The Interested and The Ready

When you’re building an audience for your online course, you can think of your potential future buyers as falling into two groups: The Interested and The Ready.

The Interested are people who are simply curious about the topic area your course inhabits.

They may have a shallow, passing interest in the topic, or a deeper, enduring one. (You probably won’t know and it doesn’t really matter.)

The Ready are people who are serious about making progress and ready to take action.

They may have taken months to become ready, or only minutes. (You probably won’t know and it doesn’t really matter.)

The traditional view is that it’s your job to move people from interested to ready.

You create a carefully crafted series of marketing messages that gradually build trust and increase people’s level of understanding of the topic area and your product until they feel comfortable buying.

In other words, you’re constantly nudging people closer to the “buy” zone.

But what if that isn’t always necessary?

What if people often switch from “interested” to “ready” for reasons that have nothing to do with you?

It might be some change in their personal situation.

Or the reaching of some significant milestone.

Or a simple conversation with a friend or family member that makes them revisit their priorities.

That would absolve you of all responsibility for getting them ready, leaving you with one simple job:

Feed their interest until they’re ready to take action.

Here’s what that looks like in practice…

• Provide an easy way for people to raise a hand to hear more from you (e.g., sign up for your email list)
• Give them something valuable and/or interesting on at least a weekly basis
• Be transparent that you have a paid offer for them if and when they’re ready to take action

And for the people who are ready, you’ll need:

• an easy-to-understand product (e.g., a course) or service (e.g., coaching) that helps them solve a specific problem;
• a simple way for people to find out more and easily buy it (like a simple sales page);
• a commitment to do everything you can to ensure your buyers get great results

In reality, some people will stay interested but never become ready. But also, some people will arrive on your doorstep already serious and ready to take action.

As long as you’re serving both groups, you can stop worrying about how they move from one group to the next. :-)

See you soon,

Glen