Flagship Course

Introduction

There is no better way to launch or grow a brand, maximize exposure and cultivate a loyal customer base than with a high-quality, carefully constructed flagship course.

A flagship course becomes part of your signature brand. It demonstrates your ability to transform information into knowledge.

And ultimately, it becomes the very foundation in which your business can continue to grow and thrive. Best of all, creating a successful flagship course isn’t rocket science, though it does involve a series of important steps that are necessary to take your course from initial concept to completion—and then launch it in such a way that it smashes your revenue goals and continues to drive in targeted traffic. In this special report, we’ll take a close look at the different ways to create a bestselling flagship course, how to ensure it’s a winner well before you even begin to create it, and how to effectively launch it.

So, without further delay, let’s get started!

Flagship Courses 101

Before we dive into some of the best strategies for creating a successful flagship course, we should look at what a flagship course is NOT.

To start, your course is not:

· Based on existing content, freely available online.

Your flagship course represents your brand in a way that no other course will. It can catapult you to great success if done correctly, but that requires a strong and focused effort to create quality content that is clear, fresh and unique to you. This means that you never want to use private label content in your flagship course.

Every module or lesson needs to be written with a unique perspective or angle, and exclusive to your training package.

In other words, your students are given access to material that they won’t find anywhere else.

Your course is also not:

· A rehash of existing information.

Even if you spend a lot of time creating fresh content, if you base it on existing material it’ll likely end up coming across as nothing more than a rehash of tired, saturated and common information.

This doesn’t mean that you have to reinvent the wheel or come up with outlandish strategies or methods just to be able to present something new. But it does mean that every lesson you create, or resource offered, needs to feel special in some way; whether that happens naturally by offering your own unique perspective on the topic, or by giving your students different options when it comes to solving their problem or addressing a pain point. So, how do you ensure your flagship course content is designed to stand out and satisfy your students so they feel they’ve received immense value by purchasing your product? It begins by evaluating your own skillsets and personal life experiences. Only by creating content in your own unique voice and by digging deep so you can share valuable and personal information that helps transform your students in some way can you create a stand-out, bestselling flagship course. Your life experiences are uniquely yours (there’s that word again: unique!), and so when someone begins your course they’re given access to information that no one can possibly share, at least not in the exact same way. And of course, the more you know your audience prior to creating your course content, the easier it will be to develop the tools and resources they need to graduate from one step to the next. It all begins by choosing a single problem that you can solve. Everything begins here. It’s the crux of your course and the driving force that gives it direction, purpose and meaning. By identifying the main problem you are going to solve for your students, or the primary pain point, you will be able to create high-quality, relevant content that has a clear purpose and is easy for your students to understand. How do you find a problem that is worth building a course around?

Here are 3 easy steps:

1: Think about what people in your market are regularly talking about, particularly in regards to complaints or frustration.

Utilize places like Facebook groups, Reddit and Quora to find commonly asked questions, complaints and problems.

2: Choose a common complaint or issue that you’re experienced enough to solve. The key is to start with a problem that you are most qualified to address.

3: Commit to addressing the issue and then helping your students overcome this problem or issue throughout each section of your course.

By the time your students complete your course they should be well-equipped to either solve a problem or have already solved it during their training.

Flagship courses are all about transformation. That’s what will make your course stand out and will help to solidify your place as a thought leader in your market.

If you’re struggling to come up with a blockbuster course idea that’s guaranteed to sell like crazy (before you ever spend the time to create it), you should take a look at https://www.PromoteLabs.com/flagships

This all-inclusive training will show you exactly how to come up with a course idea that you'll love and want to build a business around.

Using the ideas shared here you will create a business that you love to work on.

You’ll also learn things like:

· How to create epic hooks and headlines that make your course a bestseller.

Copywriting is huge in online business. This approach will help you create the perfect hook and headline that gets attention.

And best of all, you’ll also gain instant access to the exact blueprint to creating the sales engine for your course. You'll go through every step you need to take to create a winning sales presentation and campaign to go with it!

Finding Your Audience

Chances are, if you’ve begun researching the inner-workings of creating a successful flagship course, you’ve heard the term “know your audience”, and for good reason:

· Knowing who your audience is will ensure your content is anchored to addressing the main problem people are most desperate to solve.

However, knowing your audience is one thing—finding your audience is another, and it’s the first step you should take when deciding on the topic for your flagship course.

You see, finding your audience is all about locating and identifying a group of people who all have the same problem.

Then you can get to know them by listening to exactly how they express their issues and past experiences when attempting to solve that problem.

And by doing that first, long before you even create the outline for your flagship course, you’ll be able to create a sort of storyboard that will help to guide you from start to finish. In the previous chapter, we talked about how to find a problem worth building your course around, and when it comes to finding your audience, this is where that problem stands out. It’s one of the most important steps in the process of creating a best-selling course because it tells you exactly what to create content about. Knowing your target audience demographics isn’t enough. You need psychographics as well. Here’s a summary of what psychographics is according to HotJar.com: Psychographics is the qualitative methodology of studying consumers based on psychological characteristics and traits such as values, desires, goals, interests, and lifestyle choices.

Psychographics in marketing focus on understanding the consumer's emotions and values, so you can market more accurately. Need more information? Check out this article: https://www.hotjar.com/blog/psychographics-in-marketing/

Ideally, you should get to know your target audience, which is your ideal customer or student, in the same way you’d know a close friend. This involves a lot of research, sure, but it will absolutely pay off. Get to know as much about them as you can, including: their hobbies, goals, motivations, relationship status and future outlook.

The more information you’re able to collect, the easier it will be to create a course that captures their attention. You learn about your audience by keeping an ear to the ground. This might include watching conversations evolve through social media, participating in Facebook groups (or creating your own!), or surveying an existing audience. Then, you can condense all of this information into a single avatar that provides a guiding light as you begin to visualize an outline for your course and its primary purpose. But before you create the outline or spend time working on modules or lessons, you’ll want to validate your course idea.

We’ll take a closer look at how to do that in the next chapter.

Validating Your Course

So, you’ve done your homework and studied your market through a series of channels such as your own email lists or other outreach, or via social media.

You believe you have a clear idea as to what problem you’re going to solve in your flagship course, and how you can help transform a student from someone who is given information to someone who possesses knowledge.

What next?

It’s time to validate your offer. This is when you tell your audience that you’re working on a course that will solve their problem.

If you already have an email list, this is when you should email them and ask if it’s okay to reach out once it’s ready. You could also create a separate landing page and email list so that those who are currently subscribed to a general list can opt to subscribe to one that’s dedicated to providing regular course updates and announcements.

Basically, you want to qualify your idea before you spend any amount of time creating it. That way you’re sure that it will be a success! If you don’t have access to an existing mailing list or audience, you can easily grow one by creating a free offer and providing access to it in exchange for an email address.

The free offer doesn’t have to be extensive or time-consuming to create. Just make sure that its relevant to the topic of your flagship course and that it warms your audience up.

The objective of a free product, regardless of what type of product you create, is to generate excitement for your upcoming course; to provide a taste of what’s to come, and to demonstrate your ability to create high-quality, informative and highly-relevant content on the topic they’re interested in. So, don’t stray too far from the primary problem you’re going to address in your course, but at the same time, make sure not to give too much away.

After all, you don’t want anyone to feel they’ve entirely solved the problem with the free product, leaving little motivation to purchase the paid course. One easy way to create a free product that ties into your flagship course is to solve a smaller problem, or a closely related issue that is easier to solve. For example, if your flagship course is based on “Relocating to Canada”, your free product might be a pre-travel checklist in printable format. Again, your free product shouldn’t take too long to create, but it should be unique to your offer and still provide exceptional value. And finally, there’s another reason why it’s important to qualify your course and kick start activity long before you create the content:

Doing so will give you momentum and motivation, but most importantly, accountability, so that you get started quickly and remain focused on your flagship course until it’s completed. Your next step should be to think about how you can pre-sell your offer, and validate your idea. Take your time with this! It’s a very important, yet often overlooked step in the process and one that will pay off in spades, if done correctly. You’ll also want to consider your brand pitch. This is also commonly referred to as a “tagline,” “elevator pitch,” or “unique value proposition.” Your goal is to be able to convey your idea in a way that is both clear and descriptive, but in the least amount of time. Give this some serious thought! Explain how your product/service will help your target audience in a clear way that they’ll understand.

Evergreen Courses

One of the things you’ll likely find yourself debating is whether to create a flagship course that is evergreen or based on an open/closed format.

An evergreen online course launch means that you’ll create your course once and then it’ll be available from that moment on, indefinitely, with no end in sight.

Of course, there are many benefits to creating a course that’s evergreen, including:

· Students can purchase access whenever they want to. This will keep sales rolling in regularly and not require that prospects subscribe to a waiting list in order to be notified of re-opening.

If you have a large following, you’ll be able to generate consistent sales and passive income with an evergreen course without having to launch again and again.

· You can take advantage of impulse purchases, where someone comes across your course and immediately purchases.

The downside to an evergreen course really comes down to just 2 main things:

1: You’re unable to utilize the power of urgency like you could if your course was only open for a short time (like with attention-grabbing countdown timers from: https://www.EmailDyno.com

2: With no sense of urgency, people can (and will) procrastinate when it comes to purchasing your course. This means it may take more work on your end to persuade them to take action.

Keep in mind that regardless whether you choose to base your flagship course on an evergreen basis, or only open registrations every so often, you can always relaunch from time to time by sending out a sequence of emails reminding people how your course will help them.

On the flip side, open-close online course launches can be extremely profitable, not to mention easy to manage. You simply create the course, and then create a variety of launch campaigns throughout the year. And because these types of course launches generate a sense of urgency and excitement, you’re able to easily push people into taking the plunge and purchasing.

Deciding which launch is best for you isn’t always easy, but having a launch strategy is extremely important so take some time to consider both options.

As long as your flagship course is high-quality and designed to appeal to a large, engaged audience, you’ll have no trouble being successful regardless of which method you choose.

Setting Goals

One of the most important things you can do is to decide on a clear goal before you create or launch your flagship course. It’s easy to skip this step, believing that if you create it, they will come. But having a very quantitative goal is one of the easiest ways to be successful because you’ll remain extremely focused throughout the launch. This singular goal will keep you moving forward, pushing as hard as possible until you reach the top.

If you are looking for information on what quantitative goals are and how to get started, check out this article: https://www.nateliason.com/blog/quantitative-life-goals

Your first question should always be: What’s my goal revenue? From here, you will be able to figure out a clear path forward, knowing exactly what you need to do to reach success.

For example, if your goal is to make $20,000 from your initial launch, and you price your course at $500, then you know you will need just 40 people to purchase in order to reach that main goal.

Setting a goal makes things crystal-clear, and also helps simplify the entire process of successfully launching your course.

Start by deciding on a financial goal and then entering those numbers into a spreadsheet. Include your goal revenue, how much you plan to charge for your course, and a reasonable conversion rate.

It’s safe to say that around 2% of your list will convert, so even if you only have a small list with the right email sequence you should be able to reach your initial goals. The key is to set realistic goals, especially if this is your first course. Also, keep in mind that while your primary goal for a flagship course should usually be revenue-based, you could also create other courses that serve different goals, such as: Prospect Goals: The goal would be to identify x number of new prospects within a certain time period.

Product Awareness Goals: The goal would be to increase brand awareness.

For example, you may set a goal that focuses on generating x amount of exposure within a 30-day period.

Regardless of the goals you set for your flagship course, you want to make sure you can easily track and measure results. For many, that involves using the SMART framework.

SMART stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. Let’s break it down further: Specific:

Your goal should be very clear and specific, otherwise you won't be able to focus your efforts on achieving it.

A specific goal answers questions like:

What steps need to be taken to achieve it?

Measurable:

It’s very important to have measurable goals, so that you can track your progress and stay motivated.

Measurable goals will also keep the momentum going as you feel a sense of excitement as you get closer to achieving your goal. Quantifying your goals also makes it easier to track progress. Achievable:

Your goal also needs to be realistic and attainable to be successful.

Ask yourself: is your goal something you can reasonably accomplish?

Be honest with yourself!

Relevant:

This step is about ensuring that your goal matters to you, and that it also aligns with other relevant goals.

This is where you think about the bigger picture:

Why are you setting this particular goal?

How will it help your business down the road? Time-Bound:

Every goal needs a specific target date, so that you have a deadline to focus on and something to work toward. SMART goals should have time-related parameters built in to prevent everyday tasks from taking priority over your longer-term goals.

And remember, your goals will remain goals if you fail to take the action required to achieve them! Banking small wins will give you the confidence you need to continue on your path of success. Try to implement the SMART strategy above with your flagship course. It’s a very easy and effective tool that will provide focus, clarity and motivation as you create and launch your course.

Course Launch Strategies

When it comes to launching a course, there is no one right way to do things.

Sure, there are the typical launch strategies that have proven to be successful, but you should always be willing to try new things that may move the needle.

In this report, we'll take a quick look at the 3 phases involved in successfully launching your flagship course:

Phase 1: Educate

It all begins with educating your audience and getting them excited about your upcoming course. This is the time where you should offer free content or access to products that motivate and persuade your audience to take action.

Offering high-quality, free content that’s extremely relevant to the topic of your course is hands down the easiest way to convince them that your course will be worth purchasing. Phase 1 should run for 1-2 weeks before your course launches. During this time, you can offer a variety of things that will keep the momentum going, such as:

· An email based course, or mini-course.

· Limited access to your course.

· Downloadable reports, PDF’s or eBooks.

· Articles, blog posts, podcast or access to videos.

A successful phase one gets prospects excited about your course, and helps establish a trusted connection between you and your audience.

By the end of phase one, you should have a captive audience, waiting anxiously to enroll in your flagship course.

Phase 2: Pre-sell Phase two includes a pre-launch phase as well as the actual launch of your flagship course.

How long you run this is entirely up to you but I recommend at least one week, preferably two. That will be enough time to send out emails that are designed to get people excited and evoke curiosity, and will also give your audience a taste of what’s to come.

When it comes to a pre-launch strategy, it’s easiest to manage it all via a series of emails.

Each one will serve a singular purpose: a course teaser, introducing yourself and your brand, provide exceptional value in the form of free content, and to keep your upcoming course at the forefront of their minds so they don’t forget, or get distracted by other offers.

Keep your emails short and concise. If you’re sending out free content, it’s always best to include a direct download link rather than try to include all the content in one email. The shorter and more direct, the better. As it gets closer to your launch date, you’ll want to begin to answer common questions. Create a FAQ guide, or simply address questions in a series of short emails.

Answer questions such as:

· How do I know this course is for me?

· Do I need to purchase anything else to be successful?

· How long will it take to complete the course?

· What type of material is included?

· How long does the course last?

Depending on whether your flagship course is evergreen or cohort-based will play a factor in the questions you answer, but the objective is to address as many roadblock-type questions as possible before launch day.

That way, you’ve left no stone unturned and have eliminated, or at the very least minimized, as many barriers as possible when it comes to prospects wondering whether your course is right for them.

Phase 3: Sell! You’ll want to have all your email content pre-written prior to launch day.

This includes reminders that enrollment is open, as well as closing soon (if your course isn’t always available), as well as any social proof you may have available (testimonials for other products can also work).

There’s a lot more that goes on behind the scenes of a successful flagship course launch.

If you want to simplify the entire process and discover the insider secrets to building and launching a six-figure flagship course, you should take a look at https://www.PromoteLabs.com/flagships

With this course, created by the bestselling team at PromoteLabs.com, you’ll discover exactly how to create a full-time income with flagship courses using a proven blueprint. To your success!