A 5-day challenge is where you invite people to work towards a goal over a period of 5 days. Each day, you give them something specific to accomplish in order to help them reach that big-picture goal.
They’re these highly popular events that get people excited and engaged for a short period of time and there are also a lot of topics out there for you to choose from.
I’ve personally joined many challenges before (a meditation challenge, a blogging challenge, a drink-green-smoothies challenge, and even a Youtube yoga challenge), and I’ve also created and hosted a couple of challenges for my business too (a goal-setting challenge, a productivity challenge, a to-do list challenge, a habit challenge, etc.).
Speaking from experience, creating and hosting a challenge is a highly effective strategy to:
Attract your ideal clients and customers
Build your email list
Grow your community
Increase engagement within that community
Position yourself as an industry expert
Increase awareness about your products or services
Sell your products or services
So, if you’re here thinking of creating a challenge for yourself, you’ve come to the right place because it doesn’t have to be as complicated as you think.
Here are eight steps to create a challenge (the simple way).
1. Pick a challenge topic
The first step is to pick your challenge topic.
It might sound simple at first but many people actually get stuck here because there’s just so many topics you could create a challenge around.
Here’s a quick exercise that could help.
List down topics you’re knowledgeable about.
List down topics that are relevant to your business offer/s.
List down topics that your target audience is interested in.
You could imagine this as a 3-way Venn diagram and once you have a couple of ideas under each category, you could choose the topic that overlaps all three.
It’s also a good idea to choose a topic that could help your target audience get a quick win.
If you can clearly identify the end results for your target audience, then you know you have a good challenge topic.
Remember, the more actionable your challenge is, the better, because it can help them get to know you, like you, and trust you enough to buy your products or book your services later on.
Sample Challenge
To put this blog post in action, we’ll create a sample challenge called, “Create Your First Lead Magnet in 5 Days.”
To follow step 1, I picked this specific topic because:
I know about lead magnets and email list building.
Lead magnets are relevant to my business offers (I sell easy-to-edit lead magnet templates).
My target audience is interested in growing their business and getting more clients. Lead magnets and list building are excellent ways to accomplish that.
2. Set challenge goals
The next step is to set goals you want to achieve with your challenge.
Do you want your target audience to know, like, and trust you?
Do you want to position yourself as an expert in your industry?
Do you want to sell your products or services?
Do you want to grow a community?
Do you want to increase awareness about your brand and business?
Do you want to gauge interest in a future product or service?
More specifically, try to answer:
Who is your ideal challenge participant?
What is your target number of challenge participants?
What is your target conversion rate?
When will you host your challenge?
It’s best to be clear about your purpose for creating a challenge so that all your actions from here on out would be directed towards those goals.
Next, be sure to set goals for your challenge participants too!
What do you want your participants to learn, do, overcome, or accomplish with your challenge?
At the beginning of your challenge, they should be able to ___________.
During your challenge, they should be able to ___________.
By the end of your challenge, they should be able to ___________.
The clearer the end results are for your participants, the easier it is to determine whether the challenge will be a success for them or not.