Coaching call: How can I structure my offers when my audience only has the problem for a short period of time?

Today I am coaching Helena McDonald who is a dietitian working with women suffering from gestational diabetes. Her unique challenge is that her audience have an immediate problem and a very limited transformation timeframe. Today we are exploring how best to structure Helena's business model and offers to not only work around this challenge but thrive despite it.

In this episode we chat about:
– How reassessing your audience's needs can provide clarity to pivot your existing offers
– Not every transformation can be solved with a course – exploring alternative platforms
– How drilling down on the problems you solve can identify potential expansion opportunities
– The positive benefit of a tiered step nurturing process and the surprising value and flexibility it can give to your offer suite
– Why evergreen does not mean set and forget!

 

Today, I'm chatting with one of my Launch Magic students, Helena, who has been through Launch Magic a couple of times now. And she works with people who have gestational diabetes now. It's really interesting because the challenge that we are workshopping in today's call is something that some businesses have, but not all do. 

And that is the challenge of what you do when your ideal client has a very specific pain point, but only for a very short period of time. And how do you structure your business and your offers around that? 

 

How reassessing your audience's needs can provide clarity to pivot your existing offers

I think a really interesting direction that we could take this in is really looking at your offerings and your business rather than it being the typical kind of funnel where somebody comes in and we may capture them on a lead magnet and then we spend like 90 days nurturing them before they buy with your audience.

So by the time that 90 days is up, they could have given birth, right? So that's a challenge that I struggle with a lot because I'm always thinking, if I'm not constantly offering something, as in if my course isn't running, then I'm not helping people because there are all of those people out there that will have just had their pregnancy been and gone, and maybe they were interested in my lead magnet when I first put it out there.

But then by the time my launch comes around, they might be way too far along in their pregnancy where it's no longer really relevant or they're about to have their baby or they've had their baby, and so I can't retain them as a customer in that sense either. So it kind of feels like, yeah, there are a few reasons that it just doesn't really work that well for me, but I think it has been helpful doing a couple of launches this way just to get my head around marketing, but just in terms of what to do next is feeling a little bit confusing at the moment. 

As I always say, you need to live launch it a couple of times so that you can see how it's all converting. But I think after you mentioned you're doing your webinar tonight, I think I would say after this webinar, after this launch, put it on evergreen and see how that starts to go. Because you might find that those people come in. And then suddenly they want to buy, but you've got nothing for them to buy.

 

Not every transformation can be solved with a course – exploring alternative platforms

I'm thinking I will also open up spots for just one-on-ones, and maybe that could be an intensive workshop that I do with somebody to give them a good plan to go off, but I've also had in the back of my mind potentially creating a membership.

So kind of rejigging the group program a little bit so that it's going to end up relatively similar but at a cheaper price point so that it's easier for people perhaps because, I guess I still have a bit of a mindset barrier around the price of things. 

I don't want what I offer to be something that is unachievable for a large number of people because I wanted the reason that I'm doing what I do is that I know that there isn't a lot of support for these women out there. So I want to be kind of a go-to that they can come to and feel like they can be included in that without a really high price point. 

It would also be open constantly so people could filter in and out. And then potentially I could offer another service around postpartum nutrition as well. If I'd captured people in a membership type of space where there are resources and some live group calls and like a Facebook forum where there's me monitoring it instead of just the Wild West, which is currently what is out there on Reddit and on Facebook. There are lots of forums where it's the blind leading the blind but I just don't know if that's the best thing to do or exactly what that looks like and how to set that up and how to then market that.

Two different things that you could help them with. One of them is obviously the knowledge, the tools, and the resources to change their diet and make sure that they're eating appropriately. And then the other part that you can help them with is that support. And I wonder if they feel a little bit isolated because obviously they probably had a lot of friends who've been pregnant, but maybe they don't have any friends who've struggled with gestational diabetes. 

And that was some of the main feedback that I got from one of the participants I had in my last round. It was her second time that she had gestational diabetes and she already had a pretty neat diet. And so the main reason she joined was that she just wanted reassurance more than anything, and just a space to be able to connect with other people and that she was feeling so isolated. 

She didn't want to go to work, she didn't want to have to talk to anyone, didn't want to have to go to family dinners and things like that where she'd have to talk about her pregnancy or food or anything like that.

So she was just feeling so isolated and just in such a low mood about it all. And so then she just felt like it was so helpful. And like somebody else, she could relate to other people in the program and me to be able to kind of reassure her and talk about what they were going through together.

 

How drilling down on the problems you solve can identify potential expansion opportunities

So there are two potential lead magnet options. So the first one that comes to mind as you're talking could be something about educating the people in their lives on what they're going through. So it might be scripts that they can share with their family members and their partner and their friends to say, Hey, this is what I can eat and can't eat, and this is what I'm going through and this is what I'm struggling with.

And maybe it's help setting some boundaries around those sorts of relationships or alternatively, a potential option could be unbundling the community from that paid membership that you're thinking of and the community is that free lead magnet. They're both good options. Obviously, the community is going to be a much harder one because you need to manage it or you need to hire a team member or somebody to manage it.

I really like the first one because I've always thought about that aspect of it, but never knew exactly what that looks like in terms of giving partners of the women going through it, both support and guidance and helping the women as well through that.

But that's also interesting thinking about your second option there because something I actually really love doing. Scrolling Reddit and commenting on people's posts. And I do that when I'm in a lead up to a launch. Just commenting, answering a question, being like, oh, hey, I've got like this masterclass coming up, or download my lead magnet.

And so I enjoy doing that, but it's also quite time-consuming. I don't know because I was picturing the Facebook group as part of the membership where you can ask a relatively specific question there and I can answer it for you. Whereas I wouldn't want to do that in a public forum, I see the appeal of getting people, so I'm a little bit torn.

Okay. So two things there. So firstly the Reddit strategy, I love. I imagine a lot of the questions are getting repeated over and over again, and it's like you repeating the answer over and over again. I would say step one is to create an FAQ. 

I kind of have done that, but I haven't found it that effective. I don't know, because yes, questions will be similar, but there might also be situations. I mean, often they're first diagnosed and they're like, what do I do? And my lead magnet kind of covers that. 

 

The positive benefit of a tiered step nurturing process and the surprising value and flexibility it can give to your offer suite

The other thing that I was thinking was, I wonder if you were to do the free group, I wonder if that is a community and then if they want to upgrade, they can pay a monthly amount. To include for example, Q&A calls or some kind of support, I know we talked about this a while ago in a Launch Magic call, but having potentially like the meal plan reviews or meal diary reviews or something?

And then the next tier up is that knowledge, that framework, the real simplifying of the whole process. So rather than picking and choosing, and asking questions, you are taking them through that whole process in your bigger program, but if they can't afford that, there are other options.

So I wonder then, rather than pricing yours to be really affordable to everybody and then having to try and sell to more people to sustain the revenue so that you can keep providing free support and lower price support, I wonder then if it's worthwhile having like a limited number of scholarships that you offer each year. 

I wonder if that could be another option. So then the people who can afford to pay for it and who prioritise paying for it can pay for the program. Those who just want the support and maybe they're getting the knowledge from their doctor or from somebody else, they can just stay in, in the membership or in that community. And the people who are in between and who can't afford that program have an option. 

 

Why evergreen does not mean set and forget!

 So generally going to be email marketing automation. So when somebody downloads your lead magnet, for example, if they join that free Facebook group and opt-in with their email address, then they would be getting that series of emails, nurturing them through the process, bringing them closer to buying. So instead of it happening in a live format, like with a live launch where we have the cart, and open emails, all going out at the same time. 

In this case, they would be set to send automatically based on when this person joined the list when this person signed up, so there's still a big sales process behind it all. And it's not a matter of just putting it up on your website and saying, oh, it's on evergreen now because that's not how it works. Unfortunately, you still have to sell to them because otherwise, it won't sell. 

 

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