In the last 5 years, about a dozen online Japanese courses have appeared with a similar premise. They announce a week of free video lessons, then open spots for their Japanese course that costs 4 digits and always ends in 7.
It's Japanese week, Golden Week, Japan week, Nihongo week and many others. Both invest heavily in social media marketing and advertising to reach people.
I personally see no problem with it, and if I had the money I would heavily invest in advertising, marketing, writers, and other things to grow Suki Desu and my other projects. But what bothers me about all this is the herd effect, and how it can end up ruining the reputation of these online Japanese courses.
This is all a result of the Fórmula de Lançamento, an online course created by Erico Rocha that circulates among all digital marketers. I had the opportunity to attend this course and despite the techniques taught, I found all the content quite simple, although effective.
Even because, if it weren't effective, people wouldn't be using this launch formula to sell their online courses. It's not just Japanese courses, pretty much any course on the internet uses one or another technique from the launch formula.
Remembering that the launch formula is not the only course that uses this same system. Thousands of infamous courses that teach people how to make their own course use the same marketing scheme.
Table of Content
The Launch Formula and the Herd Effect
The Launch Formula is a course that teaches a person from scratch how to create and sell a digital product. In this formula they learn the tactic of making a week of free videos to add customers.
There are thousands of other marketing techniques that I don't want to mention here, but they are simple and obvious things to understand. The big problem is in the way students apply this formula.
Everyone wants to do the same thing the same and is practically no different. The author of the launch formula himself says that the person needs to innovate and be different, but it seems that students don't listen and do practically the same thing as the others.
For a person to stand out, he needs to be different from the others.
A great example of this is in the 7 used at the end of prices for all online courses. The myth video, Bruno Avila, explains a little about it:
If everyone is doing the same thing, customers will simply find it suspicious and lose interest in the product. I work in this area and I affirm that every year that passes it is getting harder and harder to sell digital products, exactly because of the herd effect.
People just want to do what is working for others, they don't want to innovate, just copy. First appears Luiz Rafael's course, then a dozen Japanese courses appear using the same proposal.
I don't blame the authors of online Japanese courses, but the marketing agencies they hire!
The example of someone who applied the formula, but does it differently
Luiz Rafael from the online Japanese program was a pioneer in the launch formula, he was the first to apply these marketing techniques in his Japanese course, but he is the only one who tries to differentiate himself as much as possible from the others.
While many content producers focus on selling their products, Luiz Rafael invested heavily in his course and also in the free content offered. All the other Japanese courses I know don't spread as much free content as Luiz Rafael with his youtube channel, social networks and the website classesdejaponês.com.br
I'm not implying that other Japanese courses are bad, because despite the formula that I personally find annoying, they are dedicated to teaching their students, each with a different method. I myself promote all the Japanese courses that I find interesting, I don't have this exclusivity, but for me, the best currently is the Programa Japonês Online without comparison.
Maybe you don't like a teacher, so it's good to have several options for online courses. I believe that Luiz Rafael is the only Japanese teacher who applies the launch formula alone, the others simply hired marketing specialists to take care of all this sales part (which is the same lol).
Some professors are not even professors graduated from universities in Japan or Brazil. With that in mind, Luiz Rafael, to shut the mouth of critics, hired native teachers from Japan to teach his course, which is getting more complete every day.
Why am I writing about this?
It may seem like an off topic, everyone will keep using these sales techniques as long as they are working. I just want to make it clear that I'm not the only one who finds this boring, but I guarantee that it doesn't affect the content proposed by the course, at least the ones I trust.
Are people deceived by these techniques? Yes and no, really some lay people can end up buying a course on impulse without having a real desire to learn Japanese. That's why some end up asking for a refund within the first 30 days.
But the refund rate is very small, below 2%, this indicates that really most people who buy the language learning courses are really interested in learning and dedicated to their studies.
I set up a new website focused specifically on this area of digital marketing called kevinbk.com, if you are interested in following my articles focused on this area, just visit my site.
Hope you enjoyed the article. What do you think of this launch formula being applied to every online course that appears? Do you think you already did? Is it time to think of new ways to sell?