When you launch your online course, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the excitement and miss the crucial planning steps involved in actually making it a success. When you launch your online course in a way that will reach the right people and maximise the revenue and impact of your online course, you’re going beyond putting in a title into LearnDash and taking online payments through Stripe. In this post, I’ll walk through each phase of an online course launch, from pre-launch planning to the post-launch window, to help you plan an online course launch that sets you up to succeed.
The Importance of a Strategic Launch Plan
Why You Need a Launch Plan
A strategic online course launch plan will make sure you’re starting with the right audience—for maximum reach and to make the impact you desire. Without a plan of attack, you’ll miss out on potential students, you’ll leave money on the table, and you won’t make the impact you desire. In short, here’s what a launch plan will enable you to do:
Know your buyers: figuring out who your course is for is the first step in writing messaging that connects.
Be clear what you’re aiming for: your goal might be a set revenue for the year; it could be a certain number of registrations; it could be building your email list to X size.
Add urgency: When you create anticipation and schedule the launch, you also get people to look forward to it, and then it will be more likely a successful day for launching.
Pre-Launch Phase: Building Momentum
Market Research: Understanding Your Audience
But first, know your audience—and know them well. Glean who they are and what they want by using a site such as Google Trends or SurveyMonkey. If you know what they desire, you can (and should) create a course that reflects those very needs and incorporate messaging in your marketing that is aligned with their interests.
Moreover, competitive analysis gives you something to react to: what are courses in your niche doing that you can differentiate from? Take a look at what successful courses in your niche are providing, and seek to do better.
Creating a Compelling Pre-Launch Offer
A pre-launch offer would be a good way to start building excitement and momentum, capturing early sales, and perhaps also capturing a mailing list. This could take the form of an early bird price, a limited-time bonus, or early access to some extra content. These types of offers can be built into your launch sequence using tools such as Deadline Funnel, which allow you to add countdown timers to your landing pages.
Building Your Email List
Your list is your most important asset as it goes into a launch, so make sure you start building this long before your launch so that people can sign up to get your resources for free. These resources could include PDF e-books, webinars, or mini-courses. When they sign up to your list, use email marketing automation tools like Mailchimp or ConvertKit to send out mini-campaigns and convince them to become paid clients or customers.
Slice your email list up by their interests and behaviours, then communicate with those segments: You might send one message to people who have viewed the first part of your course about kite surfing, another to people who have viewed the second part where you talk about the best spots, and a third to people who have signed up for your free eBook about the medical benefits of kite surfing.
Crafting Your Launch Messaging
Developing a Strong Value Proposition
Your value proposition is the core message in your sales pitch to prospective students about why they should take your course and not someone else’s. It’s the summary of the advantages of the value proposition (its benefits and the outcomes that learners can expect to achieve). Talk in the language of your audience’s pain points and their desires that your course can fulfil. For example, don’t say:‘Learn graphic design.’Instead, say:‘Learn to create beautiful designs that will make clients call you.’
Crafting Persuasive Sales Copy
You need your sales copy to be persuasive, about the benefits of your course. Use storytelling so you can emotionally connect with your audience. And testimonials or case-studies help improve authority. Tools such as Grammarly enable you to write more clearly, legibly and without errors.
Make your messaging more convincing by including social proof: reviews, endorsements or stories about the success previous students. For example, if one of your students is making a killing on eBay using your Amazon AMS course, consider including a short The marketing collateral is blueprints, bedrooms and painting Maverick can give you similar impressive tips because he knows what to talk about.
You have hard-earned expertise in a category that millions of people want to activate. Most of them won’t scratch the tip of the iceberg, but you can crack open the cold mound of ice if you catch their attention and frame it in a way that appeals to their ego. Life changing? Not really. But lifelike? That’s the plan.
Creating High-Converting Landing Pages
Your landing page is the most important page of your launch. When your leads finally check out your course, it’s your landing page that will convince them—or not—to take the plunge. Make sure your landing page has: 1. A meaningful headline 2. Significant subhead 3. Well-written copy 4. Testimonials from students 5. A clear call to action 6. A remarkable guarantee 7. A graphic that conveys the theme of your course 8. A strong image of you; 9. Your alluring offer 10. Instructions for ordering 11. New ways to use your course 12. Up-to-date information.
A clear headline: This should immediately convey the main benefit of your course.
Engaging visuals: Use images, videos, or infographics to illustrate what your course offers.
Convincing calls-to-action (CTAs): Make registration easy by using simple, action-oriented buttons such as ‘Enroll Now’ or ‘Get Started Today’.
Leadpages and Unbounce are easy-to-use tools for creating high-converting landing pages that don’t require back-end coding skills.
Executing a Successful Launch Week
Leveraging Social Media for Launch Day
Social media can also be utilised in a highly effective way to help build a buzz on launch day. Use Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to publish behind-the-scenes student testimonials and launch countdown content. Engage with your audience through comments and question responses. Use a hashtag to help people find you, and embrace the lingo.
Or you could ramp it up even more with a social media contest or giveaway. Post a picture of something that looks fun, and host a contest or giveaway to go along with it. Offer a free course for one person who shares your post or tags a friend.
Running Paid Advertising Campaigns
If you have the budget, paid advertising can greatly expand your reach during that critical launch period, especially if you use platforms such as Facebook to target the right demographics and interests. Duplicate your main ad, but create several variations of the same ad with different messages, images, and CTAs, and optimise based on the audience analytics.
Retargeting ads are crucial in the context of a launch. They reach people who have visited your landing page but didn’t sign up and remind them of the value your course can bring to their professional lives.
Hosting a Live Launch Event
Similarly, hosting a live launch, like a webinar or Q&A, is a great way to reach your market and attract new prospective candidates in real time. Promote a webinar or Q&A event, and then host it on Zoom or GoToWebinar. Make this the keystone of your marketing events.
supplies and provides attendees with free authentic content that whets their appetite for your course. It might be a live demo, mini-lesson, or live discussion of the core concepts of your course. Then, end the event with a compelling offer.