Today I flesh out my marketing strategy for launching my new course and trying to sell myself out of my cash-strapped situation.
Hey guys, Ryan here from Instructions Not Included. I wanted to give you an update on my marketing strategy for the suburb research course and basically coming up with enough money to survive until Ben’s money comes through as well as some of the problems that I’m having and I don’t know what I’m going to about.
But I’m hoping that as I talk to you guys, some ideas will begin flowing. I feel that really creating this podcast does help me understand things more and getting things out there really helps.
So, I sent out my first email today to my list about my suburb research report. I didn’t do a special offer or anything. I just said, “It’s available. Go ahead and check it out.” I wrote it kind of as if writing to a friend.
So, it wasn’t super sales-y, but the whole purpose of the email was to get people to check it out. So, it wasn’t like, “Here’s some free content. Oh, by the way, I have this course. You should buy it.” It was definitely like, “Go ahead, check out this course. If you’re interested in suburb research, then I think you should buy it.”
So, I had 2 sales straight away. So, that’s $200, but that’s all I’ve had today. I definitely would have liked more than that. My goal is $1,000, but this is only one part of my strategy to achieve that. That was one email and then I’m going to create some free content and send out emails around the free content; which will also market the course and hopefully get more people into the course.
It’s hard because this is a course that’s designed to sell overtime to people who need it at that point in time. It’s not a course that I designed to sell in one big hit like I’ve done with previous products that are just like, “Go ahead, buy this product. Sale ending soon.”
The problem that I have now is I’ve taken the time to write down ideas for content that I could create. Originally, I was thinking, “Okay. I’ll do 7 episodes over 7 days.” I wrote down a whole bunch of ideas and I’ve got 20-30 ideas for episodes that I want to create. So, I put them all on individual index cards and I’ve kind of ordered them and I’ve got a row of primary things. Things that I think are super useful to market my product and to sell as many as I can in the next week or two. So, that’s in one line and I’ve got 4, 8, I’ve got 12 of those.
I then got a secondary line, which I think will be very useful to people and will help me sell this course over time. And I’ve got 12 of those, but one of those index cards should be fleshed out to 15 different podcast episodes. So, 12 to 28 or 27 in the secondary pile. And then, I’ve got a third pile which has 4 in it; which are kind of interesting but won’t necessarily help. It’ll just be a nice-to-have.
So, really, I’ve got 12 to create and then another 12 that I’d like to create. And so, my problem is, rather than do 7, can I do 24? And how can I handle that increased workload and how can I make that happen? So, that’s what I want to talk through with you guys today.
And then, I have one other issue, which I also want to talk about; which is this podcast and how can I get these episodes done more quickly and get them out. Because I’m finding I just don’t have enough time in the day to focus on Instructions Not Included and spend the whole day editing these episodes and getting them out.
Okay. So, let’s approach this. Let’s think, “How can we do this?” Alright, so we’ve got maybe 24 episodes that we to create instead of 7 and we’ve got a week to do it. Okay, well, the majority of my process is already done by my virtual assistant. So, she orders the transcriptions. She publishes everything to the blog. She uploads all of the episodes. So, that’s fine. But the things that I do is I’ve got to outlines for all of these. I’ve got to record the episodes.
I then got to get the episodes on to my computer, edit the episodes and then upload the episodes to Dropbox. I also have to export the episodes, I guess, after I’ve edited them.
So, how can I make this process quicker? How can I get 24 episodes done – not in a day. I couldn’t do it in a day, but in a couple of days. Well, I’ve got a week. If my entire week was focused to that, then it could be achievable. My day is almost over, so I can’t do much today. But what I can do is write, in order, each of these episodes. Or, I can write one piece of paper per episode, because that’s generally how I do my outlines.
Now, generally, I don’t like going too far ahead. 24 episodes is a lot of episodes ahead and I don’t like doing that because I find my mind changes and I just end up doing nothing with the data. But because we’re trying to do this over a couple of days, I’m going to try it and I think that’s going to be okay.
So, we’ve got an order. So, today, I can write out that order and maybe even begin working on some outlines. And then, really, it’s just a matter of focusing the majority of my attention this week on to creating these episodes. What I usually do is I’ll film an episode, I’ll import it and I’ll edit it. Maybe I should just record these back to back. Do absolutely no editing at all, but just check each episode and make sure the sound is good. So, record them all or record as many as I can.
And then, I could go through and do editing. Because you do get tired, so maybe I could record one day and just do a full day of recording. And then the next day, I could do a full day of editing. And then a full day of recording, a full day of editing and get as many done as I can. It’s worth a try.
This afternoon is outlines, as many as possible, get them all in the book. Tomorrow, which is Wednesday, will be record as many as possible and I won’t be editing any tomorrow; which means there’ll be nothing going out tomorrow. Thursday will be edit as many as possible. And so, I can edit them and then I can batch that and I can get them all uploading Thursday night to publish on Friday. Friday, I could be creating more videos. And then, maybe Monday, I could do some more editing. So, definitely achievable.
And I also need to think about Instructions Not Included and how I’m going to get around to editing this. Because I’ve got a 6-week delay, but at the moment there’s no episodes going out because I haven’t edited them. So, how am I going to find time to edit them as well and batch them and make them make sense? I have no freaking idea because the episodes aren’t even labelled. So, I don’t even know what they’re about to create a title in order to upload them. Yeah, I don’t know what I’m going to do for Instructions Not Included.
But I’m pumped about creating these 24 episodes and just going, “Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!” for basically a month on suburb research to market this course. That’s going to add tons of value to people. Over time, it’s going to drive a lot of sales for me. It’s just a lot of work. Alright, I’m going to go ahead and get into it. I’m going to try and smash some of these out. It’s 3:09, I’ve got a little over an hour left until I finish the day.
Hoping to get on Smash Brothers tonight. But we’ll see how we go with the missus and if she’s okay with that because I have been out a couple of nights, so not 100% sure. With Smash Brothers, I did research that people who played Fox and Falco – which are the two best characters, but also the two hardest characters – tend to have more hand problems than people that play with characters that require less buttons.
So, I’m definitely happy with my decision to go with Peach. And I’ve got a secondary character now, which is Marth and I’ve been practicing a bit with as well. So, I’m getting better, looking forward to the next tournament that I’ll attend some time in December. You guys know I love Smash Brothers. Super Smash Brothers Melee – I don’t know why I talk about it in this business podcast, but it’s definitely a big passion of mine.
Alright, I’m done. I’m just rambling now. Until next time, if you want instructions go and buy some furniture.
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