Coaching call: How can I create compelling messaging to sell my online course?

Today I am coaching Jemima Flendt who is a quilt pattern designer, author and teacher currently developing an online course for quilters and preparing for her first launch. Jemima is seeking guidance on the best messaging to use to promote to a new audience and achieve her aim of hitting the beginner quilting market. Today we chat about strategies to create clear, concise messaging that converts.

In this episode we chat about:
– The gold that comes from audience research…exploiting the old adage ‘they don't know what they don't know'!
– Why launching is all about buying the promise and how your messaging statements are imperative to communicating the outcome
– How identifying and breaking down the key features and benefits of your offer can have a positive, nurturing benefit on your audience
– Why keeping your messaging language clear and concise, over-complicated and fancy, is a must.

 

 When it comes to selling anything in your business I know that commonplace where many people get stuck is on how to communicate it, how to come up with that messaging that really is compelling and converts the right people into buyers. Now. I'm really excited today because I am coaching a stream student of mine who is a quilt pattern designer, author, and teacher. 

Currently developing an online course for quilters and she's preparing for her very first-course launch. So today I'm helping her to figure out what messaging will be appropriate and compelling for what she's launching. And I'm really excited because I know you're going to get a lot out of this, even if you're not teaching people how to make their own quilts, which I know most of you won't be. 

 

The gem from audience research

Well, this is the first time that I've put together an online course, so for me, it's really about bringing in a new audience. A beginner course, two people who maybe already on my list are just that little bit further along. So working out how am I going to get people back from the beginning stages of quilting or from the beginning stages into my audience and being able to get the right messaging out there to be able to make this actual online course a real success.

I've got a community Facebook page and I've been asking lots of questions, so I've been doing lots of research and also with my Instagram following as well, really sort of starting to get questions.

That's going to be a huge part of the content that you need to share in the lead when you open doors in February, it's going to be that content that really highlights what they don't know, so that they realise, oh, I didn't know that. What else don't I know? And even stories from people who've, you know, maybe they're more experienced in quilting, but they have tried something new and because they didn't have that basic beginner skill, they've ended up with a Pinterest versus reality kind of disaster of something that doesn't quite look like what they thought it would. I think you're pretty covered there in terms of the content. 

 

Why launching is all about buying the promise

But then when it comes to messaging in a Launch when you're selling really anything, people are buying the promise, like they're buying what you are promising that this course will deliver what they are potentially going to achieve, what problem they're going to solve.

So I've been working on that and basically, my course is going to be showing beginner quilters how they can achieve making their first quilt confidently and easily with my step-by-step online course. 

I think it's more than just the first quilt though, right? Because you're teaching them. Then, you're teaching them the skills and things that they need that will set them up for success further down the track. So yes, they're making that first quilt, but it's also those skills so that they don't end up with those disasters later on when they're trying to make a quilt and they realise they don't know a basic step.

You're selling the first quilt and you're selling the ability to create or to do more advanced quilts afterward as well. So when it comes to messaging, it sounds like you've got the promise. It's a tangible outcome. Somebody who wants to get into quilting wants that first quilt. 

 

How identifying and breaking down the key features and benefits of your offer can have a positive, nurturing benefit on your audience

Then the next thing of the messaging becomes some of the different features and benefits of the course. Have you had a go at writing out any of those? And you know, if anybody listening to Mima is in Launch Magic, this is part of the Launch Magic process, so we're really workshopping some of the features and benefits that came out of that. Do any of those come to mind? Was that a process that felt easy to you or was it something that you felt a little bit stuck on?

Definitely, the features are a step-by-step course in that we are looking at the modules and each week they'll be workbooks and they'll be videos that are very straight to the point one of the features is that I haven't tried to overcomplicate the videos, so I've tried to keep them within a short timeframe because if you are going to spend half an hour, an hour watching a video in that sort of space where my target audience is, that's half an hour into getting started, that they've kind of spent time watching a video rather than actually getting started their quilt. 

There are quite a few different features there that you listed. So the videos are really short and the benefit is that you can spend less time learning how to do it and more time putting what you've learned into practice.

So it doesn't take you to end up taking you forever to make this quilt. It's a small amount of learning to save you a lot of time, so you can create that quilt even faster. I've really taken on board what you said about getting to that destination as quickly as possible with what you need to know.

You also mentioned workbooks. That's another feature. So we now have two separate features here. So the video is featured one. Printed instructions for creating your quilt so that you don't have to watch the video if you prefer not to, or you don't have to re-watch the video to remember what they said or something like that.

That's going to be a huge, huge selling point for a lot of people. They don't want to sit there and watch all of these videos. They just want to skim-read through the instructions. Another feature then is printable checklists so that you can make sure you are covering often all of those foundations, not only for your first quilt but for all future quilts so you don't end up with a quilting disaster.

And that's exactly it. We want it to be a shortcut. We don't want it to be something that doubles the time it takes them to get their quilt off the ground. We want to make it quick. And we want to make it more successful and we want to set them up for success. 

 

Why keeping your messaging language clear and concise, over-complicated and fancy, is a must.

But I suspect that in their language, it might be in the words that you could put it, it might be something a lot more to creating a quilt than you realise, or there's a lot more to creating a quilt than choosing the fabric and knowing how to stitch it together. 

Is there anything that comes to mind immediately when I say they don't know what they don't know? What are some of these things that they don't know they don't know? It's more to do with that aspect with the actual, probably technical setup of their sewing machine. So when it comes to quilting, you actually need a quarter-inch foot on your sewing machine, and without that, everything isn't going to come together.

Having the correct equipment for quilting as compared to general sewing is a big difference in people not knowing that they've been gifted a sewing machine or they've been given it or sometimes even picked it up off the side of the road.

And they suddenly had this machine that they want to be able to do with quilting, but it's not necessarily ready to go. There's a very powerful piece of content, first of all. But secondly, I think a very strong message will be, there's a lot more to quilting or quilting isn't just because you can sew doesn't mean you successfully make a quilt. 

You might have a sewing machine that's gathering dust and you know how to hem a pair of jeans. That doesn't mean you can create a quilt and this is why. And then breaking down some of those key differences. 

First of all, it's a different sewing machine set up completely. How you would normally sew. Second of all, some other differences that they don't know. And then third of all, there's some other difference.

So straight away they're starting to realise, oh, okay, this is very different to what I assumed it would be. And you could even talk about how maybe the people that they follow, or the Pinterest quilts that they've looked at in the tutorials they've looked at, don't teach them the foundations. And without those foundations, they are setting themselves up for quilting and heartbreak.

Then it's worthwhile putting in that time to time and the energy to learn how to make it really well. So then it also becomes a skill where you can now create quilts to gift to other people over and over again. But really investing that time in getting it right the first time around. So you're not spending and not wasting money on fabric. That just looks like a really sad bundle of rags. 

You could play on that the key message of quilting is different from sewing. And that is something that potentially would be part of your Launch content would be talking about like, these are the different things you need to get started. You're not necessarily giving them the step-by-step of, Hey, this is how you set up your sewing machine, but you're saying look you do actually need a quarter-inch foot for your sewing machine?

And potentially even when you're doing the webinar, that could potentially be something you talk about in there as well. And in terms of things where we talked before about features and benefits, you talked about like the videos and being short and all that. What other types of language or what other types of words would you use between that workbook and between the videos to get that target audience over the line?

But being clear on those features and those benefits will matter so much more than what words or fancy words you use. Let's get it really clear first, and then if you want to go and add some extra fancy words in, or replace some words with like emotive ones or ones that kind of have a feeling emotive is essentially what I'm saying. Messaging is something that a lot of people struggle with. 

 

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