Creative tips and tricks

A Course Creator's Guide to How to make up the gaps in Your One-to-Many Pipeline

Dec 11, 2024

Have you ever tried running on sand? In all honesty it's a disaster. It's twice as much effort for half the distance. This is exactly the situation when you have the gaps in your sales pipeline. And unfortunately, far more course makers face this dilemma.

If you're making a course, you're giving your business the chance to engage many more potential customers with your knowledge, but when was the last time you had a look at your current pipeline and identified the gaps and opportunities that aren't being tapped?

See the sample course-creator pipeline below for tips and inspiration.

Skip ahead:

Prior to diving in The significance of personalization

As you check out the pipeline below You'll see a strong emphasis on individualization.

Many people believe that an automated pipeline is an impersonal one. However, in actual fact there is an innumerable possibilities to make automated communication more thoughtful and personal, while also improving consistency and conversion.

Read on to discover steps that can not only make up the gaps in your current one-to-many pipeline, but also offer personalization opportunities which will please your leads and customers. Don't forget to keep an on the lookout for strategies and technology that can assist in bringing these customized pipelines to life and without consuming your valuable time.

The pipeline

    Prospecting    

This phase is all about getting the attention of your target public, but it can be a difficult time for course designers. Use the following two ideas to make sure you're reaching people who are interested with an appropriate offer

Inbound marketing requires the creation of content like blog posts, eBooks, guides, ads or anything else that can pique your target audience's interest. It's likely that you're already doing this, but make sure you're implementing an effective SEO plan to secure the content you create. Optimizing your content to be found by search engines improves the efficiency of this stage in your workflow and boosts the effort you're putting into creating your content. Search engines will be crawling every piece of content you make to display it in search results. The more optimised your content and the more likely your targeted viewers will discover you.

Formulas and landing pages In the event that you're not utilizing these powerful tools, the prospects you're attracting by your excellent content may be left undiscovered. This is among the biggest gaps that you'll encounter. To plug this pipeline hole and prevent losing leads who you've tried to connect with, use landing pages to convey a compelling story of your product and make use of forms to gather contact information from high-intent leads. Save those leads into your CRM and nurture to make a sale. When we talk about nurturing leads, we are now in our second sales pipeline phase.

    Automatic lead nurture    

When it comes to nurturing leads, manually could result in an alarming amount of gaps. Why? Since every time an important nurturing message is not remembered there is a gap that leads could be lost. It's not uncommon for teams to do this without not even being aware of the harm done because they're too busy managing other tasks. This is why you need automated nurture sequences.

Utilize business automation software to build nurture campaigns consisting of the various outreach efforts that you require to get your audience through your pipeline. In the case of a user who submits a request on your site, business automation can automatically initiate a welcome message which will offer resources that are of interest to them, and then push them toward the next phase of your sales funnel. After it's fired then your customers will be able to receive all the necessary messages at the exact time they're looking for them. And you and your team don't need to do anything since the nurturing process happens in a way that is automatic.

There's a chance that you're already using automatic lead nurturing, but this doesn't mean that you're not susceptible from gaps. You must ensure that you're not missing any steps in your automatic sequences by including valuable content throughout your emails and texts. A few effective things to include are:

  • Personalized email to introduce your company
  • Free eBook
  • Sneak peek of the course, and an accompanying client testimonials
  • Helpful articles related to their interests (Your small-business CRM may assist)
  • Free webinar invitation
  • Exclusive discounts

The entire list of resources is designed to provide value to your leads and that is the primary goal during this stage of the pipeline. The best part of this process is that whatever you choose to nurture leads with can be automated. The result is zero gaps, less time spent on manual tasks for you and an enduring experiences for leads.

    Lead qualification    

Once people are beginning to respond in your content The qualification process begins. You can easily optimize and streamline this stage of your pipeline by collecting valuable information from automation of nurture cycles. These data points will help inform the process of qualification so that you can segment your most interested leads who are ready to purchase an online course.

Automated lead scoring was developed to quickly and accurately bubble up your high-intent leads with no manual input from you or your staff.

A well-designed, effective process of qualification looks like this: Business automation or CRM software monitors every customer's interaction with you, including how often they open your emails, the links they click, what kinds of forms they complete and so on. Then, it assigns points to each positive action and subtracts points from negative actions, tallies the points and indicates the leads most likely to make next steps with your brand.

    Webinar or live event    

Making a live event an element of your pipeline is an excellent method of serving a large number of people at once however in a manner that is personal and enjoyable. So, after you've determined which leads you're most likely to be are, automatically segment them into their own group. The rest of your leads will follow a different nurture path until they're ready, but the most qualified leads will be invited to a free webinar.

During this online event You'll need to ensure you've done three important things:

  • Offer value: Think about giving your participants a glimpse of a concept they might discover in your class. This is a pivotal aspect of making your webcast worthwhile for them and deepening their trust in the courses of your company.
  • Incorporate a Q&A section at this point, unanswered questions could be the obstacle that keeps leads from purchasing one of your programs, which is why it's crucial to set aside time to provide answers. And since this live event can be used to help multiple leads at a time, everyone is going to benefit from questions that are that are asked.
  • Give an CTA  to prevent a dead-end or a gap in the presentation, this one should conclude in a logical next step, and this is the ideal moment to encourage guests to make a purchase or schedule a call if they still want to find out more.

    Convert or further following-up    

Following the event is live You'll be able to access a list of all registrants and you'll be able to contact them accordingly and make your sales pitch.

That's where the majority of businesses miss a step. They don't realize that they've got a large number of people who are enthused enough about their offerings and training courses to register for their online event. A key element to make sure the integrity of your process is to contact your contacts whether or not they participated in your webcast.

For those who attended the event, you can schedule an automated email the following day, after the event. Send this email to say thank you your guests for taking part by providing the attendees with a special discount coupon code, and then send them to your site where they will be able to make their purchase.

If you've got a number of attendees who have registered for an event, but did not get to it, make sure to send an automated message to them, too. Invite them to your next live event or give an email with a replay of the event they didn't attend, however you could also provide a hyperlink to the checkout page of your site so they don't have to go through the entire process and pay for your course when they're ready.

In an ideal world, the majority of your contacts will convert after this step in your pipeline, but this isn't always the situation. Don't sweat it, though! Just divide the ones who did not buy into another group so that you can continue to nurture the prospects and offer value until the time is right to make your next pitch.

    Onboard    

Have you secured the new clients? First step: Happy dance. Second step: Onboarding.

The process of onboarding is important, but it also happens to be one of the most common mistakes. In order to avoid any missteps when you are onboarding, as well as to avoid the time of manually completing your onboarding, opt for automatic onboarding.

Automate each step of your onboarding so you're not leaving potential customers confused and unsatisfied following an purchase. The only thing you need to make is create a campaign that's triggered by a course purchase. After that, you can fill it with the necessary elements for example:

  • A welcome and thank you email
  • How to access their brand new courses (ie. login details, steps to create your account for the first time, etc. )
  • Resources they can utilize to maximize the value of their course
  • Invitations to groups when their course offers group learning access or if you have a community of other students who they can connect and collaborate with

Go the extra mile to help your company and customers

Your sales pipeline could end right after someone gets all their onboarding materials, but that would result in missed chances and a sloppy process. If you're looking to improve your pipeline's efficiency for maximum success, think about rounding it up with these final elements:

    Check-in    

Keep in touch with newly registered students after they've experienced the opportunity to dive into the course and begin taking classes. You can send them an email with an application form for them to discuss their experiences or have questions. Include an address to your support page, and some tutorials they might find helpful. Once you have checked in make sure to check their email inbox on a regular basis to remind you of any new courses or materials and to congratulate them for completing different milestones or simply to ask for more feedback.

    Cross-sell and upsell    

One of the main reasons not to close your pipeline in a hurry is that you risk leaving money on the table. Happy customers often become regular customers. Therefore, you should make sure to include an option in your sales process to either upsell or cross-sell to current course customers.

But remember to customize your message to make it pertinent and relevant to each customer. Make use of their courses currently offered previous downloads, their past courses, and any other details you can gather about them in order to decide the best cross-sells or upsells to pitch them. The more tailored these sales pitches are and the more likely clients will act on them as if they were repeat buyers.

For example, if someone is taking a social media marketing course from your company, do not try to sell them the idea of creating the podcast. Instead, invite participants to join a brand new training course in advanced social selling.

    Retrieve reviews and referrals    

A different method to increase sales is to get positive reviews and promising referrals. This creates a flywheel of leads that you can add to your pipeline.

Once someone has successfully completed the course, capitalize on their experience by sending a message that thanks them for choosing your business, and also encourages the user to review your course or suggest someone else who could profit from the course as well.

We'll talk about technology and next steps

When you modify this nine-step process to align it with your specific business There's one element to remember: the help of software. The most solid one-to-many sales pipelines are dependent on having the right technology. This is what allows you to carry out this procedure over and over again and save time on manual input, and provide a fantastic and constant experience for your clients.

The following are the two particular elements you must have in your tech stack to help you along the way:

If you're ready to get started and would like to know exactly where the holes are in your pipeline, you can take advantage of this no-cost assessment. It can help you identify any missed opportunities throughout the customer's lifecycle, and show you how to rectify them in order to ensure a superior customer experience each time.