Doesn’t selling your course before creating anything sound nice? You can! Pre-selling your course can be positioned in several different ways; such as a beta launch, a founding member launch, or just simply called ‘pre-selling.’ You can create a pre-selling launch plan around your next, or first, online course before you create or record any content for it.

Nobody wants to spend time creating something that ends up not selling or being what your ideal audience needs right now, right? Pre-selling your course to the rescue!

The Benefits of Pre-Selling a Course

The main benefit is selling before you spend the time creating all of the modules, lessons, and content. Creating a course is a big project, and it can be a little discouraging to spend so much time creating the perfect course to hear crickets when your cart opens.

Pre-selling your online course is also a great way to validate your course idea, and you can even have your first round of students help you create the content they need. Some course creators do the pre-selling round live, so they work along with their students and deliver the best training, resources, and content they need. The insights, feedback, and testimonials you can receive from these initial students can be invaluable!

What You Need to Know First:

You need to know a few things before you try to pre-sell your course.

1) Your Course Promise

Your first round of students will need to know and understand the course promise. What are the end results they will receive by signing up for this course?

2) Your Course Outline

You’ll also need to have a general outline of your course or format for the live round. Nobody will sign up for a pre-sell offer if they don’t have enough details to make an informed decision. So while you don’t create the content yet, you do need to have it planned and mapped out in a rough plan.

3) Your Messaging and Ideal Audience

Pre-selling is still similar to selling; people will be buying knowing that they won’t have access for a bit. This means you need to entice them even more, to buy now, which is why nailing down your messaging and your ideal audience for your course is still key if you are doing a pre-sell launch.

Pre-Selling Your Course:

There are 3 key steps to putting your pre-launch course out there and getting your first students in the doors.

1) Create a Pre-Selling Launch Plan

Pre-selling a course is still a launch, and it requires a launch plan. Usually, this is on a smaller scale, but it’s still a launch plan. You need to map out your content, email sequences, promo offers and create excitement around your launch!

2) Create Your Course Pre-Launch Goals

Make sure that you set some goals for your pre-launch. Will you be doing a live round so you only want a handful of students to sign up so you can focus more on their needs and learn from them while you work through the course together? If you do, make sure to add that into your marketing plan content — ‘Only 10 spots available!’

Otherwise, let’s set some other goals around your launch:

• How many pre-sell students would you like to have in your course?
• What revenue will that result in for your pre-launch?

3) Implement Your Pre-Selling Marketing Plan

Now it’s time to announce your course to the world! So exciting that it’s launch time, and you haven’t had to actually create your course yet.

Is this something you are looking forward to trying? I believe in you! If you need help, please reach out to us here.