4 Ways To Structure Your Online Program
If you’ve been in my world for a while you know that my favourite answer to most questions is: it depends.
I can’t just say, ‘Oh this is how you structure an offer.” It doesn’t work like that.
Let’s look at the classic offer structure, that has 3 parts:
Self-study curriculum + live group calls + asynchronous community (like Facebook, Slack, etc.)
Even just with those 3 components, you could have 4 different types of offers, that all vary depending on your offer ecosystem, your priorities, the experience you want to create, and your people - among other things:
Option A: Cohort-based, linear curriculum
In this option, you could do an open/closed enrolment to create a cohort through the journey, where each week they focus on the same part of the curriculum.
✅ Pros: cohort creates intimacy, calls can be laser-focused, boost of connection through cohort, easier to discern capacity for your energy and/or add cohorts with support coaches
❌ Cons: cohorts lean towards a live launch model, but can be done evergreen with the right systems, some students will fall behind (it’s inevitable!), some students will want to jump ahead (also inevitable), puts more burden on you for facilitating community
Option B: Rolling enrolment, linear curriculum
By removing the cohort component, you can now have rolling enrolment to lighten your launch burden but still have students moving through the curriculum linearly
✅ Pros: no need to live launch, mixed levels help with growth and inspiration for all students, can scale with support coaches if you want
❌ Cons: Students may jump around in the curriculum and get overwhelmed without the right orientation, rolling enrolment can be disruptive to the community depending on how it’s navigated
Option C: Rolling enrolment, pathway curriculum
For this option, we keep the rolling enrolment, but now the curriculum is broken up into pathways based on learner goals - so they’re only focusing on the most important learnings to their needs.
✅ Pros: no need to live launch, still get the mixed levels for inspiration, learners are more likely to stay motivated by focusing on what matters most
❌ Cons: if program orientation isn’t super strong, participants may get lost, requires more advanced facilitation skills to navigate different levels of learners
Option D: Split offers into tiered ecosystem
Finally, we also have the option of dividing up the individual components into separate offers. So you could have:
The self study curriculum sold separately
The asynchronous community as a membership at a low rate
The live group calls (cohort or not) as a membership at a premium rate, could also add on material review or feedback if you’re feeling extra generous
✅ Pros: more accessibility in pricing, more scalability by having options that aren’t as reliant on your time and energy, creates a natural flow through your offers where learners can choose the level of support and investment they want
❌ Cons: Needs to be clearly articulated in your sales process, more moving pieces for you to balance, live group calls needs to have scope and standards in place
Ok - so how do you choose?
Here’s the thing: it all works. When deciding on offer structure, you need to think about your energy and bandwidth, your learners, the experience you want to offer, and how you want your offers to relate to each other.
These are the exact types of discussions we have inside Masterpiece - reconnecting to your vision and your priorities, then examining your existing offers, dreaming up potential new offers, and making sure everything is aligned, flows, and is architected for scalability and profitability.
Ready to get started in Masterpiece? Learn more here.
