Troy Dean

Digital marketing entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster.

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Jul 26 2016

Minimum Viable Marketing Strategy

In this post, I'm going to share our minimum viable marketing strategy for a brand new business. We recently launched a new course called RockStar Empires where we teach creative entrepreneurs how to create and sell their own online course. Yep – a course on how to make a course.

Online education is a huge market (valued at US$107Bn in 2015 by Forbes Magazine) and selling courses online has helped us grow to a seven figure a year company.

RockStar Empires is no ordinary course though. It includes over 36 high quality training videos with dozens of super-easy templates for our students to fill in so they can get their own course made quickly. The course is presented by myself and Kristina Romero from the US.

We launched RockStar Empires to a very small segment of our list in June, 2016 as a proof of concept. We had no website, no blog, no marketing strategy (except some Facebook ads) and three epic training videos we gave away for free as part of the launch.

Now we've proven this product is great and people want to buy it, it's time to build an audience. So here is my minimum viable marketing strategy.

The minimum viable marketing strategy includes the bare minimum I need to execute in order to start building a list of people who are interested in creating and selling their own online course.

This strategy will evolve and grow over time so I'll do my best to post updates here on my blog as we learn.

Google Doc Template
You can access the Google doc for this here if you like. Just remember to go to File > Make a Copy if you want to edit it for your own purposes.

NB: Some links in this post are affiliate links, so if you buy any product through my links I will earn a small commission which I will use to pay for all the premium tools and software we use to run our business.

The Flowchart

The flowchart below (created with LucidChart) might help us all visualise how this strategy works.

minimum viable marketing strategy

 

Target Audience

First thing's first: who are we doing this for? The target audience for RockStar Empires is tech-savvy, creative service providers (consultants, coaches, authors, speakers, copywriters, photographers, designers) who have existing clients and want to productise their service so they can create leveraged income and not be so reliant on client services. Leveraged income is revenue you create by making something once and selling it over and over again.

Lead Generation

Blog Post

We need at least one blog post, (preferably six), which teaches something incredibly valuable to our target audience. This blog post will contain actionable advice and be linked to a complementary (and complimentary) download to allow the reader to take action.

The blog post will teach how to take some knowledge out of your head and write a lesson for your online course and will be posted on the RockStar Empires blog, built on WordPress and hosted at WP Engine.

Here is the blog post in action which teaches you how to turn your knowledge into an online course.

Lead Magnet

The complementary download will be a worksheet the reader can download and fill in based on what they learn in the blog post. The pop up opt-in form for the download will be accessed by clicking a button in the blog post and will also be triggered when a reader exits the blog post by moving their mouse outside of the browser.

The opt-in form will be built using OptinMonster and will collect email addresses into Infusionsoft.

Re-Marketing

A dedicated re-marketing page will be built to target those who do not opt-in for the free worksheet download. This re-marketing will be done via Facebook.

The re-marketing page will be built on WordPress using Beaver Builder.

Here is the re-marketing page in action which promises to help the reader to “write your first lesson for your online course in 5 minutes.”

Thank You Page

A thank you page will be built to acknowledge that the reader has successfully opted in for the free worksheet download and to encourage them to check their email to access the worksheet and print it out. This page will also include a bonus free video that demonstrates how to apply what we have taught in the blog post to an actual lesson in an online course. The lesson we use in this video as the example will be one of the lessons from the RockStar Empires course.

The thank you page will be built on WordPress using Beaver Builder.

Here is the thank you page with the video that shows how the RockStar Lesson Format is used in an example lesson from the RockStar Empires course.

Autoresponder Emails

Once the reader is added to Infusionsoft, they will be placed in a campaign which will do the following:

  • deliver the free worksheet download as requested
  • send follow up emails explaining why each part of the RockStar Lesson Format is important
  • send a follow up email with a link to a SurveyMonkey survey to establish the pain points of the target audience

Here is the survey on SurveyMonkey.

Facebook Ads

Finally, we will use Facebook ads to promote the blog post and the re-marketing opt-in page to our target audience. That's right, the re-marketing page will be promoted directly as well as being used as a re-marketing page for blog post readers who do not opt-in.

We'll begin by spending $100/day to determine the best audience, headlines, ad copy and images.

In Conclusion

I'll attempt to update my blog as this strategy evolves over time, however for now, I believe this is the bare minimum we need to begin building an audience of interested leads for our next launch of RockStar Empires. Are you doing this as a minimum in your business?

Love to hear your thoughts as always.

Written by Troy Dean · Categorized: Marketing Strategy

Comments

  1. Simon Kelly says

    July 26, 2016 at 10:12 pm

    Great stuff as always Troy, it’s good to get a peek under the veil for how it works!

    What do you do first when you are brainstorming this? Hit the whiteboard?

    Reply
    • Troy Dean says

      July 28, 2016 at 5:04 pm

      Thanks for the kind words dude. I usually start off on the whiteboard and then move to LucidChart pretty quickly so I can share it with the team and then finally I’ll document it in Google Docs.

      Reply
  2. Tatiana Hindes says

    July 27, 2016 at 6:32 pm

    Wow, what a great process. Lean and easy. Good stuff Troy!

    Reply
    • Troy Dean says

      July 28, 2016 at 5:08 pm

      Thank you Tatiana. Glad you found it helpful.

      Reply
  3. Lynne says

    July 28, 2016 at 2:01 am

    How do you determine that someone did not opt-in from the blog post and redirect them to Facebook? Do you use OptinMonster for that?

    Reply
    • Troy Dean says

      July 28, 2016 at 5:10 pm

      Hey Lynne, the Facebook pixel will determine whether or not someone lands on the “thank you” page after opting in and then segments them into the right audience for the follow up FB ads.

      You can learn more about the Facebook pixel here: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/facebook-pixel

      Reply
  4. Christopher Schell says

    July 28, 2016 at 3:08 am

    Troy,

    I’ve said this before, but one of the things I really love is how you pull back the curtain. Any time I’m sold on something I’m always fascinated by how and why it happened. I appreciate your transparency, vulnerability and of course, your value. Rock on!

    Reply
    • Troy Dean says

      July 28, 2016 at 5:15 pm

      Thanks Christopher. Posting these things actually keeps me accountable too 🙂

      Reply
  5. Alastair says

    July 29, 2016 at 10:52 am

    Love the the simplicity, Troy. Will follow this series. Keep up the good work 🙂

    Reply
    • Troy Dean says

      July 29, 2016 at 2:27 pm

      Thanks for stopping by Alastair. Do you have a digital product you’re working on?

      Reply
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  8. Apex Infotech India says

    March 25, 2020 at 4:43 pm

    Great Strategy for Online Marketing.

    Reply
  9. Spencer Moreno says

    June 23, 2020 at 5:08 pm

    It seems a great strategy. Does this marketing strategy work for these online courses: web design, graphic design, web hosting, apps development?

    Reply
  10. Actor Gautami says

    November 4, 2020 at 1:23 am

    Very Nice!! Thanks for Sharing..

    Reply
  11. Web Design Company says

    November 4, 2020 at 1:51 am

    Very Useful Information, Thanks for Sharing with Us.

    Reply
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    January 11, 2021 at 6:13 pm

    We are website design and development agency which also provide seo,ppc service,digital and social media marketing. Website designing company in faridabad

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Trackbacks

  1. 68 Small Business Resources to Make Consulting Easy | Process Street says:
    May 8, 2017 at 10:01 pm

    […] incredibly useful blog for consultants and entrepreneurs alike. With useful insights on topic from building a minimum viable marketing strategy to how to think about your pricing method, the only downside is Troy’s posting frequency […]

    Reply

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