How to Sell Online Courses (Steps tips, Steps, and Examples)

The process of selling online courses can be reduced to six simple steps. No business degree or experience in sales is required. Get started here!

If you spend enough time researching making online courses, you'll probably start to feel the desire to create your own course online.

A quick search on selling techniques can send your mind spinning, and you may also experience that common imposter syndrome creeping up.

It can seem like there are hundreds of terms and concepts you have to get to grips with and everyone is aware of more about the business of selling online courses than you do.

The procedure of how to market online courses could be broken down in six easy steps. No business degree or experience in sales is required.

In this tutorial, we've simplified the basics about how to sell online classes to increase your reach as well as increase your earnings.

Find out more about the steps to sell online courses or click the hyperlinks below to go ahead.

  6 Step Guide on Selling Online Courses

2.      Be aware of who you're selling to
3.      Price your Course
4.      Consider Pre-selling
5.      Start and Refine
6.      Develop Sales Strategies
7.      Make use of Marketing Strategies
8.      Three examples of how to Make Online Courses Sellable from Course Creators
9.      Three Top Tips for Selling Online Courses

6 Step Guide on How to Sell Online Courses

The process of selling online courses can seem like an endless maze of jargon and unintelligible infographics but it shouldn't be overwhelming.

Selling online courses is broken down into just 6 simple steps.

Each step has provided the basics of the information you require as well as additional reading options for further information.

Here's our ultimate guide to how to sell online courses.

Know who you're selling to

If you're considering selling online courses, the first factor you should consider is to whom you're selling the course.

A lot of first-time course creators fail on their first obstacle in creating an online course that they believe people would like - instead of figuring the actual needs of their audience.

It's crucial to confirm the concept of your course before you start creating and selling online courses to avoid wasting your time and energy.

For selling online courses, it is important to understand:

• Who is your ideal potential customer
• What challenges they are facing
• What they need from you

It's crucial that you create something of value for your audience and build an audience of committed, motivated customers.

Here are 3 steps to help you locate your ideal audience

Research your Audience

If you are looking to identify your audience, then it is essential to conduct your investigation.

If you have already established clients, you can start by establishing them. Or if you haven't started selling products or services but, think about who you'd sell your courses to in a perfect world.

With the advent of technology it is now easy to conduct research about your audience. Use Google as well as social media sites for your target audience and learn more about them.

As part of your audience research, try to complete these three tasks:

Identify the solution you are proposing

For you to determine your ideal customer, start by thinking about the solution you are offering to your students.

Consider the results of your online course and consider who would benefit the most from the course you're offering.

Imagine your course as a solution for someone's struggles - which problem(s) can you fix? What challenges can your course aid people to overcome?

If you can identify the solution you're offering it's easier to think clearly about who your target audience is.

Define your audience demographics

When you've identified who will profit the most from what you're offering, you can become more specific. Define the core demographics of your customer base, which includes:

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Family status
• Hobbies

Additionally, you can get more detailed, looking at their current employment status, their education level, income and more.

Your aim is to be as precise as possible to understand exactly whom your intended audience is based on their shared characteristics.

Check out your competitors

In your audience research, you may also consider those who compete in the field you are interested in.

If you are aware of the people your competitors are targeting You can begin to identify the people whose wants aren't yet being addressed or that your competitors aren't currently reaching with their products and marketing.

Be aware of your ideal customers

After you've completed your basic of research, it's recommended to reach out to your most desirable customers and speak to them.

Internet research is crucial, however to really find out who your ideal customers are it is essential to get feedback directly from them.

Here are 3 tactics:

• Send out customer surveys
• Interviews conducted face-to-face
• Post questions on your social media

Pay attention to the people you want to reach to find out exactly what they are looking for from you, and what you can best serve them by offering an online course.

Aim to reach at least 50 people in your customer survey to provide you with a clear picture of your audience's needs and the best way to market online online courses to the segment of the market.

Narrow down your audience

Utilizing the information from your survey of the public as well as customer surveys, you can then narrow down your audience further.

It's very helpful to make a user persona or customer avatar. This is a detailed account of your ideal customer which focuses on one individual particularly.

It imagines your target group as a single person that includes:

• Their demographics are their primary focus
• The goals they have set and their values
• Their challenges and pain points
• They play a role in the buying process as well as potential issues
• They can be found in their sources for data e.g. books, magazines, news sites

When you're selling online courses it is your intention to talk directly with the customer. An accurate customer profile lets you focus your marketing efforts, including your copywriting and content marketing advertising, as well as your social media strategy.

Pricing your course

Pricing your course can be daunting for those who are the first time you've done it.

There's good news, there are simple techniques to price your course and beware of the most frequent problems with selling online courses: selling at a low price.

Pricing your course on the quality of the content

The key to selling on the internet is to view your program as a solution to the challenge. This principle applies for pricing your course as well.

You shouldn't charge your course by the length or degree of difficulty, price it based on the quality of the content.

It's not just about selling data You're selling a result. What kind of transformation will your course offer? What are your students equipped to accomplish after they complete your course?

No matter how long it takes students to complete the class, what is important is the results you deliver fast and as efficiently as feasible.

Don't undersell your course

The biggest mistake course creators commit is pricing their courses online too cheaply.

The assumption is that the cheaper the price, the more courses you'll be able to sell. However, pricing your course too cheap can hurt your company's long-term success.

In addition to the fact that you will earn less for each sale, you will also be able to earn more Drackbacks you should consider:

• Prices that are lower draw less loyal customers
• It reduces the perceived importance of your course
• Invaluing your knowledge can harm your credibility
• It costs the same for marketing a low-cost course than a course that is more costly
• The money you have is not as good to invest in solving some of the students' problems

Though it's tempting, if you price your course lower in order to increase sales however, it could do more harm than beneficial. If you're interested in learning how to promote online courses, try to be confident in putting the price of your course higher.

We recommend making online courses available for sale at a minimum of $50. You should also consider price your course at $199 or higher.

Consider pricing tiers

If you're not yet ready to sell your course for the best product in your market, think about offering pricing levels instead.

Price tiers meet your customers' need to consider the various options available, without having to take a look at competitors' course.

For example, you could be able to offer three pricing tiers, starting that include the simplest package starting at the lowest price. The medium package will be your primary course, and it is also the one the majority of buyers will opt for. The premium package might include exclusive features such as private or group coaching as well as live teaching elements.

By implementing pricing tiers, it is possible to make your program easier to access for a greater range of customers without reducing the value you can get from the expertise you offer.

Whatever method of pricing you decide to employ be sure to always adjust it in the future. When you have more clients and your course develops then increase the cost accordingly. It allows you to charge more when you improve your marketing and add an additional value to the course.

Check your pricing to see which one works best for your business and your target audience.

Think about pre-selling

Though it could seem an untruth, it can help you determine the need of customers before you put time and resources into creating the course.

By pre-selling your course and preparing it for sale, you will receive immediate information on what your audience is looking for.

If your program doesn't make a splash, then your idea needs refinement.

Pre-selling your online course also allows you to build a customer list and to begin creating the community will be useful after you've created the course and made it available for students.

Here are some helpful tips to get you started by pre-selling your products:

Make a minimum-viable course (MVC)

Sometimes referred to as a pilot course a minimum viable course is the first edition of your course that you're prepared to market.

This is the course you'll take at its most basic - and the understanding is that you'll be able to add more information and enhance it with time.

A MVC allows you to test the waters with your target audience, before making the decision for a high-end course.

The idea is to use your MVC to get reviews and comments from your customers that you then can use to refine and promote the course you are planning to launch, helping to sell your online course with greater numbers later on.

Pricing for your pilot course will be cheaper than courses to follow.

In order to avoid having customers feel disappointed about the content of your course - and even potentially leaving negative feedback - price your pilot course at a lower cost than you'll need to charge for the course in the future.

You could even market the pilot course as an exclusive opportunity for participants to participate in the testing phase and be able to see a glimpse of your course content.

When your first group of students have completed your program and received those positive reviews that you want to get, you're able to increase your price to attract new customers.

Establish a drip program

You can also utilize a drip calendar structure to develop course material when your students finish each lesson or module.

has a Drip Schedule function which lets you decide the time that students have access to the course material, based the date of your course's launch or your chosen timeframe.

For example, you could provide students with access to an updated training video each week for a 2 month period. It gives you the time to create your course content at a rapid pace, and taking in feedback from your students as well as developing your material.

Pre-selling is like cheat sheets to course creators. You get the benefits of feeling the needs of your audience and collecting feedback prior to when you start the creation of your course and putting your time and effort into the product.

Start and refine

How to promote online online courses doesn't follow a straight line, it's more of the shape of a circle.

When you create an online course and upload it, your job isn't done.

The most effective course creators, that also offer the best courses, follow a regular procedure of creating and continuously improving their online courses.

Also known as feedback loops, this process of (re)launching and refining your course is about listening to feedback from customers and using that feedback to enhance your course content.

It's as simple as this:

• Learn:Ask your customers for their feedback so that you can understand what they expect from your program.
• Selling:Refine your offer using comments from customers. Use it to develop something captivating to your target audience.
• Create:Tailor your course content in response to feedback from customers to provide a high-quality, effective educational experience for your customers
• launch:Launch your course and run it with real students in order to fulfill your pre-sell promise, then repeat the loop in order to fine tune your program and offering.

The process of collecting feedback and refining your offering and content lets you improve your content as time goes by and transform it into an perfect product to meet the needs of your target audience.

It starts with pre-selling your online course but the process continues after your course has launched This means that you continue making improvements to your offering and course contents based on feedback from customers making sure you have your best course possible that is available.

These are some positive effects of creating feedback loops

• Find out what your customers really believe about you.
• Encourage customers to engage to make them feel respected and listen to
• Retention of customers is improved
• Refine your product for your target audience
• Your message should be tailored to meet your target audience

Take note of the opinions of your clients for tips on how to market online courses to your target group - they're your best advisors you are able to have!

In order to maximize the impact of your teaching, provide chances for feedback at final session of each course. Include a survey that lets students express their views about their ideas, thoughts and complaints. You can also schedule one-to-one calls with a select group of students to get deeper feedback.

If you're running an online group of learners, make use of this forum to collect more feedback from students - post open-ended surveys, questions and polls so that you can gather as much data as possible about how you can improve your course.

Develop sales strategies

Online courses aren't something that's difficult. It's something that anyone can master. In order to master your selling skills, it's a good idea to create a sales funnel for your online course. Here's how:

How can you design a marketing funnel to sell online courses

A sales funnel is the process your clients follow to make a purchase. It describes every step at which potential customers will interact with your business.

The process begins at the beginning of the sales funnel, when they first learn about your brand and then they proceed to purchasing a product or turning into brand advocates.

Visualize your funnel for sales being an actual funnel. It's larger at the top, and smaller at the bottom.

The top is the general public, and by the time they are at the bottom you have the few select people who will buy something and then become frequent customers.

This process is expected - Your course wasn't created to be accessible to everyone!

A sales funnel helps to concentrate your attention and efforts in selling online courses. This can help:

• Send your messages to the right people
• Find key contact points for potential customers
• Make the most of opportunities for selling
• Remove sales friction
• Measure and track the success of your sales

If you can map your customer's journey, you will be able to see more clearly how to move clients towards the desired goal for example, taking your online course.

Here is a one of the most popular models: Awareness -> Belief -> Conversion> Loyalty > Advocacy

• AwarenessAt the very beginning of your funnel is the Awareness stage, where your clients discover that you are there. They first see you onto their radar, and then they decide to decide if they would like to learn more about you. It is the initial impression that people get of your brand.
• Consideration -The second phase of consideration where your customers begin researching what options are that they can choose from as options to solve their issue and whether your business is one of the options they'd like to explore.
• Conversion -The Conversion stage is the critical step for selling online course - Customers have already gathered all the information they need and they are now ready to purchase. This is the time to make your clients believe that your business is that they'd like to buy from.
• LoyaltyThe loyalty phase focuses on how to sell online classes for a long time - once customers have made a purchase, they keep coming back to you as you keep to offer them something of value, interact with them, and keep them engaged.
• Advocacy -The Advocacy stage is the time the point at which satisfied customers continue to bring more customers to the sales funnel through sharing your course with others on their social networks. They also act as brand ambassadors and helping you grow your reach and the potential for selling online classes to more students.

Using your sales funnel

After you've created your sales funnel and your customer journey, you can begin creating content to fulfill the needs of your customers and lead them towards the next step on your funnel.

Here are some ideas about the kind of content you can develop for each stage in the funnel.

Each stage in the funnel should be to draw individuals further into the funnel. If, for instance, you do an online webinar (mofu), try to share things from the bottom of the funnel, such as a case study or a promo offer (bofu).

Don't be concerned about creating all kinds of material that will entice customers. Focus on 1 or 2 techniques for each phase of your funnel. This will start.

The sales funnel can be useful to help guide your marketing strategy and identify where you should devote the time and money for selling online courses. see the next step!

Use marketing strategies

If you want to know how to promote online courses, you need to master some fundamental marketing methods to be able to connect with the people you want to reach and convince them to make a purchase.

There's an abundance of methods to market your online course - but there are several simple strategies you can use to sell online courses in a matter of minutes no matter what your business or area of expertise.

Here are a few of the top marketing strategies for selling online online courses:

•    Marketing content
•    Email marketing
•    Social media marketing
•    Influencer marketing

Marketing content

Marketing content is often the primary focus of the course's marketing strategy.

Content marketing can refer to any kind of content you create for your business, be it blog content or video contents, email content, and many more.

In order to promote online courses, the use of content marketing is a way to inform the audience as well as increase brand awareness. If you create quality content for your audience They will keep engaging with your brand , and they are more likely to convert into potential customers later on.

Content marketing can also help:

• Increase the reputation of your company
• More the number of referrals
• Boost your search engine visibility
• Build a closer connection with your the customers

The trick to successfully making use of content marketing to promote your business is to target your customers through platforms and channels they utilize most.

Find out where your target audience likes to spend their time on the internet and then use this knowledge to develop your content marketing strategy.

Email marketing

If you're looking to increase sales for past customers, or nurture prospects who aren't ready for purchase yet, email marketing is another really useful marketing technique to keep in your arsenal.

Email marketing lets you reach the people you want to reach through emails that are designed to introduce customers to your brand, offer them useful resources, and guide them through your sales funnel.

If you can build your mailing list, you'll can direct your potential customers to engage with them frequently and establish a closer connection over long periods of.

Through email marketing, you can also:

• Give a more personalized experience for customers
• Offer product recommendations
• Collect customer feedback through surveys
• Increase traffic to your website
• Add value for your audience

To start creating your list of email addresses begin by creating lead magnets that encourage your audience to share their email addresses with you.

A few ideas to convert top lead magnets are:

• Free mini courses
• Guides that can be downloaded for download
• Webinars and events

Once you've built an email database It's important to maintain those subscribers. That means producing emails that provide an actual benefit to the audience with plenty of tips and useful sources.

Social media marketing

Today, if you wish to learn how to sell online online courses, it is essential to learn how to use social media to promote your business.

Social media can be an extremely effective tool for selling online classes due to its ability to put your company's name in front of the appropriate people more quickly.

When you implement the correct social media strategy Your brand's awareness could shoot up overnight.

The success of your social media campaign depends a lot on your strategy and includes the following:

• What you post is important, and whether or not it's useful or interesting to your target public
• What you do to present your brand , including the voice of your brand, images and your content style
• How you engage with other accounts - including with customers, influencers and other brands
• What can you do to create a sense of crowd around your brand by making people feel seen and heard

Similar to all of your marketing activities and efforts, social media must be designed to portray your brand in the best possible way and showcase your brand's personality. Consider the image you're presenting to your audience to determine if the image will attract your ideal customers as well as help sell online training courses.

Marketing with influencers

Getting started with influencer marketing is easy - check out the profiles of the influencers within your niche who fit with your values as a brand. Simply send an email to them privately and present yourself.

Collaborations with influencers may be free or paid for and can comprise:

• Posts that are sponsored or brand name
• Guest posts
• Takeovers of social media
• Re-sharing or brand shout outs

Through partnering with influential people in your niche, you can improve the trust of your customers towards the brand you represent and introduce your brand to a wider public.

  Three easy tips to better brand marketing  

Take a look at The Big Picture

Instead of running multiple campaigns via mail, social media, and on your site, try to make all your marketing channels work together to complement each other.

The messages you share across a single platform must be replicated on every channel - this not only helps to create a cohesive image of your brand for clients and helps you to repurpose and recycle content.

For a return to the sourdough bread example - you might choose to run an event on how to make sourdough starters with white flour, wholewheat and Rye. It is possible to create a series of video tutorials on YouTube and make Reels in on Instagram and send out regular email newsletters that focus on different starters with downloadable guides.

Customers can find your information on the platform that they most use. They will gain a better understanding of what exactly your company provides and how you could aid them.

This is the same content and the same knowledge that is used in various ways , and all adds up to establishing your status as an Sourdough specialist for your target audience.

Write compelling copy

Any marketing content you create is required to grab the audience's attention to help you increase sales for your items.

That means you need to learn how to write appealing, compelling copy that drives your audience to do something like joining the newsletter or sharing it your content with friends, or even purchasing your course online!

Use social evidence

Keep in mind that your customers are human, so it's not unusual for them to be uncertain on whether to make a purchase with a company they don't recognize.

Social proof can be defined as:

• Testimonials and reviews
• Customer interviews
• Case studies
• Statistics e.g. the number of people you've helped
• Logos, accreditations and brand names

By showing off your previous clients who were happy, you could convince buyers to make a purchase from you.

Social proof also leverages the fear of not being noticed and the FOMO effect. If your customers are all purchasing and loving your goods and services, the majority of your customers is likely to want to join in too!

Utilize social proof for the landing page, social media, email marketing and much more.

  Need more ways for marketing and selling online courses? Download our full guide for everything you need to know about how to make money selling online classes.

Three Examples of How to Sell Online Courses from Course Creators

For a demonstration of how simple it is to learn how to market online courses, we've picked three case studies of successful course creators that started out the same way as you.

This is how they learned the art of selling online training courses to the public and build six-figure business ventures in the procedure.

    Mimi Goodwin - Sew It! Academy

course creator Mimi Goodwin first started her online sewing business as an online blog in the year 2012. Using YouTube to share and create videos of tutorials Mimi quickly increased her followers to over a million viewers.

The next stage was to start Sew It! Academy. Sew It! Academy, which would allow her to earn money through her blog, and build an extremely successful business. It has generated huge amounts of online course sales.

Mimi says her success is due on the basis of a'sell and not sell idea. YouTube tutorials on her channel provide helpful information for the viewers who are introduced to her brand and knowledge. The users can later subscribe to a system to gain specific assistance and information.

Mimi also uses Instagram as a strategy to promote online courses through telling stories of customer success and sharing her own personal posts as well as stories. As the face behind the company, she believes that authenticity and a personal approach is the key to forming an enduring community.

The most important takeaways

• Make use of social media platforms to increase your following naturally
• Make free tools like videos tutorials
• Make sure you are authentic and genuine when you sell.

    Mike Nelson - 9to5Dropouts    

After quitting his job as a manager to start his own business, Mike Nelson knew he had to learn how to make online courses sell quickly. His biggest concern was that people wouldn't take him seriously and wouldn't have the confidence to invest in his course - but Mike Nelson tried his best.

Utilizing free webinars to generate awareness of his expertise and pre-sell his online course, Mike was able to start the first class in the 9to5Dropouts academy. Mike then set about growing the online course company making use of influencer marketing and paid YouTube ads , and his personal community of Facebook courses.

Paid advertising lets Mark get in touch with a very specific audience and help to create more brand awareness. Once they make a purchase and are accepted into his Facebook community where they are converted to brand ambassadors.

Utilizing these methods for selling online classes, Mike has grown his company and built an academy that generates over seven figures annually.

Important takeaways

• Find niche influencers for marketing
• Build a course community for selling additional courses
• Think about paying ads for your target audience

    Mina Irfan - Universe Guru    

As she began Universe Guru, Mina Irfan tried a range of different strategies to sell online classes. She invested a huge amount of time and money into new technology and creating an amazing sales page but it didn't have the outcomes she had hoped to see.

Instead, Mina found that the best way to market online courses was to keep it simple. Mina utilizes YouTube to generate organic leads to her website. She also hosts live coaching sessions via Zoom.

To boost sales during slower times, Mina also uses discounts and incentives to entice new clients, such as flash sales, course bundles and even. These are a way to get new customers acquainted with the academy and makes them hooked.

Mina is officially among the most popular creators of 2021 thanks to her simple methods for selling online classes. Mina uses only a handful of ways to attract leads, and converts which is a fact!

Important takeaways

• Make use of the channels for marketing that are already working for you
• Use discounts and incentives to increase sales
• Conduct webinars or coaching sessions to create more leads.

3 Top Tips for selling online courses

Three top points to remember to help you sell online courses and build your business, no matter the place you're beginning from.

    Make an Community    

One of the most effective strategies to sell online classes is to establish an online community for your course. As the examples above demonstrate, community is key to engage your customers as well as build brand loyalty to increase sales of your courses today and into the future.

    Change as you go    

If you have the ability to read the student's reviews, and take notes by the feedback you receive, you can create the kind of course your intended group wants, not what you believe they want.

Related:

    Stay Simple    

The trick to make online courses more profitable is not to think too much about it.

The first-time course creators typically have imposter syndrome, and the sense of having to be prepared. prepared before they even start - but evidence from instructors from our community suggests you can just begin and work out as you go.

When it comes to selling classes, it's best to keep the course basic. Make sure you focus on one primary product, one offer and one key message. It is a good idea to test pre-selling before starting to develop an exceptional product.

  Sell Online Courses using  

The procedure of learning how to promote online courses much simpler than you imagine. This step-by-step guide is designed to assist you in selling more courses, grow your audience and increase the amount of money you earn.

Keep the basics in mind and don't get caught up in it!