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AuthorIan Brodie

Ian Brodie

https://www.ianbrodie.com

Ian Brodie is the best-selling author of Email Persuasion and the creator of Unsnooze Your Inbox - *the* guide to crafting engaging emails and newsletters that captivate your audience, build authority and generate more sales.

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Why would someone buy your course?

Posted by

Ian Brodie on December 3rd, 2021.

I went to the barber's yesterday and got myself a half-decent haircut.

For some unknown reason, there are three barber's shops in close proximity in our tiny village. So plenty of choice.

But not anywhere near the amount of choice you have when it comes to buying an online course. You can almost literally choose from any supplier in the world as long as the course is in a language you understand.

Which brings up the important question for course builders: given all this choice, why should someone buy their course from you?

In my experience there are 5 ways you can set your course apart from the very many others on the market. But only 3 I'd recommend.

You could, of course, make your course cheaper than everyone else's. Not a smart strategy and not one that is likely to last long as someone else is bound to undercut you.

You could try to make your course bigger and more comprehensive. A decent strategy for a larger organisation with the resources to do so. But not a great strategy for the likes of you and me.

The first viable strategy is to focus on a narrow niche that plays to your strengths. There's less competition in narrow niches, but they're usually big enough to sustain a solid business for a small firm or individual course builder.

The second viable strategy is to differentiate based on your own credibility, personality or relationship with your audience.

If you're a well-known expert in your field, have a long track record of success, or have built a strong relationship with an audience (e.g. your own email list) then that can differentiate your course from others.

People buy from people they know and trust and that relationship can be your edge, even if the course itself is similar to others.

And finally you can base your course on a unique methodology or approach.

Rather than just teaching standard material, if the core of your course is a methodology or model or approach that's unique to you it becomes impossible for competitors to copy.

And because the approach is different to what anyone else is offering it'll be new and compelling to potential buyers. And it means you can focus on teaching the unique aspects of the approach rather than covering everything related to the topic.

For very many people this will be the most effective way of differentiating yourself while minimising the amount of work needed to develop an effective course. And the reality is that we all have our own unique approaches to how we deliver our work – it's a matter of codifying and communicating them in a compelling way.

Using a unique methodology or framework comes across in many of the interviews on the Course Builders Hub.

And next time I'm going to explore how to use a unique methodology or “distinctive point of view” to create a course that's different and rather easier to sell.

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The Power of Podcasts

Posted by

Ian Brodie on November 28th, 2021.

So first off, the good news is my sourdough loaf from last week turned out fine after all, despite forgetting about the dough overnight.

I guess the freezing temperatures here in the UK stopped it going too mad. The rise was a little less than normal, but very acceptable and quite pretty really. And the slightly burnt ear was delish.

I'm sure there's some marketing lesson in there about having faith or things being more robust than you imagine…but that's not the point of today's post.

Instead, I want to talk about a question that's on the lips of a lot of people: “how can I market my course and get new customers without spending a bunch of money?”

The answer, in my experience, is… lots of stuff. You just have to figure out how to make it work.

And the “stuff” I want to talk about in this post is podcasts.

Podcasts aren't the kind of thing that make you rich overnight or bring a proverbial flood of new leads in an instant.

But they do bring a steady stream of new visitors. And they build a more permanent type of relationship. The type that comes from gently whispering in someone's ear week in, week out rather than making a big one-off noise.

In her Course Builders TV interview Denise Oyston talks about how her podcast has become the main source of new leads for her course.

Denise has my complete admiration as she does podcasts the “hard way” – solo.

I've always done interview-based podcasts – and that's continued with the Course Builders Hub interviews.

There are three wonderful things about interviews.

Firstly, you always learn something new. Often lots.

I've been staggered that despite over a dozen years developing my own courses and teaching it to others I've learnt so much from these interviews I've been doing. Different strategies. Different tactics. Different philosophies. All sorts of new stuff.

Secondly, you reach new people thanks to the folks you're interviewing.

I've deliberately told my interviewees there's no expectation they'll share or promote the interview – I'm so grateful just for them sharing their experiences with me.

But they've all shared the interviews with their contacts and on social media and new visitors have appeared at my site and signed up for my emails as a result.

And finally – and rather subtly – interviewing someone on a podcasts builds a relationship with them.

All the conversations you have with someone before you interview them, the interview itself and your interactions after all start a really good relationship.

It's up to you where you go from there.

Collaborations. Potential client work. Friendship.

All possible.

Podcasts or video interviews like I'm doing are a commitment, of course. But they're fun. They connect you with great people. They get you that steady stream of leads.

If you're looking for a no-cost way of marketing your course that actually works, I'd recommend them.

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Me and Jackie Weaver down by the Schoolyard

Posted by

Ian Brodie on November 28th, 2021.

Christmas has arrived here in Handforth.

It's snowing today. And last night we went up to the village to see Jackie Weaver switch on the Christmas lights.

Jackie who?

If you're not from Handforth you might not remember, but back in February a video of a disastrous Handforth Parish Council Zoom call went viral.

There was name-calling, shouting, swearing, all sorts of misbehaviour. And Jackie Weaver was the calm-headed clerk who'd been called in to sort out the toxic mess.

She was famous for 15 minutes (well, more like 15 days) and interviewed by all the national newspapers and TV. She even has a book out for Christmas.

Of course, the world moved on from Jackie and sweary Alan's iPad. Other things grabbed the headlines.

But if you're from Handforth, you're not going to forget. And thankfully we had the good humour to invite her to be our celebrity Christmas-light-switcher-onner.

By now you're probably wondering “is there a marketing lesson in this Ian?”

And I think there is.

Because it shows that while fame is fleeting, “local” celebrity is a lot longer lasting.

Handforth remembered Jackie Weaver because she's relevant to us.

And if you can stand out in some way to your audience, they will remember you. As long as you're relevant.

There are three big triggers that get things to stick in our memories:

Novelty and Difference
Repetition, and
Relevance

We remember things that are a huge surprise or really stand out because our initial impression is so vivid.

We remember things that are repeated because the memory gets reinforced with each repetition.

And we remember things that are relevant to us because they're important, and they connect with our pre-existing memories.

If you want to be remembered by your clients these are the variables you can play with.

A lot of focus in marketing is put on being different and being new. But don't overlook the power of just keeping in touch regularly. And that by being relevant to your clients, by focusing on them specifically rather than the world in general, you'll be more memorable to them.

Jackie Weaver made a big splash nationally. But it's Handforth that remembers her, because she's more relevant to us than anyone else.

How can you make sure that you seem more relevant to your ideal clients than anyone else they might be talking to? It's a big key to having them remember you when they need help.

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My Sourdough Disaster!

Posted by

Ian Brodie on November 26th, 2021.

Like seemingly half the world, I got into baking sourdough bread during the pandemic.

I can't tell you how many terrible loaves I baked before I hit on a decent “formula” that worked for me and was easy to do. Now we get a fantastic batard every time.

Well, every time except today.

Last night I made the mistake of making pizza while I was supposed to be shaping the bread and popping it in the fridge overnight. And I plain forgot to do it.

I woke up this morning to a big lump of overproofed dough.

I'm going to bake it anyway, but it's a good reminder not to take on too many things at the same time. You'll inevitably mess one of them up.

But there's perhaps a more important lesson that applies just as well to building courses.

Because even though I messed up this loaf, all I've really “wasted” is maybe 10-20 minutes of my time and the cost of 400g of flour.

If today's loaf doesn't work I can quickly rustle up some more dough and get going again and have one ready tomorrow.

When it comes to courses it's important to start with that “rapid testing” philosophy.

In particular, you never know whether your course is going to sell until you offer it to people to buy.

Probably the biggest mistake you can make is to spend months and months creating tons of content and trying to make it as perfect as possible before market testing it.

It's much better to do your research, then create a course outline and offer it for sale in advance of building it – for example as a live online workshop.

If enough people sign up you create the content and run the workshop. Then turn it into a more official course afterwards, confident that it'll be a good investment because you know the demand is there.

If not enough people sign up you refund the small number who bought and go back to the drawing board. Rather like me with my sourdough.

Following this rapid testing approach means you're much more likely to hit on a course that will sell. And it gets you out of the trap of being so invested in your initial idea that you just keep trying to make it more and more perfect and never get it to market.

You'll see that rapid testing philosophy echoed in many of the interviews on the Course Builders Hub.

I'll say more about rapid testing approaches for courses in future posts – including what to do if you've got trapped in the perfectionism loop and haven't managed to launch your course yet.

But for now I just wanted to re-stress that if you haven't created or launched your course yet – it absolutely won't take you months and months. You can have a simple workshop designed, sold and delivered in weeks.

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What’s the Best Way to Market an Online Course?

Posted by

Ian Brodie on November 24th, 2021.

It's the biggest challenge most people have with their online courses: marketing their course – particularly after launch.

And the million dollar question: what's the best way to do it?

Unfortunately, there's no million dollar answer. It depends.

A lot of the “course gurus” push the idea that Facebook ads are a silver bullet.

And Facebook (or Linkedin) ads are indeed a great way to grow your sales in a scalable way that isn't tied to spending more and more of your time.

But my experience is that for most people, there's such a huge learning curve to getting good at Facebook or Linkedin ads that it ends up being a real barrier to progress. Not to mention the money you can end up spending before you master them (if you ever do).

My advice is to get your first wave or two of sales by other methods. Then armed with the knowledge that there's a real market for your course and a little war chest built up from those sales: hire someone who knows what they're doing to run ads for you.

That's the approach Michael Heppell took, and he explains more in his interview here.

But other approaches work well too. It all depends on your starting point and what you're good at.

Dr Tarique Sani fills his pipeline of course buyers and coaching clients through posting content on Linkedin.

When he first explained that he posts 4 times a day my jaw dropped. That just seemed like an incredible amount of content to me.

But in his interview he lays out his approach to creating content for Linkedin that allows him to be both prolific and productive without sacrificing quality.

Lynn Scott describes how she gets most of her course buyers from her Effortless Leaders Facebook group (and they were also the source of insight and ideas that helped shape her course).

In my wife Kathy's business, the vast majority of sales of courses and memberships come from people who sign up for one of her annual virtual summits.

(You can find out a little bit more about using virtual summits to feed course sales in Jan Koch's interview here. Jan's course is Virtual Summit mastery and he's a genuine go-to guy for summits).

In her interview, Denise Oyston explains how she uses her podcast as the primary source for sales of her marketing course for recruiters.

The overarching message though is that there are many different marketing approaches that work very well indeed for online courses.

Some are better for high-value courses. Some are better at scale.

But all of them have to be ones that you can do and do consistently.

It's consistency that brings results.

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Familiarity breeds?

Posted by

Ian Brodie on November 14th, 2021.

I drove Kathy to the train station early doors yesterday. She was meeting up with some of the folks she'd done her masters with a decade or so ago.

I haven't done much driving recently for obvious reasons.

In fact, I went over a year without needing to fill up the tank. And it's been nearly two years since I drove this particular route to the station.

I was mildly shocked at how much I'd forgotten the route.

I couldn't remember which lanes were right turn only and which were straight ahead. Or quite where the semi-concealed entry to the station car park was.

And I found myself having to concentrate much harder than usual just to drive. I was quite worn out by the time I made it home.

It's a bit like that with marketing.

If you only write emails once in a blue moon, each one is hard work and you forget the shortcuts and the right buttons to press to get things set up.

If you don't do Facebook Ads week in, week out, then the interface and algorithm will no doubt have changed since the last time you did them.

If you haven't done a webinar or live presentation for a while then the next one you do won't be anywhere near as effective as when you do them regularly.

It's why trying to do too many different things in marketing is always a mistake. You end up being rusty and less than effective at all of them.

Of course, you have to experiment a bit and try a few things to find out which works for you.

But once you've got something that works, stick to it.

Don't get grass-is-greenered by the latest shiny technique or because some marketer somewhere tells you they're “crushing it' with a tactic you're not familiar with.

It's almost certain that the fancy new approach won't work as well for you – and especially if you split your focus and try to do too many things.

Much better to do one or two marketing things really well than be mediocre at 3 or 4 of them.

Because familiarity breeds competence.

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How Easy is it to Refer You?

Posted by

Ian Brodie on November 10th, 2021.

Back when I did a lot of consulting and training about face-to-face marketing I used to talk about how to be more referable. And one of the biggest factors was simply how easy it was to make it happen.

Last night for example, we had an amazing pizza at Pizza Punks in Newcastle. Later in the evening one of our friends wanted to recommend them to someone he met, but couldn't remember where they were to give directions.

Luckily I remembered. But it would have been rather easier if, for example, they'd have given us some kind of fun keepsake with our bill that had their address on that he could have to referred to.

It's the kind of thing that sounds small and a bit trivial and you find yourself thinking “surely anyone who really wants to refer me will remember me”.

And some people will.

But some who could have referred you won't because it's a bit difficult.

And that small number of referrals that either happen or don't happen because of how easy it is can make a big difference.

The same thing can apply online too.

I recently had someone email me to say they'd like to recommend my regular emails to others but didn't know how.

Initially I found myself thinking “come on, it's easy, just send them to my home page there's a signup form there”.

But of course, it's just like my friend not being able to remember the address of Punk Pizza. They probably assumed their address was obvious or that someone could look it up.

But if something is just a little bit difficult it often doesn't happen.

So I could have made myself much easier to refer by having some kind of “forward this email to a friend” system or just a link at the bottom where people could go to sign up.

And the few extra subscribers I'd get from that could well mount up over time. Especially as they're people who are recommended by a friend not people who randomly found me.

Have a look at how easy it is to refer you and what little barriers might get in the way. You'll probably find it's quite east to fix them.

– Ian

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“…you’ll never know”

Posted by

Ian Brodie on November 7th, 2021.

The ridiculously-prolific author Nora Roberts said “if you don't ask, the answer is always no”.

In the world of marketing it's probably more accurate to say “if you don't ask, you'll never know”.

Usually, we don't ask, of course.

We cling to one of two convenient lies.

Either that we already know what people want.

Or that people don't know what they want.

(Don't get me started on the misuse of Steve Jobs' smoke and mirrors quote about not using market research).

If you can find a way of asking people about their problems and challenges I've found that the answers are always useful.

A simple example from my business recently is when people sign up to get a pdf copy of my Ultimate Guide to Creating an Online Course.

After signing up I send an email with a link to download the pdf, but also ask them to hit reply to tell me what their biggest challenge or problem is with creating online courses – or what they'd like me to cover in upcoming content.

And to make sure I get a decent number of replies I promise to send a link to some training videos I developed on creating sales pages for online courses.

And surprise, surprise, despite the fact I was convinced I knew what people wanted from Course Builders TV, I found a ton of new stuff being suggested.

Frankly, enough for me to create a year's worth of content.

If I'd not asked, then right now I wouldn't know and I'd be stuck in the usual loop of “what on earth am I going to write about?”.

Instead, my only problem is having too much.

Any time you can create an opportunity for people to tell you what they want from you, ask.

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Speed > Perfection (but do we live it?)

Posted by

Ian Brodie on October 31st, 2021.

I've been doing more interviews this week for Course Builders TV and I'm now at the point where I'm beginning to look back at them to pick out common themes.

The first thing that absolutely jumps out is that everyone I've interviewed who's created a successful course has got something out of the door and into the hands of paying customers pretty quickly.

They've all – to a greater or lesser degree – gone down the path of creating something good but not perfect. Something customers can use to get the results they want, but that doesn't have all the bells and whistles that you might add to a final polished product.

In some cases that meant the technology was initially pretty basic. Or it was done as live calls before turning it into recorded videos. Or it was a “minimum viable product” narrowly focused on the outcome of the course rather than on everything someone might want to learn.

My experience is that with an online course (and with a lot of marketing) you can get to good pretty quickly. It then takes you two or three times as long to make something 10% or 20% better.

And the reality is that you can never make it perfect on your own because you just don't have the feedback from paying clients you need to know exactly what to improve.

We all know this in theory of course.

I'm sure no one is reading this shaking their head saying “no, he's wrong, it's well worth spending twice as long to try to make something a tiny bit more perfect before letting customers near it”.

But the reality is that while most of us know this in theory, few of us live it in practice.

I'm forever tweaking my website and landing pages to make minor improvements only I will ever notice. I know people who've been working on books or online courses for months or even years without ever getting that first version into customers' hands.

Yet all of us would nod in agreement with the concept that you need to get things shipped quickly.

Perhaps we need less agreement in theory, less nodding as we read emails like this, and more action to make it happen.

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Minor bravery

Posted by

Ian Brodie on October 24th, 2021.

One of my interviews this week for Course Builders TV was Sarah Robb who's created a course to teach freelancers and clients how to create world-class brand strategies.

One of the things we talked about in the interview was how Sarah made sure there was real demand for the course before creating it by interviewing potential buyers.

Not only did those interviews tell her that the course did indeed meet a real need, they also told her exactly what people were looking for from the course.

Not just the practical benefits, but the emotional side too. The fears and concerns they had when doing brand strategy. The uncertainties and hesitations when they were selling it.

In other words, the key “hot buttons” the course needed to address in order to motivate potential buyers to get off the fence and stump up their cash.

You'll hear Sarah's story and her lessons learned from building her course when Course Builders TV goes live in a few weeks.

But for now, I thought it was worth highlighting the importance of doing something a lot of us are actually a bit scared of: asking for help.

In Sarah's case, she asked potential clients to give a bit of their time to help her create a great product for them.

I know personally I'd have agonised over sending the invites. “Won't they think I should know this stuff already?”. “Will they think I'm being cheeky asking for their time?”. “What if I don't like their answers?”

It takes a little bit of bravery to admit you don't have all the answers and reach out for help.

Not “rushing into a burning building to save someone” level of bravery of course.

But minor bravery. About as brave as marketing gets.

The kind of brave that saves you a ton of wasted time and effort and ensures you get much better results from your marketing.

But the kind of brave most people don't do.

You don't need to wait until you're launching a new product to do it. You should really be asking clients and prospects for their input, ideas and feedback on a regular basis.

And if you get into the habit of asking for feedback, it's a lot easier to do it when you really need it.

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