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How To Market A Digital Course
Live launching or evergreen launching. Which one is easiest? How do you do them? What do they require? How to market a digital course and, ultimately, which is right for you? In this week’s episode, I’m going to explore each type of “launch”, their pros and cons, and my personal opinion on which you should be utilizing for your digital course.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Grab the 8 emails I send to my waitlist every launch – a new free resource for you!
- This week’s action step: Sign up for my free popup podcast – Course Launch Prep – Simplified. A three episode series created to help entrepreneurs prepare themselves to launch a course. I’m going to cover What You Need to Launch a Course ( & What You Don’t), the 5 Phases of a Course Launch, and Creating Your Launch Messaging. Episode 1 drops on September 7th, but you can go ahead and sign up and tune into the introductory episode by heading to amandawarfield.com/launch-podcast/
- This week’s book recommendation: Hang the Moon by Alexandria Bellefleur, and Count Your Lucky Stars. May be the first time I’ve ever rated a sequel higher than an original, but I only gave the first in the series 3 stars, and wasn’t even going to mention it to you. And while you could probably skip the first one and just read two and three, if you’re a completionist like me, it’s called Written in the Stars. All are written within the same friend group, and are your typical romcom novel. Book one focuses on the relationship between Darcy and Elle. Book two around Darcy’s brother and her best friend Annie. And Book three around Elle’s former roommate, Margot, and her childhood best friend, Olivia.
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!
Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate.
Live launching or evergreen launching, which one is easiest, how do you do ’em? What do they require? And ultimately, which is right for you? In this week’s episode, I’m going to explore each type of quote, unquote, launch their pros and cons and my personal opinion on which you should be utilizing. You’re listening to episode 123 of the chasing symbol podcast and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. Let’s dive in.
Live launching, live launching is what most of us tend to think launching is when we think a launch or course launch, we’re thinking live launching it’s where you have doors open and doors close. You have a ton of hype around the launch and your stories on Instagram are all about the launch. You know, maybe you’ve got some way to take down names for all of your students and you’re celebrating each sale that comes in on your lives.
You’re going live, you are doing some sort of visibility booster, whether it’s a webinar or a Facebook group challenge or a popup podcast, all of these things where you are literally staying as active and as visible as possible. You’re literally going live as much as possible in order to make sales for your course.
Now there are pros and there are cons to live launching. Pros, you have the satisfaction of seeing a large group of sales roll in. You get that adrenaline boost, right? You also have a large revenue bump in your year. You know, when you’re looking at your year as a whole and how much revenue you brought in each month, launch months are always, are typically going to have a large bump in sales, which is great.
If you need to boost your cash flow a little. They create really easy urgency because you have doors open and then they close. And once the doors close, well, your people aren’t able to get back in until the next live launch. They also create adrenaline and excitement and they majorly boost the visibility for your business because you’re showing up more often, people are interacting with more of your stuff, which means your content’s being pushed in front of new people. People are sharing about you and what you’re doing. If you’ve aligned really well with getting in front of new audiences, you’re doing that during your launch, you have a ton of visibility for your business, which not only is really important for your current launch.
But is also preparing for your next launch. So with each launch that you do, you’re not only. Trying to get visible in order to bring in more sales now, but you’re also trying to get visible and utilizing that visibility to bring in more sales for the next time that you launch. Cuz a lot of times when someone first finds you, they’re not gonna buy during that launch unless you have just spoken directly to their soul.
But that brings in a new group of followers in a new audience that you can then bring through that customer journey to convert into sales the next time you launch. Live launches also have higher conversion rates, and they are a great way to test out your messaging. There is nothing I love more during a live launch than putting up a question box on Instagram and seeing what kind of questions come in, because this is a great way for me to know how my messaging is sticking, whether or not it is where there might be some pain points that I need to focus further on.
It’s a really great way to test out your messaging. , but it’s also a great way to test your messaging in and of, of the sense that you are likely sending your launch emails to a large number of people at the same time. So you have a full launch list of however many people, and you’re sending all of those emails to them at exactly the same time.
So you can really test your conversion rates and with each subsequent launch, you can test, okay, does this email work better or does this email work better? And you can do a lot of AB testing as you continuously launch things.
Another great perk, a great pro of live launching is that there’s not a need for a ton of technology because, most of it is just you showing up, live on things. You can really utilize your content. You can really utilize free tools out there. You don’t have a ton of need for technology, but there are definitely cons to live launching. A lot of people don’t like live launching because it is mentally and emotionally draining.
In episode two of my upcoming popup podcast course launch prep, simplified, which I’ll tell you about in just a minute. In episode two, I talk extensively about how I protect my energy and my mental health during the launch, because it can be really, really mentally and emotionally draining to be live launching.
It’s also really time consuming. Not only do you need to prepare months and in months and months out for the launch and not, not only are you in pre-launch for eight to 12 weeks, but for two, maybe a little longer than that week straight, you are putting aside everything in your business for those two weeks to only focus on that launch.
And then there’s also that need to be on, right? For those of us that are introverts, that is really difficult and a lot of introverts say, no, thank you live launching is not for me. And also there’s just this need to be able to put everything else aside. Like I said, to really focus on the launch, that can be hard, not only with the business, not only is it time consuming in the business, but it also can be hard on your relationships when I’m in launch mode, Russell and I have to be really, really intentional about how we’re spending time together.
And frankly, our quality time takes a dip because I’m exhausted. My friendships, probably not I’m probably not seeing friends during the week leading up to the launch. I think it’s great, it’s a really great emotional mental health management tool to see friends during your launch week, but leading up to it, you’re gonna be busy and that can be really hard too.
I’m sure moms have a really difficult time with that with just like being so exhausted, leading into a launch. And when they have to take care of their kids at the end of the day, on the other hand, you’ve got evergreen quote unquote launching. It’s not really a launch because by the name like launching is like a rocket ship, right?
When a rocket ship blast off, that’s a launch. And that’s kind of the idea of a live launch is that you are getting this giant blast of energy and visibility. And so an evergreen launch, isn’t really a launch, but I think people call it that sometimes because they compare it to live launching. I’m gonna tell you right now, I have not mastered the evergreen launch. I think I’m close, but I’m not quite ready to teach on that yet. So if you were learn really specifically about how to do evergreen sales and launches in your business. I really recommend that you check out Destiny Cop and Jimbo Carter, both of which are incredible educators that you can start learning from inside of chasing some, both the summit, head to Amanda warfield.com/summit, and you can get free access to the summit and they both have really great presentations in there.
But they are they’re experts in evergreen sales and evergreen launching. And I’m not, so I’m not gonna teach on how just yet. I’m I think I’ve almost cracked it, but I’m not quite. But evergreen is essentially where you have automations and funnels set up in the back end that sell for you. Here’s my take on it.
And again, I haven’t quite nailed it, nailed it yet, but I’m getting close. But basically when someone comes in, whether from a freebie or self liquidating offer, they come in and you send them a series of emails that nurtures them. And once you’ve nurtured them, then you send them to a sales sequence. This sales sequence in an ideal world is meant to convert these people to students or into whatever your offer is without you having to do a launch.
Again, I haven’t nailed down the exact hows of how to get things to convert as well as I would like to. But that’s the idea of what evergreen sales are. Alls you have to do is market the freebie. And then once you have the funnel set up, they go through that funnel and they get the freebie and they do the freebie work and they get nurtured.
And then you sell to ’em and then a percentage will convert into sales. That’s the idea behind. The pros. It is so much more automated. Once you get it set up, it is set. It is automated. And obviously like anything in business, you’re going to continue to tweak it, try to improve it, but it’s set up and it’s selling for you.
Another pro is that you have sales all year round. You’re not having that one big cash injection whenever you launch a couple times a year, but you’re having more consistent sales throughout the year. As long as you’re bringing in new leads to the top of your funnel, to your freebie. There’s also not really a need for additional marketing efforts.
And in fact, it kind of simplifies your marketing efforts, cuz your focus outwardly is just your freebie. And again, it brings in that recurring kind of consistent ish revenue. The cons though, I have found it, like I said, very tricky to get it right. I have been trying to evergreen club content batching for, I think two years now.
No, that’s a lie for one year now. But that’s a long time of trying and getting it wrong and trying something else and getting it wrong. I’ve been trying to evergreen it for a full year now, a little over a year at this point, it’s really tricky to get right. And it requires a lot more technology. If you are someone that’s not great at tech.
There’s a ton, and this is something you could outsource. You could totally outsource to someone who builds funnels and sales funnels and things like that as their job. But there is a lot of technology involved, particularly if you want urgency and scarcity involved. Because what we don’t wanna do is tell someone this price or this bonus is only available for this many days.
And then after that’s up, they can still get into that price. We do not want that. That’s gross. That’s scammy, that’s bro marketing, where we have no interest in doing that. So if you want true urgency where here’s this price for a limited time, and then truly based off of their IP address, you’re technology locks them out from that page and redirects them to your regular page.
they’re truly not able to get back to that price. So it is a real urgency and scarcity offer involved. You’ve gotta have technology for that. If you want it to be automated, which you do, because you cannot sit there and do that yourself for every single person that comes in, which is where the perk of open and closed doors comes in right.
And then another con is the lower conversion rates live launching is going to convert so much better than evergreen launching will just by the nature of it, because you’ve got the scarcity and urgency really involved with all of your content marketing. You’ve got other people talking about it there’s more social proof.
Live launches are gonna convert better. There are lower conversion rates for evergreen launching, which if you have a consistent flow of new people coming into your business, not a huge deal, but if you have a smaller business could be an issue. So, which is best. Here’s the thing. I don’t think one is better than the other.
And I actually think that you should use them in conjunction with each other. And I think a lot of people out there because they’re selling how to do one or the other. They tend to kind of put the other one down and talk up the cons of the one they’re not selling.
And they talk up the pros of the ones they are teaching about. And that’s just kind of the nature of marketing, but I think it’s really important that you utilize these together. I think you need both, especially if you are, newer. If you have a newer course, if you have a newer business, a smaller business live launching is gonna be a great place for you.
If you’re already a really experienced business owner and you have great cash flow and you’re able to outsource some things and get help from experts, every green launching is gonna be really great. Here’s what I’ve done and what my suggestion would be. Start with live launching, get the hang of live launching live launch a couple times a year, live, launch and live teach.
You’ve heard the soapbox from me a few times, I’m sure. Live launch and live teach, your course three times would be my goal with each live launch, improve your messaging, focus on, you know, getting your conversions as high as you can, particularly with your email newsletters.
Then work on the back end of everything. As you’re figuring out the course, and as you’re getting it set up, then you’re gonna start working on the evergreen launch and you’re gonna start setting up those funnels on the back end. And you’re gonna start trying to figure that out as you’re working on the evergreen stuff, and you’re taking the emails that you have been tweaking and putting those in and figuring out the technology and all of that continue to occasionally live launch.
Live launch with extra, with an extra discount , and as you’re tweaking, all of those things keep live launching until you figure out the evergreen side of things. So a couple times a year, still as you’ve got the evergreen stuff going in the background, and you’re trying to figure all of that out live launch again, without the doors open and doors close, and instead use a special time discount for this launch week or special bonus.
For this launch week. And so you don’t have the stereotypical, when stores are closed, you can’t get back in until they open again because since it’s evergreen, they’ll always be able to get back in. But you can have limited time offers during your launch week. And that way, as you’re trying to figure out the evergreen stuff, because again, conversions are lower and it does take some time to figure out you’re able to still get that cash injection as needed.
And honestly, as you continue to do evergreen, you may just wanna live launch once or twice a year anyways, because you like it. That’s definitely where I’m at, where it’s like I just really enjoy live launches. They’re fun. I like the adrenaline. I enjoy connecting better with my audience and my students and so on and so forth, but that would be my suggestion.
Start with live launching and live teaching. And then once you have the curriculum nailed down 100% move into the evergreen, but keep live launching until you feel ready to let the evergreen live on its own. Now your action step for this week. I mentioned this briefly earlier, but I wanna encourage you to go sign up for my free popup podcast course launch prep simplified.
It’s a three episode series created to help entrepreneurs prepare themselves to launch a course. I’m going to cover what you need to launch a course and what you don’t, the five phases of a course launch, and creating your launch message. Episode one drops on September 7th, but you can go ahead and sign up and tune into the introductory episode by heading to Amanda warfield.com/launch-podcast.
Again, that’s Amanda warfield.com/launch- podcast. And the link of that will be in the show notes. If you just wanna head there and get it easier, then this week’s book recommendation is Hang the Moon by Alexandria Bellefleur and Count your Lucky Stars by her as well. So this may be the first time that I’ve ever rated a sequel higher than an original.
I almost always love a first book read the second think it’s meh. Read the third, love a third. Usually a second is just not as good. It just doesn’t live up to the first one for whatever reason.But, in this scenario, I only gave the first one in the series three stars. And I wasn’t even going to mention it to you because you’ve listened to last week’s episode where I kind of talked about how I determine which books to share with y’all.
I wasn’t gonna mention it cuz it was only three stars. And while you could probably skip the first book and just read two and three, if you’re a completionist like me, it’s called Written in the Stars and honestly it’s worth a read. It’s just the second and third one are so much better, but all of them are written within the same friend group.
And they’re all your typical romcom novels book run focuses on the relationship between Darcy and L book two, which is hang the moon is written about Darcy’s brother and her best friend, Annie and then book three is written around L’s former roommate, Margot in her childhood, best friend, Olivia. So they’re all romcoms they’re all really similar in trajectory. Like we all know what those are gonna be, and they’re just very stereotypical, but they are really good and worth the read. And I really love the second and the third one. So highly recommend that you go check those out.
And until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out. And uncomplicate your life in biz?
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