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? Welcome to Imperfect Action.
I'm Steph Taylor. For years, I read all the books, downloaded all
the freebies, and did all the courses, but it wasn't until I started
taking imperfect action that my business had its first million dollar year. Imperfect action
is about doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action,
and moving forward even when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this
show, you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips and strategies to build
a business that brings you more profit, more freedom, and even more joy.
Are you on the list to get my daily Businesses every day, I'll
send you a bite sized prompt designed to help you grow your business in a
more intentional way. Sign up at Stephtaylor dot co, forward slash DBB,
or at the link in the show notes. Hey, welcome back to in
Perfect Action. This is episode seven hundred and sixty six. If your online
course, 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 episode is for you, because I think it's quite common that
you might have been led to believe that creating a course or a program,
or a membership or an ebook or templatees 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
have 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 to sell your
offers. And those key ingredients include the content 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
episode. 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 door's 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 a live launch to me includes
all three of those elements. The content the bridge is 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. But so a live
launch to me is a limited time campaign or a limited time push for one
specific offer with pre 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 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 sell, 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. Okay,
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. So I go
into the foundations of the magician's gap in Module one of Launch Magic and in
Lake Feb I'm running a waitlist only free event where I teach Module one live
on Zoom. We get to hang out live and you get to learn all
about Module one. So to get on the waitlist for that, send me
a DM send me word magic to defftailor dot co on Instagram, or you
can head over to stefftailor dot co slash magic to get on that weightlist.
So you get an invite to Module one for free. Okay. The second
key element is a sales process where you can address hesitations and answer the questions.
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 some of 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 hesitation 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 am going to dedicate almost an entire email or in some cases 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 excuse is
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. The third key element is that deadline to make
a decision. 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 you're even coaching if it's one on one, they
require some kind of behavior change. We don't like to change our behavior.
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 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 and when 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 ikey, fake deadlines where you're like
last chance to join, and then the offer is always available. So let's
look at some simple tweaks that you can make to make more sales of your
offers. Number one tweak. 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. Yes,
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 that's 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, well, 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 field dehydration, They're gonna
say, no, thank you, I've got a headache. So then you
need to actually step yourself into their shoes and speak to them as they are
experiencing the problem. And if you're 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 fifteen modules and twenty five 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 closed, send a non buy a 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 close 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 phaze 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 fifty dollars for one of my courses that at the time was priced
at two thousand dollars. I was like, how dare they not see the
value? It was like this, oh if 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 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. If you are ready for a sustainable,
successful way to sell your I would love for you to join me inside Launch
Magic when I open Doors at the end of feb and in it you will
create a rinse and repeat launch strategy for more sales of your digital products,
program courses, memberships, more on demand cash injections, and more freedom in
your business whenever you want it. I only run it twice a year,
and Doors next open at the end of feb We start at the start of
March. So if you want to jump on the waitlist and get an invite
to that bonus free workshop where I'm teaching Module one, live and free,
shoot me a DM on Instagram at Stephtaylor dot co send me the word magic,
or head on over to steph Taylor dot co slash Magic and you will
get on the waitlist there and I will send you an invite when I am
inviting you to join that workshop. Now. If you're not already subscribed to
the show, hit follow you'll get each new episodes straight to your podcast app
every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thank you so much for listening. Catch
you next time.