The 10 Step Successful Course Launch Framework Revealed At The 2019 Kajabi Summit
by Caroline Onyedinma
I just got back from the Kajabi conference and it was an absolute blast! I know many of you couldn’t make it out there so consider this your official recap and recount of the online business building gems dropped.
This post is really going to be beneficial to you if you’re launching your online course or signature program and you need a great strategy to stay the course.
The first person to rock the stage was Amy Porterfield with her 10 step course launch framework.
Amy spoke on a Saturday but it felt like a Sunday because Amy totally took us to COURSE LAUNCH CHURCH! Her profitable “course launch sermon”, almost had me clapping and yelling Amen sister, “You better preach those words of profit”, from the V.I.P section!.
I totally agree with her framework. The main point in this post is a summary of the launch framework tips she gave in her talk, along with my two cents commentary about how to create a successful online course and launch it.
A client of mine, @KellyMonroe10 also attended the summit and she created this beautiful doodle to summarize Amy Porterfield's 10 Lessons. Be sure to follow her on Instagram. While you're there you can follow me also :)
1. Give yourself space to work.
So what does that mean? It means giving yourself a time that you say that you're going to do your work, and do it. Take action, babeeeee. It's the only way. So many entrepreneurs have an idea, but it doesn’t come to fruition because they work on their dreams at random, inconsistent times.
Ok, we get it. Life is busy, with the.. kids, family, your 9 to 5, or the day-to-day of running your business, where is the time? Your potential profit personified would reply answer "cry me a river!" Totally insensitive but money is impartial to excuses. It only responds to doers, not dreamers, and definitely not deferrers.
If you want to have a successful course launch you must schedule dedicated time in your when you work on your course.
Treat it like you would your 9 to 5. Have a set time a few days in the week that you clock in, put in the work, and clock out.
I recommend at least two hours a day. I'm sure that you guys spend that amount of time scrolling on social media or binge-watching Game of Thrones. So it's totally doable when you put your mind to it.
Structure, consistency, and discipline equal success.
So no random course creation guys.
Be intentional. Got it? Great!
Action tip: Pull out your calendar and make a date with your digital dream daily. Need more accountability and support? Join our mastermind here.
2. Stick to one course till profitable.
Ok, this one had me hooting and hollering in my seat.
Listen, as entrepreneurs, from the time we get in the shower till the time we get dressed in the morning, we have 1001 new business ideas. That can be a blessing and a curse. As a multipotentialite. there are so many different things I want to do. Life is short and I want to do them all.
But the reality is that it is very hard to do focus on multiple things at once and do them well. This is even truer when it comes to trying to launch multiple online programs.
Stay in your lane. Focus on one main signature course and don’t deviate from it until it becomes profitable.
You increase the chance of failure if you launch, get a few sales and then abandon that course for the next shiny object. You must repeatedly tweak and refine your emails, webinar, funnel, targeting to move closer to success. This stage is called funnel optimization. If you don’t take the time to fine-tune your course launch, you will copy the old mistakes into a new course launch.
It’s easier and more profitable to put all your effort into marketing and selling one signature course than it is to spread yourself thin trying to sell multiple smaller courses at once.
Action Step. Become a ride or die course creator that is committed to launching a signature course until it becomes profitable and then some.
3. Launch success is determined by non-launch efforts
Many course creators put all their efforts into the few days or weeks they are launching their program. They obsess over the tech, launch emails, and creating sales pages but forget what’s important.
Providing consistent valuable content, building a list, and nurturing your audience. This should happen before you launch.
Imagine planning a birthday party. Ordering delicious food, picking the perfect playlist, wearing the best outfit, but you forget to invite the guests.
Whoomp, whoomp!
Well, that’s exactly what you do when you ignore important pre-launch activities that actually encourage people to turn up to the big event.
Neglect these steps and you will launch to crickets.
Action Step: Always be list building. Create weekly core content with a Call To Action to opt-in to your list. Want to learn how. Join us in the mastermind.
4. 99% of launch decisions should be made before the launch
Let me step in right here for you Amy. If you're launching, you should sit down with your team, your coach, your launch strategist, your husband, your dog, and you're alter ego and create a comprehensive launch plan in advance because once you’re in launch mode it’s on and popping.
A course launch requires attention to detail. Everybody needs to be on the same page and understand what needs to be done and when. Promotional emails, landing pages, lead magnets, follow-up emails, Q & As, webinar time slots, automation set-up, and so on. Plan this out in advance and you'll be fine.
Action Step: Create a detailed course launch plan, make sure all your team is on-board and stick to it. Don't have a launch plan? You can find a done for you plan in the mastermind.
5. Your offer can make or break your launch
You can have a gigantic list. Thousands of followers on Instagram and Facebook. perfectly targeted Facebook Ads. But still have poor sales if your offer is weak. A drop-down gorgeous, no-brainer offer is mandatory if you want to succeed at the course creation game.
Let me say it louder for those at the back pretending I’m not talking to them. If you want consistent online moolah, your offer better be banging, sexy, downright irresistible. Otherwise, it will stay on the digital shelf collecting pixel dust and your bank account will not thank you for it.
Contrary to popular belief, your course is not your offer. Your course is a part of your offer, but not the whole offer.
Presenting your course by itself is kinda like serving dinner to your guests on a plastic plate with no silverware, no delicious drink, and no promise of a decadent dessert.
These extra touches turn a functional meal into a mouthwatering gourmet dining experience, that is worthy of the fancy restaurant price.
Similarly, wrapping bonuses, payment terms, a money-back guarantee, testimonials, and benefits to your webinar presentation or sale page will transform a perfunctory course into a “take my credit card already” must-have offer.
Action Step: Rescue your course from poor sales with my S.A.V.I.O.R offer formula. Find out how in in the mastermind.
6. One webinar is never enough
The popular way to sell your signature course is with a live webinar. The live webinar process is a full-blown project in itself and can be a little overwhelming if you have never done it before.
If you've got a course that's from $500 or more a well-scripted webinar is the perfect go-to to provide value, breakdown limiting beliefs, and present your offer.
The mistake many people make is to plan this big online event once, present it and then say that’s all folks.
Technology can be unpredictable and is never fail-proof. Tech hiccups are part of the webinar journey. So don’t place your eggs in one basket. Schedule at least two or three webinars within the same launch to mitigate the risk of something going wrong.
A biz bestie of mine learned this the hard way.
She had a major webinar coming up and downgraded her webinar platform because she wanted to cut down on costs. (FB ads can be expensive. Who wouldn't want to save a penny?) She used the Zoom webinar platform and figured that their webinar package did the same thing as their meeting package, so she would be good to go.
Boy was she wrong!
The difference is that with Zoom meetings, attendees can join audio and come on camera but they cannot at the Zoom webinar level. At the beginning of the webinar, an attendee came on-screen during the presentation. Another attendee had her audio on with a screaming baby crying for 10 minutes of the presentation.
So much time and energy go into researching your avatar, creating the perfect webinar script, designing webinar slides and implementing your webinar pipeline, and hoping and praying people will sign up, show up and buy your program. It totally makes sense to have a few webinar encores to ensure all the kinks have been ironed out and you have a smooth presentation.
Another point Amy Porterfield made was to not launch alone and I totally agree.
We don’t go shoe shopping alone, so why would you try and tackle a big technical feat like hosting the online webinar that you’ve invested so much in, solo?
Don’t be that entrepreneur. Get a webinar scribe, a virtual assistant, your coach, or even a friend to join the webinar. Your webinar assistant can give you a heads up if anything is not going well, such as the audio or visual not working right.
And if everything goes smoothly without a hitch, you'll have someone to hi-five, even if it's virtual, when it's over.
Action Step: Create a pre-webinar checklist to run through just before you present. You can find one in the mastermind.
7. Send more emails
The linchpin of your course launch is email.
They include:
- Pre-webinar promotional emails
- Webinar presentation reminder emails
- Webinar follow up emails
- Cart close countdown emails
Course launch is not the time to be timid. The more emails you send, the more money you will make. You need to be aggressive with your email strategy during this time and send multiple emails a day.
When we're in launch mode or selling mode, we feel that's our whole world, right? For those few weeks, we breathe, eat, sleep, drink emails, conversions, and Facebook live stream. Your audience is not stuck in your bubble.
They're out living and probably will not see every single email you send. Email open rates are about 20%. So there is a 4 in 5 chance that if you send just one email, they will miss it
Up the ante, send two or three emails, and increase the possibility of them actually consuming the content.
The result is an increase in conversions and definitely a bigger bank account. Pushy definitely has its place at the right time and place.
Action Step: Create a post-webinar follow-up email sequence. Double up on the emails. What could you possibly say? Learn email techniques in the mastermind.
8. Tell more stories
People are not so much interested in stats and facts as they are in hearing stories that deliver a message that connects with the hearts of potential buyers.
We should tell more stories on our Facebook and Instagram lives, in our webinar presentation and email sequences because they amplify the know, like factor that leads people to trust you enough to buy from you.
A well-crafted story that delivers the right message, to the right person at the right time is kinda like an IV drip that goes directly to the bloodstream of your ideal clients, delivers the right dose of emotion that causes purchase your product because they are fully convinced that it’s the solution to their problem.
We can picture stories, we can insert ourselves into the scene the story paints in our head. We can see ourselves transformed. We can understand beyond logic how your offer can bring us to destination success.
Stories are a powerful selling mechanism. Every entrepreneur who wants to sell online should have a predefined catalog of short, succinct stories that drive the point home.
If you’re not using them, your course launch might not get the results you're looking for.
Action Step: Learn the art and science of storytelling for the sale. Find out how in the mastermind.
9. Don’t rush to evergreen
An evergreen webinar funnel is an automated pre-recorded webinar that's typically available on the same day and presents your offer on autopilot.
They are the opposite of real-time live webinar launches where the cart opens for a set amount of days and then closes. You will get a big spike of sales in a short amount of time but it's not the way to predictably run your business. Live launching is stressful. The constant feast and famine cycle between launches when money is not coming in is a total drag.
An evergreen webinar funnel is your automated digital sales system that sells for you even while you're sleeping and the solution to avoiding roller-coaster revenue. If you’re looking for more freedom and flexibility in your business, evergreen is definitely the place to be.
Sound like bliss, right?
There's a downside. Conversion on evergreen funnels is lower. Subscribers are real people who prefer real-time human interaction. They know an evergreen webinar is pre-recorded, they don’t get the warm and fuzzies as they do with a live presentation and don’t buy as much.
So before you rush to evergreen, consider these points.
- Create the pre-recorded presentation from your best live webinar
- Don’t try and pretend your recorded presentation is live. People are not stupid, they will know and it will kill your credibility.
- Give a pre-recorded webinar a live feel by asking for audience interaction in the presentation. This is more about keeping them engaged.
When you do an evergreen webinar well, oh my gosh, it just changes the game. It gives you consistent revenue. This is when you see people soaring in their business and hitting those consistent five-figure months and seven-figure years.
Don’t run before you can walk. Evergreen will be ever ready when you are truly ready for it.
Action Step: Don’t compare your chapter 1 with a niche guru’s chapter 10 and try to skip pages in the course launch playbook.
10. There is power in simplicity
The key to success is simplicity. Amy Porterfield created her 7 figure online business from webinars, a great offer, and emails. Keep your system simple and you too will succeed.
That’s it, folks.
What was your biggest take away from this article? Let me know in the comment section.
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