HSH 062: 5 Lessons Learned From Our Newest Beta Course Launch

In this episode, I'm sharing with you some of the biggest lessons I just learned by pre-launching a new product to my audience. So if you've been planning a new product, digital course or offer to your market, you'll want to tune into this episode! 

With any course I’ve ever run with Heart, Soul & Hustle, I’ve offered it to a group of founding members first, including with our latest program, The Lead Building Automation Framework.  I do this for a few reasons: it allows me to put a price tag and concept on a product and to collect payments, it brings really good customers who believe in my products (and will provide strong testimonials) and it shows potential roadblocks or obstacles that the audience is going to experience. 

For this program, my goal was to have 20 founding members, and we have 19 spots filled as of the time of recording for this episode. We offered a spot at three payments of $347, or one payment of $997, as well as offering discounts to a small pool of existing clients. 

To fill the spaces, we hosted a list-building webinar at a cost of $97, and at the end we pitched the program, resulting in half of the spots being accounted for. We then sent one email to my existing list, inviting them to a simple sales page for the program. Some promotion was also done using Facebook Messenger but all-in-all this wasn’t a heavily promoted launch. Assuming everyone pays out the full amount, we essentially made about $20,000 and validated the product! 

5 Lessons Learned

1. Customers convert first

Once someone pays you, they’re more willing to trust and pay you again. For the $97 paid webinar, we had a 50% show up rate and 40% of these people bought the product. 

2. Focus on the outcomes of the product, not the features

For this launch we didn’t talk a lot about the content, but rather what it will create for them, which included automation, consistent cash flow and sustainable and predictable systems that they could use in their businesses. 

People don’t care about what is inside of a course, they care about what it creates for them! It’s not just about teaching the concepts, it’s about implementing things together and them taking more action, and not just amassing more knowledge. 

3. Ask your audience what they want, and listen

To do this, we surveyed the people that signed up for the webinar in an email, asking a series of three questions: When it comes to generating leads, what’s the #1 thing stopping you from gaining consistent traffic? If you could generate leads every day with automation, what would that do for your business? And, is there anything I must make sure to include in this webinar? 

By asking these questions, we were really asking what they were stuck with and needed help on and it helped us write compelling sales messages. It also gave the ability to see what might have been missed and to close any gaps in the training. 

4. Be pivot-ready

With a founding member launch, you’re really going in blind. What happened in ours was that we didn’t plan on offering templates for a certain part of the course, but when people started asking for them, they were added in. Make sure you have the space and ability to make necessary changes based on what people are asking of you. 

5. Scarcity is important

Using scarcity gives people a time to take action. I just saw one spot left when 19 out of 20 were filled, but everyone else sees “still available.” Scarcity also allows those who have already purchased to know that there is a limit to the amount of memberships sold. 

If you’ve been sitting on your course or planned online offering, and aren’t sure what to do, think of the value of having a beta member launch. It’s going to do everything you need it to do by generating cash flow, validating your product and giving you the valuable feedback you need to get the finished product out to the world.

LINKS: 

Heart Soul Hustle- Copywriting Tricks to Increase Conversions