Last month, we celebrated one of our most successful course launches EVER in the history of SK!! It was an INCREDIBLE week, and in this episode, I’ll detail the exact sales results, plus talk about why this launch was especially successful. Keep reading for our FULL online course launch report! You might find some of these practices helpful in your next launch, too!

In January of  2024, we launched our online course: YouTube for Business. We generated more than $30,000 during this course launch. I’m excited to recap our strategy leading up to the launch, how the launch went, and break down our exact sales numbers. Hopefully, this online course launch report inspires you to pursue launching digital products, too!

Where YouTube for Business Started

I have long felt that there was a need in the industry for a course that illustrated how to use YouTube to grow a business rather than an influence or content creator brand. Many business owners were left wondering how to use YouTube to drive sales of their products and services. 

YouTube for Business is about how to do that, plus, how to create a sustainable marketing strategy with YouTube. Done well, YouTube can take less time and be more effective than other popular platforms like Instagram.

Course Creation Timeline

I began outlining the course in early 2023. We sent out an audience survey in the summer of 2023, and hit the ground running with course preparation in September. 

One amazing thing that we did for this launch was bring on an extra set of hands! We hired a launch integrator, Caroline. We decided to begin the launch with a free live webinar followed by a five-day launch period where the course was available at a discounted price.

After the launch plan was finalized, I began filming course videos in November. The course was put together and beta testers began watching in December. I finalized most of my part of the launch before December, and I’m thankful because I had to unexpectedly take some time away from the business during the following months. 

We love inviting a small group of people to beta test our courses. This helps ensure any loose ends are tied up, gives us good feedback before launching, and helps us find any gaps the course might still have. The beta testing period happened from during the end of December.

Priming Our Audience

Four weeks before a launch, we begin priming our audience. This means all of our content centers around the new offer we plan to launch. I use our weekly emails to build my credibility and knowledge on that topic. Another goal is to prompt our audience to think about the topic in a way they haven’t before, all before we ever go to sell to them. We lead with real value, so that when the time to sell comes, it’s an obvious yes. We intentionally primed our audience across email, Instagram, and YouTube content. 

For this priming content, we leaned into the audience survey from months before. Many subscribers revealed that they felt YouTube would take too much of their time. In my emails, I explained that hosting a YouTube channel could take as little as four hours per week.

I addressed concerns like this one and many others with the content we put out in the weeks leading up to our official course launch. Our conversion rate for this launch was much higher than usual, and I think our intentional messaging during this time had a lot to do with that. 

Launch Timeline

Our launch timeline looked like this: From January 1st to January 10th, we promoted our free live classes. We held two webinars on January 11th, 2024. The course launched to the public on January 15th, and the launch week sale ended at midnight on January 19th. The course is available at full price in the SK shop at any time.

Typically, I hope for a 1-3% conversion rate. You can hear more about the conversion rates I strive for during launches in this podcast episode. However, my audience has grown a lot lately and there are people on my list for a wide variety of different reasons. As my audience has grown, I have noticed a decrease in my conversion rate, which is fairly normal. 

We had 900 people sign up for one of our webinar class times. 499 signed up for the morning class, and 401 signed up for the afternoon class. More people attended live in the morning (133 peak, 100 average) than in the afternoon (74 peak, 53 average). However, we sold 14 courses in each class. Meaning, the conversion rate was higher in the second class than in the first (105% and 18.9% respectively).

Promoting the Course

So, where do we find our webinar registrants? All of our marketing is organic, without paid ads. We pushed the webinar heavily in our email list (25,800 subscribers). About half of our registrants came from our email list. Our second biggest marketing platform for the event was Instagram, and YouTube was third. While we do not receive many live event registrations from YouTube, we do see most of our evergreen sales come from YouTube.

Total Sales from This Launch

Now, I’ll share the most exciting part of this online course launch report! We sold $8,500 during our live webinars, plus another $3,500 during the 48-hour webinar replays. During launch week, when the course opened to the public, we sold $16,200. We did about $5,000 on the last day of the launch alone. Be encouraged that if your sales are down during mid-launch, the last day almost always picks up steam!

Our total sales on the course alone was $28,389. Including upsells, we sold $30,951. 

I want to point out that many of these sales were payment plan options. Meaning, I did not receive the entire amount at once. Instead, I received about $21,000, and the rest of the amount (almost $10,000) will come over the next few months in the form of smaller payments.

Upsell Report

We love using Kajabi, however, we are still solidifying our upsell strategy. We have heard feedback that users do not like the layout of the followup offers. Still, we listed a few, and our most popular upsells go as follows. 19 people added on a product called “35 Days of Instagram.” If they turned down that purchase, they were pitched Inbox to Income, one of our other courses, as a downsell. 3 people purchased that course. Even though less people purchased it, it generated more revenue than 35 Days of Instagram because it’s a higher-ticket offer.

Evergreen Sales

Once a launch ends, we offer the replay of the free class as an evergreen freebie. We embed a video from Vimeo in a private Showit page to host the replay. To deliver the replay, we put the page on a twenty four hour countdown using Deadline Funnel and deliver it to subscribers via a Flodesk delivery email. I have found, in my own user behavior, this spurs me to watch a class rather than letting it sit in my inbox indefinitely.

We have already seen several sales from the evergreen replay which is very exciting! The course continues to convert well.

I hope you enjoyed this online course launch report as much as we enjoyed creating it! Please, send us any questions you have about launching digital products!

Our Offer Suite

At SK, we have launched several courses this year. We have gotten requests for a course all about launching, however, we plan to take a break from course launching for at least a year. Our focus now will be our evergreen sales and pointing people to our webinars. The SK offer suite highlights our three main courses (on Reels, Email Marketing and YouTube) which is such a wealth of knowledge for business owners. These courses directly answers the pain points of a lot of our audience in different ways. 

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