This blog is a rich resource that will help you make one of the most powerful decisions in your business this year: How to put together your online offering. It’s worth reading to the end. I highly recommend downloading it (there’s an easy way to do this below) 

Oh, my, there are so many tools, apps, and platforms out there right now. It makes my head spin! It’s even more frustrating when a software company promises to include everything you need to run the online branch of your wellness or coaching business.

Except that most of them don’t.  (Some almost do.. but have one or two essential pieces missing) I want to show you some “all under one roof” solutions as well as some other options that can be easily pieced together without “duct tape” and frustration.

Let’s save you some time.

What exactly to look for when setting up the system for your course or membership, no matter where you are at in your business.

A few things you need to know:

What most new online entrepreneurs (and surprisingly,  some of the marketing experts guiding them) don’t understand is that:

1. There’s more to selling an online offering than putting a class up in Teachable or Kajabi or Podia. That  blog that tells you which platform is the “best” isn’t really providing enough context to be useful.

I know they are trying to keep it simple for you (and for them) but in the end you end up having to wonder if those features really DO include everything you’ll need.

2. There is more work to do up front, when creating your systems, but the work will pay off.

3. Yes, it CAN be “ease-ful” and affordable to set it all up. But this is a “fluff free” zone.  Fluff isn’t going to help you. 

My mission here is to show you how to build an entire system, including how to promote your hard work so that people actually see it.. not just the place where your course or membership resides.

This could mean a single platform that does everything, or several that work together seamlessly.

Note: There will be a few affiliate links sprinkled throughout, which means I may make a small amount of money if the link is used. I am not an affiliate for every platform I recommend in this article. 

This article is for those who are just beginning to explore the idea of selling an on-demand digital product in addition to 1:1 services or live events, and are OVERWHELMED by all the platforms out there. Which ones will work best AND be the most cost-effective?

Many of you are also frustrated about how long the process of researching the options can take.

My goal here is to make it easier for you to decide, based on the 7 criteria I use to decide what pieces to include in my “tech infrastructure” or ecosystem.

I also want to save you some time in the LONG run, but there will be some work up front.  Your options:

 

• You can use the 7 criteria as a general guide. Skim, take in each concept, which is broken down into 7 sections.
• You can follow my own process for determining if a platform will work for selling an online offering. (find it at the end of this blog)
• You can even download a version of this blog to use while you do your research.

Why it is so important to have a solid system in place

What happens when you grow and now need to manage hundreds of people in your ecosystem?

The “ecosystem” you will need must be adequate enough to promote and deliver an on-demand offering. Each step MUST be set up and managed so that it runs automatically. The reason: “on-demand” products can be sold at any time, from anywhere, and at any place in the customer journey.

Many entrepreneurs at the beginning stages of developing their on-demand offerings are immersed in a different mindset that still lingers in the local, 1:1, trading time for money zone.  So they insist on using the platforms they’ve been using all along to book clients and patients.

They may ask: “Why can’t I just use Acuity? It’s always worked for me.” It’s a great platform, and I’m not saying to ditch it, (nor am I singling it out for any other reason than it happens to be very popular) but I do want you to think about how it may (or may not) work in the context of what you need your system to do.

Here’s a rundown:

Booking platforms

Booking platforms work well for those who are selling ONLY events or time slots. Even the packages and “membership” options they offer are still based on selling TIME. There are other subtle differences, such as the sale of “gift cards” which implies time, rather than coupons which are applied to the sale of a product.

If you are relying ONLY on booking software that isn’t part of a complete system that includes my 7 criteria (such as Kartra) or which can easily integrate with a missing piece,  (meaning you can find a platform to fill in a gap) you’ll experience 2 major shortcomings:

1. These platforms only consider the stage at which a lead has already decided to purchase an event or booking. This is only a tiny portion of the actual customer journey, since the average number of touch points needed before a purchase is made is 8-10.

In other words, marketing isn’t included. You’ll  need this. 

2. They are not designed for selling on-demand products. Having automated systems in place for on-demand products is a non-negotiable for both you and your customers.

In other words, you need to take care of those leads and customers, in ways that are immediate, customized, and automatic. You won’t be able to do this manually. (Bear with me) 

If the objective is simply to book time slots and only cover a sliver of the buyer’s journey, (the point at which they are ready to click on the book now button and buy) a confirmation email and perhaps some reminder emails may be all you need. However, your follow up options will be severely limited unless you also include a proper email marketing service as part of your ecosystem.

If you rely solely on a booking platform, you end up ignoring most of the buyer’s journey, which does NOT begin and end with “Buyer decides to make a purchase because of a link they see on social media, goes to booking page, and signs up for my event.”

Lots of stuff happens BEFORE and AFTER this stage of the journey. This means opportunity, but also potential for something to “fall between the cracks.”

Membership Platforms

I’m talking about the place where your course, membership, or program resides. These are designed for creating a great experience for your students, but not necessarily on promotion, onboarding, support, or follow up.

As with booking software, they don’t address every stage of the buyer’s journey, nor do they make it possible to address each stage seamlessly and automatically.

There will be some gaps to fill, unless you are using a platform like Kartra, Kajabi, or ClickFunnels. This is ok, just know that you’ll need to fill in a gap or two, and when you do your research, make sure that you can easily connect or integrate with another platform in order to fill in the gaps.

I’ll be honest: If you want to gain trust, appear as if you “have your shit together,” avoid spending even more time doing repetitive manual tasks, and actually sell more without having to hustle constantly on social media, you’ll need to have these 7 key pieces in place:

#1:  REAL automations.

There is some confusion about “automated emails” and email automations that I want to clear up, because they do NOT mean the same thing.

Your system needs to include more than “automatically sent emails and reminders” or transactional emails that come with most booking software, such as Acuity.

Here’s why:

With most “automated email” that booking platforms provide, the lead enters your ecosystem because they ended up on a “landing page” (which I’ll talk about in a minute.)

For those of you who are beginners, it’s likely that the person ended up here because you gave them a link, hoping that they were ready to buy. This may be the case, and this is indeed one of the stages of the customer journey. (When the lead is aware of your brand, engaged, maybe subscribed, and thinking about or ready to buy)

In this scenario, the automated emails that are generated when someone books an event or service with you are NOT actual automations. They are only designed to complete the purchase and fulfill the order. (transactional emails)

However, some platforms will CALL these “automated emails” which is confusing to beginners, because they think that what they are getting is a full suite of email automations, which is a different thing than a simple string of transactional emails that are sent when someone buys something.

In order to effectively sell on-demand products, such as a course, you WILL need to have the ability to send specific emails for anyone who enters your ecosystem, at any stage. You also need to be able to send specific emails depending on how people interact with your ecosystem at any given time. In other words, automations.

This includes people who have subscribed because of a freebie but don’t know much about you or what you offer, just yet. They will need to be nurtured. It also includes people that have registered for a free event leading up to your offer, but didn’t take action along the way: An email wasn’t opened, a link wasn’t clicked, a video wasn’t played all the way through, a purchase wasn’t made, etc.

These are “touch points” and the mistake most people make is assuming that someone isn’t interested if they don’t interact right away. Most people, even hot leads, simply won’t. Even more interesting is that they appreciate you keeping them in the loop.

The journey doesn’t end with a purchase.. It’s equally important to take care of those who made a purchase via onboarding, support, and follow up.

Of course, you also want to have a system in place for surveys and testimonials. If you try to do this manually, you’ll go crazy and waste a lot of time begging for these things. Or YOU will forget to send a reminder email till it’s almost too late to ask for that testimonial.

You will need to be able to send the right emails (you determine this) based on how your leads and customers interact with you.. Automatically.

The limited “automated email” functions that some platforms include do not cover any automated communications that need to happen in order to promote the event, or get people on an email list. They also don’t include customized onboarding, continued support, lead follow up, student follow up, or ways to communicate with paying clients and customers, automatically.

Conditional Logic

An automation system must have built-in conditional logic, which allows you to send (or not send) a particular email based on whether or not certain conditions are met. The basics generally include: “made a purchase” or “subscribed to list” but realistically, you’ll need a lot more flexibility.

For example, what if you only want to send an email to those who clicked on a link in a previous email? Or who did NOT purchase your course? Or who didn’t log into the course for over 30 days? Or who didn’t complete a checkout process or complete a survey?

These kinds of scenarios can, and DO occur, not because someone tells you to set up your system a certain way, but because YOU will want it to be able to _________ if or when ________ happens, and the system needs to be able to handle whatever YOU want it to do. In other words, YOU are the boss.

The only way to be able to send the right emails to the right people at the right time, (meaning you are the boss) and have it happen automatically, is by having an email service that is robust and flexible enough to handle this.

You won’t have time to do this manually, because by now you can probably see that managing multiple people coming in with different needs at literally ALL hours of the day would be highly unrealistic. I’m sure this isn’t something you would want to do, but it’s also not a great experience for your customers, either. It’s too easy to make mistakes. The last thing you want is for contacts to “fall through the cracks” or have a bad experience.

Remember, as a rule, people do NOT take action the first time they hear about an offer. They need multiple “touch points.” (studies show that 10 is about the average now) Most of these touch points happen via email.

People also need reminders and friendly “nudges” nowadays for things like remembering to log in, attending a meeting, or sending a promised testimonial. I have not had anyone get mad at me yet for creating touch points and reminders.. Most of them are automatic. It’s framed and worded in a way that it’s like an added service.

It also sure beats chasing after them with manual emails!

Is this expensive to put in place? No. Ironically, it’s not that expensive to set up an effective automated email system. It’s actually cheaper than the big names that do well only because of great marketing. (MailChimp is more expensive, double charges for subscribers on multiple lists, has limited automation functions, is clunky, and can be eliminated as a viable choice, as of this writing)

I recommend Active Campaign, and in some cases, ConvertKit and MailerLite, although their automations are not nearly as robust as Active Campaign. I also like Kartra.

This can be a hard concept to grasp, so you may want to check out my blog about the 9 major challenges faced by new online wellness entrepreneurs.

(See resources at the end of this blog)

2. The ability to create REAL landing pages.

Not the one that comes with your booking software or even the platform where your course or membership lives, unless you happen to use an all-in-one platform like Kartra, Clickfunnels, or something similar. (AttractWell, New Zenler)

Another word for this is “high converting” landing pages.

This is what you want, and you will want to have access to templates that are sophisticated enough to stand alone as sales pages for your signature offers or whatever other free or paid offers you plan on having.

Again, as with calendar booking, basic landing pages that aren’t really designed to sell are fine if all you plan on doing is sending a link to someone who may already be at least somewhat ready to buy from you. They are not meant to take the place of sales pages.  They are not meant for “cooler” traffic, only for hot leads. This means more hustling  for you.

Unless you want to become a slave to social media and chase after people there, you’ll need a sales page that can function well on its own so that you can do better things with your time.

You will also need a Thank You page. Users are directed to this page (you set this up) after they have either made a purchase or when they fill out an opt-in form on your website. This page is designed to offer genuine gratitude, guide to next steps, or yes, even provide a thoughtful upsell. Thank You pages are often an afterthought for beginners, but this is an important step.

You can choose to use a service that specializes in landing pages, such as LeadPages.  They do what they do very well, but I’ve found that for most entrepreneurs, great landing pages can be found in either the “all in one” platforms or..

Because of the many “crossover” functions of today’s marketing platforms, you can also find decent landing page templates in most email marketing services, such as ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit.  I personally never use them,  but this is an option.

I go into this in more detail in the Future Proof Your Business Toolkit. 

(See resources section at the end of this blog)

Clicking on these links will also give you an idea of what a landing page (and a Thank You page) might look like.

3. A membership/course area that is well-organized and encourages student participation and completion.

Some platforms only allow you to dump your videos and workbooks into one “bin” that your students must sort through. I see people paying around $30 for platforms that make me wonder if their students are actually signing up, USING these courses, benefitting from them, and becoming advocates.

A good teaching platform takes into consideration the student experience, and it needs to be seamless from the time their eyeballs land on the landing page, to the checkout experience, to onboarding, to the course itself, in which I strongly suggest you offer some support and accountability, and even some “gamification.”

Your course isn’t going to be perfect right out of the gate, of course. You want to launch a BETA version of your course so that you can get helpful feedback.

(You’ll need automations for both)

My favorite platform for this is Kartra. Others have used Kajabi and have loved it as well.

I really love the whole course experience in Teachable as well.  Of course, some of the 7 elements will be missing, but the gaps can be filled in, following the process I take you through at the end of this blog.  There are also, of course, pros and cons with Teachable.

4. A CRM. This means a way to manage all contacts, who are in various stages of their journey with you.

To put it another way, it’s an essential for building and managing a relationship with customers.. And keeping them happy!

There are many layers to a CRM. They can be basic or quite advanced.  Common advanced CRM platforms you might have heard of are HubSpot and Salesforce. These are not designed for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

What we’re looking for is a simple way to see what’s happening with your clients and customers, at a glance, so you can better serve them.

I’ll use Kartra as an example. (Unfortunately, Teachable and Thinkific don’t offer a CRM for their lower-priced plans)

Overview:

Log:

Membership status:

You may be wondering how to include a CRM in your system.  Here are some options for getting started:

1.  Standalone CRM’s are an one option for a small business like yours. I’ve checked out ClickUp but it seems more suited to project management for sales teams, and a few other apps (SimpleCRM,  TheSimpleCRM  are 2, but I have not found much information or any free trial options.

2. A CRM can also be combined with email. This article from Active Campaign will give you an overview on the value of having a CRM.  These solutions aren’t complete and don’t give you direct information about how your students or clients are interacting with your product, but it’s a start.

3. This is where Kartra, Kajabi, ClickFunnels, and other alternatives like AttractWell start to show the value they offer. The information you gather is specific to our industries: Course creators and wellness professionals and coaches. This also means that you won’t have your system weighed down by more tools it doesn’t need. These options are still coming up as my top picks.

Although this is one of my 7 essentials, I don’t want you to hold up the creation of your entire system, if you are just starting out, by spending weeks or months researching a CRM. I DO want you to be aware of how valuable this tool will be, and that it will become a must, as you acquire more leads and students.

Here are the signs that AC tells us when it’s time for a CRM:

• Things are slipping through the cracks
• You are losing more customers than you are gaining (through no fault of your own, they will just fall off the face of the earth without maintenance and care)
• You have more tasks than you can handle on a daily basis, most of which can be put on autopilot.
• I’m going to add: If you are working hard, but can’t quite pinpoint where in the journey you can make adjustments in order to attract, retain, and take care of more leads and customers, a CRM will give you fantastic insight on where to begin.

Here are some of the scenarios we want to manage, or data that we can use to figure out what our next step might be:

Who has booked a call with you? Visited a page? Got to the checkout then left? Signed up for a class? Has a particular “tag” based on a behavior, preference, or quiz result? Hasn’t filled out an intake form? Finished a module or a course? Hasn’t logged in for a while? Has questions? Had a payment that failed?

And what action will these events trigger? An email? Access changes to your course or membership? Lead scoring changes? (A way to measure and quantify the value of a particular lead) or even a Helpdesk ticket? (advanced)

In order to accomplish these goals, your system will need tools that allow you to intuitively:

• Tag, segment, and filter your customers
• Integrate with automated email campaigns (one of our essential 7)
• Trigger coupons and product access for specific students
• Track customer behavior, product engagement, and performance on assessments
• See your data all in one place, in one centralized dashboard, without having to manually pull data from different sources

This is about organization. You are organizing the people that have come into your ecosystem so that you can help them effectively, and in a timely manner, without losing your mind.

You can also begin to notice patterns. For example, if students are getting hung up on a particular module in a course, you can find out why and make adjustments.

Do you really want to do this manually? Even if you do, I strongly advise against this. Any business that is run primarily by an administrative assistant,  (or you playing the role of an admin assistant) at the expense of marketing, product development, and all the other things that make a business what it is.. is probably doomed to fail. (yes, really)

You also don’t want to have to guess what your next move is, or even worse, quit because you “reckon this just isn’t working.” Remember, in order to make data-driven decisions based on insight, not just intuition and emotions, you will need data.

A CRM means you won’t be flying blind.

Some interactions, of course, may need to be handled manually. For example, answering questions, helping with technical issues, or perhaps handling payment issues: (for example, someone accidentally paid twice for the same offer)

A good system will make it easy for you to both automate and take care of contacts manually, if needed.

I find that the less manual work you need to do, and the more centralized your information is, the better. I don’t advise spending a lot of time on stitching together data from spreadsheets, notes, and any manually-entered data. This will likely end up taking too much of your time and discourage you from really leveraging the power of a CRM, even if it’s just you. 

It’s also far more likely that you will miss something important or make a mistake. (Stress you don’t need) 

Look for solutions that have a centralized dashboard that pulls in information about a lead or customer automatically, even if it’s basic information, to start off with.  

As you grow, you can decide if you want to hire help. At this point, you can start pricing your offerings so that if you need to, you can hire someone to help you, if and when it makes sense.

Remember 3 things:

1. In order to create a positive experience for leads and customers, You NEED to free yourself from unnecessary, repetitive tasks.

2. You will also need to respond to the needs of your contacts as quickly as possible in most cases, without having to be available around the clock to respond to every single inquiry. Basic questions can be answered, if not on your website or landing page or even social media, via a strong CRM.

Note: For those who might complain about having data directly related to their interactions with a business.. imagine getting on a phone call with customer support and having to explain your needs each time from square one, sacrificing relevancy (in other words, getting what you need, when you need it, automatically) or even losing access to perks, like special offers or gifts, or increased access levels. 

A business simply has to store and track information in order to make interacting with them a good experience with everything from solving problems  to easy payment to helping you make a purchase. (Netflix and Amazon are great examples, although quite sophisticated) This data can also be flexible.. obviously you don’t need as much data as Amazon collects, but if you have students, you will need some information about them in order to create a good experience for them and in order to guide your business decisions and make your product even better.  

3. You will need to make data-driven decisions and have the needed data in front of you. Flying blind will greatly hinder the growth of your business, and your ability to create an impact and help more people.

Even though a CRM can get pretty sophisticated, if you are offering an on-demand product, you’re going to need at the very least, a basic CRM. I consider this to be more than a fancy add on, It’s one of my 7 criteria.

5. A calendar/booking solution. This includes group programs, classes, and virtual events, but it also includes marketing activities such as webinars.

One of the cool things about calendar apps or platforms that include calendar booking:  Those transactional emails I talked about earlier (confirmation and reminder emails) are SUPER easy to set up.

Your calendar booking app needs to be flexible enough to manage the kinds of experiences you want to offer. This may include ongoing classes, events, and simple appointments. Do your research if you plan on including something like a monthly group coaching call or class.

A calendar booking system alone isn’t going to be able to manage follow up with your students, participants, leads, or clients.

For this reason, it also needs to connect to your follow up automation sequences. (Active Campaign, ConvertKit, Kartra all meet criteria #1, and most calendar/booking apps “play well” with them) I find that it’s best to not have to rely on Zapier to trigger the sending of important follow up emails.  In my experience, these are where the “weak links” are, and where something could break down.

Examples of typical follow up automations: “Only send this email to” those who have taken an action, such as logging in, signing up for a previous class, completing a module or course, providing a particular answer in a survey, etc.

I’m currently using Kartra, because it works seamlessly with ALL the other criteria listed here. I’ve also used Active Campaign, which provides by far the most robust, flexible, and best value, in my opinion, of any email marketing service.

6. A PRODUCT-CENTERED System

A product is NOT a time slot. It is a thing you can sell, at any time or place, on demand. For our purposes, we’re talking about digital products, not physical products, although with some platforms you can sell physical products. These products CAN also include events, group meetings, 1:1 bookings, or other time-based features woven into a bundled product.

This can be confusing, because some “products” include your involvement, if you so choose. 

To make it simple, selling a “product” in this case means that:

1. Someone ends up on your page
2. They buy the product
3. The product is delivered immediately.

Products can be “dripped” over time, as well, if you desire.. For example, a 60 day program with a new module unlocked every week.

Some products are subscription-based. For example, a monthly membership in which members can access exclusive content on demand, but also live monthly events, such as a Q&A call.

The product has a checkout page, usually accessed via a link in a landing page “call to action” or “buy now” button.

After the purchase, the buyer is redirected to a Thank You page, and an invoice and confirmation emails are sent. (Automatically of course!) The confirmation/welcome email contains access to the thing they bought, typically either a download link, a portal, or a membership area that can be accessed with a link and a unique set of login credentials.

Setting this up needs to be intuitive for you as well, so that you get the hang of the idea of how products, calendars, landing pages, contact management, and membership areas (where you host your courses) all work together. Once you do, you can conceivably create a new product in a day, if you already have previous products, calendars, and pages that you can clone or use as templates.

The cool thing is, you can design your product to include any level of personal involvement from you as you desire.. From a “high touch” group program that includes real-time guidance, a limited number of participants, and booking time with you for extra support, to a completely self-run and self-paced course that you only need to create and then sell as many “units” as you desire.

You can do this when you have flexible tools that allow you to create just about anything.

Examples of product-centered platforms (that also allow you to sell time slots) include:

• Kartra (my favorite)
• Kajabi
• ClickFunnels
• AttractWell
• NewZenler (which at the time of this writing is in Beta and still has some serious limitations

7. A complete system that makes it easy to promote your product, sell it, offer SUPPORT for it, manage contacts in the ecosystem, and provide follow up. In other words, there isn’t anything left to fall through the cracks.

The entire process needs to be a positive, seamless experience for the customer, as well. “Clunky” setups don’t really help anyone.. They discourage participants from actually completing or using your course, membership, or program. It’s about more than just making sure that all items are checked off.

What I mean is that just like you want to create a wonderful experience for clients who enter your clinic, office, store, or healing space, you want to do the same for a digital product.

The process also must include a way to market and promote your products/services.

A system that doesn’t include a way to attract leads, convert them into subscribers, provide follow up, and most importantly: keep existing customers happy (yes, this is part of the marketing process!) isn’t complete, yet this is the system that most wellness entrepreneurs and coaches are using.

And this is what is exhausting.. because it means having to hustle and chase after customers instead of attracting them to YOU.  If you are currently relying on social media and a membership platform that lacks these 7 essentials, it’s a recipe for burnout for most of us.

So now.. this is more than an article because I’ve got some action steps for you to take.

First, make a list of the processes that you take people through right now.

What is included in the systems you already have?

What’s a little clunky for the customer, or for you on the backend?

What is missing?

What are some areas in which automation could  fill in gaps, replace tasks or areas where you don’t need to show up repeatedly, and allow you to skip the stuff you don’t like to do?

Where might you may be “leaking” time or money or energy?

Take some time to think about this, and then move on to my 4 step process below to help you choose the elements of your own system.

My step-by-step process 

Now that you have narrowed down your list of platforms to research, here is the 4 step process I go through in choosing a new platform.

Rember, at some stage, you will need to invest in order to enter this game, and currently, that investment is somewhere between $50 and $100, at the time of this writing.

PRESS PAUSE: If you are JUST starting out with your 1:1 business, focus on this for a while, till you feel confident about the unique strategy you offer your clients or patients. I highly recommend doing your foundational work first (niche, story, message, positioning, branding, etc) I have a course to help you with this, which is listed in the resources below.

STEP 1. Write down a list of 2-5 options you might want to consider.

STEP 2. Go to the pricing page for each option. Look carefully at the list of features. Do they either contain all 7 criteria? (very few will, which is normal, but there are a few exceptions, like Kartra, which has everything:

If more than 2 are missing, and they won’t integrate with or connect to another app or platform that will successfully fill in the gap, move on to another option.

STEP 3. Use the following guide to assist you in the next step, if one of the 7 criteria is missing (This is likely)

A. If what’s missing is automations, (real automations, not “automated emails”)

Make sure the platform “plays well” with a robust and cost-effective email service like Active Campaign, ConvertKit, or MailerLite. I find AC to be the best of the 3. It starts from around $15 per month. ConvertKit weighs in at #2, and MailerLite is a good free option, (it’s super intuitive) but is more limited when it comes to automation flexibility.

B. If a calendar system is missing

Make sure it “plays well with” your current calendar booking system or preferred system.

C. If landing pages are missing

You have several choices:

1. You can create them on your own website. This can be tricky, not because it’s technically difficult, but very few beginners have the design skills needed to put together a high converting landing page, and are probably better off using templates SPECIFICALLY designed and tested for use as sales/landing pages. If your landing page looks amateurish, it’s not going to be of much use to you. (unless you are planning to only sell to friends, family, and current clients)

I recommend using WordPress with the DIVI theme and builder. This blog will show you why WordPress, hands down, still the best option for entrepreneurs. 

2.  You can use the landing pages provided by an email marketing service like Active Campaign or ConvertKit.  These tend to be ok. These types of landing pages are not my first choice in terms of design, effectiveness, ease of use, or integration, but they can work.

3. You can sign up for a separate landing page service, like LeadPages. ($37 per month) LeadPages focuses on landing pages, It’s what they do, and they do it well.

4. You can go with a platform that has just about everything you need, including decent landing pages (AttractWell) or with Kartra, Kajabi, or Clickfunnels which have everything. I think that Kartra’s starter plan provides the best value at $99, especially when you start adding up the costs of a Frankensystem.

When people are already paying $60 to $80 per month, why not just spend another $20 on effective landing pages that you don’t need to struggle with, are well -designed and convert well, and already integrate with everything else in your system?

D. If it’s missing a CRM:

1. Integrate your system with an email service that includes a CRM, such as Active Campaign or ConvertKit, to start off and get a feel for how CRM’s work.

2. See #4 above, and consider a platform that has everything you need. (Kartra has all 7)

E: If it’s not product-centered

Honestly, it’s not going to work for the purpose of promoting and delivering an on-demand product.

If 2 of the 7 criteria are missing, you’ll also have to make sure that the 2 apps you’ll be using to fill in ALSO work well together. (For example, a landing page service and an email service) Simply put, the more gaps you have and the more separate platforms you have, the more complex it COULD get, and the more potential for having to “duct tape” everything together.

It’s not impossible to create a seamless experience, however, with multiple platforms. I leave this possibility open, because everything is still changing so rapidly.. new players come on the scene all the time.

Cost/Investment

Of course, you’re going to need a membership or teaching platform to host your product. At this point, you may begin to see that the costs may be getting well past the $50 to $100/month range. If this is the case, you may want to consider at least checking out a platform like Kartra. (My favorite, even though I”m not an affiliate)

As of this writing, AttractWell shows some promise, and NewZenler I want to give a chance, but I honestly don’t recommend it at this point, as it seems “clunky” and is still missing a lot.

A few more tips:

1. Go ahead and ASK someone in sales/support if the missing feature is in the works. Software companies LOVE getting feedback from us, and don’t mind questions or requests!

2. Go to their Facebook page and see what customers are asking about, complaining about, or requesting, and how those requests are handled. 

3. Once you have a system in place, trust it and use it.  It’s tempting to get distracted by something new and “shiny,” but this will keep you from accomplishing your goals. Remember, no platform or system is perfect. If you have these 7 criteria AND a strategy for your business, allow these things to work for you instead of constantly checking in, fiddling, or second-guessing what you have already set up.

Putting together a system  is one of the areas that are most likely to hold up the progress of a new online entrepreneur, and it can be overwhelming, not just because of the “tech” stuff, but because there are more choices, and not much of a guidebook for helping people like you figure out what you need and what you don’t.

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