What is an Online Course Launch Strategy? Do I really need one?
Who needs an online course launch strategy right? Well, as a course creator for over 10 years who’s had both epic wins and epic failures, I’ve learned a thing or two about what makes for a successful online course launch. I’m here to share my experience about what makes for not only a successful course launch but how to launch an online course that continues to grow in sales for years to come.
But let’s start by examining what most course creators’ Online Course Launch Strategy consists of
Typical Online Course Launch Strategy
- Step 1. Start creating videos and content for your online course (Yay! 😄)
- Step 2. Worry about boring, pesky launch details later
- (boring, pesky details include:
- whether anyone wants/needs the course content you’re currently producing
- whether the course content you’re producing meets the expectations of potential learners
- whether you have an audience you can actually launch your course to
- whether the said audience will actually click “Purchase” on your online course sales page)
- whether anyone wants/needs the course content you’re currently producing
- (boring, pesky details include:
👎 Boo. Unfortunately, this is not a very good plan.
Listen, I know that for some, planning something like a launch is the cat’s meow, while for many others of us, it feels like an annoying step that’s only going to delay what you really want to do: get started making your course already!
That said, as someone who has experienced the pain of launching a brand new online course to crickets, take my word for it: the few hours of planning you do to strategize your online course launch is well worth your effort.
Your online course launch strategy doesn’t just start with the marketing efforts you do when you’re ready to share your course with the world, it includes thinking about your audience before you start recording a single course video!
So, let’s get into it!
Researching Target Audience
Before we hit that record button and start filming ourselves giving incredible expertise to our future learners, let’s first double-check that we actually understand what our potential learners are willing to actually pay for. Remember, there’s plenty of free content out there in the world, and it’s only getting more bountiful day by day. Most people can find what they’re looking for for free on Youtube. (Heck, you can literally learn advanced dental surgical techniques on Youtube now without paying a cent, if you really wanted to.)
So our goal is to be very thoughtful and intentional before we start churning out course lessons and really understand not only what our audience will find helpful, but what they will actually click the “Buy Now” button to gain access to. As referenced above, just because a random dentist is on Youtube explaining an advanced dental surgery, doesn’t mean that that dentist is at the top of her/his field. If you had to spend your hard-earned cash to buy a course from some fly-by-night hack who pretends to be an expert on Youtube or an actual expert with over 10,000 years of practice under their belt, wouldn’t you rather opt for the expert?
Spend time where your audience spends time
When you hear the term “research your audience,” perhaps what comes to mind is spending countless hours doing Google searches and looking up stats and demographics about your audience. The whole, “Needlepoint is a 50 million dollars per year industry, if we can just catch 1% of that, we’ll be rich!” – while tempting, is not what we’re going for here. While some of that data might be helpful, it shouldn’t be what you use to make your decision on whether to make an online course or what you use to generate course content. In fact, too much of such online research could be a way to hide from being bold and talking to your audience directly.
If your audience spends all day posting in a Reddit group, so be it: do that. If instead, they meet once per week in person to jam and talk about the latest music gear, go spend time with them, even if that’s not normally your thing. Only by spending significant time talking with members of your audience, can you get a sense of what course content they want to know that’s hard for them to find free on the internet, and for which they’d be willing to pay. The danger here that we’re trying to avoid is creating course content that is stuff they already know and don’t believe is of much value to them.
One more thing I want to say about researching your audience: find opportunities to acquire questions about your course subject matter from your audience. For example, if you’re a Youtube creator who produces free content and invites viewers to upgrade to your paid master class, you should be jotting down each question asked by commenters and see if you can detect a pattern from your audience. You may find that a frequently asked question starts to arise that tells you as an instructor that your audience really values that particular topic more than all others. Entire (and lucrative) courses can be made just about those niche sub-topics alone if it’s something your audience really needs.
Creating Content
Answer the Public
When you break it down, creating online course content is really about answering questions that your audience has. Sometimes they have these questions upfront from the get-go before they even take your course, and other times these are questions that arise during the course as they learn some of the basics. Either way, those questions usually get asked over and over and you as an expert should quickly learn what those common questions are. Your content needs to be a direct answer to those questions, not a self-indulgent activity for your to blab about whatever it is you think is interesting that day.
It sounds obvious, but the reality is that a lot of content creators out there simply don’t bother understanding the audience well enough to know what their audience really wants to learn and just make videos or lessons about things that happen to inspire them the day they press record.
If you DO succeed to answer the questions through your course that your potential learners want to know, it will benefit you in two ways:
- It will be 10X easier to sell your course! If your online course sales page consistently mentions these frequently asked questions and promises to answer them in the course, readers will think you’re reading their minds! Why wouldn’t they click “Purchase”?
- Getting reviews from current learners will be much easier if they feel that they are getting content that’s aligned with what they really care about.
