Hello hello. I have another lesson for you!
This one looks at your options for delivering the free training content that’s such a crucial part of your course pipeline.
As I already mentioned before, you can choose to deliver your training as either a mini course or a live webinar. And I also gave you some ways for deciding which is the best option for you.
The approach you choose will affect how you create the content, so let’s look at the logistics of those two options in more detail.
Ready to dive in? Let’s do it.
Option #1: Mini Course
Your first option is delivering your free training as a mini course.
And if you go right back to the start of the programme, we already talked about mini courses as one of the four main course types you can build.
I described how one of the most popular use cases is offering a free, tactical course designed to generate leads. And that’s exactly what we’re doing here.
In this scenario, I actually recommend delivering your course by email instead of hosting it on your course platform alongside your main course.
The reason is that you’re removing the friction of people having to create an account and log in to access the content. And the less friction the better!
It also gives you the option of creating a purely text-based course where you deliver the content inside the body of each email.
That said, if you want to use video then your emails will follow the same schedule, but just link to wherever the videos are hosted.
This could mean creating some hidden pages on your course site or website, or just uploading a bunch of unlisted videos to YouTube.
Tip: If you want to use video but don’t want to do it for every part of the free training, you could choose to focus on the three core lessons.
Whichever approach you take, this is what the workflow looks like:
- You promote your free training (e.g., on social media) and send people to a simple “sign up” page where they can register with their email address.
- Right after signing up, participants receive the first part of the training: the Warm Welcome. This email explains the logistics, i.e., that the materials will be delivered one day at a time straight to their inbox.
- Over the next three days they receive the three lessons that make up the core of the training: the Hidden Hurdle, the Magic Method and the Time-Saving Tool or Tactic.
- Then participants receive the rest of the training: the Recap/Roadmap and the Pitch. These can be delivered one day apart or rolled into the same email. Either way, the Pitch content will link to your sales page.
- In the days after the pitch, you’ll then send up to three separate emails, reminding them about your course and its benefits, and directing them again to the sales page.
Automating the Emails
Since the mini course version of this strategy is most often used for the evergreen launch model, you’ll also want the free training to be evergreen.
This means automating the process of registering participants, delivering the free content, and following up with reminder emails.
This can be done either via your course platform (if it supports email automation) or via one of the many available email marketing tools, such as ConvertKit or MailerLite.
Typically you’ll configure the first email to be sent on “Day 0”, which means immediately after signing up, and subsequent emails on Day 1, Day 2, etc.
Using a Mini Course for an Open/Close Launch
You can also use a mini course for an open/close launch. To do this you’ll need to send each of the emails manually to everyone at the same time.
The exception is the Warm Welcome, which is sent automatically after registration and tells people when they should expect the first real lesson.
Tip: To create the right schedule, you’ll need to work backwards from your course launch window so that the Pitch email arrives once the course is available to buy, and the post-pitch reminders are synchronised with the end of the launch window.
Option #2: The Webinar
With a webinar you’ll follow exactly the same six-part structure for the free training, but you deliver it all in a single live session.
To do this you’ll create a short sequence of slides for each part of the recommended structure and then use those slides to drive your live session.
Here’s the workflow for this version of this strategy:
- You schedule a date for your webinar and set up a corresponding event in your virtual meeting software (e.g., Zoom)
- Around seven days before the event date, you start promoting your free training as before, but this time you direct people to a webinar sign up page (e.g., a Zoom registration page).
- At the allotted time and date you run your webinar, using your slide deck to drive the content of the session. During the Pitch section you provide a link to your sales page, both on the screen and in the chat box.
- Shortly after the webinar, you send an email thanking people for attending and include another short pitch for your course, a link to the sales page, and a deadline reminder plus any time-sensitive offers.
- As the deadline approaches, you send brief reminders to anyone who registered for the webinar: e.g., 24 before and then 8 hours before.
Using a Webinar for an Evergreen Launch
It is possible to use a webinar for an evergreen launch, using software that delivers a pre-recorded video so that it appears to be a live webinar.
Here’s how it works. The sign up page offers visitors a small selection of dynamically generated webinar slots and handles the pre-event reminders and the delivery of the webinar itself at the correct time.
However, there’s a degree of misdirection here and you may prefer to simply position your free training as a pre-recorded workshop, dispensing with the illusion of it being a live event.
In this case, the logistics are more similar to a mini course, except that instead of receiving several days of training emails, participants get a confirmation email immediately after registration and then just one email (usually the next day) directing them to a page where the recorded training is hosted.
How Will You Deliver Your Free Training?
This lesson has laid out your options for delivering the free training that’ll tempt your target market into your course pipeline.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at how to structure a simple “sign up” page that will allow people to register for that training.
See you there!