How To Create A Successful 5-Day Online Wellness Challenge

How does attracting your soul clients to your business and converting them to paying customers sound to you? Creating a 5-day challenge could be the secret sauce. Today, I’ll walk you through the steps for how to easily structure and market your challenge to grow your email list and book your course or program.

Reasons why an online challenge is beneficial for your business

You can promote your group coaching offer or get people to book your program.

You can effortlessly grow your email list, which is useful for later when you need to promote a special offer or your new services.
It helps you gather social proof from your satisfied challenge participants.
You can learn more about your target market.

Be very clear on your “why”

Why do you want to run this challenge? There are no wrong answers here! Make sure you align your business goals with the purpose of your challenge - you have to concentrate on one main “why”, which can be anything from growing your email list to getting more clients.

Next, you must focus on ONE big offer, which can be your coaching program or any other high-ticket offer you have. Just don’t confuse your potential clients by offering too many things.

PRO TIP:

You should lead customers to a sales page for any offer below $3000, and above that, create an application form that directs them to a discovery call with you so you can talk about the benefits of purchasing your services.

Why 5 Days?

The ideal length for an online challenge is 5 days. To be clear, this is the perfect length for a FREE online challenge, which is what we’re covering here in this article. A paid challenge (for instance, a group fitness challenge) would be set up differently.

Five days is the perfect amount of time to maintain the energy and excitement and to keep people interested enough to stick around and get to know your brand better. One of the biggest mistakes biz owners make is creating a free challenge that’s too long - which is completely disheartening. People truly do start dropping off around the 5-day mark. So be warned - if you stretch your challenge too long, your participants might drop out before you can even present your paid offer.

Stick to 5 days.

Live Or Evergreen?

There are two ways to run your challenge. First, you can run a live challenge which means you’ll have a specific start and end date and people can only join during that time. Typically with a live challenge, you’ll be present to guide participants through each day. This will be high touch and will require more work from you. You’ll want to go live each day and have a lot of interaction with your participants.

Second, you can run an “evergreen” challenge. This is a perfect way to focus on email list growth. “Evergreen” means it’s always running. People can sign up for and start the challenge whenever they want and go through the challenge on their own. This is the “set it and forget it style”, meaning, you’ll create the challenge, make it live, and then you don’t have any more work to do. If you make this type of challenge, you’ll be creating a challenge “lead magnet” which could be in the form of a workbook or video series that people can access when they sign up to your email list.

Get Clear On Your Goals

Before even starting to market your challenge, get clear on your desired results. How many people do you hope will join? How many people do you hope will buy your end offer? To set a realistic goal, you should look at how many followers you’ve got. If you already have thousands of engaged followers, you might expect hundreds of people to participate. If you have hundreds of followers, you might set a goal of 20-100 participants, depending on how engaged your following is. Just know, it can be challenging to get people to participate in a live challenge - especially the first time around. Be easy on yourself, that’s totally normal. Once you run a successful challenge and have raving testimonials to share, you can expect more participants to join in on your future challenges.

Create Your Online Challenge In 4 Steps

Pick A Name

Including the number of days in the naming is crucial. You want your audience to know that this is a doable challenge that only requires commitment for, in most cases, 5 days. Other than that, you want to offer something realistic and believable, nothing too crazy like becoming a billionaire in 5 days or going completely plastic-free in 3 days!

Ask yourself these questions to create the perfect challenge name

How much is the challenge? (FREE 3-Day Decluttering Challenge)
What’s the promise of the challenge? (Metabolism Booster Challenge)
Who’s your challenge for? (Burnt-Out Momma’s Morning Rituals Challenge)

PRO TIP: The word “challenge” might not work for your industry, so you can use words like “detox”, “booster”, “glow-up”, “project” or any other word that describes some kind of transformation, to give your challenge a feminine vibe. Just make sure that the name is aligned with the vocabulary of your dream clients.

Here are a few more topic ideas for you:

Natural Skincare Routine
Kitchen Pantry Detox
Whole Foods Snack Challenge
Clean Eating Challenge
Healthy Smoothie Detox Challenge
Home Detox

Don’t be afraid to choose a quirky title! You should only care about your ideal clients and whether the name you come up with fully resonates with them or not. If you feel like your audience is open to it, just go for it! The worst that can happen is that you get more insights about them and know what to improve next time.

2. Promoting Your Challenge

In order to successfully grow your business, be prepared to market your challenge in all possible ways you can.

If you have an email list, make sure you include the details in your next newsletter.
Are you part of any Facebook groups? When they have a promo day or if it respects the guidelines, share a post about this upcoming project to entice people.
While on Facebook, you can also promote your challenge on your Facebook page - post, change the cover to something related to the challenge, host a LIVE talking about how your challenge solves the pain points of your ideal clients.
The same applies to Instagram, Twitter, or your blog - talk about your challenge wherever you can!

PRO TIP: You should only market this project 1-2 weeks before it begins. If you end up over-promoting, people will lose interest before your challenge even starts!

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3. Content Ideas You Can Deliver Daily

The key to a successful online challenge is to be helpful and provide tons of value. Ideally, you want to deliver applicable tips that give your participants immediate results. You want to focus on communicating via email (and if you’re running a live challenge, on Facebook too). If you’re running a live challenge, consider creating a Facebook group, so that your community can engage and even re-visit the challenge. You can go LIVE and discuss questions and updates with your community.

Most importantly, whether your challenge is live or evergreen, you should send out emails every day during your challenge. This way you can remind participants to get involved. If you’re up for it, you can even include videos to explain what they can expect from the project that day.

PRO TIP:

Prepare all your posts and automate your newsletters in advance, so that you don’t have to stress about creating content in the moment.

Pssst! My 5-Day Challenge Kit is here for you to create all your content effortlessly. I’ve included a gorgeous customizable workbook, beautiful Instagram post/story/carousel templates, and Facebook group covers that you can customize in Canva!

4. Make Your Paid Offer

The easiest way to monetize your challenge is by offering a FREE webinar or strategy session at the end of your challenge. Ideally, when you provide a freebie of this sort, which is packed with valuable information, it will be easier for you to present your high-ticket offer - your coaching sessions or course will sell better this way than presented in the email. Email marketing works best for low-ticket goodies, such as a strategy call, a promo kit of your highly recommended essential oils, or your natural skincare products.

Save time on creating your online challenge and get ready to grow your business with my 5-Day Challenge Kit! Peep this amazing and fun sample kit that consists of a workbook, Instagram posts, and carousels that I’ve soulfully designed for a nutritional coach.