For someone who has never worked in sales, getting people to buy your online course can be an intimidating process. The good news is that the first sale is the most difficult, after overcoming this obstacle everything becomes easier.
For starters, there are tried and approved methods to sell your online course, the important thing is to find out which ones work best for you.
How to sell online courses: 3 practical strategies
With years of experience in the eLearning market, we’ve made a list of proven effective ways to sell online courses.
By no means do you need to try to execute all these strategies. Pick one or two that best fit your skills and start from there.
Email Marketing
You’re probably tired of hearing us talk about the power of an email list and a well-crafted email marketing strategy. But believe us, it works.
In short, your email list is made up of people who have chosen to follow you in exchange for the value you provide.
If they sign up during a Live you’ve done, to get free content or to receive news from your course, these are the members of your audience with the highest conversion potential.
– Email Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
How to Grow Your Email List
People subscribe to your email list in exchange for something of value, so the fastest way to grow your email list is to create a lead magnet.
This digital bait can be a free download of an eBook, spreadsheet, PDF, video, or whatever you choose that is informative and useful to your audience.
The important thing is that it’s valuable enough to convince people to trade personal information, like their email address, for what you’re offering.
When it comes to online courses, especially if you are new to this field and want to gain credibility, we recommend offering a free mini-course, which can be a module of your online course, for example.
– Step by step to create an online mini-course
As soon as people start signing up, you need to start your email marketing strategy, that is, periodically sending your news. After all, you can’t expect people who signed up for your mailing in August and didn’t hear from you until October to still be interested in what you have to say.
There’s no need to send multiple emails a week, just make sure it’s consistent so your followers know when to expect news from you and, more importantly, make it part of their routine.
Transforming your content into a habit in people’s lives is the first step to creating a relationship and winning loyal customers.
Make sure you submit high-quality, targeted content that will help establish you as an authority and someone to turn to in your niche.
How to sell online course to your email list
We recommend that you sell your online course through emails in two different phases. Pre-sales and actual sales.
Pre-sales
Organize the pre-sales in two steps:
- Course teaser: Tease your subscribers by announcing that you will soon be launching an online course and have exciting news for them. This is the time to build anticipation to keep your audience engaged.
- Course details: Start giving information. Talk about what the course will be, explain what lessons will be covered, what the student should expect to learn. Finish by saying that the online course will finally be available for purchase within 24 hours, but don’t share your sales page just yet.
Sales
Time to sell! But this must still be done in separate steps, through separate emails.
- Announce that sales are open: Pay attention to the layout of the sales page and create a link to it, which should contain your best copywriting, that is, a powerful sales pitch, as well as your allies, such as testimonials and CTAs. Put a promotional price and make it clear that this is a limited time offer.
- Frequently Asked Questions: This is a strategic email where you appeal to the logical side of your subscribers and quell any concerns they might have about your online course. Give them more information about the course, talk about your 30-day guarantee, payment methods, and assure them they will have lifetime access.
- Surprise Bonus: Time to play your ace up and send an email offering bonus content or an even bigger discount.
- Acknowledgment and Social Proof: Give your sales pitch a breather and thank everyone who has already purchased your online course. If possible, insert some screenshots of animated testimonials from new customers.
- Last Call: This is the last day of your launch campaign, so send not one, but two emails. It sounds like a lot, but it works. Send one in the morning, remembering that sales end at midnight. In the afternoon, recall that message and point out that it is the last opportunity for those who want to buy at a discount and with all bonuses offered.
Congratulations! Chances are you’ve made your first (and probably second, third, etc.) sale with this email marketing strategy.
– How to create email campaigns with MailChimp
YouTube
Videos sell and YouTube is still the most accessed video platform, being an excellent channel to connect with your audience and show who you are and what you are capable of.
The vast majority of professionals who want to build an audience on the internet invest heavily in creating content for their YouTube channel.
With the high engagement power of videos, you can quickly gain followers if you offer something that interests your audience.
To help those looking to sell on the platform, YouTube offers features such as:
- Regular uploads
- HD quality
- SEO-optimized description boxes
If you can use all three well, you will likely be more successful than someone who is uploading sporadically and doesn’t optimize at all.
How to Sell Your First Online Course on YouTube
Since you can’t rely on luck to create a viral video at your first time, we suggest that you start with a solid strategy, such as email marketing.
Show you’re an expert
Presentations are important, but to capture the online audience’s brief attention, we recommend that you get the word out right away and explain something related to your online course.
Don’t worry about detailing what will be included in your core product, your focus here should be on providing value.
For example, if you are the creator of an investment course, you can create a video that guides your audience through setting up an investment portfolio. Be detailed and clear and prove that you are an authority when it comes to the subject.
Talk about what you’re creating
In this next video, mention that you’re developing something new, a product that will be available in the market soon.
Show that it’s something valuable, create anticipation and excitement. Create a video script to help you out, such as “Hey, I’m working on creating an online course and I’m so excited I have to share some of what I’m creating with you right now!”.
At the end of the video, let your audience know when you expect the sales page to be available.
– 7 Tips for Creating a Quality Video Script
Drive engagement
Ask your followers to submit questions for you to answer. Use all your social media and communication channels for this and don’t be shy about asking your friends and family to join.
If you need to, make up some questions based on what people have asked you at other times.
It doesn’t matter who is asking, as long as you can host a Q&A session where you can prove your authority on the subject and create more engagement on your channel.
Announce the start of sales
This is the launch video. Advertise your online course and go with everything on the click bait game. Here again your copywriting needs to be sharp.
Title your video like “I’m so excited…” for the first hour or two to get people curious and clicking, then change the title to be SEO-optimized after your first wave of views.
In this video, show your audience what your course is, the value it offers, and what people will get out of doing it. Be excited and full of energy so that your audience feels the same. Make sure you link to your sales page in the description.
After launch, go back to your first three videos and add a note at the beginning telling everyone to check your description box for a link to your online course.
– How to sell courses on YouTube
Instagram has certainly gone from being just a social network to becoming a powerful sales channel for many brands and entrepreneurs, especially beginners.
While it is a little more complicated to sell compared to other websites as the platform does not allow you to link to your posts, it is still a channel that generates a lot of views and allows you to reach a large audience quickly.
To get started, add your sales page link in your bio. Once you have 10,000+ followers, you can add a link to your Instagram stories too.
This social network is all about engagement and has become the primary means of what is now called social commerce.
To sell your online course on Instagram, you need to engage with people. Be sure to follow other profiles in your niche and people who might be interested in your topic. Spend some time scrolling through your feed to like and comment on photos that catch your eye.
Also, it is important to post high quality content. Instagram is a visual platform, so the accounts that grow the fastest are the ones that post the prettiest images and the most interesting videos.
Getting Your First Instagram Sale
When it comes to posts with images for your feed, we recommend finding a photo that is somehow related to your course topic and editing a text overlay on top of it. Keep the text simple and clean so your image doesn’t look spammy and say something like “What’s New!”
From there, use the caption to advertise your online course and direct people to click the link in your bio. But don’t stop there.
In this social network you have to attract attention and make people keep coming back for more, so create reels, stories, do lives talking about your course, explaining something of interest to your audience for free and everything else you can think of.
Share a little bit of your life and work routine and do it regularly, so that your posts start to become part of your followers’ routine so that they start to look forward to it.
As with all other networks, consistency and content are everything.
Instagram is tricky because people have a short attention span and often just scroll without thinking.
But even if it is more difficult to sell your online course through this channel, keep it as a means of relationship with your audience, and a way to get more and more viewers.
– 8 tips on how to use Instagram to promote your business
Sell your online course with Coursify.me
If you offer relevant content that really makes a difference, your brand will get stronger and your online sales will only increase.
Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for anyone who wants to create, sell and promote courses on the internet.
Serving companies and professionals in more than 60 countries, the platform is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System (LMS).
– Whats is a Learning Management System
We have three plan options for you to decide which one best suits your needs.
Visit our website, test the platform and start selling your online course right now.