It can be easy to get carried away with features when you start creating your course or membership. And although they can certainly add to the experience… its like putting a loud exhaust and 19″ chrome alloys on a rusty old car.

Get these fundamentals right first and you'll have very happy customers…

 

Valuable

When someone joins your world, they do so because they want to either…

• Solve a pain point
• Gain a skill
• Achieve a transformation of some kind

Before you even think about creating your course or membership, get clear on which objective you want to achieve and make this your primary focus. Write it on a big sign in front of your desk if you have to!

That is how you create value for your customer, and it will also help you to keep your offer specific and concise by removing anything that doesn't fit with your overall objective.

Deliver on the promise of your objective and you'll create a loyal tribe of customers queuing up to join your next offer.

 

Easy to use

When you add in unnecessary steps when your customer work with you, you create friction and drop-off.

Like with the “content brain dump” I talk a bit about shortly, creators tend to want to add in what they deem to be “features” in their effort to create a perceived high-quality offer.

Do you really need to create a whole membership site for some video training when you could provide a simple download link to the files?

Cut out as many steps as possible to remove friction and make it easier for your customer to consume and ENJOY your offer.

 

Concise

This aspect is crucial if you want your customers to consume your offer and get results from it.

Longer does not mean better – so if you can solve a pain point or answer a question in 300 words then there is no need to write 3000.

As a general rule of thumb, try and cut out at least 25% of your content. This can feel counter-intuitive but it will get your customers better results.

And it also gives you an opportunity to turn other content into a 2nd offer.

 

Specific

One of the most common mistakes I see is what I call the content brain dump. That's when, in an effort to try and create something high-quality and packed with great information, a creator will put ABSOLUTELY everything they know into their offer.

The problem with this, is that when you try and include absolutely everything what you actually do is give your customers no direction on what's the most important parts of your offer.

By including everything you overwhelm them and make it hard to consume. Being specific means more chance of your offer actually delivering on the promise you make before they purchase, and more chance of your offer being used.