Hello and welcome back. The module is well and truly underway!
This lesson is all about how to drum up enough interest in your beta launch to make it a big success.
In other words, we’re going deeper on the first of the four phases of a well-planned beta launch: Interest.
The Reality of Filling Your Beta
And the reality is that selling places on your beta is similar to selling almost anything else: it’s a numbers game.
The more people you can find who are interested in what you’re doing, the easier it will be to fill the number of spots you need to fill.
When you boil it down, there are two strands of effort here:
- Creating awareness – literally, making people who weren’t aware of your beta plans, aware of them.
- Building an interest list – i.e., compiling a list of people who are curious to learn more about your upcoming course.
We’re going to explore both of these in turn, but first let’s profile the people most likely to join you on your beta journey:
- They already know, like and trust you to some degree
- They’re attracted to the result that your course delivers
- They feel like the timing is right for them to tackle this goal
Obviously, until you start talking to people you won’t know how well they fit these criteria, but you should have a sense of who might be a good fit.
For instance, if your course helps small business owners streamline their sales process, any small business owner in your network is a possible lead.
The Two Main Ways to Create Awareness
So let’s talk about creating awareness. You can do it in two ways:
- One-to-one, which means reaching out to individuals who already know you to tell them about your plans to launch a beta course, and
- One-to-many, which means talking about your beta course to whole groups of people at once (e.g., your social media followers).
In both situations, the goal is the same. Adding people to your interest list.
Creating awareness one-to-one
We’ll start with one-to-one, because that’s likely to be your most fertile method for finding students.
And for that, I want you to imagine the entire universe of people who would recognise your name if you reached out to them.
I’m talking about:
- The contacts in your address book (friends, colleagues, clients, etc.)
- The close connections in your extended network (for example: LinkedIn)
- Any other relevant people you’ve interacted with (for example on Zoom)
Because in that pool of possibilities you’ll find people who are curious to learn more about your course.
Finding out exactly who they are means having conversations with the most likely prospects. It’s not hard, but it requires work and persistence.
So here’s the process:
- Scan through all of the people in your “universe” and make a note of anyone who might possibly be a good fit.
- Reach out using the most appropriate channel for each person to start a conversation about your beta and its goals.
- Add anyone who seems keen to a simple interest list so you can easily follow up with them later.
Top of your list should be anyone you’ve already engaged with during this process. For instance, anyone you shared your market description or course promise with to get feedback. Those could be your hottest leads.
And by the way, in the resources section, I’ll give you a template you can use for reaching out to people via email or direct message.
Creating awareness with “one-to-many”
Creating awareness using the “one-to-many” approach is a little different. Instead of sending personalised messages to individual contacts, you’ll communicate with whole groups of people at the same time.
So I’m talking about reaching people via:
- Social media
- Your email list (if you have one)
- Any online communities you hang out in
- Any free or paid networking groups you belong to
The details will depend on the context, but here’s the basic process:
- Pick your platforms for raising awareness
- Decide a simple strategy for each platform
- Execute your strategies and adjust as necessary
And it’s simpler than it sounds.
To pick your platforms, just consider anywhere your target market might be lurking where you could post content without making a nuisance of yourself.
Your strategies can be super simple. For example: one post a day on your Facebook account for a week.
In the resource section, I’ll give you some ideas for angles you can take with your content.
But whatever content you decide to post and where, the goal is the same: getting people to add themselves to your interest list.
Creating a “Self-Service” Interest List
When you’re reaching out to individuals, it’s easy to manually maintain a list of people who tell you they’re interested in hearing more about your beta.
But when you’re talking to groups, it’s good to give people an easy way to raise their hand without contacting you directly (some people are shy like that.)
So it’s useful to create a simple page where they can enter their name and email address.
If you already have an email list and feel comfortable creating sign-up forms you can just create a new one to handle your interest list.
Or you could create a simple Google form that allows people to enter their details into a database.
If you’re already using an online course platform, that may have a built-in feature for managing an interest list or waitlist.
The main thing is you have a place to send anyone who’s interested in finding out more.
Ready to Move On?
Okay, that’s all I wanted to cover in this lesson. Make sure you check out the resources, and I’ll see you in the next one!
🛠️ Resources
❓FAQs
How many people do you need for your beta?
I believe that 5 to 10 people is a good range.
Less than 5 and you’re unlikely to get enough feedback. More than 10 and you may struggle to give people the attention they need.
However, it ultimately depends on your course and how much time you have to run it.
What about recruiting friends and family members?
Friends and family who are motivated to help you out, might be easier people to recruit, but they generally don’t make good beta students.
Crucially, you want people who are driven to get the result, not just to help you out. That’s why I don’t believe in giving people access to your beta for free, but I’ll talk more on that in a later lesson.