Are you scared of launches? Let’s change this, shall we? It’s time to launch face first, hands out wide, ready to accept anything that comes your way. It’s time to play a bigger game! In this post, I’m sharing 3 strategies to help you launch a successful online course, that are working now.
#1 Give People a Time Frame
When you create your online course or program, I want you to give people a time frame, for example, 6 or 12 weeks. Your potential students are looking for a plan, a framework or a system that will get them to the desired outcome.
There’s no specific length that your course should have, it depends on the results you are promising. How long will it take your students to get the results? People want to know that, and it will help you sell your course.
This is especially prevalent in the wellness industry because in theory, we all know what to do – we know we should eat better, exercise more, go to bed earlier, etc.
The problem is motivation and accountability. For example, there are a million free yoga videos we could practice with and live classes we can join on Zoom, but we don’t do it. Sometimes we need that external push, and that’s what you’re going to give your students when you create a plan for them that they can follow! It doesn’t matter what you teach, it’s about a problem you are solving and the way to get your students there.
So for example, instead of creating a course “Yoga for Beginners”, offer a 6-week journey to learn the foundations of yoga so you’re confident to join a public yoga class. That’s a fear many people have, they are afraid of embarrassing themselves in a public yoga class, so you could help them solve that.
We all love systems and plans to follow, and I’m sure you have a framework or process inside you that you could teach. Again, it doesn’t matter what timeframe you choose, it could be 7 days, could be 3 weeks, 6 weeks, 6 months. Think about it, and when you already have an online course, think about how you could repackage it to make it into this beautiful journey your students go on with you.
#2 Include Community Elements in Your Course
Community elements can add a lot to the experience your students are having, and to the value they get out of your course. It also means you can ask for a higher price too – read more about this here.
People are craving connection, now more than ever. We want to connect, and we want community.
A community also creates momentum and accountability. When you see other people putting in the work and getting results, it’s super motivating because we want that too and it will help your students stay on track and take action. A time frame and community elements create excitement. It’s an experience you’re inviting your students to which can be so much more fun than just creating some video trainings.
The only thing to consider is that it does require more work on your end. For example, if you do weekly calls with your students then you need to make sure you’re present for that each week. It can be quite time-consuming and you need to be aware of that and factor it into your schedule. This is also why it works especially well when you have a program that has a certain time frame.
When you have a 6-week program you can offer 6 weekly calls and be present and engaged in a student community or Facebook group for those 6 weeks, and after that, it’s over. Your students could still have access to the trainings and replays inside your course, but the live element would be over, and that makes it manageable for you.
You wouldn’t have to offer this year-round, maybe you launch this live version of your online course two or three times in the year and that’s enough.
#3 Follow A Proven Launch Plan
So many yoga teachers and wellness entrepreneurs told me they just want to do a small launch, or they already did a small launch in the past.
I think this is what most of us lean towards, especially for our first launch. We just want to test the waters, we don’t feel quite ready and think “let’s just send out a few emails and see how it goes”. This is what I would have done for my first launch if I didn’t have a plan to follow. But instead, I had invested in this expensive program by another online marketeer and I just followed her step-by-step launch template, and it worked.
I don’t think you can have a successful launch without having a plan to follow. You can’t reverse-engineer this by copying what you see other people doing, because you don’t see the strategy behind it, behind every single email or social media post they put out there. And if you’re like most people, planning your launch completely by yourself will mean you will play small. You will have fears holding you back from playing a bigger game.
I feel really strongly about this, especially for your first few launches. Follow a proven plan, and you’ll learn what works for you and your audience and what doesn’t, and then you can start experimenting and changing things up.
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