#13 - 3 easy tweaks to sell more courses TODAY

One of my clients actually found that this was almost like the missing piece for her. And by adding in this one simple thing, she actually, I think she tripled her last sales. And that was, it was the only thing that she did differently.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd, Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking, nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hey, hey everyone. It is Kate McGibbon here and welcome back to the Doing It Online podcast. This is episode 13 and today I'm going to be sharing with you guys three easy tweaks to sell more of your online courses. Now, I don't know if you know this about me, but I have been creating and scaling my own online businesses since 2007. So yeah, don't go and do the maths on that one. And in that time, I've created and launched 12 different online programs, products and corsets. Yeah, I said 12. And most of them went on to sell multiple six figures, which is great, but a few were total flops, of course. And from all of this I have learned so, so much, including a few simple tricks and tweaks that can really help you to sell more of your offers than ever before. And that is what I'm going to be sharing with you today. So are you ready? Let's jump on in. Okay, number one. Now this is actually what I would say is an example of something I call either a mini funnel or a funnel optimizer. However, you can use them for live launches and offers as well. It is not just for funnels, but the reason I call them a mini funnel or a funnel optimizer is because it's something that you set up and it is a little automated sequence or it's a little automated setup. And once you've set it up once, you can use it again and again. And that's essentially what a funnel does. It's something that is automated, that helps you sell more. Once you set it up, once it keeps on, you know, you keep on using it. So what are these little mini funnels? Well, they are a either a downsell or an upsell funnel. And what they are is a downsell is basically when you offer, you know, after your launch, after people have the people who haven't purchased you offer them either a smaller or a lower priced offer. So usually this might be a day or so after your launch, you want to give them a little bit of a break but not too much so that they've kind of moved on and forgotten about you. And then you would send this smaller offer to people who perhaps showed interest. You probably don't want to send it to your entire list, but that again depends on what the offer is, how relevant it is and up to you. Usually we just send it to the people who, you know, have viewed your sales page or clicked on the links in your email, something like that. So people who showed some interest but didn't purchase. And I said this would be a normally a smaller or a lower priced offer. And there's lots of different ways to do this. It could be a completely different offer. Maybe you have another product that's at a lower price, maybe you have a more entry level product. It could be some people take one or two modules from the course or offer that they were selling and they offer it as like a get started kit at you know, a fraction of the price of the great. The main offer. Other things you can do is, and this is one of my favorites is a offer a longer payment plan and I'll actually talk more about that in a second. There's lots of different things you can do but really it's just about going okay, these people were interested, I saw they were interested because they clicked or they, you know, they viewed these pages but they didn't quite get across the line. And quite often one of the big things stopping people is maybe right now they're just not able to invest or maybe they don't have the level of trust yet to invest at such a high level. So. Or maybe they just don't feel like their skills is quite ready yet and they just want to. They don't believe themselves or trust themselves that they're going to go and make such a big investment worthwhile. So you give them something smaller, an easier. Yes, a taste test, something to get them started. Now you would know from your people maybe what is the best for offer there. And sometimes you have to test out a couple of ones. Maybe each time you run a launch you try something different, see which ones work best. But this is just something that you know you can get up to. If you get it right, 10 to 20% of the people who showed interest could then go on to purchase your downsell. So that can be a really, really big boost. Now on the flip side of that is an upsell and you don't have to have both Usually I tell people to think about, you know, what is going to be a, the easiest to actually, you know, set up, get running and test and B, what, what is actually going to be the most profitable. So, you know, selling a handful of something at $97 or a handful of something at $1,000, depending on whether you know which option you go for. So sometimes it becomes quite clear which is the one you should test out first.

Hey guys, it's just Kate here. So first of all, I just had to quickly stop by and say thank you so, so much for listening to and supporting my brand new podcast. It really means the world to me. Thank you. And to help kick this puppy off with a real bang, I actually have an amazing free bonus just for you guys, which is I'm giving away access to my 5 day mini business accelerator workshop worth $97 totally for free to everyone who leaves a 5 star review of the Doing It Online podcast on itunes right now. This five day workshop walks you through creating your own killer online business plan for your online course business. One that is scalable, profitable and enjoyable too. It's chock full of my very best lessons and strategies from over 13 years online and today it's yours for free. All you have to do is step one, open up iTunes, click on this podcast, click write, review and then click those little five stars and share what you love most about the show. Step two, head to katesbonus.com that's K A T e S B o n u s.com Kate's Bonus and Pop in your contact details and itunes account name so we can know the review is from you and we can send you your login details for your bonus. It's that simple. Step one, leave a five star review. Step two, head to katesbonus.com and send us your details. And that's it. And as an extra little thank you, I'll be choosing my favorite reviews every week and sending that lucky reviewer an exclusive I do it online mug so you can sip along in style while you listen to your favorite show. So what are you waiting for? Hit pause, go, leave that review, then head over to katesbonus.com, pop in your details and claim this amazing five day workshop for yourself. I'll see you inside.

So an upsell is actually something you offer to people who did buy. So this is why you can end up having both because no one's going to see them both. They either did or they didn't buy and then upsell again. It's usually one of two things. It May be actually a bigger offer. Like it could be something that's two to five times more in price than the original offer, or it could be an extra little something that's going to help them get even more out of the existing or original offer. So I've seen so many different examples of this. Some are people do almost like a VIP version of their original course and it might be okay, the original course, maybe it was DIY style and maybe there was gonna be monthly Facebook group calls and that was it. Then you offer a VIP version, which is people who want more help. And for maybe 30, 60, 90 days you have a weekly 30 minute call that they VIPs get access to instead. So they get much more support, much more help. Super easy to set up. You don't have to go and create anything really. And your time commitment is an extra 30 minutes a week. So not anything too crazy. Other things I've seen people have like implementation workshops or live workshops they invite people on to, or they add in templates or things like that that might be really useful and help people to get a bigger, you know, a better outcome and get it faster. So again, just think about your offer and your target market and what would be easy for you to add in. Because that's really the key with these things is as with anything, it's always my motto is that you want to test before you invest. And that means investing time or money. So you want to know that it's going to convert, it's going to sell before you go and then create a whole other course or whole whole other offer. Sorry. So if you can use something that you already have, oh, that would be really simple for you to create and implement. That's even better. So that's option number one. And actually it's kind of really two options. But usually people pick one or the other and you know, test them one at a time. So that's adding either a downsell or an upsell. Now this next trick is an option that is working really, really well, particularly right now with, you know, how uncertain so many things are around the world. And one of my clients actually found that this was almost like the missing piece for her. And by adding in this one simple, she actually, I think she tripled her last sales. And that was, it was the only thing that she did differently. So this second offer, and I briefly touched on it before, was to offer a longer payment plan. So maybe you have, you know, a 997 offer and your payment plan is four monthly payments of 2, 9 7, like that's a pretty, you know, familiar setup. I'm sure a lot of people listening are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I offer. That's good and that is great. But depending on your market, again depending on your niche, depending on your offer, things like for some people right now, even that two nine seven may feel like a bit of a stretch, but they know they still want to get in, they still want to get started. Now of course we already talked about offering a downsell where you give them a smaller, lower priced option. But there's also the option of actually having a lower price payment plan or sorry, a longer payment plan on your main sales page as part of your actual main launch main offer. So what is quite common is people again using that 997 price point as an example. They would have the 997 upfront offer and then they would have 12 payments of $97. So of course you always want to incentivize as many people as possible to pay in full, so you chuck a few extra bonuses on for those people. But that extra longer payment plan would all of a sudden mean that your offer is now so much more accessible to so many more people. And if that's right for your target market, it can mean a really big uplift in sales. So again, they said you want to really incentivize as many people as possible to take that full price payment plan so that you get your initial cashflow. But to have this longer tail, you know, of recurring payments coming in, it still all adds up. It's still all money in the bank at the end of the day. So that can be a really great one as well. What I've also seen some people do, even not in Covid craziness, is they once a year as part of they have one launch a year where they offer this longer payment plan and they make it. It's part of the thing. It's like you, we only do this once a so if you want to get in with this payment plan, you have to buy now. You can't get it at any other time throughout the year and it actually becomes part of the incentive for people to buy. So again, if that's the right for your target market, it's if that's right for your nation, your offer, it could be something that's really, really powerful and profitable. All right, number three, and you probably would have guessed what I'm going to say here now, right? Number three is to add a funnel, of course. So there's two reasons why adding A funnel is going to help you make more sales because first of all is if you are launching and then at the end of your launch, what happens? You normally people just go back into your main list. You keep emailing them weekly, hopefully, if you're doing your consistent content. And then it's not until next time you launch, which is maybe three, four, six months away, that they'll see another offer from you. However, there is this strategy out there called launch stacking, which has actually been proven to be really effective, which is where when someone has come through and had one launch and perhaps they didn't buy because maybe that week wasn't the right timing for them, maybe they were busy, et cetera, et cetera, but maybe two, three, four weeks later would actually work really well for them by presenting them with another chance to purchase another, whether the same offer or a different one, can end up working really, really well, can end up giving you a really big boost to your initial sales. So this is one of the reasons I love having a funnel. Whenever we do any kind of live promotion, once the promotion's over, you know, we have a little period of giving, obviously some great value in between, but then we add everybody back into our longer funnel, so they'll see another offer within usually 21 to 31 days from the end of the first promotion. And this can convert really, really well. So again, adding a funnel, having a simple set, automated sales process set up that is almost like this little tool or this little puzzle piece that you're like, oh, I can add it in here and I can use it over here. It can be just one of those, you know, great little assets that you have in your business that you can use again and again in so many different ways. And for those of you who aren't launching or even for the months in between launches, the second benefit, obviously, of having a funnel is that even when you are not launching, you are going to be making sales, they're going to still keep ticking over, whether it's a handful a week or a handful a day, depending on how you set it up and how you promote it. But having that rolling over in the background, obviously, even if it is only a handful at a time, it still all adds up to making a ton more sales of your course. So those were my three favorite easy tweaks that you can make to your existing launches, offers to whatever it is you've got going on to help you make more sales today, now. And if you would like to still make even more sales than that, then you need to have what I call a Hell's yes, shut up and take my money kind of offer. And if yours is more meh than money maker right now, then I have something really special just for you. Because I'm actually running a Totally Free Live 3 Day Offer Overhaul challenge called Sold Out Success and it all kicks off on October 12th. And inside it, I'll be walking you through the top three steps and tweaks. Not these ones. I've just shared with you is that this is totally different. This is about your actual offer, not just how you promote it. So it's the top three steps and tweaks you need to make your courses, programs and offers and take them from sort of selling to other said to shut up and take my money style selling. So save your seat. Now it's totally free. Just go to kateschallenge.com that's Kate with a kate's challenge.com or grab the link from the Show Notes below. So that's it from me this week lovelies. Keep doing what you do and I will see you all next week. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing it online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.