HSH 038: How to Craft a Successful Promotion For Your Course, Coaching or Service
You’ve probably heard the saying, “If you build it, they will come.” This isn’t necessarily true though, especially in today’s online space. In this episode, we look at the steps to crafting a successful promotion and why just having what you sell on your website isn’t enough anymore!
Steps to crafting a successful promotion:
1. Assess your skill and you ability
Be being realistic about where you and your business is at, it’ll help you figure out which launch mechanism will be best to use. There are many to choose from, including evergreen funnels, webinars, 5-day challenges are more.
For people new to launches, I recommend using the 5-day challenge, which is low cost and low risk; often only a few hundred dollars in ad spending is required to get a great return on investment.
Webinars convert, but they are really an intensive art and we’ve been revising ours month after month. Video series provide potential customers with three emails followed by an invitation to purchase your product, but are relatively expensive and require multiple people to pull them off (videographer, script writer, possibly a copywriter). Funnels work but take time to build and test out; they can be intricate and we really recommend setting up the funnel after you’ve proven your product sells.
2. Determine your goals and budget
You shouldn’t be throwing out a lofty goal for a promotion “just because”, as this won’t guarantee success. My goals and budget operate in tandem: how many products do I need to sell to reach the goal? What is that really go to take to make it happen? 5-day challenges typically have a 3-6% conversation rate, and here are some other figures to keep in mind:
- Email-only launches/funnels convert at about 2-3%.
- For every 1,000 people signed up to a webinar, about 300-350 will show up live and about 10% of those people will convert, although you’ll be able to double that number with an effective follow-up series. This brings the estimated conversation rate for webinars to 3-6%.
- Video series convert at 3-6% as well, and carry with it a perceived higher value. This can help you build your list more effectively, but as mentioned, can take a lot of work and financial investment.
- If based on these conversion figures, your goal for the number of people in your challenge doesn’t seem doable, lower your expectations and reverse engineer your numbers from there.
I like to use a good, better and best goal system. For example, using a 4% conversion rate on a $500 product, my goals would look like this:
Good goal: 375 leads X 4% conversion = 15 sales X $500 = $7,500 in total revenue
Better goal: 500 leads X 4% conversion = 20 sales X $500 = $10,000 in total revenue
Best goal: 625 leads X 4% conversion = 25 sales X $500 = $12,500 in total revenue
After setting these goals, determine your reach. As a rule of thumb, for your first promotion (webinar, challenge, etc.) 5 to 10% of your email list should sign up with just one email. The remainder of leads can come from paid advertising, for which you should be calculating your average cost per lead. If you don’t have this date, an estimate of $2.50/lead is an average you can use. By using these numbers, you can come up with the range of budget you’ll need for paid advertising. I add a 20% cushion to this figure to arrive at my estimate and potential profit margin.
Looking at these numbers are critical, and changes the thought from “I want to make X amount of dollars” to “I know exactly what I need to do to make X amount of dollars and still be profitable.”
3. Think about your offer
Ask what problem your audience is experiencing that your product will solve. You also should ask what is the benefit or core promise that your program is offering people, and what will they miss out on if they don’t purchase it?
I recommend giving yourself a week before the promotion starts to run your ads and promote it, and a few days after the cart closes to review your numbers and decompress. Go over all of your statistics! What converted and what didn’t? What was your overall conversion rate? How many people signed up and what was your actual cost per lead that you can use for calculations on your next launch?
Remember, the success of your launch is not defining of who you are as a person, and there are no bad launches, there’s only good data!
4. Execute!
The final step is just going out and doing it. When things are crazy during the launch and you have a plan, you’ll have the key metrics to fall back on to analyze and make adjustments.
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