Ep121 Transcript: 3 Types of Online Course Models – Quick Fix Friday

Are you considering launching an online course? Then tune into today’s episode of Quick Fix Friday, where I go into three different types of online course models.

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In episode 119, I talked to Dr. Mary Barbera about her online courses for parents of children with autism. She had several different online courses and a membership, and I wanted to dive into a couple of different models for creating an online course and talk about some of the advantages of each.

So she mentioned an evergreen course, and what does that even mean?

An evergreen course is typically something we talk about that is always available. You can get that course at any time. It’s just always there. Someone could come and purchase it, and one of the things that you have to consider with that is that, that course may not have some urgency around purchasing it right at that moment.

For Mary’s audience, parents of children with autism, there is some urgency. They need that information pretty quickly. They’re really wanting to learn more and wanting to get some immediate help, and that’s why she has gone with the Evergreen model.

But for people with information that may not be quite as urgent, it might be a little bit harder to get someone to buy right at that time. So you could consider something like an expiring bonus that they would only be able to get if they signed up in the next few days. And you’d have to have some sort of software that would detect whether or not they were coming in for the very first time. Same thing with maybe an expiring discount that’s also available. There’s a tool out there called Deadline Funnel that helps you determine whether someone has visited your website during a certain timeframe and will prompt them with that expiring bonus or expiring discount.

Mary does have a discount on her courses and that can help too because people may not know when that discount will go away. And she also, I know offers some different times of launching where she has some additional types of things that she gives away during that special bonus time. So that’s another thing to consider as well.

So that is what is called an evergreen course, and unless you have some sort of urgency, it can be a little bit challenging to get someone to buy at that moment.

The other thing Mary is doing is driving ad traffic to those courses all the time. And she mentioned on the episode that someone will probably buy it during the time we were recording, and that is because she’s got that traffic constantly on that landing page, she’s doing all different types of tests on whether that landing page is converting really well. She is a great marketer, and so that is definitely a takeaway is that it’s not just about building your course, it’s about really understanding the driving motivations that cause people to buy right at that time.

So the second type of course model is more of an open and closed model. A lot of times they talk about launching a course and you launch it for a certain time, maybe you do it a couple of times a year or maybe just once a year, and you’re launching that course in a much bigger way and focusing all of your marketing attention on launching that course, and what happens is that the course is only available to buy during a certain timeframe. Maybe it’s five days, maybe it’s 10 days. It’s a shortened buying cycle so that creates the urgency to get in at that moment. And so people will make that buying decision because they know they won’t be able to buy it again for another six months, or maybe even a whole nother year.

This works really well for businesses that just want to focus a lot of attention. They might have other things they’re doing throughout the year. They’re focusing a lot of attention on that course at that moment. Or maybe they have several courses that they’re launching a few different times during the year so that they can turn their attention to those different courses. And that is, I think, one of the best models for launching a course and having a course is this open and closed model because it does cause more buyers at the same time. You have this new influx of members right at the same time that you can focus on and turn your attention to and make sure that no one gets lost during the buying period, so that they’re all taking the material, consuming the material, and you can really focus everything on getting your new members. Into the course and really engaged in that material.

The third type of course is one I really like because it causes you to create the course right as you’re going. And this can be a little bit of a hybrid approach because you could have some of this live model with the launched course as well, and there is a specific timeframe that you’re launching that course, but it’s a live model where you’re delivering that content live and you know it could be called different things. Maybe it also could be a workshop or a live workshop or a live masterclass type of thing.

But what I like about this live model, Is that you have this forced timeframe to create the content. because I find that a lot of business owners think about launching a course and they’ve got one all planned out in their mind, but they never actually do it. And when you put something on the calendar and say, okay, we’re going to deliver a segment every week, it forces you to create that course and then, After you’ve created it, you can resell that in more of an evergreen way.

So it’s a great way to test out the content, seeing the reception of it without having to create something. Really big and maybe not ever complete it. And never launch it at all. So if you’re struggling with creating your course, I would definitely suggest trying that live model and just getting it out there into the world.

And if something doesn’t go quite right, that’s when you reiterate and try something new. Try some different marketing tactics perhaps, and you learn from that and keep going. So hope that was helpful and talk to you again soon.

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