10.7: Promoting Your Pipeline (Part 2)

Welcome back and many congratulations! You’ve reached the final lesson in this module and in fact this whole programme.

It’s a huge milestone, so give yourself a hearty pat on the back.

As a reminder, we’re part-way through our discussion about promoting your pipeline.

The previous lesson covered tactics you can use when your course is evergreen. Now we’ll tackle the other possibility – an open/close launch.

So let’s get started.

What’s Different about Promoting an Open/Close Launch?

Conveniently, a good number of the promotion tactics we discussed in the last lesson will carry over into an open/close launch.

So if that’s the case, what’s different about this type of launch compared with an evergreen launch?

Well, it really comes down to two things: timing and intensity.

Let’s talk about timing first.

How to Time Your Promotion with Precision

If your course and pipeline follow the evergreen model then the timing of your promotion isn’t critical.

It doesn’t matter exactly when students sign up for your free training. All that matters is that they’re moving towards an offer to buy your course.

But with an open/close launch, it really does matter when they sign up because it needs to line up with when your course is available to buy.

In practice this means working backwards from your planned open and close dates to make sure that you’re promoting your free training at the right time.

So if your free training lasts five days before pivoting to the pitch, you’ll want people to start the training around five days before the shopping cart opens.

And if you’re running a live webinar instead of an email mini course, you’ll want to promote the webinar several days in advance to give people enough notice to attend, and then open the shopping cart just before or during your webinar.

In other words, you’ll need to think about and plan what happens when.

Four Key Dates for an Open/Close Launch

In fact, there are four key dates for an open/close launch:

  1. Registration opens – when people can first register for your free training
  2. Registration closes –  the last day people can register for the training
  3. Cart opens –  when people can first buy your course
  4. Cart closes –  the last day people can buy your course (this time around)

Somewhere between the registration closing and the cart opening you’ll deliver your free training, whether that’s an email mini course or a webinar.

Example

So let’s say it’s the start of March and you want to launch your course by the end of the month.

And let’s also say you want to open your shopping cart on a Monday and close it on a Friday so that people have a full working week to sign up.

For mini course-based pipeline, your launch timetable could look like this:

For a webinar, it could look like this:

The timings above are just an example. There’s nothing magical about the specific days of the week or the intervals between key dates.

That said, here are a few pointers:

How to Increase the Intensity When It Matters

I said earlier in this lesson that intensity was the other main difference between an evergreen launch and an open/close launch.

So here’s what I mean by that.

With a limited window in which to recruit students for your course, you want to push as hard as you can to get people into your pipeline.

Why? Because if you take a softer approach and get fewer students than you hoped, you’ll have to wait until your next full launch to correct the situation.

(On the other hand, if you don’t get enough students for an evergreen course in a particular month, you can just promote harder the next month.)

So what does it look like to increase the intensity of your promotion?

Well, here are some ideas:

Overall, remember that one of the reasons for choosing an open/close launch over an evergreen model is the potential to create excitement around your launch and tap into “FOMO” – the fear of missing out.

So if you feel uncomfortable moving into full-throated selling mode in the run-up to your launch, open/close may not be the best model for you.

Enjoying the Best of Both Worlds

Even if you want your course and pipeline to be evergreen, you can still gain many of the benefits of an open/close launch the first time you launch.

In fact, the full launch of your course and the chance to get free training both deserve a little fanfare and it would be a shame to waste that opportunity.

So here’s how you can blend the two models.

Instead of closing the cart on a specific date you offer the course at a special introductory price to anyone who buys on or before that date.

From a technical standpoint you can either share a discount code at the end of the free training, or manually increase the course price once the deadline has passed.

Either way, you’re using your newly available free training to build excitement around your topic and get the first batch of people into your pipeline.

And you’re still tapping into FOMO (via an expiring discount) to encourage people to take action and buy your course.

It’s Time to Launch Your Course!

Okay, that’s everything I have to teach you.

While there are many different ways to promote and sell your course, what I’ve taught you in this module should give you a solid foundation for success.

Remember, a course is a valuable digital asset whose rewards you can reap for years. But it won’t sell itself.

Good luck!

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