Behind the Scenes: Impact More Lives with an Online Birth Course
What if I told you there is a way to impact 10x more clients than you could physically serve in the entire lifespan of your doula business?
If you’ve been wondering how to build a sustainable online birth course, then get out a pen and paper, this episode is for you.
Things you’ll learn in this episode:
What you need to be doing before you even think about creating an online course…
The one task that course creators ALWAYS seem to forget…
My 7 phases to creating your online course sustainably…
… and a whole lot more!
Let’s dive into my 7 phases of building (and launching!) a successful online course as a birth doula.
Of course, there is no one right way to create an online course, but I see so many women who are not taking the best approach… So I’m gonna let you guys in on my 7-phase process that lays out everything you need to have a successful online course!
(PSA, I use this process in every single launch I do. This is not just for using the first time you create a course.)
Let’s get into it!
Phase #1: Grow your audience.
One of the biggest ideas I teach my business students is that you need two simple things to create an online business: An audience, and an offer. And in that order. Grow your audience before you create that offer.
…Why? After growing your audience, you need to survey them to see what they even want. Don’t create an online course that you need, because you're not the person who's going to buy it! You need to create an online course that you know your people want, and are actually going to buy.
Then you’ll be able to sell it using the words that they use, the pain points that they use, and highlighting the outcome that they want to achieve. But we can't know all of that unless we have an audience first.
I'm not talking about just an Instagram audience. I am a huge fan of growing your email list, and the purpose of social media is to get people onto your email list. (Which is a key part of growing your audience.) There is no magic number, but my goal for you is to have 500 people on your email list. If you can bust your butt and make that happen, you are more than ready to launch an online course.
Phase #2: Validate your idea for your course.
Once you grow your audience, you’ll start creating connections and having conversations with your audience. You need to find out what they are looking for in a birth course, or postpartum, or breastfeeding, whatever your niche is.
My *favorite* way to do this is through Instagram stories, using the poll feature. I’ll ask my audience, “Has anyone ever taken an online birth course before?” I give them four options to choose from.
Yes, and I loved it.
Yes, and I hated it.
No, but I want to.
No, and I really don't want to.
After I get some responses, I’m going to DM every single person who responded to this poll and ask them very specific questions depending on what they answered.
Answer: Yes, and I loved it.
DM: Which course did you take? Why did you love it? How was it delivered? Was it live? Was it pre-recorded? How much did it cost? Was there anything you didn't like about it?
Answer: Yes, and I hated it.
DM: Which course did you take? How much did it cost? How long was it? Why didn't you like it? What would have made it better?
Answer: No, but I want to.
DM: What are you looking for? What kind of lessons would you like? What's the price point that you’re looking for? Do you prefer live classes? Do you prefer it to be pre-recorded? Would you enjoy any community aspects?
Answer: No, and I really don't want to.
DM: Why?
The group of people with the last response is particularly important because you can now take what they tell you and make sure the course you're delivering does not include things that they hate about other birth courses. Put it front and center on your sales page. In your webinar, in your email sequences, and anywhere you’re promoting this course, use the exact words these people gave you.
After you get all of your responses, copy and paste all of them into a massive spreadsheet. This spreadsheet will serve as inspiration for your sales page, your emails, and anything else you are using to promote your online course.
Phase #3: Pre-sell your course.
Don’t create any assets for your course until you have done a pre-sale. Don’t film any videos, make any PDFs, scripts, or sales pages until after you pre-sell your course.
I've done it as early as four months before a launch, and I've also done it only four weeks before a course launch. And both of those work fine for me. The goal here is that you are testing everything. Your copywriting, your market, your audience, and your offer. You're seeing if people even want it.
Why? Because there's a chance that nobody wants your course. And that's okay! If they don't want it, we're not going to make it. Or we're going to go back in the process and change copywriting, design, the checkout page, whatever needs to be changed…and launch it again.
How do you do a pre-sale?
I do my pre-sales through Instagram and my email list. Typically, I have people on a waitlist at least a week in advance, send out five emails over five days, and then invite people to join my course. Why would they want to join four months early before the actual course is created? Because they are getting the “founding member” price, which is just a very big discount for trusting me without knowing exactly what's going to be in my course.
Why would someone take the risk and prepay? The reason is that they trust you. You have spent so much time creating and nurturing this audience that you now have people saying, “Wow, I'm going to buy whatever she creates because I just vibe with her so much. I love how she presents herself, and I love that she shows up so much on Instagram and in my inbox, so I'm going to buy.”
Phase #4: Create the course.
When it comes to creating the course, a lot of people freak out and say, “Oh my gosh, this is the hardest part. What tech do I use? How do I film? What do I put in the background for the video? How do I edit? How do I make the lighting look good?”
This is totally normal to think because it's something that most of you have probably never done before. Fear of the unknown. But I want to let you know that creating the course itself is really not that scary. The tech is not as difficult as you think. You can record your videos on your phone and edit them in iMovie. Or you can buy ScreenFlow, which is what I use.
You learn you learn by doing.
And it's actually not as hard as you think. Especially when you're following all of these phases in the right order, because you’re creating the course that people already bought in a presale!
Phase #5: Launch.
Launching your course means you have doors open for about seven days, and then doors close. During that week, you are going hard. You're emailing your audience 10 emails over seven days, talking about your course all over Instagram, and it's 100% full-steam promotion mode.
Phase #6: Deliver your course.
If you're creating a more comprehensive course, anything above $300, the delivery is extremely important. And I know when a lot of people are starting out, they DO NOT want to show up live. They think I’ll be awkward, they’ll make mistakes, or even not know the answer to a question. (I know this because I’ve felt all of these feelings myself.)
I truly think that every online course should have some sort of live component—this creates a start date and an end date. I think you should go through the entire thing together with all the students and have that sense of community.
Why? Because you’ll get real-time feedback on your course, especially the first, second, and third time that you're launching. Don't just have a do-it-yourself course right off the bat. Even if that’s a goal for your course down the line, don’t start off that way. Feedback is essential to curating an amazing online course, and a live component is the best way to get that feedback.
A few options for live course components:
Weekly Q & A on Zoom
Weekly guest speakers on Zoom
Private Facebook group
Private Slack workspace
Phase #7: Launch debreif.
Create a Google Doc called “Launch Debrief”. Once your launch is over, you're gonna dump ALL of your thoughts/observations about the launch into one place. Anything and everything. Here are a bunch of questions you can answer in your debrief (in no particular order):
How much did money you spend on ads?
How much return on investment did your ads bring in?
How many new email subscribers did you get during the pre-launch period?
How many people visited your sales page?
What was your sales page conversion rate?
How many people clicked from your sales page to your checkout page and then converted from there?
How many people got your freebie? ( And how many people have visited your freebie page during this time?)
How many people registered for your webinar?
How many people showed up for the webinar?
How many people that registered for your webinar and showed up actually ended up buying your program?
How much money did it cost you for every webinar registrant (if you run ads)?
How many sales did you make during the pre-sale?
How many emails did you send during the pre-sale? And what was the open rate on those emails? And which email caused the most people to buy your course?
How many people bought during the seven-day launch? Did those people get on your list a year ago? Or are those people brand new to your email list?
How many people bought your course through an affiliate? (And how much did you payout to affiliates?)
How many scholarships did you give?
How many people just straight up bought your course from Instagram?
What was your actual revenue?
What is your actual profit in the end?
After you get all these analytics, you’ll use them to determine what you will and won’t do next time.
Debriefing is something a lot of course creators skip, but I strongly urge you not to! It’s so important to debrief immediately after the pre-sale, launch, and delivery of your program while it’s all fresh in your brain. Then based on your debrief, you’re ready to plan your next launch. Even if it’s six months away.
Alright, that was a lot of high-level information. Make sure to review all 7 of the phases: grow your audience, validate, pre-sell, create, launch, deliver, debrief. It’s super important that you do it in that specific order, because without an audience, you can’t validate or pre-sell. Without a pre-sale, you can’t confidently know anyone wants to buy your course.
You get the idea.
Take it one step at a time and don’t get ahead of yourself.
thank you for listening
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Meet your host, Kyleigh Banks, a side-gig doula turned CEO of a multi-six-figure birth-focused business. Her passion? Teaching birth nerds, like you, how to build an incredibly successful doula business that allows you to quit your day job, stay home with your kids, and most importantly, make a lasting impact on the world.