Hello Reader,

Did you realize the promises on your sales page can keep helping your people long after they click buy?

THIS WEEK

KEEP THE PROMISE IN FRONT OF THEM

What annoys me when I see people talking about creating courses is the big long checklist: write your sales page, write your email sequence, do all the marketing, decide whether to run ads, plan the webinars leading up to the launch, and somewhere in there, creating the course is one step. I've spent my whole career teaching and creating learning, so it always hurts a little, because the learning, the thing you're actually selling to people, feels like an afterthought.

But I'll step off my soapbox for a second and use one of the things that inevitably gets created when you sell a course, your sales page. This is where you make all kinds of promises. You tell people exactly what they're going to learn, what they'll be like after they go through it, how much their life is going to change, and what they'll be better at. You load up on all of those hopes and dreams.

Once people sign up, they're probably not going back to that sales page. But you know what's there, and you know what you promised. And as people go through a course, they might get frustrated or life gets in the way. The distance between what they imagined when they bought it and what's actually happening gets bigger and bigger, and they forget the frustration, or fear, or wanting something to be different that made them click buy. They were so excited when they signed up, and then life took back the focus.

Finishing isn't always the goal. Sometimes people dive in, grab what they need, and pop out. But if people are changing something in their lives, they're going to get lost or bored or distracted, and they'll need reminders to keep using what you taught them. It's like starting an exercise program. At some point you have to get over the hump where it's not part of your routine yet and the motivation has faded enough that you need a push to keep going. That's what you have to give your people, and it's one of the most powerful things your course design can do to get them results.

So before you hit publish, or even if your course is already out there, pull up your sales page and look at it alongside your course. Then build little moments into the course that reconnect people to those first promises and goals. It could be a little text on a screen, a follow-up email partway through, or even a quick survey to check in on where they're at. Something as simple as, "Let's take a moment, take a breath, and think about where you were just a few lessons ago." Give them a chance to pause and think about where they were when they started, where they are now, and where they want to be when it's all done.

FROM MY DESK

I'm starting to plan for 2027, including a few collaborations, and I'd love to know what topics you want to hear more about so I can bring in people who can help with those. Tell me below (it's anonymous if you want it to be). And if you have a business and think a collaboration could be fun, hit reply and let's chat.

Sarah