Ready, Set, Gram
Sue B. Zimmerman built a following teaching Instagram marketing. When Instagram rolled out Stories, she wanted to teach it right away, but her team's content calendar had no room for the usual months-long course launch. Her team agreed to take on a faster campaign, and they chose a paid webinar, following advice from Steve Dotto.
The team kept the launch compressed to about a week and a half of preparation. Their goal was a thousand seats. Sue expected between $5,000 and $10,000 from the webinar in a best-case scenario, with plans to repackage the recording as a product afterward. Her list was a little over 21,000 people, mostly creators and small business owners who already knew and trusted her. Subscribers paid $9.99 for the webinar, while people reaching the offer through Facebook ads and other social channels paid $19.97.
The launch started with an email to the list, which brought in more than 80 registrations right away. The team then pushed the offer across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, using UTM links on every post so they could track which sources drove sign-ups. Sue also described a funnel that moved people from a free Instagram guide, to a $7.99 ebook, to a $29.97 hashtag handbook, and then to the $97 flagship course, Ready, Set, Gram. That course launched in June, reached a 7% conversion rate, and produced 368 sales in the launch window. The price later rose to $297 on the website, and the team had more than 400 total buyers by the time of the interview.
The strongest lever was the existing email list, which Sue described as people who "already knows, likes and trusts us." Affiliate partnerships with figures such as Amy Porterfield and Marie Forleo also added launch volume. Sue estimated that each periodic launch brought in roughly $20,000 to $40,000. Group coaching in six-person "Hives" at about $700 per month added steady recurring income, and paid speaking gigs ranging from $3,000 to $10,000 supplemented it.
Sue reported almost $400,000 in total revenue for 2015 and set a 2016 goal of $500,000. She said the team was focusing on a regrouped and cleaned email list and on repackaging launches as ongoing products.
- •Selling first to a warm, trusting email list let the team skip the cold-traffic problem that most course launches face.
- •A tiered funnel from free guide to ebook to handbook to flagship course lets each buyer move up in price without a large jump in commitment.
- •Compressing the launch into a short webinar window created urgency and fit the team's limited bandwidth.
- •Affiliate launches with established marketers borrowed credibility and audiences that the team could not have built quickly alone.
- •Recurring coaching and repackaged course content turned one-time launch spikes into a more stable revenue base.
- 1.Start by building or activating an email list of people who already trust you before launching a paid product.
- 2.Offer your existing subscribers a discounted entry point, such as a webinar, and let the lower price reward their loyalty.
- 3.Map a tiered product funnel from a free resource to a paid flagship offer, and track each step.
- 4.Put a UTM-tagged link on every social post so you can see which channels actually drive sign-ups.
- 5.Partner with established marketers for affiliate launches, and record your live sessions so you can resell them later.
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