Before: I have taught live/online/hybrid graduate-level project management courses for my university for ten years. But I never did any marketing, nor set up my own course delivery portal. I am now retired from academia, so I am a solo edu-preneur. My prior revenue for direct marketing teaching was $0.
For this program, I wanted to take the content I developed and taught academically, and streamline it into a powerful, practical offering that anyone in the world could take, online, on their own schedule. I wanted to remove the academic BS and experencify my material into a true experience product, and teach using the Socratic Method -- so my students are led to discover powerful insights, by themselves.
My EPM product is an online workshop: Critical Chain Project Management Breakthrough Bootcamp -- the next level in project management, and a new paradigm for consistently finishing projects early. The ideal customer is a project manager facing an impossible deadline. I have modeled my workshop directly on EPM in terms of the duration (8 weeks of content, 10 weeks elapsed), with 3 presentations, a coaching session, and a Q&A session each week. I especially appreciated the volume of content in this course -- everyone online seems to be so scared of OVERWHELM that they cut back their content to the minimum. I prefer to deliver mastery level material, and coach people how to handle it and apply it.
I have done many live/online/hybrid presentations -- but never to SELL. So the messaging and marketing material in this course is invaluable to me. To accomplish my mission, I did one live/recorded conference presentation (30 minutes) and one live/recorded webinar (90 minutes) following the plan for the Captive Audience and Reverse Webinar campaigns.
Because these were sponsored by a professional society that includes project managers, I could not make my offer directly/explicitly during the sessions. So I made two tweaks:
(1) I presented my offer as a specific example of what all/other experts in specific areas in the profession should be doing as "service to the profession". I told hat I'm doing, and you should be doing somet__this is what needs to happen, and this is whing just like this, because we need to grow, and that means people must be able to learn. So offer a course like this in your own specialty."
(2) I collected emails at the end of both sessions, and used the Website ATM campaign to actually sell and get money for my pilot course and a bonus one-day live workshop I'm doing December 17 in New York. [The idea for that came from my first Get Them What They Want campaign.]
I held an online semi-sales webinar on 11/20 at noon (to reach West Coast to Europe) and made $2K (two people signed up). Mission Accomplished! I am now using the Reverse Webinar campaign to leverage that for additional sales.
Update: Reverse Webinar Campaign kicks ass! Double Mission Accomplished! My pilot course is 6 weeks at $997 (half of the $1997 for my full course starting in Jan 2017). The bonus live one-day workshop is also $997 including meals. As of the end of EPM today (11/21), I have a total of five people signed up for $4985 and more are in process.
P.S. I want to especially thank Don Crowther for his tech tips and advice. The combination of Marisa's strategy and Don's how-to teaching (and the delightful contrast in their styles) was a very synergistic combination. Definitely retain this part of the course for the future. I love the techie stuff, and Marisa + Don is a powerful and unique combination
What is your biggest takeaway from EPM?
Experience products vs info products how to market online courses, campaigns & tactics How did EPM help you become successful? Marketing! a strong message is key.
How has EPM and your success impacted your life?
I now know how to refine great content to a marketable product, and how to incrementally refine that marketing to ramp up success.
What has been the biggest change in your business?
Confidence.
What are you most excited about moving forward with your Experience Product?
I can bring high powered corporate "new product development" methods to solo entrepreneurs -- they don't have to go on the "pivot merry go round" to find their success
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Experience products vs info products is a game changer -- more people need to understand this difference