Is Kajabi Right for Your Business? Here’s How to Tell.
Leslie Cason
Helping creatives turn their talent into profit through digital products and courses | Kajabi Expert | Education for DIYers
Nearly every week I have conversations with fellow business owners who want to turn their knowledge into courses and revenue. And one of their first questions is where they should host them and whether Kajabi is the best option.
If you haven’t decided whether Kajabi is right for you, this post will help you figure that out. It’s not meant to “sell you” on Kajabi. My Studio doesn’t make a commission if you sign up. It’s meant to give you an honest view of the platform so you can make a sound decision about whether it’s right for you.
As a vetted Kajabi Expert, I work with the platform daily to develop it for clients in a variety of niches - coaches, therapists, podcasters and more. So I have some insight on when it’s the right platform and when it will be too much.
IS KAJABI RIGHT FOR YOU?
Kajabi is a huge platform and it can replace most - if not all - of the tools you probably already use in your business. But as I tell our clients, if you’re going to use it you want to be sure you can maximize your investment and that you are going to use at least its core features - the products, email marketing and pages. So it’s essential that you evaluate whether it will be right for you before you sign up for the trial.
If you’re not gonna use all of those core features, there are other platforms that would be a better and less expensive option.?
When someone isn’t sure if Kajabi is the best choice, here are the questions we go through:
Write down your monthly payment for each of these tools and services:
Kajabi has features that do all of these things. So compare what you are spending every month to what you would spend with Kajabi, which has four plans to choose from:
How much would you save each month if you moved to Kajabi? For many tools, the more you grow the more you’ll spend. For example, with most email marketing services, when your list grows so does your monthly fee. With Kajabi, you can have up to 10,000 contacts on the basic plan and 25,000 on the growth plan. Plenty of room to grow without having to worry about your monthly fee increasing. So think long-term about your expenses and what they are likely to be three or six months from now.
Do you like your current platforms for email marketing, website and/or courses? How do you feel about leaving them? Some people are very particular about what they use and how you feel about something often determines your success with it. So consider the emotional side of changing platforms (it actually does matter). Consider whether it would be difficult to give up a feature you currently have or whether you could deal with doing something different. I have had clients who wanted to move to Kajabi, but had a hard time adapting to how it works.
How do you feel about having all of your core tools on a single platform? For some of our clients, this was a scary thing at first. What if Kajabi goes down? Thankfully, Kajabi has a team of engineers who work around the clock to keep the platform operational. After a few months of having everything available with one login, our clients realize what a convenience it is. Still, it’s hard to get your head around having everything contained in one place. This is why it’s a good idea to get into the habit of backing things up. Kajabi does this for you, but having all your stuff in another place can ease anxiety.
How techie are you? And how willing are you to learn the Kajabi platform? I’ll admit, it’s not the easiest to get your head around. There are a lot of parts that fit together. Fortunately, you have our Studio to help you.
Do you currently have an audience of engaged people? In order to sell things, you need interested people to sell them to. So it’s a good idea to come to the platform with an engaged email list so that you can launch your products to people that might actually buy them. This will help offset the monthly or annual expense. In my opinion, you should move to Kajabi after you have had success with your business and products. It’s not the place to start.
If you have a course now, do you make sales? Kajabi is best implemented when you know you can make enough sales to support the investment. Your products should have market share before moving.
So how can you know if Kajabi is the best move? Some of it is just trying the platform to see if it works for you. But if you answer “Yes” to these questions, then Kajabi might be right for your business:
HOSTING YOUR COURSE ON KAJABI
The primary reason to use Kajabi is to sell courses. You can also run programs live and use Kajabi to house the recordings (many of our clients do that). So if you have a course or are ready to develop one, Kajabi’s layout is linear and easy to use:
CONTENT
Kajabi courses can house pretty much any kind of content you want:
Kajabi has several layouts for its course container to fit how you want your students to experience your content. They all allow you to brand your course and control access to your content through publishing, dripping and locking.
AUTOMATION
One of the best things about Kajabi is that you can take advantage of its powerful automation to keep your students engaged and to encourage more sales inside your courses.
Here are just some of the possibilities:
One of the benefits of using Kajabi is that you can also use its other features to make your courses bigger and more engaging. Things like hosting group sessions, sending progress emails and creating assessments. All without having to use any external tools.
ARRANGING YOUR COURSE
Part of our course projects is helping clients take their content and arrange it in a way that makes the most sense for what they are trying to achieve. The best courses are ones that make it easy for students to quickly get what they need. Many - if not most - students will never complete a course. Instead, they will find what is most relevant to them at the time and come back to it at a later date. Courses are meant to teach students what you already know so they can get on with what they are trying to do.
We always advise our clients do two things:
领英推荐
If you’re in the beginning stages of course creation, a Strategy Intensive might be the best place to start our work.?
OTHER KINDS OF PRODUCTS
While Kajabi’s core product is the course, it also offers five other kinds of products that you can use to sell stuff - either alone or as part of a larger bundle.
Coaching: The coaching product helps you sell packages of sessions. Our clients have found this product type to be useful in managing clients at different stages because it lets you track each session individually. You can also use Kajabi’s scheduler and video hosting instead of outside tools.
Community: This product functions much like a Facebook group in that it has a feed where everyone can post. The community is arranged by access groups that you can use for specific purposes along with circles for organization. And with Kajabi’s community app (or the branded app), your students can engage on the go.
Podcast: You can host a public or private podcast (or both) and syndicate it to Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Newsletters: With the newsletter product, you can segment your email list to sell access to exclusive content via newsletters. This way, you can create a bank of content that becomes a larger product.
Downloads: With this product type, you can sell your ebooks, guides and other immediate downloads securely via Kajabi.
MORE KAJABI FEATURES
Kajabi’s purpose is to sell your products and its core features are built to do that. But it also has more features that support your marketing and selling efforts.?
Financial Features
Affiliates: Host your affiliate program and let your customers sell your products for you. You can set the commission to any amount and control which products your affiliates can sell.
Coupons: This is a standard part of selling products. You can do single or bulk coupons.
Payment Gateways: Kajabi integrates with Stripe and PayPal and has its own gateway called Kajabi Payments, which gives you options like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Klarna.
A Branded App
Let Kajabi build you an app specifically for your brand so that you can sell your products in-app. This is an extra monthly charge, but a custom app can cost thousands of dollars to develop.
Product Features
Scheduler: Use Kajabi’s scheduler for your coaching sessions. It integrates with Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office 365.
Video meetings: Host your coaching sessions directly on Kajabi and have them automatically recorded and uploaded.
Marketing Features
Events: Kajabi events lets you take registrations and send emails at different intervals.?
Automation: Kajabi has powerful automation capabilities that you can use to automate different things based on customer behavior. It’s one of the best things about the platform.
As you can see, Kajabi is big and its possibilities are bigger. If you’re interested in talking about how we can help you implement it, you’ll find our services below.
RESOURCES
WORK WITH THE STUDIO
In this Studio, you’ll find a combination of strategic know-how, techie expertise and elegant design that elevates your online presence and makes selling your knowledge a breeze
1?? The Strategy Intensive: If you have a product or course idea, but not much else, this is the place to start. Intensives are your time to work with founder Leslie Cason on things like developing a plan for building or selling your product, finding your best idea or creating a content strategy.
2?? The Product Ecosystem: If you’re in the process of creating your product and are ready to explore the mechanics of running it, this is for you. Work with Leslie to build out the learning environment you’ll need on one of our preferred platforms.
3?? The Marketing Runway: If your product is done and ready to launch (or very close), this option will help you develop your marketing strategy and assets. Work with Leslie on your content strategy and create the pathways to your product.