4 Reasons To Launch Your Online Course With A Live Challenge
Why You MUST Include Challenges In Your Launch Strategy
If I ask you “how are you launching?” What would you say?
A Webinar, Jeff Walker Style 3-part video series, a complex email funnel…
I would ask...why not a challenge?
Challenges work incredibly well, not only for launching but also for list-building.
Challenges are a profitable strategy and one of the easiest ones to pull off, which is why I recommend you give it a try.
There is no side deck to prepare and it is pretty low-tech.
Before we get into the many benefits of challenges, let’s discuss the important things first.
What is a challenge?
In a challenge, you motivate your audience to perform one specific task every day, for a certain period of time. ( 3 Day, 5 Day, etc)
You can choose to do this through live videos, pre-recorded videos, a combination or even with emails alone.
Challenges are great for accountability as a bunch of like-minded people with similar goals are doing it all together. They are pushed to take action every day for the duration of the challenge.
They can get quick wins as they work through a challenge.
People sign up for a challenge because they have an issue or a pain point they are struggling with and your challenge is promising to help them with that.
When they take part in challenges, and do the daily work and get those “wins” & “Aha”, they feel a sense of accomplishment and are motivated to do more. (They may want to work with you in a paid capacity after the free challenge is over)
With challenges, you get to demonstrate yourself as the subject matter expert and offer free taster sessions on how it is to work with you. People tend to want to try working with you in a free setup before they are sure that you are the right person for them...and challenges make that possible.
It is the whole TRY before you buy strategy. And this works really well.
Why should i pick challenges as a launch strategy?
Challenges help you prove to your audience that they will get results.
They’re not hectic, you get an ever-growing email list, I mean, isn’t it a clear win-win for all?
That 5-day interaction that your audience gets with you helps in building a bond and increases the know, like, trust factor.
And if you’re thinking, “Why 5? Why not 3 or 7?” No doubt, people run 3 or 7-day challenges as well. But in my personal opinion, 5 is just perfect. Neither too much nor too little- just optimum. I feel that 3 can be too less and 7 can be a bit too long.
Benefits of using challenges as a launch strategy.
Let’s list out some MAJOR advantages of using challenges as a launch strategy.
1. Helps in building credibility
The best advantage of a challenge is that you get to build your credibility EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. of the challenge.
Plus, there’s no intense performance pressure. If you don’t do too well on day 1, you have FOUR more days to make it better.
You can take the feedback you get and make changes for the next day.
2. Combining different types of media
With challenges that run through days, you can mix the use of different kinds of delivery methods.
You can have a video component, an email component, and even some PDF resources. So you are covering all kinds of learners, which is huge.
3. Building trust and authority in limited days
The magic resides in those 5 days. Those 5 days can do something that months of effort also can’t. With traditional methods, you prep for months, and everything rides on that single performance.
The Know, Like, Trust factor is very crucial in any business and it’s a huge advantage that with challenges you’re able to do so, in a matter of days.
4. Easy to Implement
I just find challenges to be very easy to implement. You just have to give your audience a nugget of information each day and you’re done for the day. Challenges are much more relaxed and casual. This makes them easily manageable whatever your daily schedule may be.
Whereas Webinars are just too much work. You have lots of preparation to do beforehand and the actual webinar session can cause a lot of stress.
And of course, it’s an undeniable fact that challenges are profitable and hassle-free. They save us effort, but yes, we do need time for it. A 5-day challenge isn’t a “5-day” thing for us as HOSTS. But they’re definitely worth a shot, for the benefits they bring are unmatchable.
If your challenge is directly aimed at solving the problem, you’re sure they have, it’ll do wonders.
I 10/10 would recommend it. It is definitely worth a try. You give them an opportunity to solve an issue for them for free.
If you are a Kajabi user and want to run a challenge with ease, you can get this Kajabi Challenge Bundle.
If you want more strategy-related help about how to run a challenge then look at the resource here.
