Introduction
The best way to build demand for your online course is with weekly content, or is it?
So often we are told that we need to build an audience so that when we launch a course, there will be eager buyers ready with their credit cards. To build an audience the direction often given is to create weekly content.
Why then, after creating and sharing weekly content for months and even years do course creators not have an audience primed for buying when they launch their course. It’s frustrating to spend hours each week crafting new and original content only for it to fall flat and get hidden in a crowded inbox or busy social media scroll faster than you can snap your fingers.
How are we supposed to build that audience when the advice doesn’t seem to work?
Today I’m going to walk you through why weekly content doesn’t build demand for your audience and what it actually does for you and your business.
With this simple shift you’ll finally start to see your weekly content gaining traction.
Is Creating Weekly Content Enough?
One of the biggest pieces of advice that you will find across the digital entrepreneur space is that you have to create content on a weekly basis. For some, this is no big deal. You love churning out content whether 1 person or 1000 people see it. For others, this feels like a burden, especially when it doesn’t seem to be gaining you any traction.
The reality is that simply creating weekly content will NOT build a loyal following or an audience with their credit card in hand ready to purchase your course when you launch.
Every digital entrepreneur is creating content, just like you, which is why it doesn’t work the way we hope and want.
Now, it might seem like I’m advocating for you to stop creating weekly content, but I’m actually not. I’m advocating that you think about and use your weekly content in a different way.
Let me give you an example of what I mean and then we will dig into the details.
Every week I publish a podcast episode. I’ve been doing this for several years and this is episode 204. But hitting publish does not bring me listeners or an audience ready to buy my services or courses. What does generate enthusiasm is using my podcast to build authority.
The reality is that we want to show up online, hit publish on some posts, a weekly blog, an email newsletter, a podcast episode and have people flocking to our side.
This doesn’t happen.
I am a big fan of consistency, hence the 204 episodes of this podcast, but hitting publish isn’t enough.
You have to make true connections with human beings through conversation while using your content to build authority. Now when I say true connections, these are connections where you don’t go in with an agenda in mind. That becomes very transactional and you can tell. It doesn’t create a foundation where there is mutual respect and back and forth. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve all had that one person who, when they reach out, it is because they want something. Either they are pitching something to you, or they need you to do something that will benefit them more than you. Or you’ve had conversations where someone offers to help you, but then they expect that you do something for them.
While there is a time and place for that kind of reciprocity, if you show up and create connections where you focus on the quality of the conversation rather than the outcome of the conversation then the reciprocity tends to show up in a really lovely way. Without any manipulation.
Let’s talk through 3 simple ways to make these connections happen, because goodness knows that can be a challenge for many, myself included.
1: Connect in Groups
One way to begin building connections and relationships that will bolster your efforts with the impact that your consistent weekly content has is to get involved in groups where you ideal client is already hanging out. As a course creator, chances are, you can already check this one off. If you’ve ever done research on what your ideal client needs and wants you probably found your way into these groups. You are in groups where your ideal course student is lurking or asking questions.
This is probably the simplest, lowest key, inexpensive way to begin making connections and can be done completely on your terms.
I trust that if you are listening to this podcast, you’ve gotten the vibe that I’m all about being kind and helping whenever possible. And I’m going to make another leap that you are the same. Kind human that you are, you will jump in to help answer questions in these groups.
You can spend a few minutes each day scrolling through groups and answering questions that don’t already have responses. This does a few things. Your expertise will stand out because you aren’t one of a hundred responses and you will really be helping someone who was vulnerable enough to say they needed help or didn’t understand something. They will be grateful for your ideas and help.
But how does this relate back to your weekly content that you are thoughtfully creating and publishing each week, whether it is a podcast, a newsletter, a blog post, a YouTube live, or something else?
When you are answering questions, what everyone is going to call “engaging in the group” and I call being a good human and helping others out, you can easily share something along the lines of. “You aren’t the only one who struggles with this! I was just talking about it on my podcast. I was sharing with my listeners 5 ways to manage this. What if you were to try “abc”?”
Here you have provided genuine help by offering a solution, one of the 5 ways you discussed on your podcast episode, the weekly blog, or your newsletter, and you’ve let them know that you have more to say on this. This opens the story loop to ask more questions and sets you up as an authority. It is also, even more importantly, allowing you to connect with that human being in a way that they will value. You have helped them by giving something specific to think about, a new way to do something that might be easier.
And this kind of connection can lead to a deeper layer of connection, often called coffee chats.
2: Coffee Chats
When we are trying to build a business, it isn’t just about posting online and then waiting for the requests to roll in. You’ve heard me talk about this in the past, if you simply build it, they will not necessarily come to your business, purchase your course, your coaching services, or your product. While consistency in publishing content is key to success, it is just one piece of building your business as a digital course creator.
We have to make those genuine connections. One way to do that is to have coffee chats with people who you’d like to connect with. Now, when I first started in business, I had to laugh a little because I don’t drink coffee. In fact, I pretty much stick to water, so I always felt a little weird saying, “Let’s do a coffee chat!” But now I love them and try to do a few each month.
If coffee chats are new to you, or you haven’t found them to be helpful in the past, let’s walk through what they are and how to make the most of them. Unlike connecting in groups online, coffee chats aren’t completely on your terms and they do take up more of your time BUT they create some really amazing outcomes.
Think of a time when you met a friend for lunch, a cup of tea, or just a walk in the park. This is essentially how you can think of a coffee chat inside your business. You are meeting with someone to talk and chat, in this case, about business. I have found that these coffee chats work best when you are NOT trying to sell anything.
The dynamic of having in the back of your mind that you want to sell your product or services changes the conversation. This doesn’t mean that if someone asks how they can work with you that you can’t let them know what you have to offer, it just shouldn’t be the main attraction.
In the past I’ve set up coffee chats as a way for people in course creator communities to be able to ask questions about their course or their business. This is why getting involved in communities can be helpful. It allows you to have a natural group of people with whom you might click, so to speak.
You can also set up coffee chats with people who are running complementary businesses. For example, I love when I get to sit down and talk with my friend, Tracy Beavers. She excels at organic growth on Facebook and teaches her students how to do the same. In fact, she was my guest in Episode 155. We regularly sit down to chat about business, how we can help one another, and just to chat about life. She is a business friend whom I value. There is natural reciprocity as we support one another, but more importantly I genuinely love our conversations.
You need both kinds of connections and should actively pursue both kinds of connections.
Now, when I first mentioned coffee chats I said that this is not entirely on your own time. These conversations can take longer than a quick 10 minute jaunt through a Facebook group, but they often go deeper than a simple post reply can go. You get to know a real human being, have a conversation with them, and start looking for ways to continue the connection.
We all do better when we all do better and these coffee chats are worth the time they take. Just this past week I had the pleasure to sit down with two different course creators for coffee chats. We talked about strategy, messaging, timelines, and our kids. We weren’t trying to sell anything, just connecting, getting feedback, and broadening our circle of connections.
I can honestly say that now I have a course that I can recommend on creating your visual brand strategy that includes making life easier when you are in Canva, and I can recommend retreats for women who want to get their next steps and goals planned out so that they can become reality instead of just a someday dream.
Before those calls, I couldn’t have told you who I would recommend, or even who to check out! Taking the time for coffee chats has been one of the biggest business growth tools for my own business and I’ve seen the same for others.
Just because we are online doesn’t mean we can just be keyboard warriors. We have to be human first.
But I do get that sometimes you need a little added oomph to this connection creation process. The first two ways we’ve talked about have been free aside from your time investment. This third approach to building connections will cost some money, but can speed up the timeline when done well.
3: Paid Ads
If you are looking to speed up the pathway to building connections so that your weekly content, whether it is a podcast, newsletter, live stream, or something else entirely has more impact, paid ads can be an option.
Unlike hosting coffee chats and getting involved in groups online, paid ads require you to make a monetary investment beyond the time investment that making connections typically require.
Paid ads are tricky, though, and if you ask 10 entrepreneurs for their thoughts on padi advertising, especially on social media you will get at least 10 opinions. Some people may have more than one opinion on paid advertising based on their experiences.
So let me walk you through how paid ads can help you to fasttrack building connections, as well as the cons of paid ads, and where to go if you would like to give ads a try but know that you don’t want to muck around without help.
First up, how can paid ads actually help you build connections? If you target the correct groups with your ads, you are going to have the opportunity to connect with the exact right audience, and in social media ads you can even set them up so that your ads are being shared with people most likely to spend money. As people comment on your ads, as they reach out for your resources and to join your email list, you have the opportunity to set up further conversations. They have already signaled that they are interested in what you have to offer and you can build the conversation and relationship from there. This doesn’t mean that you have to have 5 million coffee chats. Instead, you can create absolutely stellar email sequences that build demand by creating rapport, understanding what your potential clients need, and sharing solutions with them that make a difference. Of course, you can also open several slots on your calendar each week for coffee chats that your new followers can book in.
This sounds great, right? One of the biggest challenges that I hear from entrepreneurs is that they have these great ideas, their messaging is getting better each day, but how are they supposed to reach a wider audience? Paid ads can help you gain exposure, just like being a guest on podcasts, offering trainings in other groups, and networking.
Paid ads are another way to gain exposure. THey also help you to test things like offers and messaging faster so that you can make adjustments faster.
Paid ads are, indeed, a great way to build exposure, but you have to balance your budget and the time needed to learn how to implement ads effectively. I can tell you from personal experience that ads take a lot of work and adjustment. If you want to hand all of that off to an ads agency you can expect to pay a monthly retainer fee as well as a minimum in ad spend per month. This gets pretty expensive, pretty quickly.
If you want to do ads all on your own, you can expect to spend quite a bit of time learning the ads platform, testing audiences, formats, messaging, and adjusting based on data. I’ll be the first to tell you that if you are new to ads, get some help.
Help doesn’t have to be in the form of a full blown agency, in fact I recommend that anyone using paid ads as part of their exposure and growth strategy learns how ads work. This is the only way you will be able to partner with an agency and know when they are hitting the mark or not. Become baseline proficient with running your own ads first.
My favorite person to learn from and work with in terms of ads is Paul Pruitt. Paul and his wife Melissa focus on creating a really custom experience that goes deeper with fewer. They have two levels of memberships that give you access to hundreds of office hours each month with specialists in keyword research, ads setup, strategy, and more. On top of that they have great online courses that help you to learn to fish for yourself as well. So if you are sitting here thinking about adding paid ads to your business, connecting with Paul is the best first step you can take. I’ll pop a link in the show notes so that you can connect with him.
The key here is to know what your budget is and then stick to it knowing that ads are very much a process of trial and adjustment even with the best of support!
Action Item
Since the key to making the most of your weekly content is going to be building relationships, it is time to take action and build those relationships. As a quick review, we covered three ways to do that today. You can start amping up your participation in online groups and in-person groups where your ideal client is hanging out. Answer questions, post about what you have going on, and generally being a positive addition to the group.
Secondly, you can start having conversations with people in the form of coffee chats, whether you drink coffee or not. A great place to figure out who you want to have deeper conversations with is in those groups that you are being an active participant.
Finally, we talked about the concept of using paid ads to boost your reach and make it easier to find people with whom you might want to work or would benefit from your course, product, or other services.
The question I’ll put to you now is what makes the most sense as a starting place for you? If you are already active in groups but aren’t getting on a call with anyone, that might be a great next step. If you have coffee chats down to a science but simply don’t have enough of them and need more then you might consider paid ads.
Let me know what you are going to do for your business by sending me a DM on Facebook or Instagram at Digital Course Creator Guide.
What I have found is that strategy and action are key to having a six figure course creation business. Action without strategy is just a bungled mess of tasks that take up your time. You are hoping to stumble into success. Strategy without action is just a nice piece of paper that helps to fill your recycle bin or add to the clutter on your desk.
You need both strategy and action and that often comes with accountability. So be sure to send me that DM with how you will focus on building relationships in your business. I’ll be honest, it is this task that took me into profitability with my business and I’m confident that it will help you move forward as well.
Where to Go Next?
How are you feeling about making more of your weekly content? Have I successfully brought you over to the bright side of marketing? The one where we get to connect with amazing humans and as a result, build our course creation businesses to new levels?
I certainly hope so. Now in this episode we talked about weekly content, we talked about my friend, Tracy Beavers and her growth strategies, we talked about getting active in groups, and the possibility of adding paid advertising to your business strategy.
If you’d like to learn more about Tracy and her growth strategies, check out Episode 155, The Secret to Building Your Facebook Audience without Paid Ads. If you are looking for communities to join and finding the best matches, check out Episode 124, Building Your Network: Choosing the Right Community for Your Business.
Until next time, happy creating!
Show Notes
Connect with Paul Pruitt two different ways. You can check out his Ads Challenge or the Adaptive Marketing Program. I highly recommend both and have used both in my business as different points.
