We are sharing behind the scenes of our latest launch for our DIY SEO Course, SEO On Tap! We’ll talk about how it came to life, why it was a success, and what we’d do differently. If you’ve been thinking about launching a course or you’re just curious about what it’s like to create one, this episode is for you!
Do You Have A Mindset Block Around Launching?
Because we sure did! We had a major mindset block before launching – we suck at launching. Can you relate?! We were stuck thinking that we couldn’t launch, launches are stressful, or we wouldn’t hit our goals. However, this is the very first time we have ever felt so dang good about launching. We put a ton of work into this launch, and it was well worth it.
Now it’s time for you too, to throw away that mindset block.
5 Successful Course Launch Tips
We hope you can steal these tips and use them for your course launch! We do want to mention that we pushed our launch date three times, and we think that actually contributed to our success. We were so stressed trying to stick to a date that we were killing ourselves trying to get it finished. It wouldn’t have been our best work, and it would have made the launch crappy for us. It’s totally okay to not stick to a date you had for yourself.
1. Talk about it earlier than you think
We also started talking about the course reallyyyyyyy early (like last summer). Mostly because we planned on launching a long time ago 🙃 but it worked out in our favor. We generated a lot of excitement, and people knew about it. Our shop launch was the complete opposite – we wanted it to be a surprise, but then no one knew about it, and it was hard to get people excited once the products were already out there.
2. Email your list more frequently
We added another weekly email to our list — SEO Squeeze. This has been so easy for us to create. The purpose is to give people a super quick tip to improve their SEO, and you know Abbey has hundreds of SEO tips for you! It was a great way to prime people about doing SEO themselves and how to do it. It also teased the course for us a bit because some of those tips are in the course.
3. Host a live webinar
We did two live webinars teaching four tips to improve your SEO in less than 5 minutes. This was the most fun part of launching for us! Even though we had some nerves, it went so well, and so many people came to learn from us. We would 100% do live webinars again because it generated so much excitement during our launch. Then evergreened that webinar so we can use it for future marketing efforts (AKA the next time we launch!)
4. Run paid ads for a free offer
We ran paid ads (say what!?). Yes, we paid for some ads to get the word out about our course. We were so careful with our ad spend, but it was so worth it in the end. Even though we’re organic marketing girlies, we would invest in paid ads again for a major launch! More to come on this whole experience 😉
5. Make social engagement easy with ManyChat
Finally, we leveraged ManyChat, a chat automation. It made running the ads, getting people to sign up for the webinar, and getting the registration link to people (versus saying link in bio) so much easier. The automation took a ton off our plate. It also made the user experience so much better because they weren’t waiting on us for a response.
Things We Would Do Differently Next Time
Stop Trying to Be Perfect
So, let’s talk about the not-so-pretty side of launching. We are both perfectionists; since we were revamping the course, we wanted it to be perfect. We spent way too much time trying to get the perfect recordings. We made the setup way too complicated. So next time, we wouldn’t overthink the setup of recording the content and just show up – that’s what counts!
Prepare our launch content ahead of time
Next, we would pre-plan our content for Instagram and email more efficiently. We spent too much time creating content instead of engaging. That’s something we wish we had the time and energy to do during our launch period. Next time, we would pre-plan and schedule the content so we can talk about it in our stories and engage with our audience.
Shorten the launch window
We would also shorten the window to buy. We had a week pre-sale for our email list and people who joined the webinar, then a week for everyone. It probably didn’t seem long for everyone else, but to us, it felt like an eternity. It was two weeks of being ‘on’ all the time, and it was exhausting.
Pause all client work for the month of our launch
Along those lines, we also wouldn’t take new clients during our launch month. It was way too much work to manage client work and launch a new course. We were spread too thin!
Share more experiences from our students
We would love to find more ways to share our students’ experiences and results with case studies and podcast episodes. We did this a little on social media, but we’d love to get some case studies on the website and invite more students to the podcast to share their experiences. Social proof, friends!
Schedule time to decompress
Finally… decompress! We would take an entire week to decompress and enjoy the success of our launch!
Answering All Your Course Launch Questions
How do you convert all your efforts into sales?
Regardless of where we were talking about our course, we always had a call to action. We told people exactly where to buy and how to do it. Everyone knows what you’re doing – you aren’t tricking them into buying. If you believe in what you’re selling, you shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it.
Have you ever tried anything other than webinars during launch week?
This was our first time doing a webinar! For our group coaching program, we’ve tried Instagram Lives with people who have gone through the program. That was very successful. Showing up live is a great thing to include in your launch.
How do you define the “success” of a launch?
The bottom line is our definition of success for our course launch is revenue. That’s why we work! It’s not the most important thing though – we wanted to create an amazing course where people actually learn something and see results from their efforts. We want our course to make YOU money. We’d love to see real results from our new students.
What are some tactics to prime an audience pre-launch?
The extra weekly email was the best pre-launch tactic we had. You don’t have to do a million things to pre-launch. We utilized other channels we already use, but the email was literally the only extra thing we did.
We hope you gained some nuggets of wisdom here. Is this a perfect launch strategy— heck no. But our goal with sharing this with you is that maybe one or two things inspire you for your next launch— and hopefully make that experience more fun and less stressful.
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Abbey Oslin and Courtney Petersen are Minnesota-based marketing experts, educators, and co-founders of boutique marketing agency Duo Collective, which specializes in SEO, social media strategy, and branding for small business owners and creative entrepreneurs. To learn more about Duo Collective, or to inquire about working with our team, head over to www.duocollective.com.
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