What should you have in place as you’re launching an online course? Here will be an online course launch checklist that will help you to feel more ready for your offer launch.
Creating an online course is a great way to scale your impact and generate additional income online. Either you’re planning to shift all of your 1:1 work into 1:many setup or want to have your course as another resource for your audience – there are plenty of ways to go.
However, it can also feel like an overwhelming amount of work to do…
This online course launch checklist is here for you to help you through that and simplify the process of getting your online course out in the world.
If you’ve just started working on your course, make sure to join us inside Your Course Creation Membership!
Online course launch checklist
Your offer
Let’s start by evaluating if your offer is ready to be launched!
Keep in mind that your online course can also be pre-launched (you can start the sale BEFORE it’s fully ready). If that’s the path you have chosen, this specific phase of your online course launch checklist might not be as relevant for you.
- Make sure your course serves a clear goal and is created for a specific audience. If you find yourself looking at a vague material that could be useful for anyone, this might mean that there is a chance to revamp and improve it. Having a clear goal will help you not only to have a better offer but also – sell it more easily!
- Clarify the messaging of your offer. Explore your audience’s pain points and focus on how your offer will help them. Clear messaging will help you to deliver the benefits of your offer more easily and create better promotional materials.
- Provide a clear customer path from their starting point to the end goal. As someone joins your course, does the sequence of learning materials make perfect sense? Evaluate if there are parts of your course that might need to be moved or adjustes.
- Record your course videos and make any relevant edits. Ideally your videos shouldn’t be too long – most course students say that videos up to 10 mins are the most actionable to work with. But keep in mind that this will absolutely depend on your content.
- Consider adding intro/outro for your video lessons. I love creating an animated slide on Canva that I add at the end of all of my videos. You can learn how to do that inside Your Course Creation Membership!
- Add script or video descriptions where relevant. This will diversify your audience’s learning experience and in some cases will help them to find the solutions they seek faster.
- Evaluate if there are any supportive materials you could add in the course like worksheets or templates. Explore these 6 types of learning materials to add in a course.
- Decide on the price and the launch offer for your course. Explore how to price an online course here!
Check out Course Creation Checklist for a full step by step list!
Your setup
The setup of your online course often is the most challenging part as there are so many different platforms to choose from.
If you’re still trying to find your perfect fit, make sure to check out my Course Platform Guide. It’s a free Masterclass that will guide you through the key differences between various platforms and will help you to find the perfect fit for you!
Your exact setup must-haves will absolutely depend on your platform but here are the key elements to consider:
- Understand your user experience. As you get started on the platform of your choice, it’s important to understand the exact steps your audience will have to work through to get to your offer. Experiment with the platform and understand how it works, where each button leads to and what are the pages your audience will see.
- Upload your course. As you upload all of your course videos and supportive materials, make sure the lessons are Published, the videos have relevant thumbnails and downloads are visible. If your downloads are harder to see, make sure to leave a note below the video or even mention in the content where your audience can find relevant downloads.
- Create intro and outro lesson. As your students enter your course, you want to make sure you properly introduce them to the space and they understand where/what will they find. If there’s a drip schedule, let them know when the next lessons will be available. If there’s any other space to check out, like a separate community space, mention that as well. The outro lesson should lead them into the next steps – as they’ve finished this course, what is the next step they can take?
- Create the drip schedule if you plan to release your lessons over time. If not, then all the lessons are published. (Most platforms will keep them in draft by default).
- Set the price and offers for your course. This includes the base price for your offer, as well as any coupon codes you might want to use and special-price offers.
- Set up the landing page for the course. Most platforms will have built-in course landing pages. While you can choose to create a sales page on your website instead, you still should do a simple setup for the landing page on the platform as well. Check out Online course sales page template post.
- Set up/review the Checkout page. While in most cases Checkout pages won’t have extensive editing features, you still want to make sure all the details there are relevant and on point. This is especially true for Kajabi as you have to customize the Checkout page there. Learn more in this post about The most common Kajabi mistakes.
- Set up the Thank You page. This often is an overlooked part of launching an online course, as it’s easy to dismiss it. You want to make sure the TY page is brand-aligned and delivers the message about what is the exact next step for your audience. Inside Evergreen Funnel Formula course we talk more about optimizing all of your checkout elements if you aspire to generate passive course sales.
- Make sure it all works – I usually love to try it all out with a dummy account, created with a free code. This way you can explore the exact steps your audience will take and see if everything is in place.
Your launch plans
What would be this online course launch checklist without the actual part of getting ready for the LAUNCH.
So by now, you have your offer set and good to go, your platform is all ready.
Here are some of the launch prep questions to consider:
- Plan time for the pre-launch. Pre-launch can be one of the most important parts of launching your offer – it’s the time BEFORE your course launch when you introduce your audience to what they can expect. As launch periods often last only 7-10 days, the pre-launch gives your audience a chance to hear about your offer MORE. Remember – many people will need as many as 7x times of seeing your offer to make the decision to buy.
- Consider creating a launch event. A launch event is the event that will lead into your launch. For example, a free Masterclass that gathers all your hottest leads and then you use the Live event to open your offer and give the best deals for a limited time.
- Outline your launch emails. Explore how you can use ChatGPT to help you with the ideas for that! I love using emails as the first step to the course launch as they give a great base for repurposing and creating other launch promot materials.
- Create and schedule other relevant promotional materials. I love launching on Instagram and it’s the main social media I use. So in my case this will include creating Instagram posts and Stories. If you have any other social media where you’re actively showing up – tap into that as well! It can be Facebook, LinkedIn, even having your own group on Meetup or elsewhere.
As you go into your course launch remember that persistance is the key.
Way too many people start promoting and drift off as they don’t see the expected level of interest. But here’s the thing – often people buy in the very last minute. And just because you don’t see the sales on the first or the second day, it doesn’t mean that your offer won’t be highly successful!
That’s why having a launch plan BEFORE you start the launch will help you to actually work through it all, even if the motivation to do so dies down.
I hope this online course launch checklist will help you to get your online course to the finish line more easily.
For more support in your course creation journey, make sure to join us inside Your Course Creation Membership!
Connect with me on Instagram @coursecreationlab to learn more!
And don’t miss the latest episodes of the Savvy Offer Hub podcast.
