How to boost sales of your online course, membership or group program in 2024

Today Steph talks about:
– What sells and what doesn't sell in 2024
– The simple strategy for sharing content that sells without sounding sales-y
– The profitable framework you can repeat again and again to generate sales on demand

There's still a ton of opportunity to grow your business with your online course, group program or membership…but the strategy behind how you sell your offers has never been more important.

 

This is why you are struggling to sell your course membership program, whatever your digital product is, it's because marketing it and selling it are two completely different things. What is actually the difference? 

Somebody who is buying from you goes through this entire journey before they take action, before they buy from you. And unfortunately, many business owners lump sales and marketing into this one bucket, and they just call it marketing, or they call it, promoting my product. And then they try to get people to take action when they're just maybe at this stage, let alone having gone through the entire journey yet.

So when you say marketing my course or marketing my program, marketing's actually just this first little stage where you are reaching new people. 

If you were suddenly saying, Hey, I've just met you. Here's my course, go and buy it. They're going to be like, no, thank you. Like, I don't even know why I want it yet. So advertising is one way that you can reach new people. But advertising can play a role in every single step. 

And to some extent, marketing includes your free content, which might move them from aware to interested. But for them to go from interested to actually buying from you, there's a whole step in the middle there and that's where they actually desire what you are selling. And for them to desire what you are selling, you have to bridge what I call the magician's gap.

Selling is now this process that when somebody is aware of us. Selling is what you do with these people once you have reached them and you've started to generate a little bit of interest. Selling's not usually going to be like one Instagram post or one email to your list that takes somebody from interested to buying. It's a whole journey that you are taking them on. 

So you need to reach people who are experiencing the problem that your offer solves, and then turn them into people who want what you are selling.

We don't want to just look at how many people signed up. We want to look at every single step of the Launch and how that went. And then from there you can refine it and then you can rinse and repeat it, and you double down and you Launch again and again and again. Rather than thinking, oh, I need to have this really big audience before I Launch it for the first time because my Launch has to be this big confetti and champagne explosion.

 

What sells and what doesn't sell in 2024

So what no longer sells in 2024 is a clever, unique, or exciting idea for a digital product. 

Selling isn't about having a great idea that people get excited about. It's about solving a problem that needs solving, that people are willing to pay money for. So what does sell is a product that solves a specific problem. 

Some of you might have come across this framework, the four stages of competence. And when you are really good at what you do, you are at this level of unconscious competence. 

And as a side note, a lot of the time when somebody says, oh, well, I don't know what people would pay me money for. I don't know what I have to offer, would people buy this? I don't have anything unique to share. It's because you don't realise how much you know because it's unconscious competence. 

So the first stage is unconscious incompetence where you don't know what you don't know. And this is probably where most of your ideal clients are sitting at the moment. 

And then as you progressed, you became aware of how much you didn't know. And this is actually the hardest part because it's where it feels overwhelming because you know how much there is that you don't know, and you can really feel that gap between where you are now and the things that you need to learn.

Most of your Launch is going to be moving your audience through these two stages from stage one to stage two. You are bringing to the surface problems they didn't know that they had and showing them why these problems need to be solved. 

Then we have stage three, which is, you can do it. You know the thing, but you don't take it for granted because you can still remember what it was like to not be able to do the thing. 

And then stage four, where you are the expert and you don't have to think about it. 

Another thing that doesn't sell in 2024 is content that gets your audience excited about your offer. 

If somebody doesn't even know why they need this thing yet, they're not going to care about your countdown, they're not going to be sitting there like, oh, it's only seven days until doors open. I can't wait. That generally isn't going to happen unless you are like one of the Kardashians and you have just this super engaged following, who will buy everything that you sell.

 

The simple strategy for sharing content that sells without sounding sales-y

So instead, you want content that bridges the magician's gap and gets them ready to buy. Now, what is the magician's gap that I keep talking about? 

So your audience, your ideal client, they are currently at point A. And one day when they sign up for your membership, 12 months later, or maybe three months after they sign up for your course, or eight weeks after they sign up for your group program, they will be at point C.

They will have solved their problem. They'll be experiencing this epic transformation in their lives. Now, where a lot of people go wrong is they try to share content free content that bridges this little gap. 

So what doesn't sell is putting your product on your website and then occasionally promoting it.

So what does sell then is having a clear sales process to help your audience make a decision. The first part is a little bit of marketing, growing your audience with the right people for this offer, for this particular offer. And so not just growing your audience with anybody who will download your freebies and who will follow you on Instagram, but with the right people for this offer.

Then sharing free content that bridges the magician's gap, and then having some kind of limited time Launch trigger answering their questions and their hesitations and giving them a deadline to decide. 

 

The profitable framework you can repeat again and again to generate sales on demand

So remember we looked at this little gap between where they are now and where they are when they finish your product and there's this little invisible point B where they are ready to buy your product, that's the gap that your product addresses. 

That is what you are showing them inside your course. But the magician's gap is actually the gap between where they are now and where they need to be, to be ready to buy. And in other words, what does your ideal client need to know to be ready to buy your offer?

Then what do they need to know about the solution to their problem? Do they know that there is a solution to their problem? They're not aware that there's a solution. They're not aware that that problem is solvable.

And if they do know what the solution is, do they actually know what the real solution is? And then lastly, what do they need to know about the outcome or the transformation they will have after completing your product?

Do they know that the outcome is possible for them? All right. 

Before we move to the next section, the framework you can repeat to generate sales on demand is awareness doesn't equal sales, and marketing and selling are two different things. 

So generating those sales on demand of your course or membership or program, it's not a matter of sharing a viral reel or switching on some Facebook ads, that's not going to sell it.

Growing your reach and generating that awareness is great, but what matters is how you are turning people into buyers and that's where launching comes into play. 

So we talked about how launching is not that thing you do just once, it's a 60 to 90-day marketing and sales campaign, and you might run a Launch for the same product multiple times a year.

We Launch, then we review it, then we refine it, then we rinse and repeat it. And the more that you Launch, the easier it begins to feel like a pro. 

 

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