If you’re in the course creator world, you’ve probably heard your colleagues say they want to “go evergreen.” It means they want to transition from launching their course over and over again to an evergreen funnel sales model. Evergreen is basically a coveted money-making machine that runs automated in the background with little to no active selling by the course creator. For some people, it’s the long-awaited goal of their business. Because going evergreen means no more launching, just raking in the dough with little to no effort, right? 

Well, this “dreamy” sales method still comes with a few caveats, and you should know what they are before you start thinking about whether or not you should go evergreen. 

Let’s start with the basics – what does an evergreen funnel look like in your business? It’s a sales model that can work on its own, without a ton of the creator’s involvement. The product, your course, for example, is available for sale all the time.  And it sells all on its own because the business is optimized to provide potential buyers with all the information they need. A business owner can do this by setting up sales pages and emails. That way they can convert a window shopper to a paying customer within minutes, hours, or a few days.

Once an evergreen funnel is set up, optimized, and working, getting more sales is simply a matter of getting more traffic. It’s basically an online entrepreneur’s dream! Especially for people who hate launching. 

An evergreen funnel can look like a few different things. For example, some online entrepreneurs go evergreen for a portion of their business but still launch from time to time while others will evergreen all of their offers to try to make their entire sales process as automated as possible. The model can truly work for small, mid-range, AND high-end offers! 

But I want to make sure we’re on the same page. 

🙅🏽‍♀️Evergreen does not mean zero work🙅🏽‍♀️

There is a lot of experience, preparation, and business management that goes into an evergreen business model. And I want you to be prepared for all of that before you drop launching altogether and put your course on evergreen.

Get a Profitable Live Launch Under Your Belt

Before you think about going evergreen, start here, with at least one profitable live launch. You need to know that this product can sell and sell well. It’s not always ideal to go evergreen with a new product or even a just-starting-to-grow product. Evergreen is for your heavy hitters – no matter how much they cost. You need the product to speak for itself since you won’t be speaking (read: launching) for it anymore. 

There are a few things to keep in mind when you decide if a product launch has met your expectations: 

1. You met your sales goals 💸
2. You’re happy with your conversion rates
3. You have enough wiggle room to experiment with an evergreen funnel AKA room for the conversion rates to dip with new traffic and some money to put into paid advertising to help fuel your funnel

That wiggle room is SO important because live launches can sometimes do better than evergreen conversions-wise because there is often less of a warm-up period and the leads are new to you. Be prepared for that, it happens, that doesn’t mean your evergreen funnel is a failure. It’s just part of the process. You may have to make adjustments to your recorded videos, pages, and emails to make sure your product appeals to your ideal customer, regardless if they have a relationship with you as the creator or not.

Get Your Tech Ducks in a Row

This is the behind-the-curtain work you have to do before you can go evergreen! The tech side of things is what keeps everything going smoothly so you can be a little more hands-off and focus on other things.

Understanding and optimizing your evergreen funnel to perform well means getting your business model ready to work without you, which will require some planning! You’ll be getting email automations set up, prepping a strong recording of your webinar (or whatever sales event you did), and possibly putting some countdown timers in place, too. ⏱

Fortunately, an evergreen funnel doesn’t have to have a bunch of fancy-schmancy software to work. Many email service providers (like ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, Kartra, etc.) have all the capabilities needed to automate emails per person so that each person gets them on their own timeline. You can also use advanced self-timed webinar software as well, but we also love just putting a video right on a page because it makes for a simple user experience! And if you need an outside countdown timer tool to give your customers a deadline for their buying decision, check out Deadline Funnel.

Make an Intentional Traffic Plan

Just because the sale of your product is automatic, doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be done to get new leads every single day. Because there is 🙇🏽‍♀️. 

It is all about intentionality when you go evergreen. When you know what you’re planning, when, and how, it is much easier to manage an evergreen funnel. 

So let’s take a look at how we can be intentionally planning to bring traffic to our evergreen product. 

Ask yourself: 

• Will you be posting on social media regularly? 
• Using Facebook and Instagram ads? 
• Are you promoting on Pinterest? 

Figure out when and where you’ll be reaching out to your audience about this product and prepare to make that connection. You may not be as hands-on, but your marketing can do the work for you. Because if you create a product and a funnel, you STILL have to market your business to get people to see it. Going evergreen doesn’t necessarily mean the work stops, it just means you’ll have to focus your time on marketing instead of product creation, selling, or delivery (if your course is self-paced).

Our best advice? Consider a hybrid model!

This one is our favorite business model ever 🤩 You don’t have to choose between always launching or always evergreen. You can do both! 

Have your product on evergreen, get the tech and the marketing all in order, but still launch at least a couple of times a year to build buzz and bring in a whole new group of leads and students all at one time. The best of both worlds! You’ll get a stream of students in between launches, your evergreen funnel will get better and better based on what you learn each launch. You’ll be able to test how good your evergreen model is while still taking clients! And best of all, you can count on having jumps of enrollments (and revenue!) in a few months. 

Evergreen can be a dream, but a dream that still requires hard work and dedication 💪🏽 It takes a lot of planning and super strong product to be able to pull it off, but if you’ve got both then try it out! Take a look at your metrics, your strategy, and your tech and see if you can go evergreen in 2022. If you can, go for it! We’re rooting for you 🥳

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Launching is part of the gig, but it’s not everyone’s greatest skill. Nor do they want it to be. They’re working hard on their latest course!

So what do you do when you’ve got a genius-level course but still want genius-level launch support? 

Call The Launch Guild! ☎️ My team and I are expert launchers with years of experience under our belts. And with our Full Support Launch Services, we’ve facilitated multiple six-figure launches — and even one six-figure cart open DAY!

We know exactly what it takes to help you have your smoothest launch ever. Click this link to book your free consultation.

Ready to go evergreen? Ask about our evergreen funnel set-up services. We’ve got the experience, tech skills, and know-how to get your agency ready for a new business model.