🗣️ Transcript
Hello and welcome back! This penultimate lesson in the module is called: The Anatomy of a Powerful Promise. And I’m linking things back to a concept from earlier in the course, the promise.
So here’s what you’ll learn:
- The difference between a goal, a destination and a result
- A simple template for getting clarity on your course’s central promise
- 4 examples of the template in action
But before we get into our anatomy lesson, I want to tidy up a bit of terminology.
I’m conscious I’ve been throwing a few different terms around and while I’m doing it for precision, I’m also conscious it could be confusing.
So let’s recap.
Your target market has a high-level goal, like “getting fitter”.
Your course leads your students on a journey to a destination where some specific version of that goal (or a dialled back version of it) has been achieved.
We define the destination in terms of the specific results students will have achieved by the time they reach it.
And we understand that it can be useful to think of each result as being either a new asset, a new ability, a new status or a new reality.
In practice, it’s usually best to focus on just one result.
Still with me?
Well, your promise just wraps everything up with a bow. It’s a way of articulating what result your course delivers, for whom and why. And it does it in a way that’s easy for your target market to understand and is understandable by other people too.
Because here’s the thing. We’ve already said it’ll be your job to tell people about your course. And that whole conversation will be a lot easier if you know exactly what to say.
Once you have a clear description of your promise you can test it out with a few people in your target market before you commit to it.
And once it’s decided, it’ll help other people understand what your course is all about too. After all, even if someone isn’t in your target market, they might know people who are!
As in earlier modules, I want to make this as “paint-by-numbers” as possible so we’re going to distil everything into a simple template.
And here it is:
[Course] helps [Group] to [Result(s)] so that [Reason]
You’ll recognise a couple of these components from earlier in the course but let’s break them down one by one…
Course is, well, your course! If you already have a working title for your digital baby, feel free to fill it in. If not, you can just use “My course”, as in “My course helps…”
Group is the group from your target market description, for example, “stressed-out parents”.
Results is a short description of the results, ideally aligned with the four fundamental result types we already discussed. I recommend focusing on just one result.
And Reason is basically the same concept we met in an earlier module. This time it’s your target market’s deeper reason for wanting those exciting results.
If you’ve worked closely with these types of people, or been one yourself, you should already have a good idea of their underlying motivations.
If not, you may need to take an educated guess, or you can do a little informal market research.
So that’s the template and the component parts. To bring it to life, let’s see a bunch of different examples covering each of the four result types. Here we go…
Effortless Selling helps sales-squeamish small business owners to build and maintain a pipeline of promising prospects so that they can grow their business and finally feel good about selling.
That’s an asset result because what they have at the end is a functioning sales pipeline. The reason explains why that pipeline is valuable to them.
Crypto Mastery helps part-time investors understand the fundamentals of cryptocurrency investing so that they can make safer investments and build wealth for the future.
That’s an ability result because of what the course teaches them to do. Crypto knowledge is just a means to safer investing and wealth building.
Email Marketing Jumpstart helps people who love writing to become certified in email marketing so that they can attract freelance clients and earn money from their passion.
That’s a status result because being able to say you’re a certified email marketer is a valuable new label that unlocks clients and more money.
The Disruptive Diet helps overweight, middle-aged men permanently change their relationship with food so that they can lose weight, look great and live longer.
That’s a reality result because students’ daily reality is that they think and feel differently about food and they can see the physical changes in their body.
Okay, lots of examples there for you to ponder. And there are more in a resource you’ll find below this lesson.
I hope you’re starting to see how you can apply this template to your own target market and list of potential results.
I’ll see you in the final lesson for this module when you’re ready!