If you have an online course, you need a course marketing strategy.  One of the best ways you can improve your own marketing skill is to study the pros.  This is true in almost every walk of life, and marketing is no exception.  In this video, I break down some key elements of the course marketing strategy that Michael Hyatt is using in the launch of his Best Year Ever product.

 

See it on YouTube here.

[Transcript:]

Last week we talked about this content from Michael Hyatt and all this stuff about goals and so forth for 2016. That’s really important and I hope you’re working on your 2016 goals. If you want to check out Michael Hyatt’s stuff, you can go to LateNightIM.com/bye.

What I want to talk to you about today a little bit is the kind of marketing lessons that you can learn from watching a guy like Michael. He’s launching this course in late December 2015 / early January 2016, just like he does at the end of every year. It’s evergreen content, although he updates it every year. It’s one of the core products that he has.

The way that he launches this product is with ideas that are from something called the Product Launch Formula, which is a phrase originally coined by a guy named Jeff Walker. There are a lot of ideas in the Product Launch Formula and there’s a big course that you can take about the Product Launch Formula, but there are some fundamental marketing lessons and truths that you can find in the Product Launch Formula that you can see in Michael Hyatt’s launch that I think are interesting and that you should think about in your own marketing.

Some key elements that you see in the Product Launch Formula, typically what you see is people will release some free content, typically videos, sometimes short reports, PDFs or other kinds of online downloadable material that is available for a short time and in phases. Typically what you see is they’ll release video one, video two, video three, and then the fourth video will essentially be a sales video and the cart will open, for a limited time the product will be for sale, and then the cart will close. This is the typical kind of thing you’ll see with Product Launch Formula.

This is no different with Michael’s launch. Right now, in December of 2015, Michael has a PDF that he’s given out and a software tool that runs in Excel that’s an assessment tool you can use and that’s related to the product. And I happen to know since I’m an affiliate that he has three videos planned behind this.

All of these things have a central element in them; they all stand alone as being valuable content. If people download this stuff (which you can find at LateNightIM.com/bye) they will be better for it. The content that’s there is valuable and good and stands on its own. It’s not marketing fluff. There’s actionable stuff in that content that will actually help people all by itself.

In some sense, the phrase that you hear is “giving away the best stuff for free.” There’s really good stuff in there. It’s limited because each video is only five or 10 minutes, but it’s great stuff. Some of the best stuff that Michael has to offer is in those videos.

Now, what are the marketing characteristics and lessons you can learn from this type of approach?

One thing is value. Delivering value. After all, all business is an exchange of value, a value proposition. If you are going to get someone to give you those little green things, that’s value – money represents value. They want to exchange that at very low risk for some value that you have to offer.

What better way to let them understand how valuable the content you have to offer is than by giving them some free samples? You see this all the time in Sam’s and Costco. Some guy is selling sausage or pastries, or whatever, and he’s out there giving free samples.

That’s essentially what Michael is doing here with his implementation of the Product Launch Formula, he’s giving out free samples of his work to people so that they can understand what to expect when they click that buy button and hand over their money in that shopping cart.

That’s the first marketing idea; establishing trust that the value is really there. That’s a great thing.

The second thing is that the videos aren’t there forever. There is urgency and scarcity in this Product Launch Formula marketing plan. The videos come out, you can watch them for awhile, and when they’re gone they are absolutely gone, you can’t find them anymore. The product launch itself where you’re able to buy the product is also scarce. There’s a certain amount of time in January that you can buy this product and after that this thing is closed until the next calendar year in December. If you don’t get the product now, you won’t be able to get it. You won’t have the opportunity to start this in July, for example.

So there’s the establishment of trust for the value proposition, there’s the demonstration of the value proposition in the marketing content itself, and then there’s scarcity in this marketing campaign and urgency.

It’s not artificial scarcity, particularly in this case. This is a course about how to have a better year, that’s a thing in January. We’re going to do this thing in January and then we’re done with it. That’s how Michael runs it and it makes sense. It’s a real, honest, ethical approach with a lot of integrity. Michael is helping people here no matter what. Whether you buy the product or not you can get help from Michael through the pre-sale videos, and if you buy the product you’re going to get something really great.

Those are the marketing lessons that you can see. You can learn a lot about marketing from following these guys like Michael Hyatt that really know what they’re doing and you can apply these even in a small way to your own products. Give away some great stuff. Build a list. When it comes time to sell basically what you’re saying is, “Hey guys, you know me, my stuff is great. Here’s something else I have that’s great that you can pay for if you would like.”

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