When is the right time to sign up for Kajabi?

People tend to think they need to have everything perfectly in place before they officially launch a new business. 

But if you want to own your brand and turn it into a full-time knowledge business, you need to create a solid foundation for future success. Even before you're ready to launch, you need to set up your website, start creating quality content, and warm up an audience of potential customers.

Keep reading to learn our three-step process for doing just that, and when you need to sign up for Kajabi to make sure your launch if successful.

What it takes to turn an idea into a profitable business 

If you’ve got an idea for teaching other people how to achieve a specific outcome or learn a skill that you’ve mastered — you’ve got a business in the making.

In a knowledge business you don’t have a physical product. Instead, you pour your knowledge into a course, a coaching program, or membership that you can sell online. As a result, you don’t have to deal with the logistics of selling a physical product. There’s no need to become an Amazon partner or worry about inventory, warehousing, and shipping.

You simply need a unique solution to a problem that other people want to solve. And then choose the best format for sharing that solution — typically text, audio, video, or a mixture of all three. 

Knowledge products are increasingly popular with people who want to transform their lives in some way, both personally and professionally. Experts estimate that sales of e-learning products will top $325 billion by 2025. 

And it’s a business that anyone can start. You only need a platform to host your training and a system for automating its delivery when your customers purchase it.

What are the benefits of selling knowledge products?

Info products offer a wide variety of benefits. But at their core, they allow you to "productify" your knowledge, so you can teach an unlimited number of people at any given time. This removes the time barrier of helping just one person at a time. 

With knowledge products, there's virtually no limit to how much income you can earn. After creating your course, you can sell it over and over again. You can also create related products that teach advanced information or additional skills. 

And knowledge products are infinitely scalable. Once you’ve created and launched your course, your business is relatively easy to run. Your focus is on taking care of your existing students and getting your message in front of prospective customers. 

3-step process for turning your idea into a knowledge product

The key, as with any business, is to lay a solid foundation for growth. Here’s our step-by-step guide for turning your bright idea into a successful knowledge business. 

1.  Validate your idea

The first step is to clearly define your idea. What problem are you solving? Can you break down your solution into a simple step-by-step process? Are there resources and templates you can create to help people quickly achieve the outcome they’re looking for?

It’s important to come up with an original idea that’s unique to you. This will differentiate your product from similar products that are already on the market, making it easier to market and sell.

Note: Your idea and/or solution may not be 100% unique, but it’s best to have a unique approach to solving the problem. 

But don’t start creating anything yet. Before you dive headlong into building a product that barely makes a ripple in the pond, it’s important to validate your idea and do some market research so you know people will buy it. 

Validating your idea isn’t hard to do. You just need to determine two things:

• How interested people are in learning the information you’d like to share
• Whether they’ll actually pay money to learn it

You can do this by sharing your idea with people in your network, creating a Slack or Facebook group and inviting people to join, or offering a free mini-course to your friends and social media followers. The idea is to start talking about your topic before you create a product, so you can gauge people’s interest in learning more.

It's also a good idea to do some competitive research. If there’s no course similar to yours on the market, there may not be a market or demand for the content.

But, you could just be really early to uncover this need. That's where the idea validation from online communities can help you understand if there's a market or not.

If your idea is solid, a Google search should turn up a few related knowledge products, or at least some blog posts or discussion threads around the topic. This tells you that there is indeed a market for the product you want to create. 

2. Create a buyer persona for your ideal client

To turn your knowledge product into a profitable business, you need to build an audience. But how can you know what your audience wants? And what’s the best way to get your message in front of them?

Creating a buyer persona can help you find the answers to these important questions. Fortunately, it's an easy and fun exercise. 

Start by filling out the following details based on what you know about your target audience: 

• Name (give them a fictitious yet believable name)
• Demographics (age, location, career, family)
• Personality, interests, and beliefs
• How do they prefer to consume information? 
• What are their goals? 
• What are the challenges they face? 

This exercise will also help you get to know your target audience intimately. It can also give you ideas for more knowledge products that could help you meet their needs. 

For more, check out our blog for more tips to create your B2B ideal customer profile.

Note: Creating buyer personas isn't just an exercise in creative brainstorming. It has repercussions for your bottom line too. 

3. Start warming up your audience

Once you've defined your target audience, browsed the competition, and figured out whether or not your info product is a good fit with your buyer personas, it's time to start building the foundations for your knowledge product.

For that, you need to start sharing quality content and warming up your audience.

Not only will this save you hours of time, but it will also allow you to hit the ground running when it comes to launching and attracting new customers. Taking the time to set up these marketing channels now will help you generate demand for your product and start selling right away. 

Set up email marketing

You've likely heard that email marketing is one of the best ways to convert browsers into buyers. It’s also a great way to share premium content with people who love what you do. 

The first step in crafting any email campaign is having a subject line that's worth opening. Your goal is to create interest and curiosity, so the user will open the email and take the next step to learn more. An email's open rate is a core indicator that you're doing it right.

To get the highest open rate possible, consider segmenting your email list once you've launched your info product. For example, you may create one segment for members and another for non-members. Or you may create segments for students vs. non-students. 

You could also segment your email list by the contact’s knowledge level. With this approach, you could offer different courses for beginners, intermediate students, and advanced students. 

However you decide to segment them, your goal is to send the right message to the right people. This ensures that your emails speak directly to your audience's unique needs. As a result, you’ll get higher open rates and better clickthrough. So when you announce your product is available, your list is ready to buy.

Host a webinar to educate your audience

Another way to warm up your audience is through live videos or webinars. These events allow you to share your message while building a loyal audience. The process works like this:

• Invite attendees to register for free training on a topic related to your knowledge product. 
• Before the event, send reminder emails that tease the information you’ll be teaching and alert them when it’s about to start.
• Share valuable information related to your knowledge product.
• End the webinar by giving attendees a behind-the-scenes look at your knowledge product. If it’s available to buy, you can share a link for purchasing it. If not, you could sell early access. (This is  a great way to validate your idea!)
• Send a follow-up email sequence to attendees. You want to keep their interest and let them know what their next step should be.

Webinars and live videos are an effective way to promote your business and training while building a list of potential students. It’s especially valuable because it gives people an idea of what your teaching style is like and what they can expect if they buy your products. 

To get the most from live events, make sure you use persuasive tactics like: 

• Scarcity (create fomo by letting them know if you only have, say, 100 seats available) 
• Reciprocity (offering a free gift when they subscribe or stay to the end of the webinar) 
• Commitment (asking them to share in the comments the challenges they face and their commitment to finding a solution)

This is the perfect way to begin gathering testimonials that you can use to promote your knowledge product. Take screenshots of people's responses to your training, and use them liberally to market your products.

These credibility boosters can go a long way toward giving your product more clout with first-time buyers. 

Create free content to entice prospective buyers

Valuable content is essential to growing an audience. In addition to live training, consider starting a blog or a podcast. And create some lead magnets (or freebies) that people can download when they submit their email address.

Your goal is to whet their appetites for your paid products. You can do this by offering:

• A small portion of your full knowledge product
• A free guide to getting started in your chosen niche 
• A template, checklist, or other resource
• A how-to guide that gives your audience a quick win

If possible, create a wide variety of content, so you can test different concepts, formats, and messages. This will help you figure out what works best with your audience while you’re building awareness around your brand and future product.

Keep in mind, your free content shouldn’t cannibalize your paid products. Give your audience a taste of your premium training, but save the details for paying clients. 

Short on free content ideas? Consider these: 

• A podcast that talks about the issues surrounding your product or idea
• Product recommendations in your niche
• A video lesson on getting started in your niche
• An email mini-course that teaches users how to achieve an outcome your audience cares about

The key is to give away content that’s valuable and gives users a taste of what you can do for them if they buy your product. This builds your credibility as the knowledgeable expert who can transform their lives. 

When should you sign up for Kajabi?

Before signing up for Kajabi, you need to meet two criteria:

1. You have an idea of what you’re going to sell
2. You’re actively building your audience

Once you know what you’re trying to build and who you’re targeting, you’re ready to build your website and start building a list. That’s the perfect time to sign up for Kajabi. 

It gives you time to learn how Kajabi works and build a solid business foundation before you launch. So you can:

• Lay the groundwork for your SEO by getting your website and blog started early
• Have a digital home base where you can send your social media followers and convert them into leads via email sign-up
• Start to build credibility
• Save yourself the headache of migrating systems down the road
  

Kajabi: the #1 platform for knowledge entrepreneurs

As an all-in-one platform designed specifically for knowledge entrepreneurs, Kajabi resources you to quickly launch and scale a knowledge e-commerce business. 

With all the tech you need bundled into one platform, you’ll never need to worry about figuring out which tools will help you grow your business or integrate with every other tool you’re using. Because in Kajabi, they’re designed to work together. 

And Kajabi has no hidden fees. There’s no penalty for adding additional clients, so you can grow your business as big and as fast as possible.  

The key is to find your big idea and start building an audience to sell to. For that, Kajabi is all you need.

Ready to get started? Sign up for your free trial of Kajabi today!

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

Find more blog posts by category:

Online courses
Memberships
Podcasts
Coaching