Caitlin Bacher:
My name is Caitlin Bacher, founder and CEO of Scale with Success®. And I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world, grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. We are sharing revealing conversations about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join us here to discover the tough decisions we’ve had to make, the biggest failures we’ve had to bounce back from, and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. We are so grateful that we have the chance to share it all with you right here on Scale with Success®: The Podcast Built for Course Creators™. Let’s get started.
How do I create connection with students in my evergreen course without having to be on 24/7? This question is really important, especially because we are excited that our evergreen courses are up and running and our new students are coming in daily into the program. But the problem is that it can be very overwhelming, especially when it comes to student engagement, because they are engaged. They are engaged and as they’re engaged, they’re asking questions, they are looking for that connection. And the reality is that it’s very difficult to create that next level product that you might want to create if you are still really involved inside of the delivery of those other programs. So, one thing that kind of happens is, I don’t know if you guys have heard of this term parasocial relationships, but they are real. So parasocial relationships occur when your audience feels extremely connected to you via social media.
So you and your marketing are performing one to many, right? You’re putting out live streams, you’re putting out Instagram content, all kinds of stuff. And you’re using the content frameworks that we’re giving you. And your ideal customers feel like you are speaking directly to them, but you don’t know who they are. So they feel through that parasocial relationship, a very deep connection with you. And it could create kind of like a weird situation because your students who are brand new, so you haven’t yet developed a real life relationship with them yet. Like as soon as they join the program, they already feel like they’re your best friend. Right. Even though you’ve never, ever had a real conversation with them before. And so it can create kind of a, not awkward, but it’s a sensitive situation because you want them to have a great experience and you want them to feel welcomed, but at the same time, you cannot be on 24/7.
So here’s a few things that you can do. I’m going to give you four concrete things that you can take action on.
So number one, create a set of core values for your students. So get everyone on the same page with a shared set of values, where students are going to really feel like they belong and that they’re in the right place. It’s going to foster connection with each other as opposed just to you. So what is important is that you are consistently sharing your values in your marketing so that there aren’t any surprises when new students join the community. There’s always going to be surprises on some level, but it’s important to make sure you’re talking about what’s important to you, whether it’s resilience or a personal responsibility, or whatever it is, that you’re talking about that in your marketing.
And then you’re transferring that into your student community, because if you’re not doing that, then the only way your students are going to feel connected is if they’re talking directly with you and you want them to take that connection that they want to have with you and while that connection is fine, it’s also important that they spread the love. And also start to connect with each other.
The second thing that you can do is host a group welcome call. So we have a training on this and I’ll share the details of that in just a moment. But even though you have new people entering your evergreen program daily, it’s likely that each student feels like the only new kid in school, right? They don’t know that there are new people coming in continuously. And so it can feel like if they’re coming into the community and the community is already engaged and people have relationships with each other, they can feel like, oh gosh, I feel like a little out of place here. I don’t really know who to chat with or who to connect with or anything like that. So it’s really, really important that you have that group welcome call where again, you’re taking the connection that your students want to have with you, and you’re helping them take that connection and turn it kind of towards each other.
So the other tip that I will give you is having someone on your team host the welcome call, whether it’s like a monthly welcome call or a weekly welcome call, whatever you decide, having someone on your team do it is optimal because then your new students can start connecting with your team. So all the pressure isn’t just on you. And so it sets them up from the beginning like, oh, this is how it’s done here. Like, oh, this is a really awesome person that I’m connecting with. And so it’s like, it takes some of the pressure off of you.
And the other thing is we do have a training on this. So we have scripts and frameworks. You can literally just give someone on your team this training and they can start to run it. It’s called The Profitable Welcome Call: How to Increase Student Success and Retention Without Adding More to Your Plate.
The third thing is create an intentional onboarding email sequence. If you are used to using a live launch model, what can happen is you’re used to just sending out an email that like gives people the course content. Then you are in there live delivering the onboarding experience inside of the community. But that experience needs to be automated either through technology or through having someone else on your team begin to deliver it. And so it’s really important that you think about all the good will that you are creating through the marketing and sales funnel needs to continue then into the client delivery experience.
So your new students are going to need a bit of handholding in terms of knowing where to go and what to access. And the other thing is, as you scale your marketing efforts and people who are less familiar with you begin to enroll, it’s really important that you create an experience for them that makes them feel confident about your purchase. Once you begin to really amplify things with paid advertising, you’re going to get people into your programs that haven’t been on your list for a year. Like they might’ve just heard about you a week ago and suddenly they’re in the program. And so giving them that extra bit of hand holding through the onboarding email sequence that is dripped out over time and not just one email, here’s all the information like, go get it. It’s going to be really, really important.
The other thing to just remember and keep in mind is that buyers remorse is totally normal. So when we’re talking about kind of protecting our confidence, buyer’s remorse is normal, but you want to make sure in order to counteract that buyer’s remorse, that you aren’t overwhelming them with all of the information upfront. They need to receive the right information at the right time. We have this buyer journey of like first they’re pain aware, then they’re problem aware, then they’re solution aware. Well, you need to continue that journey once they purchase your program. So it’s not just like, oh, like now they’re just going to have to take the training. It’s like, they still need that paced handholding to really help them move forward. So if you have one coach, I would encourage you to think about handing that off to the coach, because that is going to free up your time.
Even though it’s only a 15 minute call for you, it’s still like the preparation of the call, and then the context switching. And then since it’s you and your business, it’s very personal and so you feel attachment or the emotional sit downs of like, oh, I really want them to be happy and dah, dah, dah, dah. And so if you’re handing that off to someone else, it’s going to actually free up a lot more than 15 minutes for you. So I would kind of start to think about that. And it could be once a week, it could also be like twice a month. You can find a cadence that’s right for you. And if you’re using The Profitable Welcome Call, they’re going to be using a slide deck. They don’t have to think on their feet. Like when we were talking about instructional design earlier, they’re just following a process.
And so it’s all branded. It makes them feel confident. Anyone. Doesn’t even have to be a coach. It could be anyone on your team that is delivering that. So make sure to watch The Student Onboarding Sequence, which is How to Wow Your Students with a Stellar Onboarding Experience and Decrease Refund Requests.
And then fourth is engage your students by posting content that encourages them to celebrate their wins, ask for help when they need it, and be accountable for their commitments. Now, there are a lot of different ways that you can do this. Yes, you can schedule recurring weekly posts, but there’s other alternatives as well. So that’s not the only option. One thing that you can do is you can create six months of posts and cycle through.
So if you want to post in your paid community two or three times a week, then two or three times a week, it’s like eight post a month times six is 48. Have someone create 48 prompts or like pieces of content or whatever for you and someone else on your team can then go in and schedule those out. And so it just kind of loops through every six months. And so you’re not always having to create that brand new content and people are able to, it’s a process that’s in place that will take care of that for you.
And then the other thing is it’s really important to recognize students who are doing the work and getting results. So there’s a few different ways that you can do that. Whether it’s recognizing them on one of your, if you do like a live monthly group coaching call for your core students, if you want to highlight some of the wins that happened that you saw happen in the community, if you want to have someone go in and respond to community posts.
So someone on your team, whether it’s you or someone on your team that they feel like their wins are celebrated and acknowledged. And what this is going to do over time is it’s going to take that excitement that the brand new student has to working with you and they’re going to be able to take all of that excitement and start to spread it out so that they’re connecting with not just you, but your team and with each other through that community.
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