Okay, so you’re ready to launch your course, but how do you get people to actually buy it? I mean, there’s so much that goes into a course launch and creating the, as you will know by now. So what is the best way to get people to actually buy?
Well, let’s be real – we buy based on emotions more often than not. I mean, think about the last time you made a big purchase: how much of it was based on reason and logic, and how much of it was based on, “Hey, I really want this and it will be so awesome,” and you just kind of tweaked a logic and the reason to make it fit so that it was a good reason. And maybe it was a good reason and it just happened that you were excited about it and so you kind of pushed to make sure that it made sense.
But because we buy based on emotions, you need people to be excited about your course when it launches so that they want to be part of it. They want to get in on it and they want to pay you the money that it’s worth because it will bring them value in some way – make their life better, help them build their business, help them improve through other areas of their lives, whatever it happens to be.
You need that excitement to be there. And so put yourself into their shoes. Think about what would make you excited about this? What made you excited about building the course in the first place? So start to brainstorm some of those things in order to get some ideas of how you can build excitement.
But the thing is, we also buy based on recommendations. When you make a big purchase, how often do you go and ask someone if, say you’re buying a computer, what kind of computer did they buy? What brands worked? What kind of specs do you need? If you’re buying a car, you ask your friends what their repair bills have been, because you really don’t want to get stuck with a lemon and you figure out, based on other people’s recommendations, what is going to be a good buy and what’s not.
So you also want to be able to have some recommendations. That’s why, when you’re building a course, you look for testimonials. Maybe you do a beta test so that you can get those testimonials before you actually build the course and start selling it so that people trust you and are willing to put their money into it so they can get the same value that these other people did. But that can be really hard to do. It takes a lot of work to do a beta test. It takes a lot of work to just get the testimonials, even if you do that beta test.
So what else can you do? There are some pillars that you can build when you’re getting ready for your course launch. So you want to build community – the community will help you build that excitement. It gets other people talking, it gets them all excited together, and that excitement builds on itself when there’s more than one person in it.
You also want to build trust like we talked about with the testimonials and the recommendations from other people, and just trust that you build up by doing other things. By showing them that you will give them value if they will trust you.
You also want to build that excitement like we talked about. So the community and the excitement kind of go hand in hand, but you can also build that excitement and you can do things that get people excited, that get them talking to each other and just thinking to themselves, “I want this,” and, more importantly, “I need this. This will make my life better.” And by doing all of those things, you’ll build buyers.
So those are some of the pillars that I would recommend you build as you get ready for your course launch. And there’s one thing that can do all of those things for you, and most of all, the builds buyers, because they will have bought from you.
So if you host a virtual summit, you can get all of those pillars in one place. Virtual summits build community, because it’s very likely that you’re going to run a Facebook group – that’s what Krista from Summit in a Box and I both recommend – if you build a Facebook group around your summit, then you will be able to build that community. You’ll have people talking to each other, they’ll be finding accountability partners. There’ll be talking to the speakers at your summit, and they’ll be talking to you, which in turn builds that trust.
That’s that second pillar. When you build the trust through the summit, people can see that you’re giving them value. You’ve brought together all of these amazing speakers who are helping make their lives better – for free – so why wouldn’t they give you their money? If you do this for free, what kind of value are you going to give them in a course? It’s kind of a no-brainer for a lot of folks.
So when you build that trust and you build that community, you also build the excitement. When you’re in the community, in the Facebook group, you can do live videos, you can have discussion threads going, you can ask them questions. You can get that engagement and that excitement building. You can get the speakers in there talking to them, getting them excited for the summit, and you can even plant the seeds for your course launch as well.
So you could give away a prize of a free course to one person in the group, based on the engagement. That’s something that I like to do in summits and it gets everybody excited and it gets them primed because the people who don’t win don’t really want to miss out either. So they’re more likely to be buyers as well.
And most importantly, there is that buyers pillar. Summits build buyers. They don’t just build people who trust you and people who like you, but they build buyers. When you are doing a summit, you can sell an all-access pass and you can even sell a couple of different ones. I have a summit coming up that actually has more than one pass option.
So you could have a pass that has just the presentations and the transcripts, and maybe some worksheets. And you can have that as a lower cost offer, but then you can have a mega bundle. The mega bundle is something where your speakers can contribute bonuses, you might even have affiliates contribute bonuses, you contribute bonuses, of course, because you want the people that buy it to trust you as well. So by building this into the course, you give them all the free value. You build them community, you get the excitement going, they learn to trust you throughout the summit. And then they buy from you.
They buy your all-access passes. And when they buy from you. That gets them primed to trust buying from you again. So when you launch that course and you tell them, “Hey, all of these things that you learned in the summit, this is going to build on those. You can take everything you learned for free, but then you can jump into this course and you can go and streamline it. You can make it faster. You can make more powerful.” Whatever your course happens to do that builds on your summit, you can make it so that these people that now are excited, that trust you, that have that community built around this course – they want to stay with that community, so they want to be part of this course where all of the people that they really like are going to be in that community for the long haul.
So summits are a fantastic way to build all of those pillars around your course launch. And if you want to learn more about how to run your own virtual summit for free, you should definitely go and sign up for Sell With a Summit: Course Creator Edition. Krista from Summit in a Box and I are hosting this and it is going to be an amazing event.
You will learn from over 25 speakers about everything from how to do summits, how do you build a community of raving fans, how do you position your course so that it is the logical next step for people who attend the summit, you’re going to learn how to market it, how to make even more money out of it by doing ordered bumps and tripwires, and everything you could possibly want.
So definitely sign up for your free ticket to Sell With a Summit: Course Creator Edition and I would love to see you there!