked to that email so that when they sign up, they get an email saying, hey, thanks for your interest. We're going to open up on this specific day, mark your calendar.

And then sometimes I like to tease.

Them with a little trailer video of what the program's all about, what some of our community members are saying, all the fun we're having.

So they have a little bit of.

FOMO and they feel compelled to mark their calendar so that they don't miss out when it opens up again.

Third, if you're ever wondering how to.

Price your course, if you want to.

Experiment with pricing, it's always much better.

To go up in price rather than the reverse.

So say, for example, you're not sure.

If you should be charging 500 or $1,000 for your course.

The first time you open up your.

Course, open it for $500.

And say on the sales page, when.

Your course is open, hey, this round, this cohort, this time we're going to offer it for $500 because it's an introductory price.

But the next time we open it.

Up, it's going to be for $800, for example, giving them another reason to buy now. But of course, you got to stick to that promise.

The second time you open up, open.

Up at 800 and say, hey, it's $800. But guess what? The next time we open it, we're going to $1,000. So now to join.

This is a great way not only to test your pricing, but also to.

Incrementally feel more comfortable offering more for the value you're going to be adding to the course. Remember, as you are offering the course, you're going to be improving it. You're going to tweak it, you're going.

To add to it.

So the value of it is going to increase and therefore the price should match.

And my last tip is, I've seen.

A lot of great creators that do this strategy that open and close their courses, use affiliate marketing brilliantly.

They even do it with their own customers.

So when somebody buys their course when it's open, they say to them, hey, join our affiliate program or our referral program.

What they do is they basically incentivize.

Them in sharing the course with other people they know, with their network, on social media, things like that. I experienced something really cool where they got money back. They actually had a refund for every time they referred somebody up to a maximum amount. So for we had five referral maximum, meaning that for every referral they got a hundred bucks refunded from the price of their actual course. So if they paid 500, for example, and they referred five other people and those five people bought their course was free for them.

This created a great viral loop and.

There'S tons of great affiliate programs. If you're on WordPress, affiliateWP is a great program. There's also IDEV affiliate. There's a whole bunch of other ones too. There's some easier ones as well. You can Google that. That wraps up today's lesson. I hope you saw that. Hey, this might be a good idea. Something to experiment with when you build and run your own course.

Or if you have an existing course, maybe try this out. You might even get a bunch of sales as you announce you're about to.

Close it, because you're going to open it up only periodically. So you might be saying, hey, we're going to close enrollment for the next three three months. So you want to buy now before we close, because you won't be able to sign up until this date. Getting people off the fence, giving them a reason to buy thanks so much.

For listening to the $100 MBA show.

If you love what you hear, hit.

Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. We're on every podcast app, so smash.

That subscribe button, that Follow button so you get our episodes automatically. Before I go, I want to leave you with this.

If you run a small business with.

A small team, it can be really exhausting to be marketing and selling constantly. This is one of the biggest benefits of opening and closing your course. We can't be Internet Marketer of the Year every single day of the year. It can be quite exhausting and honestly, many people want to just focus on the content and serving their clients. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Free ride Friday.

I'll see you then.

Take care.

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