We've all had that gut-wrenching moment, lying awake at night wondering if your business is all it could be and if you're doing everything you could do!
Do you speak to your audience? Do they even want what you're offering? Why oh why aren't you hitting all your goals yet?
That's where this weeks guest, the go-to marketing guy, Paul Healey comes in.
It's Paul's job to find out if you have a viable product and market the heck out of it until you're sleeping like a baby again.
This week Paul shares his top tips (and yes you might want to print this page out!)
- I help people take their expertise their wisdom, skill, knowledge and turn it into an online course in order to generate a passive or semi-passive income.
- On occasions, I'll work with people on a joint venture basis whereby they provide the content for a course and I will provide the marketing in order to sell the course.
- Yeah, it’s a good question because it’s important to get this bit right before you start creating all of your course content.
- So let's look at viability first. The question I want answering is this: Are there lots of people interested in the subject of your course and can you reach them?
- The tool I use to answer this question of is Facebook ads. For example, if I wanted to create a weight loss program for busy female executives over the age of 40, I would create a dummy ad that targeted that specific demographic. When you do that Facebook will tell you how big the audience is.
- If the audience is less than 1000 you’ve got a pretty good idea that the audience is too small. In terms of how big the audience should be, I’ve managed to help people build profitable courses with audiences as small 20,000. But I think the sweet spot is between 20,000 and 200,000. Any bigger than 200,000 and your target audience may be too broad.
- In terms of profitability I, ask 3 questions –
- How affluent is your target market? Have they got money to spend?
- What is it worth to them to have their problem fixed.
- Can you create higher priced versions of your offer to that market?
- Once I’ve verified there’s a big enough paying market and I’m confident that they have money to spend, and that I can create higher priced offers for them, the next thing I will do is a quick test to see how responsive the audience is. And I will do this by creating a very simple opt-in page. If I get optins at a good price, say 2 or 3 pounds or dollars, that’s another good sign that it’s a viable product.
- In short, you need to have enough knowledge to be able to help people get to the level that you specify you will help them get to in your marketing.
- If you try to create an all singing all dancing course that caters for beginners right through to advanced users, the chances are you will probably never finish creating the course. However, if you create a great quality course for beginners, and you market it to beginners, you will get the course built and a lot of people who purchased your level 1 course will almost certainly go on to purchase your level 2 course when it’s ready.
- I think that having an interest is more critical than knowledge. Knowledge can be accumulated as long as you have the interest to begin with.
- The important thing is not to create a course on a subject just because you know there is a great income potential for it.
- For example, if you decide to create a course on investing in crypto currency just because you know it’s a really popular niche at the moment, but not one that you had an innate interest in, then that simply won’t work long time because you won’t be able to last the long game required to create a course and build an audience.
- There are lots of different set ups in terms of deals but I think that the one that works best is 50/50.
- As marketers we know that 70% of the effort in building an online course is creating the infrastructure, the funnel and the marketing.
- But if you only offer a 70/30 deal in your favour, the person who is getting 30% may lack motivation, so I always go 50/50.
- The more important thing to consider is that you can actually work together okay. So WHO you work with is as, if not more, important than the specific deal.
- Another question I get asked (do you want to ask it) is should you sign a contract. Personally, I’ve never signed a contract. Not when it comes to creating online courses. Certainly, don’t mess around with contracts before the course is up and running.
- For cold traffic and a low priced offer, it’s Facebook Ad into free report into 7 Day Challenge into Offer.
- For mid-priced, it's Facebook Ad into free report into webinar into offer.
- Or, for high priced, its Facebook Ad into free report into webinar into application form (acuity) into telephone call.
- With lots of retargeting.
- There’s not one key when it comes to building a profitable online course, there a whole key fob of keys.
- You need to get good at all the disciplines, but the main one, I believe, is to create a great product that people love and one that results in lots of great testimonials and case studies.
- Those case studies and testimonials, which we have to actively ask for and collect, will make up for any shortcomings we may have in terms of copy, traffic, funnel building etc.
- Build something great, get great testimonials.
A book that you would recommend…
Straight-Line Leadership by Dusan Djukich.
What is your top success habit?
Have a to-do list, do the to-do list. A little tip to help with this. I used to use pen and paper but found I often thought about stuff when I was out and about without my pen and paper. So now I use a fabulous Ap called Wunderlist.
Who do you look up to?
Everybody, I’m only 5 foot. No seriously, it is everybody. Everyone has stuff they can teach me, even if it’s how NOT to really mess your life up. No, we can learn a lot from other people if we learn to take the focus off ourselves and shine the light on them.
How do you define success?
That’s changed over time. Now I can define it in one word: PEACE. My goal used to be things and status, now it’s just peace.
Here the big one…who do you like more, Rob or Kennedy?
Well, Rob and I have shared many beers together so I've got to go with Rob. (Back on even scores lads!)
Finally, where can folks go to find out more about you?
You can find me if you head over to Facebook and search for Salsa Paul.
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