So many people get into online courses thinking that if they can just create the best content the course will sell itself.
Truth is… it won’t.
You could have the best course out there, but having a great marketing and sales strategy is just as important as the course content itself.
Successfully selling online courses is more than just creating a landing page, creating some Facebook ads and going straight for the sale right away.
Let’s talk about five strategies you can use and keep in mind to improve your online course sales and find success.
Table of Contents
1. Don’t Expect One Facebook Ad Will Do All The Work
One of the biggest mistakes we see inside tons of ad accounts when we audit them is people expecting one ad is going to do all the work for them.
Meaning they set up a campaign and they write one or two ads and that’s it.
Then they spend the rest of their time testing background colors of the images to see if anything makes a difference to their bottom line.
Sound familiar to you?
Don’t expect that you are going to write one ad and it’s going to do all the work to grow a six or seven figure business for you.
Instead what you need to do is have a few different hooks at different stages of the customer journey and test what messages are really resonating with your core audience.
At the agency we usually end up running six to nine different ads at all times at each stage of the customer journey (top of the funnel, middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel).
They have different variations of images and videos, hooks and copy.
Most importantly they’re always out in the marketplace grabbing people in and moving them to the next step.
You want to focus on creating a handful of unique and different messages that can attract customers who have different interests, needs, and are at different stages of awareness.
2. Create A Full Funnel Strategy
Along with not creating just one ad, what you should really focus on next is making sure that you have a full funnel ad strategy in place so you can plug in those ads in the right area of the funnel for the best results.
So what does a full funnel ad strategy do?
It helps increase the number of people who are aware of your business through prospecting.
Then gets them to raise their hand and opt into your funnel through acquisition.
Then closes the sale with the final action stage, getting them to sign up for your offer.
The full funnel strategy is essential in making sure that you engage users at every step of the customer journey, otherwise it’s just too easy to lose them.
The goal is to create high converting ads at each step that turns traffic into leads and leads into sales.
Keep in mind though we’re advertising on a social platform.
So you want to start by being social and then bring in the sales message over time.
With a full funnel ad strategy you have a way to do just that and introduce your brand in a personal, simple way.
3. Meet Your Customer At Their Stage Of Their Journey
Picture your core avatar in your mind.
Hopefully you can tell me all about that person: their age, gender, hobbies, interests, online habits, etc.
The thing is that person might be at different stages in their journey of whatever they’re trying to experience.
For example, let’s say your core avatar is a female business owner who’s trying to grow her ecommerce store with Shopify.
This person could be the type you work with the most and resonate with the best but she can also be at completely different stages of her journey at any given time.
She might be just getting started and looking at how she can get to her first $10k month or she might be hitting $50,000 months and trying to scale.
There’s a big difference there, and these two people are looking for and need different things.
A great exercise to ensure you’re talking to people at the right stage of their journey is brainstorming what roadblocks, challenges, and objections they’ll experience along the way.
Then use that to design your ads and angles and plug them into your funnel in order to speak to people at the perfect time for them.
4. Always Keep Innovating
It’s easy once you find something that works to keep rolling with that for a while.
I mean if it’s bringing in sales, you totally should!
But after a while if that campaign has saturated your audience and marketplace, it might be time to come up with some fresh stuff to get people into your world and back to your main offer.
Take Todd Brown for example, he’s always selling new customers into his $5,000 high ticket course that is his core product.
But if you follow him long enough you will find he’s usually got some new campaign idea every three months to bring new customers into his business.
The product stays the same but the marketing campaign that brings people into his business changes.
You should expect to do the same.
People get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again.
Your marketing has to evolve with the marketplace.
5. Build Trust Through Consistent Interaction
People don’t buy from brands they don’t trust yet.
When you’re offering a high ticket program, you’re not selling a new toothbrush. This is a big commitment here!
We’ve all heard about the multiple touchpoints and the many months it can take for someone to actually commit to purchasing.
These touchpoints are usually a combo of your paid and organic channels working together to move people through your funnel and optimize your customer journey.
Consumers use an average of almost six touchpoints but different studies range from 7 to 20 depending on the industry and if you’re B2B or B2C!
That’s why understanding and measuring your customers’ path to conversion is essential.
The truth is you have to interact with people many times as they go through your sales funnel before they actually trust you enough to buy.
And those interactions should be meaningful, valuable, informative, and engaging.
Actually the worst thing you can do when selling your online course is going for the sale right away.
It’s like asking somebody to marry you on the first date. Ha. Good luck.
People need to go on a few dates with you and really get to know you and what’s in it for them.
Use your funnel strategy to your advantage. It will help ensure that you keep getting in front of your target audience.
The Takeaway
Selling an online course is not as easy as everyone might make it seem.
But if you make sure to focus on your students, their journey, and use your marketing to build a strong reputation over time the sales will come.
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