When you’re shifting to an online business model and sharing your expertise, launches are going to be vital. And tracking milestones before your online course launch is an important step toward success! 

As you put together your marketing strategy for an online course launch (especially if you’re new to creating courses), launch milestones are key. They’ll help keep you on track and motivate you to achieve your goals as you share your expertise with an even wider audience. 

3 Course Launch Milestones for Before Your Launch

If you’re new to sharing your expertise online, that’s totally okay! We’re going to explore three milestones you should focus on before your course launch. 

You’ll want to create a project plan for your launch, and it will contain multiple action items over a specific time period. To do this, you’ll need to work backward from your launch dates…which means you need to know those dates. If you haven’t already figured out when your course launch is happening, write it down on your calendar now. 

In this post, we’ll be working off of the example of milestones to track starting three months prior to your course launch. But for some business owners, entrepreneurs, and experts, more or less time will be needed (or possible). Customize these timelines to fit YOUR needs!

3 Months Before Your Launch: Structure Your Offer & Assess Your Audience

Three months before your course launch, you’ll want to focus on converting or clarifying the work you’ll be doing. How do you translate what you’re doing with clients now into an online, scalable format? 

Restructuring your current offerings is an important place to start when you’re planning your launch. 

From there, it’s time to assess your audience. Who is your audience—existing and past clients and customers, or are you starting from scratch? Knowing your audience inside and out (and what work is necessary to build a warm online audience) matters. 

Especially if you’re going to need to build a new client base online, it’s important to start identifying that ideal, target audience! 

The last things you’ll want to focus on in this stage are working on a passive lead magnet and building your waitlist. Building your waitlist goes hand-in-hand with your lead magnet because a lead magnet really helps you grow your list of subscribers. 

With these milestones, you’ll know: how you’ll be translating your current work online, who you’re going to work with, and how to start building your list. That way, you can get people excited for your upcoming course launch!

Related: How Micro-Steps Can Lead to Big Results in Your Online Course Launch

2 Months Before Your Launch: Nurture Your Audience

Two months before your launch, it’s all about committing to your nurture strategy. You’ll want to create weekly nurture content (at least once per week or more). 

If the thought of creating nurture content every week seems overwhelming, just know that consistency is more important than frequency. The more quality content you can create, the better! But showing up consistently is really what matters. 

You need to create predictability and show up for your audience again and again. If you show up for them, they’ll show up for you when it’s time for your course launch! 

And when you create organic content on social media, you’re going to build an audience authentically that trusts you. Of course, ads have their place, but people trust organic content, which can lead to more conversions for you. 

Similarly, social media algorithms reward users who post consistently and keep showing up. That’s a HUGE reason why consistency is so important prior to your course launch. 

Make sure you’re regularly nurturing your audience on social and in emails throughout this whole pre-launch period. That is essential to having a successful launch later on. 

1 Month Before Your Course Launch: Build Your Webinars & Sales Elements

In the month prior to your launch, you’ll build your monthly content webinars. Webinars are free, prerecorded lessons that help drive people toward your course later — serve as amazing passive lead magnets!  

As you experiment with creating webinars, you’ll start to feel more confident and comfortable. Make sure to structure your webinars so you deliver actionable, valuable content without overwhelming people.  

A great webinar primes people for your course launch by feeling complete and achievable on its own. This sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true! No one is going to continue to engage with what you have to offer if they’re overwhelmed by your free offering. 

As you craft your webinars, you’ll also need to work through your overall course outline. How will you design the program, and what lessons will you include? 

Your webinars should align with microlessons from inside the course to prime people to make the leap. 

By the middle of the month prior to your launch, you should be in the nitty-gritty of working on your: 

• Sales elements
• Offer page
• Webinar
• Emails
• Funnel

All of these elements are key to a successful course launch, and you’ll need to work on them prior to launching! That final month is the perfect time to get down to business and focus on these essential steps. 

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If you’re ready to grow your business by shifting your expertise online, you don’t have to do it alone! I’m here to support you with your online course launch and beyond.