Live Launch vs. Evergreen Launch: Which is Right for Your Online Course?
Are you ready to sell your online course and wondering if you should do a live launch or go straight to an evergreen sales funnel?
Many business owners find live launching stressful and prefer the ease of launching with an evergreen sales funnel. There are pros and cons to each method, and in this post, we will compare live launches vs. evergreen launches to help you determine which is the best option for you to sell your online course.
Note: Some of these links below are affiliate links, which means I may get a commission if you try them and purchase. However, none of the fees have been increased to compensate me.
Live Launch
A live launch involves a set open and close cart period. Some people love live launching, and others can find them completely overwhelming, which is understandable; live launches come with a lot of excitement and a lot of pressure.
The Benefits of a Live Launch:
There are a lot of benefits of doing a live launch, including the ability to create urgency around your cart close date. You also have many options around offering a limited-time bonus or early bird pricing to capture even more on that FOMO (fear of missing out) feeling.
In addition, with a live launch, you can interact with your audience in real-time. This is an excellent opportunity to gain insight and feedback into their objections so you can address them. Doing a live launch gives you a chance to perfect your webinar or live launch content so you can get the highest conversion possible.
With a live launch, you have the opportunity to gain a huge cash injection into your business during launch periods. Live launches tend to have a higher conversion rate because of the live component. You’re working hard to build the know, like, and trust factor; additionally, a live event generates excitement around your course, which helps with your conversion rate.
The Cons of a Live Launch:
The cons of a live launch are that live launches can be stressful! You may be doing a live webinar 2 to 4 times during your live launch or leading a long three to five-day challenge event. During your open cart period, you engage with your audience to address their objections and present yourself as the expert to help them with their problem. It’s difficult to constantly be “on” during your launch with the other demands in your business and life.
Evergreen Launch
Evergreen means something that is available ongoing, but it still deserves a launch. You won’t capitalize on the excitement generated by live launches, but there are so many benefits of creating an evergreen launch for your digital course.
The Benefits of an Evergreen Launch:
Evergreen launches are a lot less stressful but might involve more tech setup at first as they are more automated.
If your sales funnel converts, the significant part about that is having sales and new students coming in year-round without you having to put in extra marketing efforts. Part automated, part passive, and part recurring income!
The Con of an Evergreen Launch:
A con of an evergreen sales funnel is that the conversion rate is typically much lower than a live launch event. Without the excitement of the live launch and the ability for you to interact with your audience live, while you’ll still get sales, they will be much lower.
No matter what, an evergreen launch is a way to infuse cash into your business with low stress.
How to Map Out Your Funnel for your Evergreen Launch
Now that you know the difference between a live launch and an evergreen launch, let’s walk through how to map out your funnel for your evergreen launch.
Create the Perfect Lead Magnet
Most evergreen sales funnels start with a lead magnet, a fancy word for a free gift. This could be a free webinar, a free challenge, a guide or workbook, mini-course, or templates. There are so many ideas for lead magnets. For evergreen sales funnels, in many cases, I recommend taking your webinar from your live event (that you know converted well) and using that in your evergreen sales funnel.
When mapping out your sales funnel, you want to have a good flow from offer to offer, which means your lead magnet needs to target the right people who would benefit from your paid offers further in the funnel.
Promote Your Lead Magnet
To get people into your sales funnel, you need to promote your lead magnet. There are so many ways to promote your freebie, but here are just a few that work for most business owners:
Talk about it often in your content - blog posts, email newsletters, social media posts
Add a link or opt-in form on your website homepage.
Add an exit-intent pop-up on your website.
Make sure it’s linked in your Instagram bio link.
Nurture Your Email List
Once someone opts into your lead magnet, the next step is essential for converting subscribers to customers or students. We need to nurture them once they are on our email list using targeted tags, automations, and email sequences.
My favorite platform is ConvertKit as they make all of the tech mapping so much easier to do.
Here’s an example of why tagging is essential:·
Someone signs up for your lead magnet. On the thank you page, they have a one-time offer on a low ticket digital product. If they purchase, we need to add a purchase tag and exclude that tag from the promo sequence.
Why? Because we don’t want to be sending emails with a goal of getting somebody to buy the low ticket digital product if they already have.
You’ve probably received promotional emails for something you’ve already signed up for. That happens because the business didn’t set up and exclude people with purchase tags from their email sequence.
Plan and Schedule Your Evergreen Launch Emails
Once somebody purchases that low-ticket digital product we talked about in the last step, where do we want them to go next? This is why it’s essential for our sales funnel offers to make sense to our audience and the next step they would need.
Here is an example of a simple sales funnel for a course creator with multiple offers at multiple price points:
The Best of Both Worlds: Combination of Live Launch and Evergreen Launch
A third option is to utilize the best of both worlds. You can have a live launch once or twice a year and have an evergreen sales funnel that runs in your business all year round. Even if your course includes time-sensitive or live components, there is a way to create an evergreen sales funnel that converts and it’s simple to convert a live launch into an evergreen sales funnel.
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