How (and Why) to Create Your Next Beta Offer
You may have heard that beta offers are a great way to create and launch a new product or service, and it’s true!
“Beta” just means the first version of a new offer you’re putting out into the world while you test it out. Think of it as a trial run. It’s the perfect opportunity to see how an offer is resonating with your audience so that you can help solve a problem your clients are experiencing, bring in revenue, and test a new concept.
Plus, launching a beta offer can allow you to bring in revenue while also serving your people in a way that doesn’t burn you out – a thing I know both you and I are here for in the world of online business.
So, now that testing out your own beta offer is starting to sound pretty dang sweet, what’s the best way to go about creating, pricing, launching, selling, and collecting feedback for future updates? Read on for everything you need to know to make your beta offer a win for you and your clients.
Start with the minimum viable product
The simplest way to put your offer together, get it out there, and start selling? Focus on creating the minimum viable product – a basic, pared-down, starter version of your product or service that still offers value and benefits for your customer.
Bonus: starting with the minimum viable product is also the quickest way to help your customers start reaping the benefits and to help yourself get paid.
(Not familiar with minimum viable products or want to learn more about the topic? Head over to Episode 70 of The Sell it Sister! Podcast and have a listen!)
Most importantly, you want to be sure that this offer can help deliver the results you’re selling. This isn’t the time to add extra bells and whistles – only include what needs to exist to help your client get those desired results.
It’s ok to embrace the B-
Let’s say you’re an email marketer who offers done-for-you services.
You have an audience who loves to learn from you. They devour the content you’re putting out, they find it super valuable, and they know that they need some level of help with email marketing in their business… but they’re not ready to hire you for one-on-one work.
You might be thinking, “Okay, how can I serve the people who aren’t ready to invest in my one-on-one offers? Should I do a group program? A membership? A course? There are so many options!”
Eventually, you decide to try out a small group cohort. You’ll get 10 people, and you’ll walk them through exactly what you do. Then, maybe you’ll repurpose that content and turn it into a course or something later.
But in this first round, here’s the question you need to answer:
“Can I help other people get similar results to what I can get my clients, without them having to work with me one-on-one?”
And you’re going to aim for a B-.
Yes. Really.
I know that might sound really scary.
When we’re growing up and going through school, we are conditioned to believe that there is an A+ way to do something, and then a C, and then everything else is a failing grade. We were always told to be striving for that A+, right?
I get it, because that’s something I’ve had to work through, too.
But the reality is, in the world of online business, there are a lot of ways that you can really, really, really serve people well at a B- level.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you should just be, like, phoning it in and just going for the money grab without actually helping your clients or anything like that. Obviously, I'm not about that!
But you don't need to get bogged down by the idea that if you don’t create something that’s absolutely, positively the best it’s ever going to be and has zero room for improvement, then people are going to be mad or feel like you robbed them of their investment.
When you beta test, you get to help people while also testing out your concept. In the process, you’ll find ways to improve it and make it even more valuable for the next time you launch.
A case study in farming feedback for success… literally
Here’s a great beta offer example from outside of my current business: My friend Michael and I both used to farm. Now, he teaches and consults with farmers, so we co-created this course to teach farmers’ market vendors how to make more money at the farmers’ market. It’s called The Farmers’ Market Success System.
When we first launched it, we straight-up told people, “This is the beta round. We guarantee you – we pinky swear – the price will never be this low again. Knowing that, once you’re in, you’re in. So any time that we upgrade the course, any time that we record videos or add bonuses, you will automatically get that content without any additional cost. You might as well get in now if you’re thinking about it, because you know that next year when we relaunch and the course is even better, the price will be going up.”
We were very frank in saying that if…
You know, like, and trust us
You want this information
You’re willing to be an early adopter
… then you’re going to get rewarded with a price that nobody is going to be able to get in the future.
The people who joined for the beta round loved the course.
We released everything on time, but it wasn’t always totally polished. At the end of the day, it didn’t actually matter, because our students learned so much! That experience, plus being part of a community of their peers and getting help and feedback, was so valuable that they made back way, way, way more than their initial investment.
When it was time to relaunch The Farmers’ Market Success System, our beta students were more than happy to help us with Q and As, video testimonials, and so much more. They didn’t even care that the first round of the course wasn’t perfect, because they knew what to expect from the beginning!
Being able to listen to their feedback as we were delivering the course gave us really good insight, like:
→ Oh my gosh, they keep asking about this! We hadn’t thought it would come up so much, but now that it is, we can do a bonus or additional module to make sure we spend more time talking about that.
→ Oh! This thing we thought was going to be a really big selling point is actually something they don’t really care about or even find super timely in this moment.
Launching the beta course gave us good data to make the final version of the program even better, because we weren’t guessing about what people would want, what they’d find value in, or what they had questions on. Instead, we got to hear it directly from them. That was really, really powerful.
Charging for a beta offer benefits you and your client
Yes, you should charge for your beta offer. You can definitely be upfront about the fact that this is a beta offer and is available at a lower cost, but I definitely suggest that you charge for it.
Pricing is very tricky and personal, which means there’s really no right way to price your beta offer compared to how you’ll price the final product. Some people recommend you price your beta product at 20% or 30% of the price of your final product, but it’s totally a matter of what feels right for you.
Where would you like the price to end up? And what price feels like it honors the value that you're delivering and the time it's taking you to create the offer, market it, and do the whole shebang?
Regardless of where you land, you do want to charge for it, and here's why:
One of my clients created her course and had a few people go through the beta for free. And because it was free, they didn't all go through it in the same way that they would have if they had paid. There were some people who didn't do any of the material and others who only did part of it.
Sure, there will always be some percentage of people who don't complete a course, no matter what they spend. But when something is free, people often don’t prioritize it, which makes it hard to rely on their feedback.
Generally speaking, it’s better for both you and the client if there’s a monetary transaction. That way, they’re emotionally, energetically, and financially invested. They take the experience seriously, and their feedback is really, really valuable.
Plus, if somebody wasn't paying attention because they went through your beta offer for free and then said “Yeah, it’s perfect. I don’t think you should change anything,” after only completing part of it, you’re obviously going to think “Great, I don’t need to change anything!”
BUT when you launch it again to paying customers and you find all the gaps in your offer? You definitely don’t want that! That’s why I recommend that you definitely charge for your beta round. You can even have the feedback baked in with a stipulation that part of getting the lower price means completing a survey, an exit interview, or something else to provide feedback at the end.
Another cool thing? The process gets people excited! When I first did my Next Big Thing intensive, I reached out to two people who I knew would be perfect candidates for it and would give me totally honest feedback. I said, “Hey, this is what I'm envisioning. I think you're perfect for it. Here's why. And I want to give it to you at this discount.”
They both jumped at it because I made my case for why it was going to be valuable to them. They thought, “Well, hell, if I'm gonna do it anyway, I might as well save a little bit of money on it, right?” Even though they weren’t getting unlimited future access to me or upgrades or anything – because it was a one-and-done intensive – they still got an extra value from saying yes to it at the beta rate.
Program essentials and pre-launch strategies
Once you've thought about your concept and your price, you need to decide what components are truly essential to deliver your offer.
You don't want to spend too much time making it perfect – that's for future rounds after you get feedback.
For now, you just want to get out the essentials.
You could start by doing some market research and chatting with a few people. You could look back over things you’ve been doing, messages you’ve been repeating, or questions you’re asked often.
If you’re launching a group program and you need a certain number of participants to make it worth your time, you can always pre-launch with what some people call a “kill number,” which just means that you might have a goal of 10 - 12 beta round clients, but if you don’t have at least 5 signups, you’re not going to expend the time and energy to put this thing together at this time. Maybe you can revisit in three or six months.
You also have the option of creating your beta offer as you roll it out! This can help prevent you from spending months creating an in-depth program and then launching to crickets.
If you have an outline of the program essentials, and you pre-launch it knowing what the minimum viable product is, there are two types of outcomes:
1. If you don’t hit your kill number, then you can decide to put this project on the back burner for a while or revisit it and see what can be tweaked.
2. You get to say, Oh my God, this is a “hell yes” offer! People are buying it! And since you know what the minimum viable product has to be, you can start prepping it to get ahead before you launch.
Don’t wait for perfection – your perfect people need this!
When we overthink and try to perfect something, what usually ends up happening is that we keep that magic from the people who need it most.
There are courses and programs I’ve been in for years. I've seen revisions where the videos are sleek and upgraded and the platforms are new and fancy. And that’s beautiful! But you know what? The core transformational content has been there all along.
Maybe their videos from three years ago weren’t as shiny and polished as their new videos, but I was still able to get the results.
If they had waited until everything was “right” or until all of the conditions were “perfect” to put their program out into the world, they would not only not be making money, but the people they helped in all that time wouldn’t have been served!
Trust that your perfect people are not waiting for perfection from you. They’re looking for help, guidance, and the transformational results you can offer them in a quality beta program.
Instead of worrying that your clients are going to judge you, focus on what they need to know right at this moment to get the result they want.
Start there. Then, allow yourself to experiment and be inspired by their feedback. Trust that with that combination, you’ll make this offer better and better in time.
Right now, though, you can get your creation out there into the world.
That’s the power of beta offers. They allow you to work smarter, not harder. They’re a great way to increase your income and your impact without a huge lift on your end. They’re an amazing way to serve more people right now – at a discount, even!
So, as Michael Scott would say, beta offers are a win-win-win.
