If you’ve ever spent ages creating an event or digital product then had just one or two people sign up…you’re not alone. I’ve done it too. It’s hard.
I’ve also worked with clients who know how to avoid this, so I thought I’d share what does work:
1. Have a decent-sized audience and have a good proportion of them on a mailing list. I know, easy to say but takes several years of consistent effort to do. Posting a couple of LinkedIn posts to an audience of a few hundred people – maybe even a few thousand – will not fill an online course. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, but you need to be realistic about the likely results to avoid being disappointed.
2. Paid advertising. Many experts who have built a good-sized audience are also using paid advertising to reach new prospects. They aren’t doing it with ‘free’ social media alone, but it’s not easy to spot this because you won’t see the ads unless they are targeting you.
3. Getting help from other people (free). If you are using your network to help you promote then give them plenty of notice of your launch so they can work it into their social media calendars and mailings. Make it as easy as possible for them to share – give them links, images, a few sentences of copy so they can understand what it’s about and who it would best suit. Make sure you are also getting people on your mailing list so that you are growing your audience for next time. And return the favour, of course. The success of this will depend on how big your network is, your relationship with its members and how similar their audiences are to the audience you want to grow.
4. Getting help from other people (paid, using affiliates). Many of the big names are using affiliates to promote their digital products. And the affiliates will do a VERY good job of promotion because it’s typical for a product creator to give away 50% of the sale price to the affiliate. So if the expert has big names raving about their programme, the chances are the big names are getting paid thousands per sale. I have used affiliates myself (albeit for much smaller, cheaper products) so I’m not passing judgement here. It can work well. But it’s not something you can do quickly or easily.
None of the above are quick or easy, sadly. I wish they were. But the best time to get started is now, because next time you want to launch something, you’ll have a bigger audience to launch it with.