Bite-sized lessons in building an online business that feels good.
The Digital Product Kickstart Kit: Your guide to creating and launching a digital product that sells.
I help online entrepreneurs (like YOU!) launch and relaunch digital products and podcasts to reach more people, grow their audience and become the go-to geniuses in their industry
If you've created a course (or any other digital offer), put it on your website, but aren't making as many sales as you'd hoped, then this episode is for you! In today's episode, I'm sharing 3 must-haves to sell your offers and how you can tweak these for more sales.
– The common reasons why your offer isn't selling and the 3 key ingredients you need to sell them.
– How live launching your offer can help you to nail your sales strategy.
– Why bridging the Magician's Gap is so important for helping people to make a decision about your offer.
– The importance of addressing hesitations and answering any questions as part of the sales process.
– Why having a deadline will help people to make a decision that's right for them.
– My top 5 easy action steps to help you sell more of your offers.
If you've created an online course or a program or a membership or any other kind of online offer, and you've put it on your website and you aren't making anywhere near as many sales as you had hoped that you would, today's post is for you because I think it's quite common that you might've been led to believe that creating a course, or a program, or a membership, or templates, or any kind of digital product or online offer would be the solution that would stop you from trading time for money in your business.
And it would be the thing that frees up your time and scales your income. And so you followed what a lot of people might've told you online and you put it on your website. Maybe you told your email list, you told your social followers and you did this with the hopes that sales would tick along in the background, but so far you're not hitting your revenue goals.
So if you can relate to this, it's likely because you are missing one of the key ingredients.
And those key ingredients include the free content that bridges the magician's gap, which is this gap between where your ideal client is right now and where they need to be to be ready to buy from you content that gives them everything they need to decide whether your offer is the right fit for them.
A sales process that addresses any hesitations they might have and answers any questions that they might have and a deadline for them to make a decision by. Now I'm going to dive into each of these three things in today's post. I want to talk a little bit though about live launching because live launching can be a great sales process, a super effective sales process.
For your courses, programs, any of your online offers, regardless of whether there is a doors open and a doors closed. So I think there's a bit of a misconception that you can only live launch your offers if you have a strict doors open doors closed and people can't buy it outside of those times. But that's not what a live launch is to me. It includes all three of those elements. The content that bridges the magician's gap and gives them what they need, a sales process to address those hesitations and answer those questions and a deadline to make a decision by.
So a live launch to me is a limited time campaign or limited time push for one specific offer with free content that is designed to grow your audience with the right people for your offer. Nurture them through the magician's gap. Give them what they need to decide whether it's the right fit and address any hesitations that they have. And then you have a deadline. Now, if you don't have a strict doors open, doors closed kind of offer, like for example, my course Launch Magic, we only run it twice a year. You can only sign up between certain dates. And then once we start running it, you can't sign up anymore. So that's an easy doors open doors closed one. But if you still have an offer that is available all the time, you can add and remove bonuses. That can be the deadline, or it could be that the price increases.
That can be the deadline.
So, three must-haves to sell your offers. Whether that's a course, a program, membership, templates, whatever your online offers are.
The very first element, like I mentioned, was content that bridges the magician's gap and gives them everything they need to decide whether it's the right fit for them.
Or not. So the magician's gap, essentially there is this big knowledge gap between where your ideal client is right now and where they need to be before they will be ready to hand over their money and buy your offer. And until you bridge that gap for them, it's going to be a lot harder to sell for them.
This gap exists with literally any offer. It's not something that is unique to courses and programs. And when you are live launching, you can take your audience on a journey Where you are bridging that gap for them in real time with the content you are sharing. For example, right now, I am helping you to bridge the magician's gap around selling your offers and launching.
And regardless of whether you join Launch Magic when doors open at the end of Feb or not, this free content is still going to help you to make more sales. So it's valuable to you. And once you've uncovered the magician's gap for your ideal client, then you can create that content that bridges it.
You can create a launch-specific lead magnet that bridges it. You can create a webinar that bridges it. You can share social content, emails, all of the places where you are sharing content. You can specifically share content that bridges the magician's gap so that you are moving them closer to buying, even when you are not directly selling your offers to them.
Like I mentioned, live launching is one sales process. There are other ones. Now, a sales process can be as simple as a conversation that you are having with your potential buyer via email or on a DM, or maybe it's a sales call. If you are live launching. It could involve a live webinar or a masterclass. Those are my favorite ways to sell. Followed then by emails, which give them all of the information that they need to make the right decision for them.
I use mine to bridge the magician's gap. So I use those emails that I'm sending afterwards to bridge that magician's gap even further. And I preempt any hesitations that somebody might have. For example, Will this work in my specific situation? Is always going to come up. With Launch Magic, One of the questions that comes up is Will this work if I've already launched before? Will this work if I have a really small audience? Will this work if I've never ever launched anything before? And I know that in all three of those situations, Launch Magic is still a great fit. So I'm going to dedicate almost an entire email to addressing each one of those hesitations.
Another hesitation might be, well, I've already tried and I've failed. What is making this different to the other things that I've already tried? Or what if insert whatever their excuses with Launch Magic? What if I have a tiny audience ─ and then we can address that. So I make sure that I'm addressing all of these in those emails that come after the webinar.
I make sure that I'm addressing these on the sales page as well.
So humans, we need a deadline. So unless we are inherently motivated to do something because it's really painful or we want it right now, we're going to keep kicking that can down the road.
So for example, if you have a toothache, you are going to go and see that dentist ASAP. But if you are just in need of an annual dental checkup, You know, you might just keep putting that off because it's not urgent. Most of the time, if you are working with clients, your courses or your programs, or your even coaching, if it's one on one, they require some kind of behavior change and we don't like to change our behaviour.
Our brains are literally wired to keep doing the same things over and over and over again. Because anything different is uncomfortable. Spending Monday is also uncomfortable. So they will put it off for as long as they can. And in a live launch, when you have doors open and closed, that deadline comes naturally because they have that deadline to decide before doors close.
If you want to have doors open all the time and still live launch with a deadline, that deadline can be bonuses. So you can add in a really nice juicy bonus. They sign up before that deadline. They get the bonus. If they sign up afterwards, they don't get the bonus. The deadline could be that you are running a series of live calls.
So maybe for, if you join between these days, you get three months of live Q and a calls with me. Or it could be that price increase. Now, a deadline where you are not live launching. So if you're going straight to evergreen, and I did talk about this recently on the show as well, so go back and listen to that episode, a deadline where you are not launching live can be really difficult.
You typically have to have some kind of automated software in there to create a deadline based on when somebody entered the funnel. Otherwise, you end up with one of those really icky fake deadlines where you're like, last chance to join. And then the offer is always available.
Number one: do audience research.
The biggest thing that will impact your launch results is how well you understand your audience. And you might think that you understand them really well, especially if you've been doing what you do for years, but you still can't skip this step. Send out a survey, get those surface-level insights. They are really useful, but what makes the biggest difference is diving below the surface, jumping on zoom and having one on one conversations. with people who are like your ideal client, where you can then ask follow up questions. When they ask, when they tell you that they're overwhelmed, you can ask them specifically, well, what is it that's overwhelming you?
So then that way, when you create any copy, when you create any content, when you're selling to them, you can speak to what's really going on in their minds and in their lives. And then when you write that copy, your ideal client has this feeling of, Oh wow, this person gets me. This is right for me.
The second tweak, stop talking in expert language.
This one isn't easy because it requires you to put yourself in your ideal client's shoes and to think about how they are experiencing the problem that your offer solves. James Wedmore has this beautiful analogy where you are the expert in headaches and your audience has a headache and they are walking around Saying, I've got a headache. I've got a headache. Why won't it go away? You as the expert, you know that their headache is caused by dehydration. But if you go and say to them, Hey, here's a cure for your dehydration. They're going to say, no, thank you, I've got a headache. So then you need to actually put yourself into their shoes and speak to them as they are experiencing the problem.
And if you're finding that your content isn't getting the right attention online, it's possibly because you are talking in expert language and that's leaving your ideal clients thinking that what you are talking about isn't right for them. And then they keep scrolling.
Tweak number three, spend less time talking about the features and benefits of your offer and more time helping your potential buyers to make a decision.
Yes, someone might want to know how many lessons and modules and live calls and bonuses and all of that that you have. But if they are already on the fence, that's not, what's going to help them get off. They're not going to get off the fence because they're like, Oh, it has five modules. Great. That's going to make my decision easy.
No, they want to know, will this work for me? Is it possible for someone in my situation to get this desired outcome? How is this different to every other? Solution that I have tried and failed at. So during your launch, instead of trying to make somebody excited about your offer or trying to show them how valuable it is that you have 15 modules and 25 live calls, how can you help them to make an educated decision about whether your offer is the right solution to their problem?
This is what your launch is focused around. Not hype, not excitement, not trying to show them how much value is in there.
Tweak number four. After you close doors, send a non buyer survey.
Yep, send a survey to the people who chose not to buy. And I know this feels scary because it's a little bit like asking somebody who broke up with you to tell you all of the things that are wrong with you.
Like, Hey, can you give me a little bit of feedback about what I didn't do right? But this is the most effective way to identify the gaps in your strategy. And I do this after every launch. About seven days after I closed doors, I send out a survey asking the people who looked at the sales page, but chose not to buy why they chose not to buy, and you will get a much better understanding of the knowledge gaps that you perhaps didn't address in your launch content or the questions and hesitations that maybe you hadn't properly answered that meant that this person couldn't make the right decision.
And if you're really nervous about reading the responses. Sit down with a friend while you do them. I used to do this with a glass of wine at the start. Now I don't really, it doesn't really phase me what people tell me, but I used to sit down with a friend and a glass of wine. And if somebody gave me really negative feedback, I'd read it out loud and we'd laugh about it.
I have had some in the past that have really annoyed me. Like I once had somebody say that they wouldn't pay more than. 50 for one of my courses that at the time was priced at 2, 000. I was like, how dare they not see the value? It was like, my ego just did not love that. But now I know that not everyone who is answering that survey is my ideal client. So I know to take those responses with a grain of salt.
Number five, collect social proof and actually leverage it in your next launch.
And ideally when you're collecting social proof. You're not going to do it by asking, Hey, can you write me a testimonial? Because that's going to put them on the spot.
And if you even do get a testimonial out of them, they're going to write something that's like, this was a great course. And I got so much value out of it. And I loved their teaching style and the lessons were really good. And it was organized and structured nicely, which cool. That's not very. That's not very helpful for somebody who is sitting on the fence trying to decide whether they want to join.
Instead, ask them to jump on a call and ask them questions about what they were struggling with before, about their experience, about their results, and then take those answers and turn those into a testimonial and run it past them. So you are writing the testimonial for them rather than putting the pressure onto them to write the testimonial.
Because they want to, if they've had a great experience, they want to give you a great testimonial. So my experience with this is they tend to put it off because they're like, well, I don't have the time. I want it to be really good, so I'm going to put it off until I have more time to do it. And I'll think about it better.
And then you don't end up with a testimonial or you end up with one that doesn't really help your ideal client to make a decision about whether it's right for them or not. So we've talked a little bit about live launching today. That is one of the sales processes that I'm a big fan of. for selling your programs and courses and memberships and other online offers.
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