Ep49: Online Offer Growth Isn’t Just About More Sales - Here’s What Makes It Sustainable

When it comes to growing your online offer…

Most of the focus is often on attracting more people, generating more sales, bringing more leads in.

And yes, that matters (of course).

But if that’s your only focus, growth can start to feel exhausting.

In this episode, I share the other side of online offer growth that’s often overlooked, but just as important, if not more.

👉 Retention

Because if you don’t focus on retention, you’re constantly needing to bring more people in to replace the ones leaving.

True, sustainable, compounding growth isn’t just about how many people you bring in…

It’s also about:

• the experience people have once they’re inside.
• how many stay.
• how they move through your offer successfully.
• and what people say about the experience.

Inside this episode, I walk you through:

• Why focusing only on attraction can create an exhausting growth cycle.
• What retention actually means across memberships, courses, and programs.
• The role onboarding plays in whether people stay or leave.
• How early wins, connection, and clarity impact retention.
• Why helping people take action (not just consume) is key.
• How to start looking at your offer through a retention lens.

This is about creating a better experience for your clients, and building growth that compounds over time.

🎧 Listen now to Episode 49: Online Offer Growth Isn’t Just About More Sales - Here’s What Makes It Sustainable

If you had a takeaway or ‘aha’ from this episode and want to share it with your business besties and community, screenshot and share it on Instagram, tagging me at @jada.businessmentor. I’d love to shout out your takeaways and your support!

💬 Let’s connect!
 Instagram: @jada.businessmentor
 Email: jada@riseandshinecollective.com.au

→ DM me on Instagram @jada.businessmentor or send me an email to jada@riseandshinecollective.com.au if you’re ready to explore live launching in a more aligned, ease-filled, and higher-converting way through 1:1 Aligned Launch Coaching & Consulting, or you want personalised and strategic support to create or grow an online offering (course, membership or program).

And please hit follow, leave a review, and share this episode with a business bestie if you’ve found it helpful.

Transcript

Episode 49

Welcome to the Aligned and Thriving Podcast for ambitious female entrepreneurs where we align systems, strategies, and self for sustainable success. My name's Jayda, I'm your host, and I am specialized in helping you to grow your online offers for more profit and with more ease through live events that convert into your online offers and through sustainable systems and structures and strategies that are personalized to you, your offer, and your ideal people.

Today, I want to share about the next important phase beyond just attracting people into your offers. That is retention. Let's get into it.

There are two really core aspects to growing your online offer, especially if you have a membership, but also when it comes to programs and courses. [00:01:00] They are attraction, attracting your people in, which is what most people are pretty much focused on, especially at the beginning. Like, the whole business is just basically bringing people in.

And of course, that is what live launching is about, that's what launches are about, that's what all the marketing is, and yes, I'm very focused on that. However, there is another side as well, which is retention. Retention is equally as important, I almost wanna say if not more important ... Let's see how we go.

Maybe I'll stick on that hill, as is attraction. Why? Because otherwise you have a huge churn. If you are not retaining people in your courses and programs, and when I'm speaking about courses and programs, when I'm speaking about retention, I mean having them actually move through it and finish it, having them stay the course and implement the things.

And when I'm speaking [00:02:00] about memberships, that would be where you're having people stay on, and they're not just canceling after the first month or quarter or year. They are staying on. We want to retain people and have them moving through and consuming. So part of retention is having people actually consume and utilize what you have inside your offers, whether it's a course, program, or membership.

So retention is equally if not more important to attraction, okay? We need to be doing both of these things. And as the founder, as the leader of your business, you need to be focused on both of these things. That is part of your job. So when it comes to growing- If you are not retaining your people, if they are not making it all the way through your programs, this is a really big problem.

It's a problem for word of mouth. It's a problem for having to spend so much effort on bringing people in, only to not have them stay. If you have been running your online offer for [00:03:00] some time now, you know that it requires a lot of effort to bring people in, either in creating the systems that do that or rolling them out.

No matter how systemized they are, no matter how proficient you become at them, no matter how much your capacity grows so that doing a live launch doesn't really, strain you or stretch you anymore, and that does become a thing, there is still a whole lot of effort through your team, through your processes, through ad spends, you know, all of those pieces to output energy, time, and money, and resources to bring people into your offers.

So we want them to stay, right? And so retention should be up there on your radar. And how do we do that? What do we look at when you're wanting to focus on your retention? A lot of it really starts with the onboarding. What is their experience when they first join your online offer? How easeful [00:04:00] i- is that?

How much do they feel like they're in the right place? How much are they connecting with other people inside your offer? How are you helping them to have some quick wins and create some progress within that first week, two weeks, one month of being inside? How are you able to help them to see the progress that they're making?

How are you helping them to engage in the next step and take responsibility and accountability? All of these pieces, when you bring them on board, really help. If you can get them connecting, if you can get them having a bit of a win and some progress in the beginning, and if you can have them feeling like they're in the right place, they made a good decision, and if you can have it so that they're not feeling overwhelmed and unsure as they come into your offer, this is a really, really good start, and they are more likely to stick around.

Another piece is really setting pieces up within your [00:05:00] offer to help people to consume, yes, but more importantly, actually take action, especially these days. Programs, courses, memberships- I mean, people can find information easily. They can type it into AI, and they can get all the information scoured from the internet within seconds.

What they need help with is implementing it, personalizing it, understanding it, interpreting it. And so we need to have pieces in place within our programs, courses, and memberships to help all of that to happen. And that can be done in lots of different ways, but it really does need to be a focus. What are the things that you have in place to help someone consume and take action on what you're sharing?

How are you going to help them implement, and how are you going to not just do that, but have them feel like they're making progress? This is so, so important.

Another piece is [00:06:00] helping them to feel excited about what the next step is within your offer, so they know what's coming up, so that they know when they get to a certain point what's actually next, that they can look forward to it, that you help them understand why it's important and how it's going to shift things for them.

Because that is going to help them feel motivated to do that next step, it is gonna help them want to do it, it is gonna help them take action to do it, and it's going to have them looking forward to what's next. People who are feeling confused, or overwhelmed, or unsure, or like they're not making progress, they are gonna wanna cancel.

We don't want that, not just because we don't want them canceling, but because we wanna help these people. So this is really important, is to put into place pieces that are going to help with this. So I encourage you to think about what do your people need, yes, in the onboarding, so that they're being taken step by step into your offering, [00:07:00] connected with other people inside, connected with their bigger picture desire, feeling like they're in the right place, and taking some action so they feel like they've got some momentum early on.

Yes, that's the onboarding piece. What are the pieces that you need to have inside there to have them continue to take action, to continue to feel connected, to continue to stay connected to their desires for the outcome that will help them to look forward to the next step and make that progress? Are you missing any pieces?

I would recommend that you do a bit of an audit. You check in with people. If you have a look, is there somewhere within your course or program where people tend to drop off? And you could create something that's a little bit preemptive to that to stop that from happening. If there's a particular point that you tend to have a dropout in your membership, whether it is after the first month, three months, nine months, one year, where is it and what [00:08:00] could you be doing to preemptively support people to feel more connected to the community, to the other people inside, more connected to their desires and wanting to move towards them, more connected to the actions that they're taking and having them actually move through things?

I can't give you the answer to that because I don't know inside your program. I don't know who your exact people are. I'm not just gonna give you some three-step structure and strategy for you to do this, but I want you to have to think about it. I want you to think about what your people need to be able to stay connected, make progress, and be excited about moving forward.

And I want to encourage you to keep retention as one of your highest priority focus areas as far as setting up systems, implementing pieces within your offers, ensuring that your team is focused on it, and that there is regular review of what's happening with your retention and how you can [00:09:00] improve it.

There's not a one-size-fits-all, and it's important that you figure out what your specific people need.

The other thing I'll say about this is we don't wanna wait until retention is a problem. We wanna be looking at this preemptively. So while you might be at a phase where it's all about just trying to grow and get the people in, I want this to be a little bit of a thought provoker for you to take some time to think about: How am I gonna be onboarding people?

How am I onboarding people? And how can I be looking to retain people inside my offerings rather than only focused on bringing them in? Because I can tell you now, it is absolutely exhausting, and I see it so many times as well. You might get the attraction and the sales process happening, but when you're losing people out the other side, that becomes a very exhausting cycle.

Then you've gotta stay on the treadmill all the time If you can keep more people inside, you're going to grow faster and you are not going to need to necessarily open the doors as often or need as many people to come [00:10:00] in to create the growth that you're looking for. It becomes compounding, especially if you have a membership style of online offer.

All right? So we want to preemptively be thinking about the onboarding and the retention, these pieces that are beyond the attraction and the sale that are really essential and equally as important as far as reaching the growth that you are desiring. All right? So keep that in mind. It is the attraction, yes, but it is also the retention.

And if you haven't thought about it for a while or it hasn't been a focus, make sure you take some time to look at how you can be implementing pieces that will help to support and retain your people in your online offers. If you're not sure how to go about this or you're needing like some outside eyes on it, reach out.

It's the kind of thing that I can help to brainstorm and bring clarity around in a one-off 90-minute laser strategy session. I only open up two or three of these a month. There are not many available because I'm very focused in [00:11:00] with my ongoing one-on-one clients, but it's such an important piece of the whole growth puzzle that I just want to make sure that you are doing it.

That's the main thing. All right? Thank you so much for joining me this week. I look forward to sharing more with you next week.