There’s so much online chatter about the “best” way to launch a digital course. Honestly, it makes my head spin just thinking about it.
“Host a webinar and only promote to the people who show up.”
“What are you talking about? Challenges are waaay better at getting people to buy a course.”
“If you don’t have an email list of at least 10,000 subscribers, you have no business launching in the first place.”
This advice isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s not good either. Because most of the advice like this is based on someone else’s experience, audience, and course topic. What worked for them may not work for you. And to understand how you need to launch your course, you want to understand what it is that makes your audience take action. For some people, that’s not sitting through a 60 minute webinar. For others, it is.
But, that’s not why we’re here…
…this post is all about the copy assets you’ll need to write to make your preferred launch method work (a.k.a. people buy and you make money).
What are launch assets?
Assets are just a fancy way of saying the written things your audience needs to see so they can learn more about your course and how to enroll in it. These “written things” can be sales pages, emails, social media posts, thank you pages, etc. The more involved your launch is, the more assets you’ll need.
Alright, let’s see what you’ll need for your launch…
Launch style #1: The Simple Launch
This is perfect for a first time launch or someone who doesn’t have the ability (or desire) to go all in with webinars or challenges. With this launch style, you’re basically launching to your current audience – which could be your email list, social media followers, or both.
The launch assets you’ll need for a simple launch are:
-Course sales page
-Buyer thank you page
-Launch email sequence
-Launch social media captions
-New student welcome emails
Launch style #2: The Webinar Launch
This launch is perfect for anyone who loves showing up on camera to share value with their audience. It also works well if your audience needs a chance to get to know you better before you promote your course. Because of the visual and educational aspects of a webinar, it’s one of the best ways for people to figure out if you’re someone they can confidently learn from.
Another benefit of the webinar launch is that you’re also building an email list of people specific to your course. With this launch style, you’ll need a little more time in your calendar to promote your webinar before you promote your course.
The launch assets you’ll need for a webinar launch are:
-Course sales page
-Buyer thank you page
-Course launch email sequence (If promoting to your current list + webinar registrants)
-Course launch social media captions (If promoting to your current audience)
-New student welcome emails
-Webinar registration page
-Webinar promo emails (promoting the webinar)
-Webinar promo social media captions (promoting the webinar)
-Webinar welcome emails
-Webinar follow up emails (promoting your course)
You’ll notice with this launch that you also have the ability to promote to your current email list at the same time you’re promoting your course to your webinar registrants. Not only does this increase your chances of getting more enrollment during your launch, it also means more writing for you. Give yourself plenty of time to get it done before cart open day!
Launch style #3: The Challenge Launch
This launch style is very similar to the webinar launch. You’ll need extra time to promote the challenge before cart open day for your course. You also have the option of promoting to your “challengers” and your current email list. But, a challenge is a bit more time consuming because you’ll have to devote time to show up during the time that you’re hosting everything.
The launch assets you’ll need for a challenge launch are:
-Course Sales Page
-Buyer thank you page
-Course launch email sequence (If promoting to your current list + challengers)
-Course launch social media captions (If promoting to your current audience)
-New student welcome emails
-Challenge registration page
-Challenge promo emails (promoting the challenge)
-Challenge promo social media captions (promoting the challenge)
-Challenge welcome emails
-Challenge follow up emails (promoting your course)
If you’re looking at this list of assets and feeling overwhelmed, that’s totally normal! So much work goes into launching a course. And this doesn’t even take into account the time spent creating course content, recording lessons, creating downloads, etc.
I can’t stress enough the importance of giving yourself plenty of time to get everything in order before cart open day.
It’s your copy and these assets that will make or break your launch, so don’t rush through the writing process. And if you need a hand figuring out what to say on your sales page to make your course sound valuable, or how many emails to send out each day, check out my Writing Workshops.
Before you go, I’d love to know what questions you have about writing launch copy.
Leave them in the comments and I’ll be back with an answer!
Who knows, if it’s juicy enough, I might even write a whole blog post about it.