We're currently in a three-part series with special guests who are experts in all things course launches. I'm so excited to take a quick break from our normal summit talk for this series because truly, the better your course and program launches go on their own, the more a summit is going to enhance those results.
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Episode at a glance
[3:05] These days, Gemma runs a 7-figure business teaching entrepreneurs how to create and launch their first courses, but it didn't start out that way. She launched her first course in 2017, and felt like she'd won the lottery when it brought in $2000! From there, she put one foot in front of the other and built up her business into what it is today.
[6:00] Gemma's approach to selling online courses includes a combination of evergreen and live launching, and she feels strongly that businesses should NOT be relying only on live launches.
Live launches can be the incredible cherry-on-top of a business that's already working to produce sales, but I want to know that I have consistent revenue coming in month over month that is somewhat predictable. If you're moving away from the 1:1 bookings, you need to make sure that you have a system in place to sell your course repeatably every single month.
3-Part Hybrid Marketing Method
[9:04] Gemma has found the best results in terms of increasing course sales by following a genius Hybrid Marketing Method that includes three elements to market and sell your course over time.
The first element is your evergreen sequence, starting with a webinar or lead magnet, which takes new leads through a sales sequence right way. The second is your forever funnel, which is a secondary funnel that's coming after the evergreen funnel and gives additional opportunities to purchase your course or program at a more leisurely interval. And then the third element is to have fun with live launches!
[11:06] Gemma feels strongly about building your evergreen sales system first, to create consistent and predictable revenue from your courses. From there, you can supplement that with live launches that you enjoy!
Run summits, do live webinars or workshops, do a 5- day challenge. I’d recommend doing one every quarter or 6 months, and just do whatever lights you up from a live launch perspective to generate hype and build brand awareness about your program.
[12:02] The beauty of this 3-Part Method is that all three elements reinforce each other. For example, in Gemma's most recent live launch, she found that 53% of the people who purchased during the live launch had gone through her primary evergreen funnel within the past 6 months. The long-term funnel exposed the offer, but it was ultimately during the buzz of the live launch that they decided to buy.
[13:49] One of the concerns Gemma often hears about setting up a forever funnel, the second part of the Hybrid Marketing Method is getting enough content for a funnel that runs for 3-12 months, but Gemma has a great solution, even if you don't have a backlog of content you can pull from for this funnel.
Keep in mind this forever funnel does not replace your newsletter strategy. It’s much more targeted to open the sales conversation again. You can point them to a sales page, an application, or to hit reply and let you know where they’re at or what they’re looking to do. And it's amazing how many replies we get! I have someone on my team, and part of her job is to engage the people who reply back and through that conversation we close the deal.
[19:48] Your forever funnel should also include case studies, big ideas, and storytelling emails mixed in with the sales emails because they’re mindset-shifting and inspirational. Most people think this means writing lots of emails to go into that funnel all at once, but I loved Gemma's suggestion to send weekly newsletters alongside the sales emails in your forever funnel instead.
Once every other week or so, you send a forever funnel email and if you’re doing weekly newsletters, you set up the forever funnel so the go out on a day that compliments your weekly newsletter schedule so your audience isn’t overwhelmed.
[23:10] While Gemma recommends working toward building this full 3-Part Hybrid Marketing System for selling your courses, keep in mind that this takes time, and the best way to get started is to live launch your programs before attempting to go evergreen.
Get students in the door, validate your product, and then you can evergreen it knowing it will need tweaks and adjustments as you build it up. You don’t need to wait forever to evergreen your program. Get it out the door and get the data rolling in so you can get to work.
About Gemma
After launching her first online course about blogging in 2017, Gemma left her public health career and founded her education company, GemmaBonhamCarter.com. She now teaches entrepreneurs how to turn their expertise into digital courses and digital products. To date, she has served 8,000 students through her paid programs and made well over 7-figures in course sales.
Named by Entrepreneur as a “Top 5 Women in Business in 2021”, Gemma has been featured in Inc., The Globe & Mail, BuzzFeed, Today.com and more.
With a loyal audience of over 60k—Gemma’s unique take on online entrepreneurship has made her the go-to voice for ambitious personal brand business owners who want to launch courses and build a lifestyle business.
You can find her in Ottawa, Canada where she is raising two young kids, building her real estate business, and watching the latest episode of Real Housewives.
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