Why You Should Build Out a Small Course First

An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a development technique in which a new product is introduced to the market with basic features but sufficient enough to get the attention of early adopters.

Developing an MVP online course is a great way to test all your ideas and validate them with your target audience, gather feedback, and then use that information to improve and refine the product before a full launch.

By following these steps, you can create a course that meets the needs of your target audience and helps you get the feedback you need to improve. Whether it’s a short video series, an interactive webinar, or something else, these steps will help you create an MVP online course that will engage and educate your target audience.

Adopting an MVP strategy for your online course design has several advantages:

1. Faster Time to Market: By launching a minimum viable product, you can quickly test your course ideas and get feedback from customers, which allows you to get your course to market much faster than if you tried to build a fully-featured product from the start.
2. Reduced Costs: An MVP requires less time, effort, and money to develop than a full-fledged product, allowing you to minimize your costs while you validate your idea.
3. Early Customer Feedback: An MVP allows you to test your product with real customers, giving you valuable feedback that you can use to improve and iterate on your product before you fully launch the final product.
4. Better Focus: It helps you stay focused on what's most important for your students and avoid adding content that may not be necessary or that your customers don't want.
5. Increased Flexibility: An MVP course is easier to pivot and change based on customer feedback, which allows you to quickly adapt to changing market conditions and customer needs.
6. Better Risk Management: Launching an MVP course helps you manage risk by allowing you to test your idea with a smaller investment and refine or pivot your course content if necessary before investing more time and resources into development.
7. Validated Learning: It allows you to validate your assumptions and test your course in the real world, giving valuable insights into student behaviour, preferences, and needs.
8. Early Traction: An MVP offering can help you generate early traction, allowing you to build a customer base and establish your brand before launching a full-fledged product.
9. Increased Credibility: Launching an MVP can help increase your credibility and demonstrate that you have a working product, which can be helpful when raising capital or attracting customers.
10. More straightforward Iteration: An MVP is designed to be iterated upon, making it easier to make changes and improvements based on customer feedback, market conditions, and other factors.

As you can see, using an MVP strategy means you can quickly validate your ideas, get customer feedback, and make informed decisions about developing your product, which can lead to more successful outcomes. So before you build out a full-scale masterclass, think about developing an MVP first and gaining these ten benefits.

Steps to Developing Your MVP Online Course

Here are the steps you should follow when developing an MVP online course:

1. Define Your Target Audience: Start by defining your target audience, including their needs, challenges, and goals. This will help you tailor your course to their specific needs and ensure that it is relevant and valuable to them.
2. Identify Key Outcomes: Next, identify the key outcomes you want your students to achieve by taking your course. This will help you determine what content to include and how to structure your course.
3. Choose Your Platform: Select a platform for delivering your course, such as Kajabi or a website builder. Consider factors such as cost, ease of use, and features when making your choice.
4. Create Your Course Content: Develop your course content, including lectures, exercises, and assessments. Consider using multimedia elements such as videos, images, and audio to make your course more engaging.
5. Beta Test: Conduct a test with a smaller group of students to gather feedback and identify any technical issues. Use this feedback to refine and improve your course content before launching it.
6. Launch Your MVP: Launch your minimum viable product and promote it to your target audience. Offer a discount or other incentive to encourage people to enrol and give you feedback.
7. Collect Feedback: Regularly collect feedback from your students to improve your course and make it more valuable to your target audience.

By following these steps, you can develop an MVP online course that meets the needs of your target audience and helps you validate your ideas. Additionally, you can iterate on your course and refine it over time based on feedback from your students. 

Need help defining what your MVP should be? Drop us a line at [email protected] or use the form below and let's talk.