Ask Steph: How can I use a waitlist to nurture my audience for my upcoming online course?

Today I am answering a question from a listener who is wondering how to best utilise their course waitlist to generate sales for their upcoming launch. In this episode I share my feelings about waitlists and explore methods to encourage course sales when you launch.

In this episode, we chat about:
– Why waitlists aren't a reliable indicator of demand and the benefit of reaching beyond this list
– How launching 60 to 90 days prior to cart open is super effective as a nurturing process
– Why creating a sales process and deadlines in your launch can facilitate decision-making in your audience
– The overwhelming benefits of co-creating your course with your audience in return for offering an early bird incentive

Have a question you’d like me to answer on the show? Write in with your question at https://stephtaylor.co/asksteph

 

The question today is:

“How can I use a waitlist to nudge my audience for my upcoming online course?”

 

Why waitlists aren't a reliable indicator of demand and the benefit of reaching beyond this list

Now I don't believe waitlists are a reliable indicator of who will buy when you open doors because it's a much lower commitment for somebody to hand over their email address than it is for them to hand over their credit card and commit however much time and energy it's going to take action and get the result that your cost promises. 

So while growing your waitlist might help you to get some of those right people onto your email list, it's not usually a predictor of how good your launch will be. And it's not really something I would place much time and energy into growing before the first launch of your course. And instead, I would be looking at creating a launch-focused lead magnet and using that to grow your email list with the right people for this launch. 

 

How launching 60 to 90 days prior to cart-open is super effective as a nurturing process

The second point I want to make about the question you've asked is that you need to be nurturing more than just your waitlist. And I really hope that in the 60 to 90 days before doors open, you're nurturing your entire audience and not just your waitlist. Your waitlist is full of people who likely already know that they have the problem that your course solves, or they already know that they want whatever outcome it delivers. 

But what about the people in your audience who don't yet know that they have that problem or they don't yet know that they want that outcome? They don't yet know that that outcome is possible for somebody like them. Those people aren't going to join your waitlist, right? They need a bit more nurturing first. 

Nurturing your audience for your launch starts 60 to 90 days before doors open, especially if it's the first time you're launching something new. And especially if you're not already showing up consistently with thought leadership content, you're not consistently growing your email list and you're not consistently emailing them. 

Even if you don't have an email list, you can start that launch process. Because once you start to shop intentionally over that 60 to 90 days, and you nail your launch lead magnet, it becomes a lot easier to grow your audience with the right people. And the nurturing process in a Launch isn't just about getting your audience to know who you are to like you and trust you. 

 

Why creating a sales process and deadlines in your launch can facilitate decision-making in your audience

And then the second to the final point, once you've created your costs and you've made it available to buy. It doesn't stop there. I really hope that there's more to your launch than just putting it out there. I hope you have a deadline for your Launch doors closed or a price increase or a bonus that's removed because otherwise, people will sit on the fence for as long as humanly possible even if they have told you that they want it.

And it's not about pressuring someone into making a rushed decision but rather encouraging them to decide, either way, rather than just sitting there on the fence indefinitely. 

So in your case, I would be looking potentially at live launching this course, maybe two or three times a year depending on what else you'll launch, depending on what the rest of your business looks like, how long your course is, what your vision for your business is. 

And then each of those times, maybe having doors open, doors closed. And then each time you launch it, you find out where your audience is at, so you can better bridge that magician's gap the next time you launch and then you tweak it and you do it again. And each launch gets easier and easier. 

 

The overwhelming benefits of co-creating your course with your audience in return for offering an early bird incentive

I love this approach because it actually removes all of the risks from your launch. It removes that risk of what if nobody buys. And it means that you are more open towards pivoting it to what they need from you because sometimes if we've created that course first, and then we launch it and we're so attached to what we've created and our audiences over here telling us, actually, we want this, we want this, you're going to block that out because you don't want to have wasted all this time that you've spent creating something. 

So this was a really long answer to a very short question and obviously, there's a lot more to launching than simply nurturing your waitlist.

 

Pin it?