How to sell online courses (Steps of the Game, Tips, and Examples)

The process of selling online online courses is reduced to six simple steps. There is no business or sales background needed. Get started here!

If you spend enough time looking into online course creation You'll likely get the urge to build your own online course.

A quick search on sales strategies can leave your mind spinning, and you may also experience that all too familiar Imposter Syndrome is slowly creeping in.

There are 101 terms and concepts that you need to come familiar with. Everyone and their aunt knows more about selling online courses than you do.

How to market online courses could be broken down into 6 easy steps. There is no business or sales background needed.

In this article We've made it easy to understand all you have to know about selling online classes to increase your reach - and grow your revenue.

Learn more about the procedure for how you can sell online courses or click the hyperlinks below to go through.

  6-Step Guide on how to sell 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.      Utilize Marketing Strategies
8.      Three examples of how to Sell Online Courses from Course Creators
9.      Three top tips for the sale of online courses

Six Steps on How to Sell Online Courses

While the process of selling online classes can appear to be a never-ending maze filled with jargon and unintelligible infographics, it doesn't have to be overwhelming.

The process of selling online courses is simplified into six basic steps.

In each step, we've provided the basics of what you need to know and additional reading suggestions for further information.

We've compiled a comprehensive guide for selling online courses.

You should know who you're selling to

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

Many first-time course creators fall at this first hurdle in creating an online course that they think people want - rather than finding out exactly what they want.

It is crucial to verify your course concept before you start creating and selling online courses so that you don't waste time and energy.

In order to sell online courses you must know:

• Who is your ideal potential customer
• What challenges they are facing
• What are they looking for from you?

This is essential to help you create an item that will be valuable for your audience and build the community of faithful and motivated customers.

Below are three steps to help you find your target audience:

Research your Audience

If you want to find your target audience, you need to do your research.

If you already have customers, start there. If you're not selling a product or service in the past, consider who you'd sell your courses to in an ideal world.

With the advent of technology it is now easy to conduct research about your audience. You can use Google as well as social media sites for your target group of customers and find out more about them.

In your research on the audience, you should try to do these 3 things:

Identify the solution you are proposing

For you to determine your ideal customer, start by thinking about what you can offer to your students.

Consider the results from your online training and who could benefit most from the course you're offering.

Imagine your course as a solution for someone's struggles - which problem(s) do you have to fix? What obstacles does your course assist people in overcoming?

If you know the product you're selling then you'll be able to think more precisely about your intended customer is.

Define your audience demographics

When you've identified who will be most benefiting from the products you're offering, you can be more precise. The key demographics for your target audience. This includes:

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Family status
• Hobbies

Additionally, you can get more specific, considering their employment status, educational level, their income and more.

Your aim is to be as specific as possible to understand exactly whom your intended audience is in relation to their characteristics.

Take a look at your rivals

When conducting your research on the audience, you can also look at competitors in your chosen field.

If you are aware of the people your competitors are targeting then you'll be able to determine the audience whose needs aren't already catered to or whom you aren't currently targeting with their product and marketing.

Be aware of your ideal customers

When you've done your base level research, it's also a good idea to contact the people you want to talk to them.

Internet research is essential, but for you to truly know which customers you want to target it is essential to get feedback directly from them.

Here are 3 tactics:

• Surveys for customers to send out
• Do face-to face interviews
• Post questions on your social media

Listen to your ideal audience and find out what they are looking for from you, and what you can meet their needs through your online training.

Aim to reach at least 50 customers through your survey to provide you with the most accurate idea of your target audience and also how you can sell your online classes to this market.

Find out who you are targeting.

Utilizing the information from your audience research as well as customer surveys You can reduce your target audience.

It's really helpful to create the user profile or avatar. This is an extensive account of your ideal customer that focuses on one person particularly.

Imagine your group as a single person which includes:

• The demographics of their core
• The goals they have set and their values
• Their problems and their issues
• They play a role in the buying procedure and the possibility of objections
• Their sources of data e.g. books, magazines, news sites

If you're selling online classes, you're aiming to talk directly with the customer. A detailed customer avatar lets you concentrate your marketing efforts, including your content marketing and copywriting advertising, as well as your the social media strategies.

Price the course

The process of pricing your course can be daunting for those who are your first time.

The good news is, there are some simple strategies to price your course , and avoid one of the most common pitfalls to selling online courses - selling too cheap.

The cost of your course is based on the quality of the material

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

You shouldn't charge your course based on the length or degree of difficulty, determine the price based on the value of your content.

There's more to it than selling information but you're also selling an end result. What transformation does your program offer? What will your students be able to do following their completion of your course?

No matter how long it takes students to complete the program, what's important is the results you deliver in the shortest time and with efficiency is possible.

Don't undersell your course

One of the biggest mistakes course designers make is to price their online courses at a price that is too high.

The assumption is that the cheaper the price that you charge, the more courses that you'll offer. If you price your course to low can actually damage your business long-term.

As well as meaning you make less money from every sale, there are also more Drackbacks you should consider:

• Lower prices attract less committed customers.
• It diminishes the value of your course
• Invaluing your knowledge can harm your credibility
• The same amount of money is required to promote a course that is cheap than a course that is more costly
• You have less money to invest in solving some of the students' problems

Although it's tempting to price your course lower in order to make it more popular however, it could do more harm than good. If you want to learn how to promote online courses, try to feel confident about pricing your courses higher.

We suggest making online courses available for sale at a minimum of $50. You should also consider pricing your course at the price of $199 or more.

Take into consideration pricing levels

If you're not sure if you're ready to market your course as an expensive product, you might want to consider offering pricing tiers instead.

Pricing tiers satisfy your buyers require them to think about the various options available, without the need to look at your competitors' courses.

As an example, you can have 3 pricing tiers that include the simplest package at the lowest price point. The middle package is the core program and is it is the most popular option purchasers will select. Premium packages may include exclusive features such as private or group coaching as well as the live element of teaching.

Through pricing tiers you'll be able to make your courses more accessible to a wider audience without diminishing the perception of value from your expertise.

Whichever pricing strategy you use make sure you alter it in the future. When you have more clients as your course expands, increase the price accordingly. It allows you to charge more while you work on the marketing strategy and add worth to your course.

Check your pricing to see the best way to serve your intended audience.

Think about selling before you sell

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

When you have your course pre-sold You can receive instant feedback on what your target customers are looking for.

If your program doesn't make a splash the idea, it's time to refinement.

The process of pre-selling your course online allows you to build a customer list and begin to build an online community of students that is then used after you've created your course and uploaded it for students.

Here are some tips to get you started with pre-selling:

Make a minimum-viable course (MVC)

Also known as a"pilot course," an acceptable course will be the very first version of your course that you're willing to sell.

The course is in the most fundamental sense it is based on the idea that you'll add to it and refine it as time passes.

MVC is a great way to test your course. MVC can let you try out your intended audience before investing too much resources in order in order to build a complete high-end course.

The concept is to make use of your MVC to get comments and feedback from your clients that will be used to enhance and promote your next course. This will help you to market your courses online in larger quantities later on.

Pricing for your pilot course will be lower than future courses

So that customers don't feel dissatisfied at your course content - or even leaving bad reviews Price your initial course at a lower cost than you'll need to charge for the course in the near future.

It is possible to promote the pilot course as an exclusive opportunity for clients to take part with the course's testing and have a peek into your course content.

After your initial cohort of students have been through your course and you've got the positive reviews you need then you're free to raise the cost for any future students.

Set up a drip schedule

It is also possible to make use of a drip-schedule structure to develop course material after your students have completed each lesson or module.

comes with the Drip Schedule function which allows you to control the time that students have access to the course material, based the date of your course's launch or chosen schedule.

As an example, you can offer students access to a brand new instructional video each week during the course of two months. This allows you to design your course material at a rapid pace, and collecting feedback from students and developing your material.

Pre-selling can be described as cheat sheets for course designers - you get the benefits of feeling out your target audience and gathering their feedback before you begin making your course live and putting your efforts and time into your product.

Launch and refine

The method of how to market online courses isn't just a straight line - it's the shape of a circle.

If you design an online course and publish it to the internet, you're not completed.

The most popular course creators, which also have the highest sales of courses - follow a cyclical procedure of creating and continuously improving their online courses.

Sometimes referred to as feedback loops, the process of (re)launching and refining your course is about listening to customer feedback and using that feedback to enhance your course content.

It's as simple as this:

• Pay attention:Ask your customers for their feedback so that you can understand what they expect from your program.
• Sale:Refine your offer using comments from customers. Use it to design something irresistible to your audience
• Develop:Tailor your course content according to customer feedback to make your course a successful, valuable educational experience for your customers
• launch:Launch your course and take it on with actual students in order to fulfill your pre-sell promise, then start the process again to improve your offering and your course.

Feedback from your customers as well as refining the offering as well as content allows you to enhance your content as time goes by, shaping it into the ideal product for your audience.

The process begins with selling your course online, but then it continues even after your course has launched This means that you continue adding to and refining your offering and course content according to customer feedback, letting you create your best course possible available.

These are some benefits of creating feedback loops

• Find out what your customers really think
• Get customers involved 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

Pay attention to the feedback of your customers in order for tips on how to market online courses to your target group - they're your best advisors you have!

For best effects, create chances for feedback at final session of each course. You can include a survey to let students voice their thoughts or ideas, as well as any concerns. You can also schedule one-to-one phone calls with a selected number of students for deeper comments.

If you've got an online group of learners, you can use this forum to collect more student feedback - make open-ended surveys, questions and polls in order to gather the most data you can on how to make your class better.

Develop sales strategies

Making online courses sell isn't something that's difficult. It's an art that everyone can do. To ace your selling game It's best to design a funnel for sales for your online course, This is how:

How to create a sales funnel to promote online courses

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

They start at the top of the sales funnel, when they are first introduced to your brand and then they go through the process of purchasing a product or becoming loyal brand advocates.

Think of your sales funnel as an actual funnel - it's larger at the top, and narrower at the bottom.

At the top you have the general public, and by the time they get to low, you will have a few chosen people who are likely to make purchases and turn into regular customers.

This process is expected - the course you choose to take isn't designed for everyone!

A funnel for sales helps you focus your efforts and attention when selling online classes. The funnel can also assist you in:

• Send your messages to the right people
• Identify key touchpoints for potential customers
• Make the most of chances to sell
• Remove sales friction
• Measure and track the success of your sales

When you map out your customers' journey, you can see the best way to guide customers towards a desired outcome - like purchasing your online course.

This is one of the most loved examples: Awareness -> Belief -> Conversion> Loyalty -> Advocacy

• AwarenessAt the start of the funnel, you will see the awareness phase , in which your prospects discover that you are there. Your name is first on their radar and they decide on whether or not to know more about you. This is the initial impression that people get from your name.
• ExaminationThe next phase is Consideration where your customers begin looking into the possibilities available to them as options to solve their issue and whether your business is among the possibilities they'd like to explore.
• Conversion -The Conversion phase is an essential step in order in selling online courses. customers have gathered the information they require and are ready to make a purchase. This is the time to make your clients believe that you are that they'd like to purchase 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 because you continue to offer them something they value, communicate with them, and keep them engaged.
• Advocacy -The Advocacy phase is the point at which satisfied customers continue to help bring others towards the top of your sales funnel by spreading your course's message to other people within their networks and acting as brand ambassadors, helping to grow your following and increase your chances for selling online classes to more students.

Using your sales funnel

Once you've mapped out the sales funnel as well as your customer's journey, it's time to start to create content to satisfy your clients' requirements and direct them to the next step on your funnel.

Here are some examples of the types of content you could create for each stage in the funnel.

The goal at each stage in the funnel should be to pull users further down the funnel. If, for instance, you host an online webinar (mofu) Try to share things that are at the bottom of the funnel such as an example or promotional offer (bofu).

You don't have to fret about making every kind of content that can entice your potential customers. Choose one or two methods for each step of your funnel, to begin.

Your sales funnel will be useful to help guide your marketing strategies and to determine which areas to allocate your time and resources for selling online courses. see the next section!

Utilize marketing strategies

In order to be able to market online online courses, you'll need to master some fundamental marketing methods to be able to connect with the people you want to reach and convince people to buy.

There are a myriad of methods to market your online courses, however there are a few simple methods you can use to sell online courses in a matter of minutes, whatever your industry or niche.

Here are some of the best marketing strategies used for selling online courses:

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

Marketing content

Content marketing can be described as the bread and butter of a course creator's marketing plan.

Content marketing encompasses any type of content you create to market your company. It could be it blog content or video material, emails and much more.

As a strategy to sell online courses, content marketing helps educate your audience and raise the visibility of your brand. If you can produce valuable material for your customers and they remain engaged with your brand , and they are likely to turn into clients later on.

Content marketing is also helpful in:

• Enhance your brand's reputation
• More the number of referrals
• Increase the visibility of your search engine
• Develop a stronger connection with your the customers

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

Determine where your ideal customers spend the most of their time on the internet and then use this knowledge to develop your strategy for marketing through content.

Email marketing

If you'd like to sell more to clients who have already purchased from you, or to nurture customers who haven't made the decision to purchase yet, email marketing can be a effective marketing tactic to keep to have in your bag.

Marketing via email lets you connect with your audience via emails that are designed to introduce customers to your business, give them useful resources, and guide them along your sales funnel.

If you are able to build an email list, you can direct your potential clients to interact regularly with them and develop relationships in the course of time.

By using the use of email marketing, you could include:

• Provide a more personalized service to customers
• Offer product recommendations
• Surveys to collect feedback from customers
• Drive traffic to your website
• Add value for your audience

In order to begin building your email list start by designing lead magnets that will inspire your readers to share their email addresses with you.

Some ideas for top converting lead magnets comprise:

• Free mini courses
• Downloadable guides
• Webinars and other events

After you've created an email database The trick is to keep those customers. It's about creating email messages that offer real value for your subscribers that include a wealth of information and useful resources.

Social media marketing

Nowadays, if you want to learn how to sell online classes, you have be able to master the art of social marketing on the internet to your advantage.

Social media is a highly efficient method of selling online classes due because it can get your brand in front of the right people extra fast.

When you implement the correct marketing strategy on social media Your brand's awareness could increase dramatically in a matter of hours.

Your social media success depends heavily on the strategy you employ and includes the following:

• Your content - and whether it's valuable or appealing to your targeted audience
• How you present your brand , including the brand's voice, your imagery and your content style
• How do you interact with other accounts, including followers, customers and influencers as well as other brands
• What can you do to create a sense of community around your brand - through making your customers feel seen and heard

Like all your marketing efforts, your social media should be designed to portray your brand with the highest quality possible and showcase your brand's image. Consider the image that you're showing to your followers to determine if the image will draw the attention of your target audience as well as help sell online training courses.

Influencer marketing

Getting started with influencer marketing is simple - just look up the profiles of influencers in your niche who fit with your brand values. Then simply drop the influencers a private message to present yourself.

Influencer collaborations can be paid or unpaid and can comprise:

• Posts that are sponsored or brand name
• Guest blogs
• Social media takeovers
• Re-sharing , brand shout-outs, or brand mentions

In partnering with influencers within your niche, you can boost customer trust in your brand and bring your company's message to a wider public.

  Three simple steps to greater brand promotion  

Look at The Big Picture

Instead of running multiple marketing campaigns through emails, social media or on your website, you should try to have all of your marketing channels work together and compliment one another.

The content you post on one platform should be repeated across all channels It not only aids to build a cohesive branding image for your customers and allows you to repurpose and recycle content.

To go back to the sourdough bread example - you could decide to create an event on how to make sourdough starters with wheat flour (white), wholewheat and rye. The possibilities are endless. You can create a sequence of videos tutorials on YouTube or run Reels in on Instagram and create regular email newsletters that focus on different starters including downloadable instructions.

Your customers can access your content via the channel they are most likely to use and gain a better understanding of what exactly your company has to offer and how you can assist your customers.

This is the same content and information that you can use in different ways - and it all adds up to establishing your credibility as a Sourdough specialist for your target audience.

Write compelling copy

Any marketing content you create needs to catch your viewers' attention in order to sell your products.

It is essential to master the art of writing appealing, compelling content that entices your readers to act - such as sign-up for an email newsletter, sharing your content with someone else, or purchasing the online course!

Make use of social proof

Remember that your buyers are human, so it's not unusual for them to be uncertain on whether to make a purchase for a brand they do not know.

Social proof includes:

• Testimonials and reviews
• Customer interviews
• Case studies
• Statistics e.g. the amount of individuals you've assisted
• Logos, accreditations and brand names

When you showcase your past clients who were happy, you could influence buyers to purchase from your.

Social proof also leverages the fear of missing out or FOMO effect. If everybody else is purchasing and loving your goods The majority of your customers will want to get involved also!

Make use of social proof in the landing page, online marketing via email, social media and more.

  Looking for more ideas for marketing and selling online courses? Get our complete guide to everything you need to know about how you can market online classes.

3 Examples of How to Make Online Courses Sellable from Course Creators

In order to show how simple it is to learn how to sell online courses, we've picked three case studies of successful course creators that started out just like you.

Learn how the art of selling online classes to their customers and develop six-figure businesses through the process.

    Mimi Goodwin - Sew It! Academy

The creator of the course Mimi Goodwin first started her online sewing company as a blog back in 2012. Utilizing YouTube to create and share videos of tutorials Mimi quickly increased her followers to more than one million users.

The next step was make Sew It! Academy. Sew It! Academy to monetize her blog and turn it into a thriving business - which has generated huge amounts of course purchases online.

Mimi says her success is due with a'sell without sale idea. Her YouTube tutorials provide genuinely valuable information for her audience that introduce them to her brand and knowledge. The users can later sign up to a subscription-based service to receive more special assistance and tools.

Mimi is also using Instagram for a way to market online courses, by writing about the successes of customers and posting her own personal posts and stories. Being the spokesperson for the brand, she believes that authenticity as well as a person-to-person approach is the key to forming a loyal community.

Key takeaways:

• Make use of social media platforms to increase your reach organically
• Make free tools like videos tutorials
• Make sure you are authentic and genuine in your approach to selling

    Mike Nelson - 9to5Dropouts    

After quitting his job as a manager to launch his own company, Mike Nelson knew he needed to master the art of sell online courses fast. He was most concerned the fact that people would not take his course seriously, and would not be willing to invest in his course - but he tried anyway.

Utilizing free webinars to raise awareness about the expertise of Mike and also to pre-sell his online course, Mike was able to launch his first course in his 9to5Dropouts academy. Mike then set about growing the online course company using a combination of influencer marketing, paid YouTube ads and his own Facebook course community.

Paid advertisements help Mark reach a highly specific target audience and generate greater brand recognition. When they buy and are accepted into the Facebook community, where they are converted into loyal brand advocates.

Utilizing these methods to sell online courses, Mike has grown his business and built an academy that generates over seven figures a year.

Key takeaways:

• Find niche influencers for marketing
• Create a community of course owners to sell additional courses
• Think about paying ads for your target audience

    Mina Irfan - Universe Guru    

When she started Universe Guru, Mina Irfan experimented with various methods to sell online-based courses. She invested a huge amount of money and time into new technology and creating an attractive sales page but it didn't have the results she was hoping for.

Instead, Mina found that the best way to market online course was to make it easy. Mina makes use of YouTube to generate organic leads to her website. In addition, she hosts coaching sessions using Zoom.

In order to increase sales in slower times, Mina also uses discounts and incentive programs to attract new customers, including flash sales and course bundles. These are a way to get new customers acquainted with her academy and then gets them interested.

Mina was named one of the 10 top creators of 2021 thanks to her simple methods for selling online online courses. She uses just a few channels to generate leads, and converts which is a fact!

Key takeaways:

• Use the channels for marketing that are already working to your advantage.
• Make use of incentives and discounts to boost sales
• Hosting webinars and coaching sessions in order to increase the number of leads.

3 Top Tips for Making Online Courses Sellable

Three top points that you should keep in mind when trying to create online courses that will help you build your business, no matter the place you're beginning from.

    Create an Community    

One of the most effective ways to promote online courses is to build an online community for your course. As the examples above demonstrate, community is key to engage your customers to build brand loyalty, and gain more sales for your course now and in the future.

    Change as you go    

If you are able to listen to students' reviews and gain insight through feedback, you can create the kind of course your intended students want - not just the one you imagine they would like.

Related:

    Make it Easy    

The trick to market online online courses isn't to get too involved.

The first-time course creators typically have imposter syndrome, as well as the desire to be more well-prepared before they begin - however, evidence from course creators within our group suggests that it's better to just start and work it out from there.

If you are selling training courses, make it simple. Focus on one core product, an offering, and one key message. And ideally try pre-selling before starting to develop a premium product.

  Offer Online Courses for sale using  

The process of how to sell online courses is much simpler than you imagine. This step-by-step tutorial is intended to assist you in selling additional courses, increase your reach and boost the amount of money you earn.

Be sure to keep the basics in mind and don't get caught up in it!