Launching a group program? Here are 5 things to know about your audience if you want to *nail* your copy & sell it out
So you’re coach, consultant or service provider about to launch a group program…
You know what you want to offer.
You know approximately who you want to sell it to, and you know what you’re going to teach week by week.
But there's a lot of copy that goes into it: You need a sales page, you need launch emails, you might be thinking about doing a webinar or hosting some other kind of launch event…
So there are a lot of pieces, and if you're going to go to all the work of creating all of that (or hiring someone to create it for you), you want to be sure that you’ve got a viable offer that you know is going to sell.
I know it's a really exciting time, especially if it's your first time going from 1:1 to a 1:many program, and you want your launch to be a massive success.
So in this post, I’m going to share the 5 things you should know about your audience if you want to nail your launch copy and sell out that group program.
#1: Who’s your perfect buyer?
Ok, so this one might seem super obvious, but the first thing you need to know is:
Who are they?
Who is this person you're hoping to sell to, to fill your program with?
Note: I'm not talking about doing another ICA exercise, where you come up with an avatar and imagine what magazines they read or whether they have 2 or 2.5 children.
Specifically I want you to find out: What words does your ideal buyer for this program use to describe themselves?
For example, in the B2B space, if I'm working with other business owners, there's a big difference between a business owner who calls themselves “heart-centered” or “purpose-driven” versus a business owner who thinks of themselves as a “growth-stage startup”.
Likewise, there's a big difference between someone who calls themselves a “freelancer” and someone who refers to themselves an “entrepreneur” or “CEO”.
You want to know how your audience refers to themselves so that you can call your people out and say, “Hey, this is a program for ______”. And you want to make sure that the phrases that you're using to describe that group actually speak to the people you're hoping to call into your program.
When you don’t get this right, you can end up with a mismatch between your offer and your audience.
The consequence of that is not only that your perfect buyers might not end up inside your program at all, but also that the people who do join won't get the results you're promising because the material and the audience don't fit together like the puzzle pieces they are.
How do you find out what terms people use about themselves?
One trick I use when I'm trying to figure out which identifiers will resonate with an audience is to go peek at people’s Instagram bios or go to their About pages and see what they're calling themselves. (Obviously you want to choose someone you’re confident represents your perfect buyer.) This gives you a sense of the vocabulary they're using, what their values are, and what will resonate with them.
The second thing that you're going to want to know about your people before you write the launch copy for your group program is:
#2: Are they both willing and able to pay you for your program?
I say this because a lot of the time you might be creating a group program to make your one-on-one offer more accessible—even if it's a high ticket offer, you’re most likely charging less for your group program than you are for your one-on-one. So, if you're targeting a different audience for your group program than you have successfully sold one-on-one services to in the past, you’re going to want to check that your new audience has both the willingness and an ability to pay you for your support.
The most important part of this point is: You have to have both.
You can't just have people who are willing to pay, but can't afford to you, and you also don't want to be marketing to people who are able to pay but don't see a need for your solution.
So where can you go to find this out? There are two things you can look for in order to be able to identify if your audience is both willing and able to pay:
Are they paying for similar fixes?
For example, if you’re a body image coach, your potential clients for this program might already be paying a personal trainer, or they might be spending a lot of money on workouts apps, etc.
They might be seeing some other kind of coach, but you know that what they really need to do is heal their relationship with themselves. Your audience’s general disposition towards spending money on solving this problem will give you an idea of whether they’re willing & able to pay.
The second thing you can look at is:
2. Are any competitors in your space? (That’s a good thing!)
If other people are getting paid to solve this problem, then you can tick the box of whether your audience is able to pay. If the people you’d like to market to are already paying somebody else to help solve a simpler problem, you also know the problem ranks highly enough for them that they’re willing to part with their money to solve it.
The third thing you're going to want to know about people before you put together your group program (and all the copy that goes with it) is:
#3: Why do people come to you specifically? (AKA What’s your special sauce?)
Knowing what’s different you and your approach to solving your audience’s problem will help you persuade them they should switch to you, if they're already paying someone to solve this problem.
It can also help you hone in on your unique sales proposition, both as a brand and for this specific offer, which you’ll then want to have sprinkled through your sales page and your launch email sequence.
Your value proposition specifically is one of those things that is so much more powerful when you can express it in the words that your audience uses themselves.
Where are you going to source this from?
This in particular is a great question to ask in your testimonial collection form.
So, hopefully you're regularly collecting testimonials from your from your clients as well as just general social proof from your audience, e.g. screenshots of DMs, comments on posts that do well, etc. The latter will give you an idea of which messages are resonating particularly well and what language they use to respond.
For this question specifically, you would include a field in your testimonial collection form where you ask your clients, “What made you decide to work with me?” and that will give you a sense of what it is about you & your offers, your personality, and your personal style that’s closing people on the idea that you're the right person to help him solve their problem.
This is also something you could be asking people on a one-question survey on the Thank You page for a productized service or when a client books a call.
When it comes to putting these pieces in place, like Thank You pages, or, for example, quarterly surveys to collect data about your audience, when you work with me 1:1, I create a Copy Research survey for you, I interview your past clients – or Perfect Buyers if it's a completely new offer – and I’ll also advise on where we can automate these little collection points in your business so that the next time you’re launching something new, that data is already there.
If we have put these things into place ahead of time – and you’re launching to the same audience – you can simply tap into those responses when you’re ready to launch and you’ll have an abundance of messages ready to sell.
Ok, so far we’ve talked about how you need to know:
Who they are,
If they’re both willing and able to pay, and
Why they come to you specifically (aka What’s your secret sauce?)
The fourth thing that will help you write launch copy that connects & converts is knowing:
#4: What are they changing from—and why are they changing now?
So, #4 is a doubleheader, but let's look at the first-half first:
What are they changing from?
As I said above, if I’m somebody who struggles with body image and I’ve been working with a personal trainer, that history should show up in your messaging. Assuming that I'm your perfect buyer for this program, you’ll want to speak to my past experience in your copy so that I can understand:
What is it about your offer that makes it better than what I’ve done so far?
What might I like not like about what I've been doing so far that you and your offer will help me overcome?
The second part is:
Why is now the time they want to make this change?
This is something that's obviously a lot harder to figure out if you're making an offer for the first time, but assuming that you're not changing audiences too dramatically from your 1:1 offers to your group program, what you can do is make sure that you're asking this question on sales calls or in your intake form.
If you have a similar offer already you ask this on your intake form and it will help you fill in the blanks as to what your people were doing before they found you and why this matters now. Based on whether or not they end up working with you, it will also give you a sense of whether or not they see this [<— the focus of your program] as an urgent problem to solve.
OK, finally—the 5th and most important thing to know if you wanna *nail* your launch copy and fill up your program is:
5. What transformation are you promising?
The value proposition of your program will tell people how your program is unique, but your sales page also needs to tell people how they’ll transform in the course of your program.
If you take one thing from this post today, I hope it’s this:
You’re not selling 12 weeks of coaching, you’re selling this transformation— so you’ve got to know what it is.
Coaching programs in particular can be wishy-washy in terms of the transformation people can expect to undergo. For example, you know what Point A is – it’s usually is pretty easy to describe to your clients or participants where they are right now – but what is Point B? Where will they be once they complete your program?
The transformation from Before to After is ultimately what you’re selling to your reader.
So how do you get clear on what your transformation is—and express it in their words?
If it's your first time offering this program, it's a lot harder to get those words from the same people who are going to be in your program, so I recommend you go to your one-on-one clients (or your testimonials) and look the results people say you’re getting them there.
Maybe you think what you do is help people “stop emotional eating”, but what your happiest clients are saying is that you helped them “feel safe having junk food in the house”. 👈That’s the difference between speaking to what you think you do vs. what your clients actually value most about working with you.
If you can reflect back to your audience what they want most, your copy is sure to resonate and what resonates, sells.
When it comes to strategically collecting this kind of data from your clients, you always want to be asking new & prospective clients:
“What would feel like a total miracle right now?”
and
“What would your dream outcome look like?”
Then:
Follow that up with “Why?” until you get to the root of the desire.
Knowing your readers’ fantasies and having a strong sense of their dreams and desires will always help you write better copy because that’s how you give meaning to your offer.
You've doubtlessly heard about features and benefits, and maybe you also know that you always want to be using “so that” to convey the benefit of anything you offer.
But when you know your reader’s dream outcome, you can go a little deeper, too:
Take, for example, “a monthly coaching call” – that’s the feature – “so that you can get coached” or “so that I can help you bust through those limiting beliefs” – that’s the benefit.
But once you know what your audience’s dream outcome is, you can translate that into what “busting through those limiting beliefs” will allow me to do: “teach my children a healthy relationship with food”.
Feature >> Benefit >> Dream outcome
“This program includes 3 monthly coaching calls…
...to help you stop bouncing between bingeing and restricting...
...so that you can feel confident you’re modelling healthy habits for the little ones in your life.”
When you’ve got copy that resonates with your clients on the level of their deep desires, that's copy that that moves people.
It’s also copy that’s going to magnetize the right people.
In #1, I mentioned finding your Perfect Buyers: When you magnetize the right people to you, it means you'll end up with fewer people who aren't a good fit, which also means the people who do end up inside your program are more likely to enjoy it, put your content to use, and get better results.
So, any opportunity you have, with past clients, with potential clients, with people who are thinking about working with you, or who have been in your DMs messaging with you and giving you the idea that you should create a group program… ask them: What’s the dream outcome for you? If you could wave a magic wand right now what would you be hoping for?
And then when you get their answer, my question keep asking “Why?” until you feel like you’ve found the root answer. You’ll know it when you feel it because it really is so powerful when you finally get down to the fundamental reason why they want the change.
To recap—before you start trying to write the launch copy for your group offer, here are the 5 things you need to know to absolutely nail it and fill your program to the brim:
Who are they? What words do they use to talk about themselves?
Are they both willing and able to pay?
Why are they coming to you specifically? (To inform your value proposition for your offer)
What are they changing from? (So that you can speak to why your thing is better than that) and why are they changing now? Why is this urgent?
What is that ultimate dream transformation that they're hoping to achieve? That’s what you’re going to build your program around helping them accomplish and that’s what your sales page has to persuade them your program will help them do.
Feel like you’re ready to get to work on your copy now?
Anytime I’m writing launch copy, I always start with the sales page (after Immersive Copy Research, of course). That’s where you’ll make the strongest argument for why people should work with you, and you can ultimately pull some of that copy from your sales page into your emails.
If you’re struggling to figure out where you should start, grab a copy of my “What hurts?” Framework: The simple, non-sleazy, empathetic way to write a sales page that converts: