Introduction
When is the right time to launch your digital course? Is it in the summer, the fall, January 1, or April 28?
This is a reasonable question. You put so much effort into the creation of a truly fantastic and meaningful course that the last thing you want is to scuttle your efforts with a poorly chosen course launch date.
Why, then, if this is something that is so important, can you not find a clear answer anywhere? Search Google and you get answers that tell you to analyze your course, your audience, and a list of other things. In other words, no straight guidance here.
You have two choices to make, you can simply draw a date out of the hat and hope for the best OR you can follow the same guidance that I give my digital course clients when they are wrestling with the question of when to launch.
If you chose Door B, following the guidance that I offer my clients, stick around. Today we will be covering the three factors that you have to take into account and in the Sixty-Second Solution I’m going to share with you the secret to a successful course launch that will have you kicking yourself at the simplicity of it all.
When To Launch
You’ve probably asked this question in a Facebook group, or of a mentor. Maybe you’ve tried to scour the internet or asked ChatGPT to tell you when the best time to launch a digital course is. Chances are you got a vague answer.
This question is kind of like what sneaker should I buy? Well, the answer depends on what you are using the sneaker for. Are you an Olympic athlete running a marathon, a Dad chasing after his kiddos at the playground, a nurse who is on the go for 12 hours at a time, or someone who just wants comfortable shoes for everyday wear.
Then there are questions like, do you have high arches, low arches, or no arches. Do you have a color preference, I do – I love a great purple shoe, and do you pronate your foot when you move?
These are all reasonable questions designed to get you the right sneaker for your needs. We don’t hesitate to dig into all of those questions so that the sneakers not only fit well, but they last and serve their purpose.
If we expect to answer a lot of questions and dig into options for something as mundane as choosing a sneaker, why wouldn’t we expect to answer just as many, if not more questions when choosing a digital course launch date.
We are putting out heart, soul, and expertise into a course that thousands will benefit from for years to come. We are counting on revenue from this venture to be able to continue our business and even see it grow.
We have to expect to answer some questions. But what are the right questions to ask?
The reality is that sometimes there is a best time to launch based on your course topic and sometimes there is a best time to launch based on your personal schedule, and sometimes every day is a perfect time to launch your course.
Let’s break down things to consider when choosing your launch date.
Seasons
The first thing to consider is probably the easiest to determine. Does your potential course student have a busy season that would create an objection to your course?
For example, if you have a well-being and stress course for tax professionals, you can assume that they don’t have a lot of free time from January – mid-April. Then they need a little time to decompress after working long hours during the tax season here in the USA.
If you have a course on lesson planning simplified for teachers, you wouldn’t choose August to launch your course because teachers are in the thick of Back to School nights, getting their classrooms set up, and trying to learn about their new students. They are exhausted. However, they have more time in the summer and your course could help them with the upcoming year.
I’m sure you are seeing where I’m going with this. Look at the calendars of your potential digital course students. If you don’t really know what might be best for them, I highly encourage you to have more conversations with the folks who will be purchasing your course. Not only will this help you choose the best time to launch, you will learn more about the kind of messaging you need to include, where their sticking points are, even what bonuses and formats you want to explore.
By understanding your potential student’s calendar, you start to know them better and can really help them on a different level than just saying, “I have this knowledge and expertise formed over 20 years of experience, come buy my course”.
Now, obviously, I know you aren’t going to say those exact words, but when we launch on a tone deaf way to our audience they are going to be wary of purchasing. Let’s make it easy to say yes by showing that you’ve done your homework, you know what they need and want, and your course is going to actually make their life better unlike so many of the solutions that they’ve already tried.
If this is feeling a little overwhelming right now, be sure to stick around to the Sixty-Second Solution where I share with you the secret to a successful course launch that will have you kicking yourself at the simplicity of it all.
Personal Life
But just thinking about your potential student’s calendar is a recipe for disaster. Think about the last time you cooked a huge meal and used all of the pots and pans in your kitchen. That is the kind of disaster I’m talking about. Endless scrubbing of those dishes to clean up the mess.
If you fail to take into account your personal life when choosing a launch date, you will regret it. No doubt about it.
Yes, we should do what is best for our client, but if we have something big going on in life like a child graduating high school and moving away to college, a wedding or birth of a child coming up, or maybe you have a busy season if you are working a 9-5. You have to think about your energy, time, and availability.
I was recently reading about one course creator who wanted to have a backend offer for their digital course. A backend offer, if you’ve never heard this term before, is where you offer a way to keep working and get support after the course has ended. It often takes the form of a membership or mastermind type experience. This course creator noted that at the end of the course, they wouldn’t be available for the first month following that time – what could they do to still have a backend offer? This was the first time they had launched the course and so they didn’t already have something in place. Students were asking for the next step, which is AMAZING and a testament to just how well done the course was. This is also an example of needing to plan out not just when the launch will happen, but your time through the course if you are providing support and immediately after to get people going on the backend offer. It might mean condensing your course delivery timeline to make sure that you are available at the end of the course to get your students into the next phase of their journey, or it might mean that you plan the backend offer to be low key for the first month to give them time to continue working through the course. There are so many options, but they all require that you put some time into looking at your calendar not just for when to run a challenge or webinar, but also what the delivery and backend offer delivery timeline look like.
And for just a moment, I’ll bring you back to the concept of looking at the seasons of busy-ness that your potential students go through. You want to think about the length of the course when planning dates. If you have a course for tax professionals, you don’t want them to be in the height of the course in April here in the United States. I guarantee that they will fade from the course and will not have time to stay engaged.
If you are thinking that this is getting really complicated really quickly and you are just wishing that A.I. would give you a simple answer…or that I would give you a simple answer to such a big question, stick around for today’s Sixty-Second Solution because I do have a really simple idea for you that will make all of the chaos fade away.
The Perfect Time
Now what happens if you are listening and thinking that your schedule is perfectly open and your clients don’t have a busy season? Then you could launch pretty much any time. That is a great opportunity.
You don’t want to just go put a date on the calendar though. Let’s talk about some things to think about even if scheduling isn’t a challenge.
First up, you want to make sure that you build in enough time to build your audience, help them get to know you so that when you do make your course offer, they feel comfortable with the idea of working with you. We want time to show them that we can help.
That can include offering lead magnets, being a guest on podcasts and sharing your own podcast episodes. It might also include, and should include, emailing your current list of followers and subscribers. The key is to make sure that you are not just opening the door and yelling, “Hey! I have a course for you, come and buy it!” While that might work once you are well-established, especially as you are beginning you have to prove yourself to your audience.
Think about a 9-5 job that you might have worked. You had to prove yourself after being hired, in fact, you might have even had a probationary period of 30, 60, or 90 days where everyone was watching to make sure you were a good fit.
As you prepare to launch your course, think about that lead up as a probationary period where you need to show your potential students that you can and will help them. That means through tangible actions and not just fluff and motivational posts. We want them to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are the person to help them.
This time leading up to the launch of the course is often called a runway, but I think when we put that in our mind we create a checklist of things to do and go through the motions.
- Daily social media posts scheduled, check!
- Email sequence written and scheduled, check!
- New lead magnet created and sent to social, email list, talked about in podcasts, check!
You see where I’m going here. When you are in a probationary period at a job, it isn’t just about a checklist of things that you have to do. It is about making a difference, showing your unique abilities, skills, and ideas that can improve the situation. It is about getting involved and being a part of the community.
A runway image brings to mind the checklist that pilots and flight attendants go through as they prepare for take off.
Everyone will show up with that checklist. By showing up as though you were in your new employee probationary period, you are more likely to make a difference, stand out from the crowd, and be seen as the Go-To Resource for your potential students.
Action Item
If you are feeling fired up about launching and choosing your launch date, then it is time to take action from that place of motivation. And you know I’m big on taking action. Can you guess what this week’s action item will be?
If you guessed that you need to look at your potential students’ calendars to figure out what works best for them, and then compare it to your own calendar, you are right! But at the end of the day, you have to choose a date that does work for your schedule, even if that means that it is a little inconvenient for your potential students.
Remember that episode in the Gilmore Girls when Lorelei and Sookie were planning Lorelei and Luke’s wedding? Sookie found out the dates when everyone was available in the town and was trying to map the best choice. Then Lorelei found the perfect venue for a specific date that would work for her and Luke. She went with that date and it even worked for everyone’s schedule. The key is that she was taking all of these factors and then ultimately found a match between her schedule and everyone else’s schedule.
If you are finding it a little difficult to commit to a date, I want you to choose one and then DM me on Facebook or Instagram at DigitalCourseCreatorGuide and tell me what date you chose. Even if you don’t find it difficult to choose, let me know what date you have decided on. I love to be able to share digital courses with my audience.
And if you are listening and feeling a little overwhelmed and just need a simple answer to all of this choosing a launch date business, let’s hop into today’s Sixty-Second Solution because I have the answer for you that will have you kicking yourself at the simplicity of it all.
Sixty-Second Solution
Launching a digital course has a lot of moving parts, I think we can all agree to that. From what to include in your course to how to present the content, what launch mechanism you will choose, to whether you’ll offer live support to students as they go through the course, it can be a lot and lead us to freeze.
Add to that the decision of when to launch and what the best answer is to the date, it becomes a classic occasion of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
So here is the simple answer to keep you from experiencing that kind of stressful havoc. Just choose a date to launch and do it.
Yes, there are better times than others, yes you might be overlapping with a busy time period for your potential students or even your own life, but success as a digital course creator requires that you get your course out there and buy-able by potential students.
So whether you choose a fancy launch or a quiet email launch, choose a date and do it. With that first launch out of the way or a launch that you just need to make happen, you can then plan a more intricate or well-planning launch that takes into account everything we’ve talked about in today’s episode.
Where to Go Next?
The key here is to actually launch. Nothing will be perfect and in fact, you will get people reaching out saying this is a bad time no matter when you launch or how much thought you put into your timing. If at all possible, launch as often as humanly doable. I know several people who launch to a new group, affiliate style, every single month for an entire year to get the reps in and their revenue up.
With each launch you will get stronger, your messaging will become more refined as you know what objections to expect, what bonuses have people sitting up a little straighter, and what method of launch resonates best with your ideal student.
I trust that you are now ready to set your launch date with the research you are going to gather, or you are simply ready to launch and you’ll worry about all of the nitty gritty of choosing the right date on the next launch. Whether you are choosing the research route, or the jump right in route, there will always be next steps to take.
If you are ready to jump into launching your course, check out Episode 177: The 5 Reasons Your Digital Course Messaging Is Failing And What To Do Instead, Episode 165: Next Steps After Your Course Launch, and Episode 178: 5 Steps To Preventing Or Reducing Digital Course Refund Requests.
But I do recognize that even with permission to simply launch your course, it can be hard to take that next step. If you are experiencing Course Creation Paralysis, head on over to Episode 184: How to Overcome Course Creation Paralysis and Finally Launch Your Course.
Until next time, happy creating!
