This is a pre-sale to a selected audience, which will be responsible for helping you attract an even larger audience.

Why pre-launch online courses?

Pre-launching online courses is a strategy you can incorporate into your sales funnel to ensure your course sells before it’s even finished.

It is a warm-up, where you create expectations about the product and use marketing actions focused on attracting potential leads to reach your target audience.

You may have noticed several professionals selling “launch formulas” on the internet, and the vast majority talk about the importance of pre-launch for sales success. They are not wrong.

Typically, when it comes to selling online courses, the general perception is that once the course is published, sales start to happen. It doesn’t work like that.

Demand has to be created so that people know your content exists, understand its value and sales happen. For this, the best way is to pre-launch online courses.

In this pre-launch, your course does not need to be completely ready, it is just a pilot, a sample that serves to, in addition to attracting leads, validate your idea.

– 3 ways to validate your idea before creating online courses

If you still have doubts about whether this effort is worth it, here are some benefits it brings to your business:

• Time and resources savings: When pre-launching online courses, you test audience interest and make sure your course has a market. Making sure you have a real chance of success is the best way to avoid wasting time and money.

• More investment resources: You can use the revenue generated by this pre-sale to finish developing your course and bolster your marketing investment.  

• Email List building: When you start pre-launch online courses, you also start building your mailing list of potential customers. When your course is ready, simply email this list to get your first students.

– Best practices for building an email list

• Build excitement and anticipation: One of the main benefits of organizing a pre-launch is generating the engagement that comes from anticipation. When you start talking about a new product that will be launched and all its advantages, your audience starts to wait for it, which generates motivation to buy (even impulse purchases) and interest in following your news and content. 

• Feedback: Getting feedback on your idea before you finish developing it is a masterstroke. The sooner you can get validation from your target audience, the sooner you can create a course based on their actual wants and requests (rather than creating what you think they want).

5 Steps to Pre-Launch Online Courses

Pre-launching online courses allows you to gauge the market reception of your product.

This is very useful to determine if your effort and investment is being applied to something with real chances of success, or if you need to make adjustments to your product and strategy.

See a simple step-by-step guide to pre-launch online courses and optimize your sales!

1. Determine the goals and expected outcomes of the course 

The first thing you should do is make a clear list of the objectives of your online course and the results it delivers to students.

Showing the user what he earns, what transformation your course can cause in his life, is your first strong sales argument, and also the moment when you select your audience, since that will only stay to find out who is really interested in the goals you’ve listed.

Be precise, objective and truthful. Don’t bullshit the customer (remember that online attention spans are short!) and don’t promise what you can’t deliver. 

These goals and results are the beginning of the sales pitch that will be used in your online course pre-launch campaign. When they are defined, you already have content to start attracting leads through your main relationship channels, such as social networks and email.

– How to generate leads

2. Sell ​​your idea

It’s time to move on to a more direct sales strategy, that is, put a face to it, show who you are, what your product is and why people should buy from you.

For this you can record a video, organize a webinar or a live streaming on your social networks. At this point, you present the course title and outline to your target audience.

Talk about your goals and advantages, the pain you want to solve , and why you are the right person to do so. Then wait and analyze the results of that first release.

Was there interest? What did people say? If the results weren’t so good, don’t give up just yet, keep promoting your pre-launch via email, social media, YouTube and your other channels.

– 5 tips for selling courses using social media

Give more people a chance to find out about your idea before discarding it. Deliver free content and prove you’re an authority in the field. Sometimes people don’t necessarily dislike your product, they just don’t know if they can trust you.

3. Launch a pilot course

Another approach is to create a minimum viable course. It is a pilot, a first test version that you intend to improve. Or even a mini-course or just a module of the complete course that you will create.

Pre-launch online courses is all about creating a pilot course to prove that people are willing to pay to learn about your chosen topic and get feedback and testimonials from your students. 

With this feedback, you make the necessary adjustments, acquire important social proof for sales, and take the opportunity to improve your content, adding additional resources to it.

Sell ​​your pilot course for a price lower than what you intend to charge, after all, in addition to not being finished, it is fair to offer your first group of students a reduced price.

You can even call these students a beta test group and put a limit on the number of people who can apply. This helps create a sense of urgency and makes your proposal more attractive.

– Step by step to create an online mini-course

4. Create a landing page

A landing page is different from a regular page on a website, it is designed with a conversion goal, that is, to convince the visitor to take an action.

All of your marketing and outreach efforts should lead the user to this page, where again the objectives of your course and what benefits it brings to customers will be listed.

Use strong, catchy headlines, video, social proof, and CTAs that can lead to a purchase or at the very least a subscription to your mailing.  

If possible, put a sample of the course there, or its curriculum, so that the user has a better idea of ​​what will be delivered and feels more confident to make the purchase.

Remember copywriting! The content must be written in a persuasive way that makes the visitor think, “I can’t miss this!”

– How to create a high converting landing page

5. Price your online course

Pre-launch online courses is important to help you define what your product is worth.

Determining this amount can be quite complex, so we advise you to start by setting a sales target that justifies the creation of the course. 

For example, if you have an initial cost of $1,000 to create your pilot course, start by charging $100 on the pre-launch and try to sell to a minimum of ten people.

This will shed light on the sales potential of your course and whether your revenue goal is achievable.

If you can’t acquire 10 customers, it’s a good idea to reevaluate your course idea, marketing strategies, or make adjustments based on the feedback that comes in. Make these changes and see what happens.

If the first round of sales is successful, move on to developing the full course and increase your value to what you actually expect to earn.

As you improve your course and collect more positive student testimonials, you can increase the price. 

– How to price online courses

If you sell your online course before you create it, be prepared to actually deliver it within the timeframe you promised your customers. Otherwise, complaints started to come in and they could ruin your reputation and the chance to make money in the eLearning market. 

Pre-Launch Online Courses with Coursify.me

Pre-launch online courses to promote your course and find out if it will be successful or not. 

But even if the results aren’t as good as expected, don’t give up. Instead, keep working on it and improve it with all the feedback you’ve received during this pre-sale. 

The secret to success is to involve students in the creation process. That way, when you release the enhanced, full version of your course at a higher price, you’ll know it will be well-received because you’ve created it based on feedback and wishes from real customers.

To finish, our advice is: create the best course possible and host it on a platform that is easily accessible to your customers. 

Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for anyone who wants to create, sell and promote courses on the internet.

Serving companies and professionals in more than 60 countries, Coursify.me is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System (LMS).

– Learning Management System: What is it?

To know more, visit our website, do a free trial and understand why we are the best option for your online course.

The post How to Pre-Launch Online Courses  appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

However, even if you have a quality product that can make a real difference to your customers, it will likely suffer without the support of a launch strategy well-conceived.

Launch Strategy: How to Launch a Product in 5 Steps

A standard launch strategy focuses on sharing a new product or feature with your entire user base through email campaigns, social media  posts and general press.

– How to create an email marketing campaign

While this approach introduces the product to a large audience – and results in a short-term growth spike – there are many problems that can happen along the way.

The goal of most companies is to launch something and get as much growth and traction as possible in a short amount of time. However, experts point out that it is essential to design a process that allows the launch of many different product experiences within specific communities so that your product can reach critical mass. 

The purpose of the launches is to create a sustainable growth strategy long-term. So, instead of the standard product launch strategy, a more detailed five-part loop based on an enduring growth approach is indicated.

When these elements are combined, you will find the right users to target and improve customer retention. 

This is what the product launch process looks like: 

1. Define your scope
2. Access who needs the product
3. Filter your list for the best users
4. Use a success signal
5. Leverage your signals for the next group of users

We’ll look at these steps in the launch strategy in more detail below.

Define Launch Scope

Too often, a product launch strategy shows the same promotional material to the entire audience and expects users to share it. But as new products are released as early versions not meant for everyone, users whose expectations haven’t yet been exceeded provide negative feedback and kill your launch in word-of-mouth marketing.

The people you want to focus on are the segment of users who have already had their expectations met and are likely to tell everyone about your new product or feature.

So, start by defining your target audience. Instead of bombarding a vast audience with advertisements for your new online course, you should create products and resources for specific audiences and focus your launch strategy on them.

This requires narrowing your target audience within your user base as much as possible.

Once you’ve defined the scope of your audience, filter it so that you’re targeting people who’ve had a positive experience with your products. 

– How to create buyer personas for my business

Access your target audience

Next, make the news reach your target audience. Now that you have a focus, it’s time to use well-known outreach tactics such as email marketing, paid ads, press releases, referrals, blog posts, social media, groups and forums, and more. 

– How to reduce costs with Google Ads

Filter your best users

Once you’ve caught the attention of your audience, find the users most likely to enjoy and understand the beta version of your new online course. Who are your first users?

Sharing your launch with your target group is a bit like launching a net. You will find some people who fit the scope you defined and some who don’t exactly. Filtering helps you reach the right audience.

To find your audience, gather information in the following sources: 

Clearbit

The Clearbit Connect is a Chrome extension that puts information of millions of businesses and people at your fingertips, displaying data about the people who sent you an email in the Gmail sidebar.

The application has features that allow you to get additional information about the profile of a company or a lead, using the domain or email of a prospect as a basis for searching.

This gives you access to “passive data” so that when users sign up, you can use their email addresses to learn more about your audience. 

Internal Data

This refers to information you collect during sales and support conversations. If you have already launched an online course, you certainly have interaction with your customers that can serve as a useful source of data about your target audience. 

Now, if this launch strategy is for your first course, focus on outreach and start analyzing the responses you receive. Once you launch the beta version, write down all reviews and feedback, both to know your audience, as to improve your product and support future releases.

– Tips to get more Reviews for your course

Information sent by the user

Information you get through opinion polls, satisfaction surveys, polls made on your social networks, comments on your publications, registration forms, questions sent to support, reviews of your products, etc. This provides solid data to help you find and know your target audience. 

Spot a sign of success

Restricting your target audience makes it easier to get signs of success during your launch strategy than if you try to reach them all at once.

The results are qualitative and quantitative signals more accurate and less noisy that provide a strong indication of whether you have reached the right audience.

Qualitative Signals

Such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), can be corrupted when you receive negative feedback from users who shouldn’t be testing the first version of your product or feature. Avoid “noisy” qualitative feedback that hides the real feedback you need and slows down your validation process by segmenting your audience.

 Quantitative Signals

Retention curves show how well you are able to retain users over time and deliver promised value. Without segmenting your audience, this can also result in a slow validation process.

Release to all results in lower retention rates over time.

The result is that it takes much longer to deliver a product that meets the needs of the right segment of your audience.

– How to retain students

Leverage for your next launch

The final step in the loop, once the signs of success have been identified, is to figure out how to leverage those signals and launch your course to the next set of defined target users.

Launching a product or feature takes time, so the goal should be to introduce it to a new layer of users as you go, until it’s exposed to your entire user base.

Exposing your product to more people progressively over time as more value is added to it is the idea. 

Keep repeating this five-step cycle until you present your release to all users.

The main lesson here is to realize that you can’t pitch to everyone and then narrow down your target list based on who most uses the product. You can’t start big and then work backwards based on who stays.

While this approach may have worked for some, it’s rare and doesn’t work for most brands. 

Launch new online courses with Coursify.me

The five-step launch strategy works and is a faster way to validate questions and assumptions. 

There is more work needed in the beginning, but it pays off in the end with a higher retention curve.

Take a look at your launch strategy as it stands today and find gaps and opportunities to filter your target audience and find your signs of success.

Developing a custom launching process repeatable takes trial and error because the tactics that work for one company may not necessarily work for yours. 

You can hit the next product launch with market research and the right pre-launch planning. Find your combination of tactics, tools and processes that will make you attract the most right users and keep them longer.

– Tips for organizing the pre-sale of your online course

Remember that people don’t have a lot of attention to pay to your product. It’s in your best interest to protect their experiences and avoid bombarding them with irrelevant messages that test their patience and ultimately drive them away from your business.

Furthermore, our best advice is: create the best possible course and host it on a complete platform that is easily accessible to your customers. After all, you don’t want to lose students because they had difficulties accessing, paying and taking the course.

Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for those who want to create, sell and promote courses on the internet. 

With complete optimization for SEO, allows integration with your social networks and content platforms like Vimeo and Youtube, all to improve the visibility of your page.

Serving businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, Coursify.me is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System (LMS).

– Learning Management System: What is it?

To learn more, visit our website, take a test and understand why we are the best option for your online course.

The post 5 Steps to Perfect Your Online Course Launch Strategy appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.