Imagine this…

You want to build an audience and position yourself as a trusted expert in your space.

But after posting consistently on social for the last few months, you feel frustrated.

It’s not like you expected overnight fame but you hoped for faster growth than THIS. Impressions are barely rising, your engagement is bleak, and your follower growth feels like it’s tied to a tortoise’s back.

You’re getting dangerously close to selling your soul to the cringe-gods.

You open Twitter to start typing, “8 tools that made me $500 million that should be illegal”…
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Then you’re stopped in your tracks.

You see a tweet from a familiar face promoting their new audience-building program.

It’s not just another online course—it’s a group challenge.

The promise? Build your personal brand and an audience of future buyers the smart way.

You click on the link to the sales page ready to see the same-old-same-old.

Instead, you’re met with… a Google doc!?

The first thing you notice its that there are 91 other people viewing the doc too.

You don’t know what this thang is all about but one thing is certain—this is not your standard sales page.

Why do you suddenly feel pulled to learn more about this challenge?

In today’s special edition of Why We Buy, we’ll analyze how two teams came together to create an un-ignorable new audience-building program.

We’ll dig into the psychology principles they used to promote the new program and build so much hype that their first launch sold out in 6 mins.

You guessed it—today we’re exploring the Un-ignorable Challenge.

Let’s get into it.
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🤑 A Look Inside Un-ignorable

I teamed up with the Demand Curve team to launch the Un-ignorable Challenge last November.

There were already plenty of audience-building courses out there, but we had a different vision…

Most audience-building courses focus on hacks and templates while glossing over what really matters: deeply understanding your audience.

This led to a flood of cringey copycat content. Jason Bradwell summed it up perfectly with this tweet:

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Trends, tactics, and algorithms change quickly (ahem, Twitter).

But people don’t.

The best marketers are the ones who deeply understand psychology and behavioral science.

We wanted the Un-ignorable Challenge to be different than other audience-building courses.

We wouldn’t just teach people what was working right now. We’d also reveal WHY it worked based on timeless psychology principles.

Our vision was clear, but would people be ready for something new?

To avoid building a product no one wanted, we decided to pre-sell the first 50 seats.

When we sold out in 56 minutes by sending just one email, we knew we were on the right track.

Our official launch in January did even better.

We released another 125 seats and sold out in just 6 minutes 😬

We did a bunch of brainy stuff that led to a successful first launch. And the hype we built in our first launch created HUGE anticipation for our current launch.

On that note…

Reminder: Enrolment for the second cohort of Un-ignorable is open right now. We’re only accepting 500 participants and seats are selling fast. Secure your spot now >​

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Ok. Here’s a peek at what was happening behind-the-scenes of our first launch…​
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🧠 How we Used Buyer Psychology in Our First Un-ignorable Launch

Online courses about audience building are a dime a dozen these days.

If we wanted to launch the first Un-ignorable Challenge with a bang—and live up to our name—we needed to work smart.

Here are a few of the brainy principles we used to drive demand for our new program:
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​The Priming Effect

As Robert Cialdini explains in his book, Pre-suasion, it’s not always the sales pitch itself that persuades someone to take action, but what happens before you deliver your message.

Behavioral scientists call this “priming.” And Priming is powerful…

Before announcing Un-ignorable, I subtly primed my audience by sharing my unique POV.

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I wrote a Twitter thread cautioning against “building an audience” and instead urged readers to “build intent” with future buyers.

I even used the word “un-ignorable” in several posts.

These posts were designed to prime my audience and get them ready for a new kind of audience-building program, which I’d later deliver.

I wanted to build some pre-launch curiosity, so I updated my Twitter profile and shared the tweet below to tease what was coming.

Then, I strategically sent a timely email the day before the launch urging folks to “check your inbox tomorrow.”

This created curiosity, and curiosity is like an itch that you can’t help but scratch. People felt a strong urge to know what the announcement was so they could close the gap in their mind.

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​Von Restorff Effect (aka Pattern Interrupt)

How many online courses have you bought and never finished? I knew experienced marketers and founders had seen 100s of overhyped course launches that failed to deliver.

How could we break the expected pattern while reframing Un-ignorable as something distinctly different?

First, we framed Un-ignorable as a group challenge—not an online course.

Rather than drowning them in hours of videos, we’d share short, practical lessons and then challenge them to apply everything they learned by competing in friendly competitions.

Next, we ditched the typical sexy landing page and used a no-frills Google doc instead.

This was unexpected and compelling. It helped position Un-ignorable as a totally different kind of audience-building program (which it is).
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FOMO

Using a Google doc as our sales page created a real sense of urgency.

People could see that 90+ other people were viewing the doc while the number of remaining seats counted down in real time.

The FOMO was real 👀

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The FOMO was real.

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​Social Proof

​The Un-ignorable Challenge was new, but it evolved from our past programs.

To create credibility, we shared testimonials from past students including folks like Amanda Natividad and Zain Kahn, who both took Demand Curve’s original audience-building course.

Happy students are the *best* salespeople.

(Wanna see more student testimonials? We’ve got lots of them here)

OK. I saved this brainy principle for last because it’s arguably the most important…

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Mere Exposure Effect

The more often we’re exposed to a person (or brand) the more likely we come to like and trust it.

Behavioral scientists call this the Mere Exposure Effect.

Before launching the Un-ignorable Challenge, I’d spent hundreds of hours creating valuable free content. I’ve tweeted over 28K times.

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Creating valuable free content helped me to showcase my expertise and build trust with my audience.

Trust is the engine driving my business—which generates ~$40,000 per month as a solopreneur and new mom.

We could have used ALL of the tactics I shared above in our launch but without trust, it wouldn’t have worked.

You build trust by deeply understanding your audience, creating un-ignorable content, and then showing up again and again.

(Which is precisely what we’ll do together in Un-ignorable)​
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🤔 Thinking About Your Business

Are you ready to plan your own un-ignorable product launch?

Ask yourself these questions…

Q: How can you PRE-suade people before you launch?

Start the persuasion process before your buyers even know there’s a product available. Prime your audience by sharing your strong opinions on a topic or giving them a taste of what you’re working on. Think about what your audience should already know and believe to be ready to buy from you.

Q: How can you reframe your product so it’s distinctly different?

Every market is crowded. The brands that win are the ones who deeply understand their ideal buyers and can tell a better story about why their product is different.

Think about the common objections buyers might have to a solution like yours. Make a list of everything that comes to mind. And then figure out how to reframe your product so those objections no longer apply.

Q: How can you create real urgency so fence-sitters take action?

Most purchase decisions aren’t life and death. If you don’t give people a real reason to buy today, they’ll often delay making a decision. Offering flash sales or limited time offers can move people to take action.

But be careful. FOMO only works when it’s genuine. Fake scarcity will backfire so if you say that spaces are limited, they must actually be limited.
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💥 The Short of It

You can succeed in a saturated market.

But, only if you deeply understand your target buyers and create an offer they can’t ignore.

Remember, people buy from people that they know, like, and trust.​

Until next time, happy selling.