Course Creator Series #3: The Ultimate Guide To Creating Your Second Kajabi Course

Welcome back to the Kajabi Course Creators Series! 

If you missed the first two articles, you can catch up here:

Course Creators Series # 1: What To Do After You Launch Your Course. 

Course Creators Series # 2: 12 Simple Ways To Turn Your Students Into Raving Fans!

Now let's get started with Course Creators Series # 3: The Ultimate Guide To Creating Your Second Kajabi Course! 

Have you ever heard of the band, Los Del Rio? How about Toni Basil? Don’t feel bad if you haven’t; those are the names of 2 of the Biggest One Hit Wonders of All-Time according to VH1.

Los Del Rio sang the catchy dance hit “The Macarena” and Toni Basil sang the 80's classic “Mickey.” 

Unfortunately, when it comes to creating online courses, the majority of course creators are one-hit wonders. They create one course, hope it does well enough to either supplement or replace their income, and that’s it.

But that doesn’t have to be your fate! Don’t worry, because no matter where you are now after you read this article, you’re going to understand how to strategize, research, and market your second course.

But first, let’s discuss the difference between a successful course and a successful business.

What is The Difference Between A Successful E-Course and A Successful Business?

Many first-time course creators confuse creating a successful course with having a successful business.

Like Kevin Costner in “Field Of Dreams” they think if they build it, customers will come. 

But there are a few significant differences between a successful course and a successful business.

When you create a successful course, you have one product, at one price point and need to do minimal follow-up beyond customer service after you make the sale.

The problem with having just one course is that even the most popular courses don’t sell forever.

On the other hand, a successful business has multiple products at multiple price points and has follow up systems designed to move the customer through a multi-purchase journey.

Look at the ultra-successful startup Dollar Shave Club.

Dollar Shave Club burst onto the scene with a viral video commercial and a single product—a cheap multiblade razor delivered straight to your door. 

Even with all that publicity and revenue, Dollar Shave Club knew they would need to add more products if they wanted to become a successful business.

Within a few months, Dollar Shave Club had added additional products like shave butter, body wash, and even toothpaste! 

Adding a 2nd (and 3rd and 4th) product helped turn Dollar Shave Club from a successful product into a successful business which was sold to Unilever for over 1 billion dollars.

You can summarize why it’s so important to create a second course in 3 simple words:

Lifetime customer value.

What is Your Lifetime Customer Value?

Your lifetime customer value is the average amount of money you can expect a customer to spend with you over the lifetime of your relationship.

The formula for finding your lifetime customer value is pretty simple.

All you have to do is take your average purchase (your total revenue divided by the number of purchases), divide it by 1 subtract the repeat rate of purchase, then subtract the cost of acquiring a new customer.

If that's confusing, don't worry you're about to see some examples. 

Let’s say you only have a single Kajabi course.

If your average sale is $50 and there is a 0% chance of repeat business (because you only have 1 course) to go with a $35 cost of acquisition per customer the equation for your Lifetime Customer Value would look like this:

$50 / ( 1 - 0.0) = $50.00 - $35.00 = $15.00 profit per customer!

But if you have 2 courses and just a 25% chance of repeat business, the equation looks like this:

$50 / (1-0.25) = $66.66 - $35.00 = $31.66 profit per customer.

That's an increase of over 50% in your Lifetime Customer Value!

And that's with just a 25% chance of repeat business.

Imagine what your Lifetime Customer Value would look like if you had 3-4 products and a 50% chance of repeat business! 

Hopefully, now you see how creating a second course and increasing your lifetime customer value is the key to building a successful business.

But it takes time and money to create a new course, right?

Wrong.

You’re about to learn how to strategize, research and market your second course without having to spend a ton of money or even create the course before taking it to market!  

6-Steps to Selling Your Second Course Before You Even Create It!

1. Gather feedback on your first course. The first step to selling your course before you create it is to discover what your existing audience is DYING to learn. The most effective way to do this is to get on the phone with 5-10 of your past students and interview them for 15-30 minutes. You want to get a feel for what their biggest challenges are AFTER they finished your course. This information is going to help decide on the subject for your next course. 

2. Use a “Seed” launch. A seed launch is a concept first created by Jeff Walker way back in 2005 in his legendary “Product Launch Formula.” A seed launch allows you to market your product before you create it and is especially effective if you have a smaller list or no list at all. Here’s what you’re going to do; First, you’re going to send a message to your list or friends on social media that says something like, “Lately a lot of people have been asking me to teach a course on (subject from step #1), and I’m thinking about putting together a new training on it. Let me know if you’re interested." When people respond, have them join a new email list specifically for people interested in your next product. After that, you’re going to send out 2-3 emails full of content related to your second course. These emails should tell your audience that you will be putting on a webinar in a few days where you’re going to teach the first module of this new course for free. Then, you’re going to create a webinar in Kajabi and send your list of interested people a survey using assessments that says, “If you could ask me any question about (Subject) what would the top 3 be?” Use those questions to create between 30-45 minutes of content for the teleseminar call. At the end of your teleseminar, you are going to make an offer for your second product. Voila, you have now validated your course idea and made a few sales before you created your product!

3. Create the product. Now it’s time to create the rest of your product. Take all of the material you need to teach to overdeliver and break it up into 3-5 modules. You’re going to deliver these modules live to your test group using Kajabi events.  Then you're going to get them transcribed. You can do this yourself or you can hire someone to do it off of Fiverr or Upwork. Add worksheets, and summaries for each module as well.  After you have finished all the modules in your course host a bonus Q and A session for your test group. On this call make sure to ask for testimonials and success stories that you can use in step 4 when you market the completed product to your entire list.

4. Gather data by marketing it with a full product launch. Back in our seed launch step, you sent out a pretty bare-bones pitch for the test group of your program. Now you’re going to do a full product launch. Create case studies based on your test group’s testimonials, write a 7-11 email launch sequence, and re-write the original teleseminar you created.  When you market this completed version of the course to the rest of your email list, you want to pay special attention to your numbers. Even if you have a small list, you’re going to need to know what your opt-in rate was, how many people signed up for the webinar, how many people showed up, how many listened through the entire thing and how many sales you made. These numbers are going to be very important for steps number 5 and 6.

5. Find Joint Venture Partners. Most course creators try to jump from marketing their product on their email list or social media straight to paid traffic advertising on platforms like Google Adwords or Facebook. And they usually lose a lot of money. One of the keys to being able to scale a product offer is to test it first with joint ventures or JVs. With a joint venture, you are going to market your product to someone else’s audience. There are many ways to structure a JV from a revenue split to paying someone else to rent their list. The way you structure them will depend on your numbers and the preference of your JV partner. Once you have had 2-3 successful JV launches of your product it’s time to move on to paid traffic.

6. Take your offer to paid traffic. If you have had a few successful JVs and your opt-in rate, sign-up rate, and sales conversion numbers are stable, you should have a new updated Lifetime Customer Value which will help you decide on a budget for “buying customers” on platforms like Google Adwords. You’ll need to set a budget, find keywords, define your audience and create a test campaign over 7-14 days. Whole posts can and have been written about scaling product offers on cold traffic and our next course creator series will be dedicated to taking your offer evergreen using cold traffic so keep your eyes out for that article in the next few weeks!   

Don’t get stuck being a one-hit wonder!

Even if you have tried and failed before, using this 6-step strategy for creating a second course will help you figure out what your students want BEFORE you create your second Kajabi course. 

You don’t want to go through all the hassle and expense of creating a course that flops.

The fact that you have created a Kajabi course and sold it gives you a huge advantage!

You already know what you have to do to create a course so now you have to put some time and effort into talking to your students, figuring out what they want and launching your second course!   

This 6-step process is the fastest, most efficient way to create your second course.

No matter what your schedule is like, you can find the time to talk to 5-10 of your students or prospects and create a webinar where you launch the product they tell you they want.

And by pre-selling the course with a seed launch, you get paid upfront allowing you to focus on creating the best course possible to take to your list, your JVs and to scale with cold traffic.

In the movie Troy, a young boy comes to wake up Achilles played by Brad Pitt. Achilles billed as the greatest warrior in all of ancient Greece had been summoned to fight in single combat against a monster of a man.

The young boy wakes Achilles and says “The Thessalonian you’re fighting is the biggest man I’ve ever seen, I wouldn’t want to fight him.” To which Achilles replies, “That’s why no one will remember your name.”

Don’t be a one-hit one hit wonder, create a second course, build a successful business and live your dreams.

Make sure they remember your name.

Kajabi is the best way to turn your knowledge into income

At Kajabi, we’re working to build a world where everyone can build a life and business around their income. 

With Kajabi, you can sell your expertise online. Create online courses, establish membership sites, offer coaching programs, host a podcast, and sell other digital products. Plus, you'll get marketing tools like a website, CRM, email marketing, landing page templates, and helpful analytics to help you spread the word about your products and earn more revenue.

Fully explore what Kajabi has to offer and start building your business during a free trial. Start your free 14-day trial of Kajabi today!

‍Still researching? Check out Kajabi’s free downloadable ebook guides on launching and growing a knowledge commerce online business!

Read the 2022 State of the Creator Economy Report to get the latest data on industry trends and growth for knowledge content creators.

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