3 Mistakes to Avoid as a First Time LearnDash Online Course Developer
My team and I work with a lot of business owners that build their LearnDash online course platform without first confirming their course will sell. They make a whole bunch of assumptions about what their ideal customer want and do some guest work to come up with their pricing.
Basically, they go with their gut, then...
The course doesn't sell.
This is something I aim to prevent. As business owners, we cannot afford a mistake like this.
Let me spell out 3 mistakes all business owners must avoid as they work at launching their first online course.
Mistake #1 - Failing to Confirm What Your Customer's Biggest Challenge
In my Breakthrough Course Selling System, Step 1, the very first and important step of the system, is to Acknowledge your Contaminated Thinking. Assuming your are an expert in your field, otherwise you shouldn't be launching a course on your topic, you are far removed from your target customer's experience with your topic. It's been a VERY LONG TIME since you were a newbie on your topic.
As a result, it's tough for you to relate and connect with potential customers experience.
Here is an example of what a customer I worked with using the same process from my Breakthrough program. This course builder was an expert on career development, leadership, motivation and team building. He was recognized in academic circles. There was no doubt about his expertise given he had authored a number of books. His textbooks were being used to teach university level courses.
When we first spoke, his idea was to publish an online version of one of his textbooks. He had great content to work with, but that was a pretty thick book.
My immediate concern was that he seemed to be disconnected from his potential buyer. Selling on online courses is very different from selling textbooks to college students. Students need to buy the book to get through a course. They get it using a set process set out by schools and the publishing companies that support them.
That is NOT the case with people buying anonline course. These aren't people looking to learn so they can acquire a degree in the subject. What I always stress is that our potential customers have a problem that we work with them to solve. Your online course needs to serve as a bridge taking them from their current situation, past a problem they need to solve and to their future state where the problem is solved. This guy seemed to be missing the point that his customers are looking to fix something that is broken.
He was having a hard time seeing this. I interviewed him looking for examples of people he had helped using the content in his book. He gave me plenty of examples, but the two that seemed to be good targets for him to address were:
- Women wanting to adjust their careers after having children
- Men between 55 and 65 looking to change their careers late in life before retirement.
Discussing that with him, and this took a lot of work, I was able to get him to see how by narrowing his target audience and the topics covered in hist book, he could address the very specific problems these groups of people had.
These people have career problem. He had a process in his book he could offer to get these people past these predicaments.
This led to some good discoveries on his part. Using content from only a few chapters in his book, he had a solution to offer. He could walk these folks through his process and guide them to the other side. It made for a simple, straight-forward process and matched a problem potential customers needed solved.
Working with this sort of guiding principles is key when launching a course so it's connecting people. It's even better if you can connect in an emotional way like might be the case with working mothers struggling with how to balance their careers and parenting so they work better for them.
Mistake #2 - Putting Too Much Content in the Course
This is a problem that shows up because an issue similar to the one in Mistake #1. Going back to the goal of solving a problem, it's important to remember that your customer not only wants to solve a problem. They want to do it efficiently. You might find some people that just love to read and learn and expand their thinking. Don't assume that is the case. They have a lot going on and this is likely one of many problems they want to solve
Many course builders think of all the products we have bought over the years and remember the special bonuses that often get included. It's easy to start thinking, "More is better." That is usually not the case.
So your priority should be to
- get them past your problem and
- do so in as efficient a way as positive.
Clients are not looking to know all you know about your topic. They want to learn enough to get past their problem and feel confident they have learned enough to address it.
An added benefit of this is you can package a very specific and tight course addressing their problem. It could be that it's the first problem in a series of problems your customer needs to solve.
You can make your course a solution for problem #1. Then offer a problem that takes over where course #1 ends and address a second problem your customer needs to address. This second sales is very different from the first. If your first course experience was a good one, you have built a lot of credibility with your customer. They should now consider you "THEIR" expert. Selling them the next thing and at a higher price should be an easery transaction for the customer.
Mistake #3 - Working on the Technology First
My team and I build LearnDash online courses. It's what we do. I'm a developer. Our team is made of a really technical crew.
As much as I would enjoy working with you on the technology, I advise all first time course builders to NOT focus on the technology at first. Focusing on the technology usually becomes a distraction. It makes you feels like you are making progress, but you aren't making the progress that is most important first.
The top priority needs to be to confirm your course will sell. It needs to be to get it selling even before you have a course the course ready to sell. In my Breakthrough program, I right out recommend, "Sell the course so you are 100% sure you have a good seller. Prove to yourself that you can sell it. Then work on the other stuff." Technology falls into this last category.
In Step 7 of my 9 step program, I give all the technical information necessary for an initial launch of your program. It should take you no more than 2 to 4 hours to get it set up and ready to go. That includes how to accept payments.
Unfortunately, I have a lot of business owners that find me to get there technology working. We can certainly do that, but it could be an investment in technology that gets a course up and running, but it ends up being a course that nobody wants.
FYI. I offer my Breakthrough Course Selling System with the process we recommend people follow to get their course vetted using tried and true methods. Take a look. It might be exactly what you need.
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