Make MORE Online Course Sales With These 5 Marketing Strategies

If your online course isn't making the money you thought it was going to make when you created it, listen up. You can turn it around. Most of the time the biggest problem that I see with online course creators is their marketing. You need to be creating a strategic marketing plan and having efforts into your marketing to continue to sell your online courses to make more money on that course. In this video, I'm going to walk through five of the biggest marketing strategies that I personally seeing working right now to help you sell more of your online course. Let's talk about some good news. When it comes to online courses though. You could be thinking, ah, maybe the time is over, maybe the trend has ended. It has not. The global market for elearning will reach up to US$390.6 billion by 2026. And while we know online courses and online education is still growing, we also need to really think about our marketing. Because when you think about marketing, you need to remember the rule of seven. The marketing rule of seven. Any prospect needs to hear your messaging at least seven times before they will take action, buy a product, or buying a service from you. So if you're feeling exhausted about all the marketing that you currently are doing, there's a reason behind that. Listen, I know what it's like to put time and money to an online course. Launch it, put it into the world and hear crickets. This is exactly what happened to me in 2016. I followed a course on how to create courses, put in three months of work, released it, launched it, did all the hoopla and had three sales. And one of those sales was a friend of mine who felt bad for me in all accounts, to me, I failed. But when I looked back on that experience we'll call it, I realized I had a major marketing problem. I was lacking some of these major marketing strategies that I'm about to share with you here today that once I made this shift and I started incorporated them, I then started making hundreds of thousands of dollars on my online courses. Real talk here. Why not millions of dollars have I made? Logical question, right? If you're saying your marketing strategies are good, why have you only made hundreds of thousands and not millions? I think it's really important for me to share right here. I've built a business for me, for what I need in my life and for what my family needs. That doesn't mean I need to make a million dollars. So I'm going to work the amount of time that I want to work, get done what I need to get done. And as Long as it's creating the right income for me, I, I am good. I can take 13 weeks vacation, I can take my kids to school, I can take a Friday off. I don't need to hustle just to hit a seven figure mark that we feel in the industry is successful or like you haven't made it until you reach a million dollars. Could I have worked 10 hour days, evenings, weekends to get this business to seven figures? Probably. Did I want to or need to for where I'm at in my life? No, because like I said, I'm still able to take multiple vacations, rent a beach house every two weeks in the summer, have a nice house to live in and pretty much live in a low cost of living area. So I'm good with where I'm at in my business and I enjoy it. Okay, so how can you course correct this course that's not selling where you want it to be? Here's marketing strategy number one, offering a low ticket offer or maybe mini course. Now I know this may seem like extra work and you just said Trina, but you talked about not hustling and taking time off and working the hours that you want. And maybe you don't want to create something new right now, but remember that marketing rule of seven. People need to hear your message at least seven times before they decide to buy. One of the things that will speed up, people wanting to buy from you or work from you is experiencing something paid and you showing them that it is incredibly valuable. So when I'm talking about a low ticket offer, I'm talking about something in the 27, 37, $47 range and you are going to want to over deliver value in this small ticket offer. Now this offer could be like a precursor to your course that you have. Maybe it's just a little beginner module of the course that you have, but you want to get a very quick win from people that they are going to find helpful, going to remove a pain point out of their lives that they're going to say wow, she helped me achieve this. I need to know what I can also achieve with her. What else can she help me with? And then they will be more primed and ready to want to buy your course from you and they'll be willing to spend a couple more hundred dollars with you because you've proven in that $37 offer you over delivered. So they're going to be more likely to trust that when you offer a couple hundred dollars course you're going to do the same. Now having this Low ticket offer helps get people your world and what I call a value ladder. Getting people to buy this small ticket offer first, then your next mid tier offer and then your high ticket offer. Because it's always easy to get reoccurring customers than to bring in new customers. So what you could also utilize the small ticket offer for is if people are coming in to watch your webinar or wanting to learn more about your course and they don't buy, you can offer this low ticket offer as a downsell. So while they may have not bought your, say, $500, you still got them in at a $37 offer. They paid you, right? It's always hard to get people to make that first purchase with you. Once they make that first purchase with you, it's going to be a lot easier to get them to buy that next thing with you. So again, if they don't end up buying your course, maybe you have this as a downsell to again get them trusting you that the paid offers you do provide are worth every single penny. Now, one of the business mentors that I follow a lot and I really listen to is Mariah Koz, and she talks about hires, our prospects as turtles and hares. And so the turtles are people that need a little bit more time to make a decision, but you need to keep them warm, you need to put them in a warm pond, she says. So this is, you know, getting them on your email list, nurturing them with valuable content on your email list, maybe even getting them into that small ticket offer and warming them up to the thought of wanting to buy a couple hundred dollar course from you. But then you also have the hairs, right? People that are ready to buy right now, get started now. And so having this low ticket offer definite helps get those turtles to eventually buy from you and not just leave them out in the woods. The next marketing strategy I want to talk about, some people may think is dead, but it is still very much working. And it is webinar funnels. And I know we all get kind of tense around the word webinar, but trust me, it is still working in the marketing world. It's just changed a little bit. And there takes a little bit more effort in getting webinars to convert. They're one of the best ways to convert. But there are some new things here in 2023 that are going to help webinars be much more successful. One thing that we do have to realize is webinar show up rates are going to be typically around 10 to 15% of the people that signed up. So the last launch I had in May, just a few weeks ago, I was hit with this metric over the head because it was very difficult for us to get people to show up to my live webinar. So some things when we debrief this launch that we realized we are going to incorporate in the future for our live launches is collecting phone number so that we can do text messaging, finding ways that we can get people to put the webinar on their calendar. So we use eventable. And I feel like we need to utilize more emails out to those people that sign up to put it on their calendars. They don't forget. And also giving people a true reason to show up. You're going to get better conversion rates of your course when you host a webinar when people are there live and engaging with you. So you need to figure out what kind of value can you give them to show up live? What can you promise them? Is there like a free gift you can provide for people that show up? We've done this before with free thumbnail templates. Um, we gave an offer in this last webinar, three people will be chosen and I will walk through building a strategy with them. I don't think that did as good as a job as convincing people to show up. People want basically something free, something valuable. Uh, so I would think about those things to increase your show up rates. Now there will always be people that don't show up up and they want to watch the replay. And that is still very much key because a metric you want to shoot for is getting 50% of people who did sign up for your webinar to watch the replay. So some things that we've done and we are going to definitely be figuring out more ways to get replay watches is we took my webinar, we pulled the audio out of the webinar and put it into a private podcast feed, sent that out to people. One other thing that we didn't get to but I want to do next time is utilizing AI. So there is a transcript service called Otter that I want to have transcribed my entire webinar and create a summary for people as well. So this gives the visual people the video form to watch. This gives the audio people the audio version to listen to. And this gives the readers something to read. And they still get the value and they still ultimately hear why your course is what they need next to take that next step in whatever you're teaching. The next marketing strategy we're going to talk about is Usually the hardest one to get people to incorporate. Even when I'm working with my clients inside of my coaching program 10k on replay. So inside a 10k on replay, I teach my clients how to set up their very first sometimes webinar or turn their current webinar on Evergreen. I give them the templates on how to do it, the marketing strategy on how to do it, but the biggest thing that they kind of battle with is the amount of emails that they need to send. Now I will tell you inside a 10 kilo replay I gave you all of my templates and swipe copy for the amount of emails that I'm about to talk to you about and I help you build out your funnel. You can send me audits to review it. We have a copywriting coach, we also have a Google Analytics coach to help you track your metrics to see how people are coming to your page, how many people are coming to your page. So you can really get these numbers down that I'm talking about like show up rates, replay rates, and if that's something that you're really looking for somebody to really help you nail down your marketing metrics in your business and find how to make them better so you can grow your business. Go fill out an application right now@trina little.com forward/10k. The link will also be in the description box. But when you fill out that form, we just like to see you know, where you're at and if you would be a good fit. And then if it looks all good, we will send over an email to let you know you've been inside and we will work with you over the next 12 months to build out an evergreen strategy for your course business so that you're making consistent sales to get to 10k months every single month. So the reason why I wanted to share that because I'm going to be jumping into the emails you should be sending here in marketing strategy number three and it can be overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be when you have templates and examples to do it. Okay, so email marketing, when it comes to webinars or launching your course or to get more sales to your course, I basically look at two different series of of emails that need to go out. And I'm thinking right now of a live launch. Okay. Because I always recommend my clients do a live launch. So again we can get these marketing basics, these marketing foundations to figure out where you're starting at so we can tweak things to move forward. So what I'm Thinking live launch. The first email sequence that you need to be creating is about three emails to promote your webinar. Yes, I said three. When we send an email to our list, not everybody is watching us are waiting for our email. Like when she going to send us email next? I can't wait. They are busy. Remember the marketing rule of seven. It takes them over seven times to hear your message to actually take action. And that means signing up with a webinar. So when you can create about three emails on why they need to sign up for this webinar, what they're going to learn and a reminder that it's actually happening, you can also use that content that you write in that email series to use on social media as well to get your social following to show up up at your webinar as well. Because again, I want to remind you that people who are on your email list and maybe following you on social, they're not reading everything so you're not going to annoy them. Keep telling yourself the marketing rule of seven. They are not hearing everything we say no matter if they follow us everywhere. And it's really key before we move into the next series of emails, I want to talk about in these three emails that you're sending out to get people to sign up, you need to really hammer home why they need to be there, the importance of being at this webinar live, because we talked about show rates are around 10 to 15% and anything that you can do to remind them the importance of being there live will help you hit that metric and possibly even higher. All right, let's talk about the post webinar emails or the sales emails because again, my clients really have a hard time feeling okay to send their list this amount of emails. But again, the marketing rule of seven. So after a webinar I transition all of my content into basically sales content. And I send seven emails over the course of about six days. I generally have an open cart for about six days. Our last open cart went from a Wednesday to a Tuesday. And so what these emails look like is knocking down any struggles that you may hear or any reasons why they may not want to buy your course. It is your job to inform them that the current hesitation that they are having is a belief or as a false belief that they are having. And this is why this course will help solve that problem. And you're also going to want to be tying into all of these emails, not only results that current clients in your course have had, but the results they can expect to see in your course and how quickly they can expect to see these results. So one example for most people buying an online course is time. Will I have the time to do it? Will it just be another course that sits in my virtual shelves collecting dust and will the time I put into it actually pay off and get me the results that I want? So in one of the emails of these seven, you should be addressing the issue of time. Do you have a timeline in your course that they can follow to get through the course in 30 days? What milestones are you addressing throughout the schedule that they can include? Expect to see what kind of support can they have if they feel that they are getting stuck? What kind of results have other people in your course experienced in just 30 days? You're going to be, you know, peppering in these testimonials to show them this has actually happened for other people as well. I think another email to address here too in this series of seven again, inside a ten count replay, you get all of my emails that I've sent out and you can see like our open rates and kind of how we've addressed these pain points. But another one is why you can't figure this out on your own. I know we all think everything is figureoutable right now between YouTube and AI. We think we can just figure it out. So in one of the emails you need to explain why it may not be good to figure this all out on your own. Because if you want to get it done quickly, your course is basically collapsing time, right? It may take them 12 weeks to figure out how to do this on their own. But because your course is streamlined and knows exactly how results and you have everything nicely organized with templates and training videos, they can get this done in four weeks. So how much is their time worth? Do they want to take the next 12 weeks scouring the Internet, scouring YouTube, or do they want to just pay a couple hundred dollars to get this done? Solve this problem in the next 30 days. The bonus of writing all of these emails as well is you can repurpose these on social media whether you're using them for captions. On Instagram, I've used them for reels. I've also used them live streaming content as well. I also use it as basically my stories content too during car, open and cart and close phase. So when you take the time to actually write all these emails, all your sales and marketing messaging becomes so much easier on other social platforms and people are hearing it multiple times so that you can hit that marketing rule. Of seven. Now, I will give you another bonus here for these emails that have helped us see results and it's incorporating some type of video from you. In our last launch, when people engage with my video, video ask on my sales page, I was able to convert them around 70%. So 70% of the people that clicked on a video ask and asked me a question, I converted 70% of those people. And when I say 70%, that saved me about 13 sales. So in that last launch, that saved me about $13,000 just by having that video ask in the corner of my sales page and responding to those people when those questions came in, $13,000. Another way to do this is sending a loom video where you're talking to them, asking them, you know, why are they still on the fence? Is there anything that you can answer for them? Or giving them a loom video or a screen recording of what the course actually looks like inside. Again, one of the biggest reasons people don't want to buy is because we don't know what we don't know. We don't know what is in there. So by you showing them exactly what it looks like, exactly what they're going to get, that's going to allow them to feel more comfortable actually buying your course. Course. This next marketing strategy works gangbusters, but is email again, and it is an abandoned cart sequence. So you know when you're on target or you're on Amazon and you put something in your cart but you don't check out yet and you get that email like, hey, stuff still in your cart did you want to check out? That is an abandoned cart sequence. Now, depending on what email server provider you should have this option. So I'm actually going to show you here in a moment what my abandoned cart art sequence looks like in FG Funnels. And if you're wondering, you know, if FG Funnels is right for you or if this is something that you should try, I will have a link in my description box for you to try FG Funnels for free for 14 days. I am an affiliate, but again, getting my emails in my sales page and my automations all in one software like FG Funnels has been game changer for me because these abandoned cart email sequences have saved me thousands of dollars not just on my low ticket offer, but on my high ticket offer and my courses. Because here's why you need to have an abandoned cart sequence before I walk you through it. People get busy, they're looking at their sales page, maybe they're loving it, but they go to check out and a kid spills a juice box or the dog runs after a squirrel, or they're checking out at the grocery store and they just forget to come back. They wanted to check out, but they just forget. So by you following up with them in an automated email, giving them the link to get back to that checkout page that they were on encourages them or reminds them, oh yeah, I wanted to buy that. And they don't just forget because that's ultimately most of the time what's happening when they go to the cart checkout and they don't check out. They're probably getting distracted and forgetting. This next marketing strategy is quintessential for any online marketer. Online business. If you are specifically selling an online course, you've got to have this marketing strategy and it is ever green content. Now I talked about how you could turn all of these webinars into social media posts or reels or TikToks and these can really work no matter if you're live launching or you're in an evergreen launch style business. But what I've really leaned into more in 2023 is an evergreen strategy. Meaning I'm getting people to sign up for my webinars every day of the week and then they go down a series of emails that looks like I'm launching to them now. Yes, absolutely. There are benefits for them to purchase my course while they go through this funnel. Basically, whether it's a discount on price, an extra bonus that we don't offer to the public if it sits on our page. But it looks like we're constantly launching to people who are getting into our funnel. I would love to know if you want to hear more about an evergreen funnel, how to set it up, what it's all about. Leave a comment below. Evergreen Funnel so I know you would like to hear more about this tactic and strategy and how I've implemented it here over the last couple of months in my business. But when you have an evergreen funnel, you need to be creating evergreen when you have an evergreen funnel, you need to be creating evergreen content that is sending people to this funnel around the clock. And when I say evergreen, I don't mean a reel that's going to expire after about 24 hours because that's the average lifespan of a reel. Or an Instagram story that expires in 24 hours, or Facebook posts that lives about six hours. These are all average lifespans of social media posts. I'm talking about creating long form evergreen content like here on YouTube because what makes YouTube content so powerful in your marketing strategy? It lives for a long time. Okay, my YouTube videos, I have YouTube videos specifically from 2019 that still drive leads to my funnels from 2020, 2021. And this is what helps me drive consistent sales in my business is because I focus on content that I know people are going to be looking for, that I know is going to help them solve a problem and they are going to want to know more from me or want to learn more about that next pain point that they are having. So when I create all my YouTube content, I'm thinking about a series of videos that are going to knock down pain points that my ideal customer is having. In those videos, I will have calls to action about my course. This particular video I had a call to action to apply to 10K on replay because that is my primary program that I am really focused on helping right now. But this video was all based around marketing strategies and my clients typically need help with these marketing clients because remember I also mentioned how one of the biggest problems that I solve in 10 count replay is building out these email series to help my clients get more sales. Now, this particular video could live on YouTube, YouTube for the next couple of weeks. The average lifespan of a YouTube video is eight days. But it could also be driving leads to apply to my program for the next year. And that is way more powerful to me than spending time on a TikTok or a reel that is only going to last potentially a day or two. Focusing on evergreen content is how you're going to see leads and sales every day into your online course. Now, like I said, there's a lot more to building this and I do dive into this, into 10 count replay. So if that's something you would like to work with me on, please go to trina little.com 10k fill out that application. We'll see for a good fit to work together or not. Now, we do only have limited seats available inside a 10 count replay, so we only really accept clients who are truly serious about taking action and doing the steps that we recommend to them. That sounds exactly like something that you need and want to finally see consistent revenue in your business. Fill out an application now and we'll be in touch. Now if you want to see how I create these evergreen YouTube videos every single week, watch the video that's on your screen right now where I give you my entire YouTube process.