Episode #026: How We Sold Out Our Coaching Program Without a Launch
How We Sold Out Our Coaching Program Without a Launch
Have you ever wanted to SELL OUT your coaching program but we're sure what to do to make it happen?
In this week's episode I break down how we sold out our coaching program in 4 short days.
When you tune in you'll discover...
-> How what we did MONTHS before the program made a huge difference
-> The importance of being willing to TALK (on the phone) with potential coaching clients
-> How we sold out our program WITHOUT a sales page!
So tune in, listen up, and enjoy!
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 26. And in this episode, we're talking about how we launched our coaching program without a launch. So, if you've been looking to fill up a coaching program, sell your group coaching, or just get more clients without having to do a big tedious launch, this episode is for you, so stay tuned.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average online marketer. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Now, I'm really excited for this week's episode. I have to start by saying, we just redid my office with some new flooring and we haven't had a chance to move all my furniture back in yet.
So, if it's ever so slightly echo here or you hear some dog tags jingling in the background, I apologize. But once we get a carpet and some furniture back in here, the recordings are going to be nice and clean again, but I didn't want to leave you waiting on a new episode. With that out of the way, let's get into the goodness of this episode. I want to talk to you about our coaching program. And I want to talk to you a little bit about how we were able to release this thing into the world. We started talking about it on a Thursday, and by that Sunday, we had filled all the open spots that we had.
And we did it very easily. We didn't struggle. We didn't stress. I want to talk to you about how we were able to do that and some of the mentality and emotions that we went through while this launch happened, just to take you behind the scenes and give you something that you can test in your business as well. I think the most important place to start is, what was the coaching offer? For those of you who don't know, we have a quarterly coaching program called the Incubator. The Incubator is a 90 day program that we run every quarter of the year, but we only take on 12 clients.
It's really important worth noting that we like the intimacy of the program and we charge $2,000 for the quarter. That's been working really well for us and we really enjoy doing that. And I want to just let you know what exactly the coaching program is. What we do is we kick off the 90 days with a planning session where all of the members come together, we meet, we give them some documents, some spread sheets, where they can plan out the 90 days that we're going to work together, and then everyone submits their 90 day plan.
And I make a custom curriculum for the 90 days that supports everyone in the group as maximally as possible. It also comes with monthly one-on-one calls with me, access to my programs. It's a very program while still remaining customized and supportive to the people in the program. So, $2,000, 12 members max. One thing worth noting is that we have members who joined when it first came out, almost two years ago. The price point was slightly different, and we do grandfather our renewals into their original rate.
If you were doing the math and you're like, oh my gosh, this is 12,000 times 2,000 is 24,000, times four months a year is 96,000. It's a little less than that because we do have a really high renewal rate. Speaking of that, the first thing worth noting is that one of the reasons this program was so easy to fill is that eight out of 12 people from the last round decided to renew. Now, you might initially be thinking, okay, Zach, that's not emulatable. If I'm launching a brand new program, I can't do that.
But what I want to stress is that there is value in creating a really quality and enjoyable experience for the members of your coaching program. Because what happens is we have people renew every single quarter. Every quarter we get between 50% to 70% of people to renew. We had 67% of people renew this time. And you might be thinking, "Zach, I can't do that. I can't just get people to renew because I don't have a program yet." But what I want you to understand is that this renewal offer is very low key, very simple, but it's because we create a positive experience for our members that we get a high renewal rate.
We also have people refer people to the program about every quarter or every other quarter. So, there's also value in creating a positive customer experience because we get referrals. Now, this round, we actually didn't get any referrals into the program, which is totally fine. We still filled it up. But I like to mention that because sometimes we get so caught up in the sale of the program that we forget the value in creating a quality experience.
Now, that is just a little bit about the program. So, if you're doing the math, you might be saying, "Hey, that means eight people renewed. You sold four spots in four days." That is correct, my friend. You are crushing it with the math. I want to talk a little bit about how we were able to fill those spots. The first thing I think is worth noting is that we filled all these spots via email. We sent out emails, we posted in my customer-only Facebook group. We posted in our membership for people looking for next level support. We posted organically all over the place, but a majority of the promotion happened via email.
You might be thinking, "Zach, I don't have a big email list or I don't have people that I can promote to right now." That's why I really want to talk about the value that comes from doing work between your launches. This is something that I keep saying I'm going to do an episode on, and I really want to do a fully committed episode, but just to explain to you what we do, we are always running lead generation ads. Okay. I talk about this in episode four of the podcast, which we'll link up in the show notes as well.
But I am always growing my email list via list building ads. I have them running pretty much 24/7. We really got aggressive with them back in November of 2021. And we've been aggressive ever since. We're always growing our email list. In the time since we launched our program last quarter, we've added several thousand people to our email list. I tell you that because I want you to understand that years ago, you could kind of say like, "Oh, I'm going to launch a program. I'm going to launch a coaching program. I'm going to launch a digital course." And you could just kind of do it, right?
You could just decide when you're doing the webinar, run the Facebook ads, get people signed up for the webinar, and convert them into your program. The thing about the marketplace is that it's become more sophisticated. People have their guard up. They know that if they sign up for a challenge, a webinar, a video series, that there's going to be a pitch at the end. It's really important that you understand that what you do between launches matters.
Because what we did was we promoted to an email list of people we had attracted to us over the course of several months. Now, also over the course of those several months is we emailed those people with quality content, right? This podcast, we release it every week, and we always send it to our email list because it's quality content. I just really want to stress that if you are still saying, oh my gosh, I'm going to launch, but then when launch time comes around, you are literally doing everything in the last couple weeks, you're missing a massive window for success, and you're missing the opportunity to grow your entire ecosystem.
In addition to the list building ads growing our following and our email list, it's also growing our Instagram following. It's also growing our podcast download. We've almost doubled our monthly podcast downloads in the last couple of months. And it means that people are actually listening and engaging with our content. So, when we make an offer, people aren't going, "Oh my gosh, should I even hire this Zach guy?" They're going, "Oh my gosh, this Zach guy knows what he's talking about. I'd really love the opportunity to work with him." Right?
So, we're shifting that narrative from, I know you just met me, but you should trust me, to, I know you trust me because you didn't just meet me. Now, let me make an offer. That's been really, really powerful for us. We're trying to do that with everything that we promote, not just our coaching program. We've got an offer coming up in April, where we're going to teach people how to generate a hundred quality leads with Facebook ads. And so, you best believe that in early April, after this episode drops, we're going to start talking about Facebook ads on the podcast.
We're going to start talking about list building on the podcast. We're going to invite our whole email list to join us in this training, right? I'm really excited about that because we've done the work in between for people to be excited to join. Now, I do want to stress that with the traditional launch, if it's not for a coaching program, or if you're doing a webinar or a video series or a challenge, you can still run ads and you can still get people to buy cold.
But we're finding that there's a tilt towards existing organic audience buying our product. We just had a member of our coaching program talk to us about this. She said, "I did my launch. I generated some leads, and I didn't see any sales from the ads, but the people who bought from me, I had a few sales, and those people had been on my list for three plus years." Y'all the long game is where it is at these days. It's not about the quick instant gratification of a conversion. It's about the long-term nurturing and support of the people in your audience.
With all that being said, you're probably like, Zach, this all sounds great, but what did you actually do to launch the dang thing? Right? I want to walk you through how we promoted this content. The first thing we did was the Thursday that we opened the cart, we dropped a pod cast interview with a member of the Incubator. It was one of our longest podcast to date. It was actually a really long podcast. We went close to 45 minutes. And it was pretty well received. We got good download numbers. People were pretty happy with it, we think.
It's growing just like any of our other podcast episodes, which we were a little hesitant about because we thought, oh my goodness, is an episode this long going to do okay? And it did. It actually did very, very well. We first released that podcast interview. Then at the end of the interview, we talked about how we had a few spots open for the Incubator. Now, the second thing we did is we emailed our entire list letting them know that podcast was out. Then in the PS line, we said, if you want to learn more about the Incubator, respond to this email.
Now, this is something that we do for the Incubator to make it, kind add that level of like exclusivity qualification. We don't just want to send out a sales page and say, click here, join now. We want people to read. We want people to digest. We want people to decide if they're a good fit for the program. So, what we did was we said, "Respond to this email with the word, Incubator, if you want to learn more." I really like this approach because it helps me start one-on-one conversations and keep track of who's interested.
I'm not just emailing for the sake of exclusivity. I'm emailing because if somebody says, "I'm interested," and then doesn't join, I can email them back and say, "Hey, did you have any questions? I'd love to follow up with you and just see if you're joining the Incubator." Now, realistically, we didn't get a big response from that email, and I started to panic. I think it's worth noting that we still, even at Heart, Soul & Hustle, when we're launching and promoting, we still go through all those emotions.
I remember messaging my team and being like, it's too quiet. And they were like, just be patient. My team is the voice of reason in all of our launches, and I appreciate them so much. We didn't really get good response. So, what we did was later that day, we sent out another email exclusively about the program and again asked people to reply. That was our first email. It was very simple. We had a canned response that my team was able to send out. Now, you could easily do you this yourself with a canned response, but we had my team respond back with, "Hey, we're so excited you're interested in the program. Here's the number of spots left."
And we created a PDF instead of a sales page. Now, this is my favorite. Because up until this quarter, when we sold the Incubator, we actually have never had a sales page. We've always used a Google doc. You heard that right. No formally designed sales page, just a Google doc. This quarter we hired a designer who turned our Google doc into a really simple PDF. I just liked this because I don't really know if I can put into words why, but it felt like a more luxe experience to get a PDF brochure about the program.
I know it's not a physical copy. I know it's not a physical brochure, but something about it just felt so luxe and high touch. I really, when I promoted this program, put it through the lens of like, how can I make this program feel like luxe, and exclusive, and powerful, without all the bells and of a big launch? What I came up with was turning this thing into a PDF. And we had that PDF and we sent it out to people who responded. That was day one.
The next day we took a video case study from our, or from one of our members, and we put it on a landing page, and we basically emailed our list and said, "Hey, we'd love for you to check out this case study from one of our students if you want to learn more about the program. Then under the video on the landing page, we linked to the PDF. As the launch progressed, we made it lower barrier to entry to check out the program.
We did that, and that email went pretty well, and we ended up generating a couple sales from it right to the program. No sales call, no promotion. Well, I guess the email was the promotion, but no webinar, no challenge, just a couple of sales right from that email into the coaching program. Of course, we had backend automation with our email CRM set up to welcome them to the program, link them to the Facebook group, all that good stuff.
That was the second email. I felt really good at that point because I was like, okay, the program is selling, we're getting people in. Then what we did was we sent out a third email. That went out on Saturday and it basically said, "Hey, if you want to learn more about the program, here's the PDF." We kind of, and I don't know if I'm a huge fan of how we did it, to be honest, because we lowered that level of exclusivity as we went.
But I liked it because initially, we were like, reach out to us, let us know. Then we made it more and more accessible as we went on. But what was nice was, as it went on, we could start tracking who replied? Should we follow up with them? Who clicked to the PDF? Let's follow up with them. Who clicked to the case study page? Let's follow up with them. We actually didn't have to do any major follow up because the spots sold out pretty quickly, like I said, three and a half days. But one other thing that I want to mention is that we did do one sales call.
Over the weekend, after we sent out our Saturday email, we did a sales call. I just want to really stress that, whether your program is a $100 or $100,000, don't be afraid of the phone. Don't be afraid to get on chat with people, whether it's like a virtual chat, a chatbox, a phone call, because sometimes people just need that level of assurance that you're going to be there for that. I really think that just hopping on the phone, I think the call took like 15, 20 minutes, and then the person enrolled.
Don't be afraid to just hop on the phone and communicate with your offer, or not your offer, your customer. Don't be afraid to communicate with your customer because they just want to feel safe, and secure, and heard. You don't have to be a master at sales calls. You just have to be willing to listen, mirror back what people are looking for, validate that your offer can help them with that, and then give them the opportunity to join.
Now, I do want to tell you that the whole flow took about four days and we ended up filling out the rest of our coaching program. We had everybody renew. As of the recording, everyone has made their payments and we have a full program. And we did that in a very short period of time. If you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, "Okay, Zach, what are the big takeaways? What should that I be getting from this episode if I'm thinking about filling a program, a course, etc, without a big launch?"
The first takeaway is that the pre-work between launches is what determines your launch's success. And even if you're like, it's not a launch because there's no challenge or webinar, it still is. It's a limited time that you're promoting an offer. You're just doing it without a big launch, right? But I still consider it a small launch, which you might be like, that's not what the title of this episode says, but cut me some slack. I've got to make appealing titles. Right?
Number two is that creating raving fans of your students is super valuable. It means people are likely to renew with you, people are likely to refer to you, and people are likely to enjoy the content that you're creating. The third thing is that you want to create a kind of luxury experience, right? It doesn't have to be fancy. You don't have to have live events. You don't have to have crazy gift bags and high end speakers, and things like that. All you need to do is make sure that people feel like, wow, this is worth what I'm investing.
For us, that was really just getting a PDF designed and creating a brochure rather than a sales page, doing something than what the industry does to grab that attention. The next lesson is don't fear the phone. So many of us are afraid that we're going to get on a call or a sales call and we're going to flop or flounder or mess it up that we don't even try. All I want you to think is don't be afraid of the phone. It's okay to just chat with your potential customers and see if you can help them.
Finally, we didn't have a sales page. Keep in mind that yes, sales pages help your offers sell, but offers are what sell well, not the sales pages that go with them. So, don't be afraid to really push your boundaries and make great offers, because great offers are ultimately what converts. Now, if you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, head over to iTunes and drop a review. We really appreciate it. It helps us reach more people with the show and it shows me that you enjoy it.
You can also tag me over on Instagram @heartsoulhustle. Again, it's @heartsoulhustle. You can tag me in your stories, send me a DM. Let me know what you thought of this episode. I love hearing from you. Now, as always, we will have a full transcript of the show available over at heartsoulhustle.com/nyap026. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap026, for Not Your Average Podcast, episode number 26. I hope you really enjoyed this episode, got mad value from it, and until next time, stay not so average.
