BOOK MARKETING: How to Create a Powerful Online Course With Your Book Interview with Chris Kyle Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today my special guest is an elearning expert. Chris is a teacher, business coach, author, and elearning expert who's committed to empowering authors, teachers, experts, and change agents to light up the world with their message. He works with individuals and organizations to build and launch online courses and programs that deeply engage, inspire, and transform participants from all across the world. He's the creator and teacher of Launch Academy, a live, online training program that guides participants through a proven, step by step process, to create and launch successful online courses that are both transformative and lucrative. He's the author of Purpose Activation Blueprint and 5 Things You Need to Know to Create a Successful Online Course. Chris, what a pleasure it is to welcome you to the show and thank you for being this week s guest expert and mentor. Thank you Susan, it's great to be with you here and with your audience. Thank you for having me. Chris, let's talk about how our authors can light up the world with their message and how would an author turn their book into an online program. Where do they begin? That's a great question, I get that all the time. I work with a lot of authors, as you can imagine, a lot of change agents, authors, experts, content experts, and I get that all the time. The first thing that I want to say is that, in today's world, as you look to bring your message, your content, your teachings, out into the world, that there's really two fundamental ways now. It used to really be one way, and that was through a book. That was the way that you disseminated your teaching around the world, and now, truly, it's really two very powerful and distinct paths to bring your message out. One is the book, which is your Page 1
authors, authors out there writing, putting their teachings into a nonfiction book, and the other one now is online courses. To a certain degree, online courses and the whole elearning world is certainly starting to overtake the book world in the sense of not only the reach, the scope, global audience, but also in the financial return to the creator. It's very difficult these days to make any money on your book, but it's still a powerful way to get your ideas, your teachings, out into the world. Where I think people start with it is, if you have a book, or in the process of writing a book, you simply think about, especially if you're writing the book now is, think about the book and shaping the book, potentially, as a course. Thinking of it as a course in mind. What people want to start is the first is, and I know it may seem obvious, but is a commitment to teaching the content that would be in their book, that is in their book, and a commitment to that as an online experience for participants. Meaning, I really want to bring my book out and actually have it meet an audience that's going through a step by step process that I'm then teaching it. Now, I teach a lot about how people create live online courses, but you can also create what we call is, products or programs that are evergreen. I don't know if we can get into that in a moment, but that first place is that commitment because I hear a lot of teachers come to me and they say, "I've got this book and I'm thinking about going online and doing that and having an online course," and what I find is, there isn't really a commitment or a motivation to do that. Meaning, it sounds good but it's sort of like, I don't really want to do that, I'd just rather keep writing books and doing that and be behind the scenes. I don't really want to have to take the time and energy and effort to create an online course. I got to tell you, it starts with that I'm in, I'm committed. Then the second step, and I'll pause here in the second step then is, I think for most people, they need to do either the research and/or get the support and the coaching to figure out how to launch an online course. Either do it on your own, that deeply understand and do... get books and programs and sign up for stuff to learn the process because it is not easy, it's not intuitive, and it's not like, "Hey, I just throw up six modules, I put it out there, and people will just show up." The build it and they will come. Field of Dreams. It does not work. That would be, literally, the difference is then, I'm getting support, I've got the research, I'm getting coaching or training on how to best do it. Page 2
I love the idea of, obviously, the commitment to doing it, but then as you say, getting that support because, as I mentioned to you earlier, I'm in the throes of putting my own online program together and it's really not easy. As you say, it's not just throwing it up there, a few modules, especially because I'm a very high information, high content person, and I know that whole concept of less is more. Do you have a simple, let's say, course structure, that you could recommend our authors to follow? Yeah, I think what I'd love to share with you is my model, and my model is built on what I call the four essential elements for creating and launching an online course. It is a great framework for somebody to think about. "Oh, what do I need to do? What's the framework for this?" Because one thing I will tell you and we'll probably talk a little bit more about mistakes out there, but the mistaken mindset that I hear time and time and time and time and time again is, if I just find the right tech platform, I'm good to go. "Oh, I want to do an online course Chris. What tech platform should I use? Should I use Teachable? Should I use Axis Allied? What about this Kajabi thing?" The mistake in that is thinking that the technology, the platform housing the course, is the end all, be all, and that is far, far, far from the truth. What I teach is the four essential elements, which are all the components for making sure that you have a great course. That's first and foremost. Like a great program that people love, that you'll eventually, as people come through the program, are raving fans of it. Like, "That was amazing, that was so deep and rich, and it really transformed a part of my life." What you need is to have all four of these in play, and the first is transformative content. So, more and more when we look at non-fiction, when we look at personal development, or adult education, that's kind of what we're talking about here. It's really critical to look at a content, your course content, that has a transformational focus to it. It's not just a bunch of information I stick out there in random order and my modules don't connect to each other. I really encourage people to look at what is the step by step process I'm taking somebody through so they move from point A, where they come into my course, where they want something. They have a problem or needs. Then point B is where they like to be. That sense of, "I'd like to have this in my life." For me, with Launch Academy, it's simple. I come in and I really want to have an online course, but I don't know how the heck to do that. I also want to have greater reach, bigger impact, and make more money. That's my B. I want an online course to help me do that. Not just to create it to create it. If you, in whatever content area you have, can Page 3
have some sense of, "I'm taking you from point A to point B," and create a content that focuses on that, then you can be looking at more talking about transformation then just informational products or info-products as we call it. Transformative content is really important. That's creating a great course outline, having great practices, homework and assignments, and things that they're really gonna take your material and run with it. Regardless of whether it's a live online course or a home study, evergreen program, it's still the same, you've got to have great content. Then, number two is what I call enrolling messaging. And this is the step that's so critical before you just get to marketing, just all the marketing tactics and stuff, and I'll talk about that in a moment. Enrolling messaging is really all looking at the primary shift for people now is to stop thinking about what you think is so great about what you're offering, and really get in the mindset of what I call your avatar. That is specially for audience that's gonna have a great experience in your course. Also, what I call your ideal student. Your ideal student is somebody that you investigate, look at, what makes them tick, fears and frustrations, aspirations and wants. You really dig into the psychographics of your avatar, relative to your course content, and then you begin to create messaging, words on a page, that speak directly to them. Not your sense of this course is great because it has this, this and this. No, it's more like, "Oh, I want to talk to you. What's your aspiration? Here's your problem. What's the diagnosis to your problem? Here's the solution." That you have a conversation that's all about them. Then that forms your marketing messaging. That forms what's gonna go onto free webinar page, your course sales page, all of that. That forms kind of the blueprint, it's what I call the authentic messaging blueprint. When you do the avatar work, and you learn about them, you create this blueprint that will impact all of your copy, including your emails and your web pages, all of that, for your online course, for even just one online course. Then the messaging then translates into the essential element number three, which is, effective and converting marketing tactics. I just call it your marketing, your marketing tactics, practical and tactical. Then, that's where you start taking your messaging, your course content, and then putting it into pages that people will see, landing pages, course sales pages, and email copy. Then you'll also look at, "Okay, well how do I get the word out?" Through marketing partners, affiliate partners, maybe through social media postings, and then even possibly through Page 4
online advertising, like Facebook ads or Google ads, which is, I think, optional, for those that are just starting out. We'll talk more about that. Then the final piece is the technology, and I call that engagement oriented technology. As much as possible looking for ways to use technology that created more engagement, but that also helps you stay more engaged and make it easier for you to run your courses and programs. That's now the platform piece, that's where, "Okay, where should I house my course? What email marketing platform do I need to use?" Really, it's just a couple of off the shelf programs that can get people rolling and not too much money these days. But I help people sort through all the morass of all the freaking different technologies out there to what I think are the best and best of class. If you have those four, that's my model, if you have those four in play and thinking about all four, working them, that's where you start, that's the first level to say, "Okay, if I'm working on all of those, now I go deeper into each of those to complete my course." And frankly, it's not that complicated, it's just, I got a great course outline, I'm really thinking about my avatar and that messaging. What are some of the simple marketing tactics I need to do? And, what technology? That's easy. It's just, most people think that technology piece is 90% of it, and they don't think about transformative content, they don't think of messaging, and they don't think marketing, and the just think they'll just throw it up on the tech platform and it'll magically... people will show. It's so funny that you should say that because I know that I've spent a lot of time thinking about the technology. It's way down the list for you. Talk to us more about making a course more engaging so a student actually finishes the course. Because I know from my experiences, that I buy a lot of courses and I start them with such gusto and with such enthusiasm, and then somewhere along the line it sort of peters out and I'm embarrassed to even admit how many courses I have not finished versus the ones I have finished. That is so great. What a great question. It's an important question and I am with you too. I purchase courses over the years and maybe finished 10% of the ones that I've purchased. You know where I got started, or deep into them, or halfway and then I get busy and I don't finish it. My answer to that is, there is no easy answer. There's no magic pill to say, "Gosh, if you do these four things, these three things, you're gonna get 100% of your people finishing the course." That is just not the case in the world of online learning. And frankly, it's not the case of high Page 5
schools or even college or university programs. A lot of junior colleges, or colleges, or high school have huge drop-out rates. They don't finish their degree or their programs. When we look at education in general, there is large drop out. People... things happen in their lives and in the elearning space, it's even greater, or course. A few statistics here and then I'll dive into what I think is the best way to create greater engagement and have people finish is that, when you look at the two fundamental ways that courses are delivered, and there's lots of variations here, I'm just gonna give people the two fundamental ways, and that is, that you can have a course, an online course, that is a live online course. That means it has a start date and a finish date and it has a cohort going through at the same time. That's a live online course where you're engaged as a teacher. Then you also have what we call online products, or home-study programs, or boxed courses that you could say are evergreen. They're not necessarily always evergreen, and evergreen just means that they're available 24/7, 365. They're evergreen, they're always available. We call those products boxed courses and when you look at the boxed courses, the completion rate in the studies that certain companies do and the data that we get from the industry is that you have less than 10% of the people completing a boxed course. Less than 10%. Let that sink in. It's like anywhere from 7 to 10% for that, and in some ways we keep watching it. I don't even know if it's going down and down to like 5%. That means completion. Even if they got three quarters of the way through and they dropped out, they didn't finish. That's huge, and it's a huge issue in the business and the industry. Then the other side, if you do a live online course, where you're there each week with a live call and people are moving through the seven weeks together, there's a lot more mutual accountability and a sense of connecting in with the teacher and don't want to miss it. That actually jumps up to as high as 30%. Some courses can be even higher. Some teachers and courses could be 40 or 50%, or more, that complete it. But it's really dependent on the teacher and the community. You can see the difference there, creating products, programs, that are kind of there, home-study, I buy it, I spend $147, and it just sits there. There's no live call with the teacher. No nothing. So I just have to be fully selfmotivated. That's a huge difference between 8 percent and 30 percent. One of the best places that I teach, for those that are first time course creators, that are just getting into it, or maybe they've done one course Page 6
but didn't have good result with it, is, I encourage everybody, I teach this in Launch Academy, is that your first launch should be a live online course. A live course. It starts November 1, it ends December 15. I get everybody excited about the first-class session. I have a course website. I have live calls each week. It's a bit more time-consuming, especially for the first launch, but boy, the engagement levels up, the completion rate is up, you have more fun as a teacher, the students get more value because they're connecting with you as the teacher, as the expert. There's just a lot more richness just in that and then they're all moving through it together as a cohort. Week one, week two, week three, and then if you have your private Facebook group, which highly recommend that, for the course, that's just for participants in the course. They get to talk and connect with each other and share stuff. It creates all this level of accountability and support and energy that you as a teacher will have much more fun with it and the students will have a better experience. You'll get better testimonials, you'll have raving fans, you'll have people talking about the course coming out of it. Then later, as you get better and better at it, as you understand the launch system, how to do it, then you can eventually turn it into an evergreen program so that you don't have to keep doing the launch model with it. But I encourage people to do it at least three times as a live course and then shift it into an evergreen experience, if they want. Some people will still do their courses two or three times a year, every year, launch it as a live program, and I think that's awesome. I think it's a great way to do it. That's the engagement piece. Let me add one more piece about that engagement in the course. When you're creating your course, thinking about that transformative approach. What's the step by step process I want to take people through? Module one sets up and points toward module two. I can't really do module two effectively until I've done module one, and then module two gives me the insight and the opening and the learning to get to module three. So I'm moving through a step by step process and then each part of that are practices and assignments that are really engaging, that's beyond write this or journal that. It could be that. But it's like, do five avatar interviews, go interview for 20 minutes, five different people, or, here's a meditation practice, or guided visualization to do every day, or this week. Give people juicy things to do, that are embodied, that are interesting, that engage other things in their life, besides just their brain and their pen on a pad, or on the keyboard. Then, if you're doing that and thinking about that in the creation of your content and then giving them Page 7
markers along the way that they're doing it well and doing it right, more people will stay engaged when they start to see some of the shifts, even if it's simple, they start to see some of the shifts from module to module in their life. It'll create a certain kind of momentum that'll help them move through the rest of the course. If I'm understanding you correctly Chris, that is that there's a higher likelihood of transformation in a live program than there is a homestudy, self-motivated program. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Two things. One is, yes, possibly higher level of transformation, but certainly a higher level of engagement and completion. Definitely. You know, with a great home-study course, if somebody was an A student and went through the exact same program and really stuck with it, they may have the same transformational experience as somebody going through the live course, but the huge difference that would impact that is the teacher's essentially not available for Q&A, questions, a little bit more light teaching, and they're not going through with a learning community. Meaning, they're floating on their own. A learning community helps embed the learning, gives new insights when somebody shares on the forum or the Facebook page, or shares in the live calls. Guess what? It spurs insights and thoughts and for the other participants to go, "Oh, God, oh yeah, I see how that..." That component of it does point to a little bit more the potential for a deeper shift, or more... greater leap of transformation because of those components. And yet... still, if the content's great and somebody does every little bit of what you offer, they could still have a similar experience, even in an evergreen. If they do it. If they do it all. And that's a big question. I was just gonna say that, that's the big if isn't it? Right. You know, they stop halfway through, or course they're not gonna have... a lot of the transformation is backloaded and... let's say it's a seven-week, online course, a lot of the real shifts may happen in week six and seven, or five, six, and seven, right? It's a build-up, so if somebody stops at week four and they're kind of board or stops at week five, they may be missing the real goal of it all coming together as you put it all together toward the end of your courses. It's time to look at some mistakes. Our listeners love mistakes. What are two or three of the biggest mistakes that you find people make when they create online courses? Page 8
Yeah. It's great. I get this all the time too and I write about it a little bit in my ebook, which we'll talk about at the end, where I talk about some of the key mistakes. But I know, one of the first big mistakes is thinking that if I just create the program and just either directly pull it from my book and slap it in different modules and then pick a tech platform and then just post either my videos or the workbook, or whatever, that somehow magically, that's all I need to do to get people in more course. So, mistake number one is, I said it before, earlier, is, I want to do a course, let me just figure out the tech platform, once I have that then I just load up all my stuff. I know how to talk about it, I'll just write it like I think, put up a simple sales page. Then, you look around and go, "Well, I see, I've got my small mailing list and I guess I can do some social media posts. Oh, cool," and then you get two people signing up for your course. The big mistake is just thinking technology, that's all I need, I put it up, boom, done. The next big mistake that I see a lot is thinking about that the content is more informational in nature, or, what I have in my book, non-fiction book, might be very practical and it has different chapters, but the chapters don't necessarily connect. They aren't this step by step process, it's just sort of information that's there and that I think, with a course, I can just take that, lift it over, and then those different modules don't really connect well, they're not taking people through a process. Then what happens is, it becomes an informational experience. We were talking about that a little bit and you mentioned that a little bit earlier is that then it becomes more of an info-product rather than a transformational experience. Again, most authors and transformational authors, and change agents, they want to create transformation, but they have to really look at what they've written and is that gonna work, or do I need to reshape what I've written to really put it into a powerful course that has a step by step transformative experience. Then, the last one is more of a marketing one is, as teachers get to the point of saying, "Okay Chris, I've got it. I hear you with the four essential elements. I'm really working on my content and my outline. I want to make that engaging, robust. I will do a live online course." But now we get to the marketing, one of the biggest mistakes is and what I encourage is the first line, and the most important marketing that you can do is to find aligned partners. Affiliate partners. Marketing partners. Joint venture partners, we call those JV partners. All of those mean the same thing. It's all the same word is... different words for the same thing which are partners, people out there that have a following, have a list, who are willing to support you in promoting your program. To their Page 9
community. So, an endorsed email. "Hey, you gotta check out Chris' program. He's awesome. Here's his free webinar." That kind of thing, and then of course there's social media posts and all that. But, starting with trying to figure out to win at Facebook ads to launch your course is dicey and expensive. You've got to really understand what your offer is. Understand what your course that... the messaging's gotta be great. I say, partners. I say, start with partners. You can leverage your network, and the big mistake that I see in there is that people don't start early enough in the process of getting partners lined up for their course. I usually say, "Look, you need to be thinking three to six months out, minimum, to start talking to potential partners for your course that's gonna launch six months later." A start date of it. To often, even when course creators have great content, they've done a good job with their messaging, they understand, I've got to set up these pages and they've got to be good, is they still forget that or they just don't realize that and so they start talking to partners, literally, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks before their course is gonna start or before their marketing window's gonna start. That's a recipe for getting a lot of nos and a lot of gracious nos where you don't really know behind the scenes they're thinking, "Damn, that person just... they want me to blast and it's just three weeks later they want me to blast." They will never say that to you, they'll be, "Oh no I'm sorry, I can't do it," and you've damaged a little bit of the relationship by being so last minute and that's not a good thing. Do not be last minute, you don't even have to finish your course, you don't have to have it all set up on the technology, you just need a title, sub-title, and a blurb about the course to start promoting it to partners, with a plan B. And that's it. You could be working on all the other stuff while you're getting those partners lined up, and it's a huge one, and it's very specific, but I bring it up because that makes the difference between somebody having maybe 50 to 100 people in their first online course, versus 10, are those partners. Wow. So much to think about. Yeah. I've got like four other mistakes, but, we'll leave it there. Oh my goodness, I'm exhausted. Chris, I know that our listeners are chomping at the bit to find out more about you, your services, Launch Academy. Take it away. Let us know how they can contact you. Page 10
Yeah. It's great. One of the first things that I encourage everybody listening is to get my free ebook, The 5 Things You Need to Know to Create and Launch Successful Online Courses. It's a pretty easy to get through ebook. I think you'll be providing a link, Susan, for them to get that. It's free. Just sign up for that and that'll give you a lot of good information. Some of the stuff that I've shared here but going a little deeper in certain areas. Giving you some nice templates and all that. Check that out, that's one. Then, I also run a program called Launch Academy, which Susan, you mentioned earlier. That is a 16-week program to help people go through the process that I shared with you, the four essential elements to create and launch your online course. All the pieces. Diving into that and all the things that you need to know to launch your course. We just launched it, it's an annual launch and we just launched 2018 Launch Academy in May. Just, stay tuned, if you get my ebook, you'll also get on the emailing list where I give a lot of tips and videos and all that and you'll be able to stay in touch with us the next time that Launch Academy is up and ready to roll. That ebook is worth its weight in gold. I highly recommend listeners to get a hold of it. I will put a link in the podcast show page. So, please, check that out and if nothing else, get a copy for yourself. Chris, if you were to leave our listeners with a golden nugget, what would that be? Yeah. A golden nugget. I think, for me, putting myself in the shoes of that... where I was that first-time course creator, like many people listening here, of like, "I'm ready to do it." I think the golden nugget is really two things. Is, trust your content in the way that says, "I'm ready and I trust that my content will have an impact on people s lives. And that I'm committed to translating whatever I have, whatever my content or teachings, into a transformative learning experience." That's kind of my nugget is, we have so much content out there in the world. So much informational content. So many Wikipedia pages and etc. So many YouTube videos that just give you that kind of nuts and bolts of something but it's rare, much rarer, to really sit and think about how do I create a transformative learning experience for my students or my participants that they really get what they want. That they move to the next level in their life. That they're really fired up with what you've provided to get them to the next level or the next place in their life. Page 11
And if you focus on that. You create great products, like great programs. Really focus on that then I think we're gonna be changing the way people perceive elearning and all that because right now it's got some bruises and sometimes a bad imagine because a lot of stuff that's delivered isn't that interesting, that good, or engaging. Frankly what I call it, it's kind of crappy stuff. So, make great programs. Have it be transformative in nature. I know, over the long-run, no matter where you start, over the long-run, a great transformational course will always win out. You'll have success with it. That's my nugget. Wow. Make great programs. What priceless information Chris, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. Thank you all for taking time out of your precious day to listen to this interview. I sincerely hope that it sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Here's wishing you much book marketing success. Page 12