 Well, hi, hello, and a warm welcome to this week's video. Today I'm going to share with you five simple steps to launch your online art course. In some previous videos, we've gone through how to turn a workshop into a course and how to create your winning online art course. So if you haven't watched those, make sure to check the description box below this video and check those out afterwards. All right, so what are we talking about today in terms of launching? It's about getting your course out into the world. As well as these five steps, make sure that you stay to the very end because I'm going to share with you a critical secret top tip that's going to really make the difference between your failure and success. Now if you're new here, a warm welcome, my name's Sophie, and I help artists to make a living from their art or creativity by building that stable, profitable business, doing, of course, what you love and what you're passionate about. And on this channel, we talk about all things art business related. So if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to get notified every time I post a new video. All right, so let's dive into those five steps. Step number one, it's all about preparation. So what should you be doing in terms of preparing yourself for launching your online course? Well, the first thing you've got to do is actually take some sort of planner and make sure that you block out time, anything from six to eight to 12 weeks before your online course is done. So as you can see here for Art Business Academy, we have lots of planners, and that's one of those. So you would actually say, I'm going to launch it over here and I'm going to block out the weeks beforehand so that you've got a period of time that you're going to focus on the launch of that course. The next thing you really want to do is get clear on the goal. What is your big goal for launching the course? It's likely going to be a number of people who purchase the course, but it might also be a financial goal because maybe you're going to do an early birth ticket or a variety of different offers. So you might say, well, my goal is to make X amount of income. Now just like we spoke in previous video, the next thing you need to do when you're preparing for your launch is to make sure you're super clear on that ideal customer and what they're really looking to gain from your course. Because it's all very well to dive into creating a fantastic course that you love, but the most important thing here is your customer. What are they actually going to gain from taking your course? So you're just going to check back in. Now you will have done all that work in if you'd followed the videos before and putting your course together, but right now we need to re-look at that as well because it's super important for the marketing and launching of your course that you understand what your audience is looking to actually gain, what their challenges and problems are at the moment and what they really want to learn. And of course, you also want to make sure that that course is going to deliver on that promise. So if you've really looked at exactly what your audience wants to achieve and you look back at your course and you think, oh, it's not quite delivering on that part of the preparation would maybe just do some alteration or add in an extra lesson to make sure that your course is really on point. So step number two is now the planning. So you've prepared, you've done a bit of preparation. Now you're going to be looking at the planning. What do you need to plan out specifically? Well, the first thing you want to do is you're going to decide and then plan out what type of launch vehicle you're going to use. What do I mean by that? Maybe you're going to do an online class like a webinar, or maybe you're going to do a short series of videos. Maybe you're going to run a challenge. Perhaps you have a Facebook group and a ready audience and you're going to run a five day challenge. There are various different ways that you can launch something like an online course, but you need to get really clear and plan out which one you're going to be using. The next thing you want to do is you want to go back to that planner and that period of time that you blocked out to do all that sort of pre-marketing, as it were, and you want to really decide and get clear on the actual dates you're going to have what we call the cart open. So that's when our people are able to buy the course. So then you say, OK, I'm going to, my first day for cart open is going to be Tuesday, this date of this month. And you mark it off in the calendar. I'm going to keep that open for five days, seven days, 10 days, 14 days. Now, I wouldn't advise having it open more than 14 days because if it becomes too easy and available for people to buy, they won't. All right, so you need to give them a short window for people to actually say, yes, I really want it or no, I don't. So you're going to mark out that period of time that you're going to have it open, the cart open, your course available to buy. I would recommend around the seven days is quite good, maybe 10 days if you're doing it for the first time. All right, so that's the next thing you want to plan out. Then the next thing you want to think about is maybe so you look at your cart open period, your seven or 10 days. Just prior to that, you want to mark out in your big launch period that you'd drawn out in your planner, maybe 30 days beforehand, the days that you really want to ramp up that visibility. You want to be everywhere talking about things related to that course. Think talking about topics that your audience are going to be super interested in, maybe pain points, things they want to learn that your course then is going to be the solution to. Don't give away what's in the course and don't teach what's in the course, but you definitely want to give them some tip bits and other things that they might be interested in that would lead them to the point where they're like, I've got to have that course. Then you really want to have a full marketing plan for kind of both phases. You want to have that period up to the 30 days, the 30 days, and then even the bit that you're actually going to do in cart open. So in a way, it's kind of it's two phases, two phases plus the cart open period. What are the different activities that you're going to be doing during that period of time? And you can start plotting that out in your planner. You also might want to think about, well, what content do I want? You might want to be planning out thinking, well, if I'm going to do a webinar, I've obviously got to think about the content of that webinar. If I'm going to run a five day challenge, well, what is that challenge going to be? And what's the content of that challenge? So you want to plan those items out as well. So step number three is, of course, the marketing. What are the strategies you're going to use for this activity? Now, this marketing is different from the marketing that you're doing every day. All right, this is specifically leading up to people buying your course. So likely you're going to use slightly different strategies. You might even have a budget and say, I'm going to run some ads on Instagram or YouTube or Pinterest, whatever platform you're on. You might say, I'm going to do a lot of live video or I'm going to do stories or I'm going to use PR, get myself some PR as part of the launch. Or I'm going to work with a joint venture partner and not forgetting, of course, that email list. Super important marketing strategy for you. Then there's all that daily activity. And that's definitely some social media stuff that you're likely going to be doing to really build that visibility. And that could be stories, it could be lives, it could be reels, it could be fun videos, things that really engage the audience because you're wanting to build the visibility up to the point where people are going to register and turn up for your webinar. And then, of course, from that point, you're going to offer them the course at the end of the webinar. A big important part of that is if you choose the webinar as your marketing platform, then, of course, you're going to look at emails that lead up to the point where someone's actually going to listen to the webinar because there's a big difference between deciding and committing to sign up to the webinar and actually turning up. So a big chunk of activity you're going to be doing in there is keeping your audience engaged once they've registered and getting them to the point where they're actually going to turn up for your live webinar. And it's really the same with anything. If you've done a challenge, it's the same thing. They've registered for the challenge. How can you warm them up before the days of the challenge? So now we're on to step four. This is the actual launching phase. This is when you are doing the activity, whether that's the raising visibility in kind of the first part, whether that's really the 30 days that you're ramping up that you could technically say we are now really in launch phase. You're really out there building anticipation and excitement for the course. And then, of course, that period of time that you have the cart open. Now, during all of this, specifically the cart open period, you are 100% doing the launch. You're not doing anything else. This is all about you just showing up and writing the emails and writing the socials, doing the lives, really being out there, answering people's questions, getting engaged, especially if you're running a challenge. A couple of times we've run a challenge, a really successful one. It's taken up my whole day answering people and getting involved. So you don't want to be doing anything else during the cart open period. The 30 days before, you want to be giving as much time and attention as you can to it. Obviously, you're not going to be doing the 100%, but if you can be doing 50%, then that's great. Now, you're really going to do everything you possibly can. I want you to think every day, like, what else could I do? Could I just squeeze in another live? Or maybe I could make a reel. I've got 30 minutes extra. You're really going to keep pushing yourself forward. Keep doing extra stuff. So many times I see people say, my course is available and then they just sit there waiting for people to sign up. It doesn't work like that, all right? And you're out there on a big online platform with all this stuff happening. You've got to become visible. So therefore, you really want to be thinking, what else could I do? What else could I do? What else could I do? And you want to be enjoying the process as well. And all your hard work's going to pay off when people start buying the course. Now, the thing to really understand about launching, because it can be a bit disheartening at first, if you open the cart and only one or two people buy, to know that it's a sales thing, isn't it? Most people buy when that window of opportunity is about to close. So you might find that 70% or 80% of your sales come in the last few hours. This has happened to us over and over again, all right? Because they're like, I look at your sales page and maybe you've got a countdown time when it says seven days to go, six days to go. And in your head, you're thinking as the customer, oh yeah, no, I'd like to buy that course. I've got plenty of time. And then suddenly it's two hours to go. And you think, oh God, I've got to make a decision now. So you're going to use that countdown time on your sales page, I would suggest for sure. And then you really want to make sure that you really keep your energy up in those last few days. Don't let it drift off. You know, the last 48 hours is when you want to put the most energy and the most effort and show up the most. So make sure when you design that time on your calendar that those last 48 hours are days when you're likely to have a lot of energy. I wouldn't necessarily close my cart over the weekend. People are off doing different things. So quite often you close it on a Monday or Tuesday or you go Wednesday to Wednesday when people are around, that sort of thing. So step five, the final step and really the most important is kind of reviewing, all right? In step five, you want to look back over your launch and see what's worked, what hasn't worked. What would you do more of next time? What would you not bother doing at all? You know, how have people engaged? Of course you want to check your numbers. Did you hit your goal? Did you make the sales? Did you over? Did you get more? You know, what do you think went well specifically? Because the next time you do it you want to learn from that and go again. And so many times I hear people say, oh, I only had this number of sales. We want to reframe that and say congratulations, you've got your first sales in. And now you're going to learn from the process, you're going to make some changes and you're going to go again. And again, and again, and again. And if this is the first time you're launching an online course, you're watching this and you're saying, okay, I'm going to do it, I'm going to get out there, I'm going to launch the course. I want you to make sure that once you've done it you do the review phase and you look to put a date in the diary and you go again and you go again. Because it's usually by launch sort of three or four that you've really got it and the big sales start to happen. You can totally make even a full-time income from online courses. We know that, there's plenty of people that do. But here's the thing, I want to share with you my bonus tip, all right, as to really why and how this is going to be possible for you. Are you ready, drum roll? The longer you're leading time, the bigger your results. The number of times I've heard people say, I've got my course ready, which you don't need to do before you sell it. By the way, that's topic for a whole other video. But I'm ready, I'm ready. I'm going to launch next week. You can't launch next week. There is zero time for a pair. People will not know you're there and you'll have a really disappointing result. You want to make sure that you give yourself as long lead in time as possible. Now you heard me say at the beginning of this, six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, the longer lead in time so long as you are active with your marketing and you build things up and you give things and you're really involved in building it up and you're getting the word out there, the better your results are gonna be. So don't be too hard on yourself if you're watching this and you've just launched, all right, take the learnings, apply them, look at your calendar, set yourself, okay, I've got eight weeks here. Let's really use that. I've got some time before my 30 days to get prepared and get some stuff out there and then I'm gonna really ramp it up, get my visibility really high. Then I'm gonna use my launch vehicle, whatever that is, and then I'm going to offer my course for say seven or 10 days and then I'm going to review it of course. All right, I hope you've enjoyed this video. I hope you've taken something out of it. Launching can be a lot of hard work but the results as well can be amazing and when you sit back and you start looking at the number of people who've bought your course and the number of people you're helping or inspiring by whatever you teach in your art business, that's when it feels really rewarding and don't forget to book a bit of a holiday just afterwards as well because you might be a little bit tired. So you wanna make sure everyone's happy in the course and they've got what they need and then you definitely want a little bit of downtime to rest and recuperate before you start planning and you go again. All right, I hope you've enjoyed the video. Don't forget if you have, give me a thumbs up because it really helps people to see these videos and I will be back next week with more content. Until then, keep creative, take care, see you soon. Bye.