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

The process of selling online courses can be simplified into six easy steps. No business degree or previous sales experience is needed. Begin by clicking here!

If you spend enough time looking into the possibility of creating online courses You'll likely feel the desire to create your own course online.

A quick search on sales strategies can leave you in a tizzy state and the well-known Imposter Syndrome is slowly creeping in.

There are hundreds of terms and concepts you must get familiar with. Everyone is aware of more about selling online courses than you .

The process of how to market online courses could be broken down in six simple steps. No business degree or sales experience is needed.

In this tutorial we've streamlined all you have to know about selling online online courses that will help you grow your audience and increase the amount of money you earn.

Read on to learn the procedure for how you can make money selling online courses. Click below for links to jump through.

  6-Step Guide on How to Sell Online Courses

2.      Know who you're Selling to
3.      Price Your Course
4.      Consider Pre-selling
5.      Release and Refine
6.      Develop Sales Strategies
7.      Utilize Marketing Strategies
8.      Three examples of how to Market Online Courses From Course Creators
9.      Three top tips for Selling Online Courses

Six Steps on how to sell online courses

Although the selling process for online classes can appear to be a never-ending maze filled with jargon and unintelligible infographics It doesn't need to be overwhelming.

The process of selling online courses is reduced to just six simple steps.

In each step, we've included the essentials for what you need to know and options for extra reading for further information.

Here's our ultimate guide to selling online courses.

You should know whom you're selling your product to

If you're planning to offer online courses, the first thing you need to know is who you're selling to.

Most course creators who are first timers stumble on their first obstacle, creating an online course that they think people want - instead of figuring the actual needs of their audience.

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

For selling online courses, you need to know:

• Who your ideal customer is
• What challenges they are facing
• What do they require from you?

This is essential to help you create something that is valuable to your audience and build an audience of committed enthusiastic customers.

Below are three steps to help you locate your ideal audience

Research your Audience

If you're looking to discover your target audience, you must conduct study.

If you have already established customers, start there. In case you're still not selling products or services yet, look at who you'd sell your courses to in an ideal world.

Thanks to the internet, audience research is easy. You can use Google and other social networks to find your ideal audience and learn more about them.

When conducting your research on the audience, you should try to accomplish these three things:

Find out what solution you're providing

In order to identify your ideal target audience begin by looking at what you can offer to your students.

Think about the outcomes from your online training and the people who stand to gain 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 help people overcome?

If you know your solution then you'll be able to think more clearly about who your target customers are.

Define your audience demographics

When you've identified who will profit the most from what you're offering, begin to become more specific. The key demographics for your target audience. This includes:

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Family status
• Hobbies

It is also possible to get more specific, considering the status of their job, education level, income and much more.

It is important to be as specific as possible to understand exactly who your audience is in relation to their characteristics.

Take a look at your rivals

As part of your audience research you may also consider competitors in your chosen field.

When you know the audience your competitors are targeting, you can start to find out who's requirements aren't being met or whom they aren't in touch with with their products or marketing.

Listen to your ideal customers

When you've done your base study, it's recommended to connect with the people you want to talk to them.

Internet research is crucial, however in order to know exactly who your ideal customers are they are, you must hear from them directly.

These are three strategies:

• Distribute customer survey
• Conduct face-to-face interviews
• Post questions on your social media

Listen to your ideal audience to find out exactly what they want from you and how you can meet their needs by offering an online course.

Aim to reach at least 50 potential customers in your study to get an accurate picture of your audience's needs and also how you can sell your online online courses to the segment of the market.

Find out who you are targeting.

Utilizing the information from your audience research as well as customer surveys Then, you'll be able to narrow down your audience further.

It's really helpful to create the user profile or avatar. This is a detailed profile of your ideal customer which focuses on one individual in particular.

Imagine your audience as one person, including:

• Their core demographics
• They have their own goals and beliefs.
• Their challenges and problems
• They play a role in the buying procedure and the possibility of objections
• Their sources of information e.g. books, magazines, news sites

When you're selling online course it is your intention to talk to the person directly. A clear customer avatar helps you concentrate your marketing efforts in terms of content marketing and copywriting advertising, as well as your social media marketing strategies.

Cost the course

Pricing your courses can be overwhelming, especially if this is the first time you've done it.

It's good to know that there are simple techniques to price your course , and avoid one of the most common mistakes when selling online courses: selling at a low price.

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

The secret to selling on the internet is to view your course as the solution to a challenge. This is the same for pricing your course too.

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

It's not just about selling data, you're selling an outcome. What transformation does the course you're offering? What will your students be capable of doing when they finish the course?

It doesn't matter how long students take to finish the class, what is important is the results you deliver in the shortest time and with efficiency feasible.

Don't undersell your course

The most common mistake that course creators make is pricing their online courses at a price that is too high.

It's a common belief that the less expensive the course of your course, the higher number that you'll offer. But pricing your course too low can actually damage your company's long-term success.

As well as meaning you will earn less for each sale, you will also be able to earn more than one way to look at a drackback:

• Lower prices draw less committed customers.
• It diminishes the worth of the course.
• Undervaluing your expertise can damage your reputation
• It costs the same to market a cheap course in comparison to a more expensive course
• You have less money to reinvest into solving the problems of your students

While it's tempting to set the price of your course lower in order to increase sales, you could be doing more harm than beneficial. If you're looking to understand how to promote online courses, try to have the confidence to price your courses higher.

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

Consider pricing tiers

If you're not sure if you're ready to sell your course for a premium product, then consider offering pricing tiers rather.

Prices tiers are a way to satisfy buyers require them to think about and compare different options, without having to take a look at the courses of your competition.

For example, you could have 3 pricing tiers with the most basic package starting at the lowest price. The medium package will be the core program and is the one the majority of buyers will opt for. Premium packages may have exclusive benefits, such as one-to-one or group coaching or Live teaching components.

Through pricing tiers you can make your course easier to access for a greater audience without diminishing the perception of value from your knowledge.

Whichever pricing strategy you use, remember that you can modify it at any time as you go. When you have more clients and the course grows, increase the price accordingly. It allows you to charge more as you refine your marketing and add value to the course.

Check your pricing to see the best way to serve the people you want to reach.

Think about the possibility of pre-selling

Although it may seem something that isn't true, the practice of pre-selling allows you to test the demand of your customers prior to investing your time and effort into developing your program.

If you prepare your course in advance and preparing it for sale, you will receive immediate feedback on what your target audience is looking for.

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

Pre-selling your online course also allows you to establish a client list and start creating an online community of students that you can then utilize when you've completed your course and uploaded it for students.

Here are some suggestions to help you get started by pre-selling your products:

Make a minimum-viable course (MVC)

Also known as a"pilot course," the minimum viable course is the initial version of your course that is available for sale.

This is your course in the most fundamental sense it is based on the idea that you'll be able to add more information and enhance it with time.

A MVC can let you experiment with the audience you want to reach, prior to 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 gather feedback and testimonials from customers, which you can then use to improve and market your future course, helping you sell online courses in larger quantities in the future.

Pricing for your pilot course will be lower than future courses

So that customers don't feel dissatisfied about the content of your course - or even leaving bad reviews - price your pilot course lower than what you intend to charge for your class in the future.

It is possible to promote your pilot course as an exclusive opportunity for customers to be involved during the test phase to be able to see a glimpse of your course content.

Once your first cohort of students have been through your program and received those positive reviews that you want to get, you're able to increase the price for future customers.

Set up a drip schedule

You can also utilize a drip calendar format to create course content after your students have completed every lesson or course.

includes a Drip Schedule feature which allows you to control how students access the course material, based on your launch date or your chosen timeframe.

You could, for instance, offer students access to a brand new instructional video every week over a 2 month period. It gives you the time to develop your content as you go, while collecting feedback from students and refining your content.

Pre-selling is like a cheat sheet to course creators. You benefit from feeling about your intended audience, and collecting feedback prior to when you launch into making your course live as well as putting time and energy into the creation of the course.

Start and refine

The process of how to sell 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 to the internet, you're not 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 a feedback loop, this method that involves (re)launching and refining the course content is about listening to feedback from customers and using it to improve the content of your courses.

It's as simple as this:

• Listen:Ask your customers for comments to determine what they want from your program.
• Sale:Refine your offer using customer feedback and use it to develop something irresistible to your audience
• Develop:Tailor your course content according to customer feedback to create a professional, beneficial learning experience for customers
• Launch:Launch your course and use real learners to meet your pre-sell promise, then restart the loop to refine your program and offering.

This circle of gathering feedback and refining your offer and content lets you improve the content of your courses over time making it the ideal product for your audience.

It starts with the initial selling of your online course, and this continues long after your course has launched - this means you keep making improvements to the course and its information based on customer feedback, letting you create your best course possible available.

Here are some of benefits of creating feedback loops:

• Learn what your clients actually are thinking about
• Get customers involved to make them feel valued and listened to
• Increase customer retention
• Refine your product for your target audience
• Tailor your messaging to reach your audience

Take note of the opinions of your clients and learn to promote online courses to your targeted group - they're your most knowledgeable advisors that you can have!

To get the most impact, you should create chances for feedback at conclusion of each module. You can include a survey to let students express their views, ideas and any complaints. You can also schedule one-to-one phone calls with a selected amount of students to provide greater depth of feedback.

If you've got an online learning community, make use of this space to gather more student feedback - make open-ended surveys, questions and polls so that you can gather all the information you can about how you can make your class better.

Develop sales strategies

Selling online courses is not a dark art - it's an art that everyone can do. If you want to be successful in selling your course, it's a good idea to create a sales funnel for your online course, This is how:

How do you create a sales funnel to sell online courses

A sales funnel describes the journey your customers take to make a purchase. It describes every step at which prospective customers interact with your business.

They start at the top of your sales funnel as they first hear about your company and go through the process of making a purchase and turning into brand advocates.

Think of your sales funnel in the form of an actual funnel. It's more expansive at the top, but 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 selected people who make purchases and turn into repeat customers.

It's normal to go through this process - the course you choose to take isn't designed to be accessible to everyone!

The sales funnel can help you focus your efforts and attention when you're selling online classes. It can also help you:

• Target your messages
• Find the key points of contact for prospective purchasers
• Profit from more chances to sell
• Remove sales friction
• Track and measure your sales performance

By mapping out your customer journey, you can see the best way to guide your customers to a goal - like purchasing your online course.

This is one of the most popular models: Awareness -> consideration -> conversion -> Loyalty and finally Advocacy

• Awareness -At the beginning of the funnel is the Awareness phase - essentially your customers learn that you exist. Your name is first to their attention and they determine to decide if they would like to find out more about your company. It is the first impression someone gets from your name.
• ExaminationThe second phase of consideration Your potential clients begin exploring the options available to them as solutions to their problem and whether your brand is one of the options they want to keep exploring.
• ConversionThe Conversion stage is the most crucial step needed in selling online courses. Customers have already gathered all the information they're looking for and are prepared to make a purchase. This is the time to ensure your customers that your company is the only one they would want to buy from.
• LoyaltyThe Loyalty phase looks at how to sell online online courses for the long term - following clients have purchased and keep returning to you as you keep to offer them something of value, interact with them, and keep them engaged.
• Advocacy -The Advocacy phase occurs the point at which satisfied customers continue to introduce more people towards the top of the sales funnel through sharing your course with others within their networks and acting as brand ambassadors which helps to increase your following and increase your chances for selling online classes to more students.

Using your sales funnel

Once you've laid out your sales funnel and your customer journey, you can start to create content to meet your customers' needs and guide them through every step of your funnel.

Here are some examples about the kind of content that you can create to each step of the funnel.

The goal at each stage of your funnel will be pulling individuals further into the funnel. If, for instance, you host an online webinar (mofu) Try to share things from the bottom of the funnel, like a case study or a promotional offer (bofu).

Do not worry about creating every type of content that can entice your potential customers. Choose one or two strategies for each stage of your funnel, to begin.

Your sales funnel is really beneficial to aid in planning your marketing strategy and identify the areas you need to devote your resources and time to market online courses. look at the next step!

Use to market strategies

In order to be able to market online online courses, you'll need to learn some basic marketing methods to be able to connect with the people you want to reach and convince them to make a purchase.

There's a huge number of ways you can market your online courses, however there are a few simple methods that can be used to promote online courses immediately, whatever your industry or field of study.

Here are the top marketing strategies for selling online courses:

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

Content marketing

Content marketing can be described as the bread and butter of the course's marketing strategy.

Content marketing can refer to any kind of content you develop for your business, including blog posts videos, blog material, emails and many more.

In order to promote online classes, content marketing is a way to inform your audience and raise brand awareness. If you are able to create valuable content for your audience and they keep engaging with your brand , and they are more likely to become clients later on.

Content marketing can also help:

• Improve your brand reputation
• More referral traffic
• Enhance the search engine search visibility
• Develop a stronger relationship with customers

The key to making use of content marketing to promote your business is targeting your customers through channels and platforms they use the most.

Find out where your target audience likes to spend their time online and use this information to create your own content marketing strategy.

Email marketing

If you want to upsell past customers, or nurture leads that aren't ready to purchase yet, sending emails is a effective marketing tactic to keep to have in your bag.

Email marketing lets you reach your audience via an array of messages designed to introduce customers to your brand, offer them valuable resources and move them into the sales funnel.

If you can build your list of email addresses, you will can direct your prospective customers who can interact regularly with them and develop an ongoing relationship in long periods of.

With the help of email marketing, you can as well:

• Give a more personalized experience to your customers
• Provide product suggestions
• Surveys to collect feedback from customers
• Drive traffic to your website
• Add value for your audience

For the first step in developing your email list begin by creating leads that can make your subscribers feel more comfortable sharing their email address with you.

Some ideas for top converting lead magnets comprise:

• Free mini courses
• Downloadable guides
• Webinars and events

After you've created an email list, the trick is to retain those subscribers. It's about creating emails that are of an actual benefit to the audience with plenty of tips and useful resources.

Marketing via social media

Today, if you wish learn to make money selling online online courses, it is essential to learn how to use social marketing on the internet to your advantage.

Social media can be an extremely effective tool for selling online courses due because it can get your business' name out to those who are interested in your course.

When you implement the correct marketing strategy on social media the brand's visibility can skyrocket overnight.

The success of your social media campaign depends a lot on your strategy which includes:

• Your content will determine whether your post is valuable or interesting to your target public
• How you present your brand - including your brand voice, imagery and your content style
• What you do with your other accounts, such as with the influencers, customers, and customers of other brands
• How you create a fan base for your business - by making people feel seen and heard

Similar to all of your marketing activities and efforts, social media must strive to present your company with the highest quality possible and display your brand's image. Consider the image you're portraying to your customers to determine if the image will appeal to your ideal customer as well as help sell online courses.

Marketing with influencers

Getting started with influencer marketing is simple - just look up the profiles of the influencers within your niche who fit with your values as a brand. Simply send the influencers a private message to introduce yourself.

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

• Posts that are sponsored or brand name
• Guest posts
• Social media takes over
• Brand shout-outs or re-sharing

In partnering with influencers within your area, you'll be able to boost customer trust in the brand you represent and introduce your brand to a wider public.

  Three easy tips to better brand marketing  

Check out The Big Picture

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

The content you post across a single platform must be echoed across every channel This not only assists in creating a consistent image of your brand for clients, it also helps you to repurpose and recycle the content.

In the same vein as the bread sourdough example you might choose to run a campaign on making sourdough starters with wheat flour (white), wholewheat, and Rye. The possibilities are endless. You can create a sequence of videos tutorials on YouTube and run Reels through Instagram and write weekly email newsletters focussing on the different types of starters and downloadable tutorials.

Customers can find your website's content through the channels they use the most and have a clear idea of exactly what your brand offers and how you can aid your customers.

This is the same content and the same knowledge that is used in various ways , and will all contribute to the establishment of your authority as a sourdough expert for your audience.

Write compelling copy

Any marketing content you create must grab your target audience's attention to help you increase sales for your items.

This means that you must be able to craft appealing, compelling copy that drives your audience to take action like signing up for the newsletter or sharing it with someone else, or purchasing your course online!

Make use of social proof

Be aware that buyers are human, so it's normal if they're unsure of whether to buy from a brand they don't know.

Social proof is:

• Testimonials and reviews
• Customer interviews
• Case studies
• Statistics e.g. how many people you've helped
• Brand logos and accreditations

If you can show off the previous clients who were happy, you could convince buyers to make a purchase from your.

Social proof also leverages the fear of not being noticed or FOMO effect. If everybody else is purchasing and loving your goods and services, the majority of your customers will be eager to participate as well!

Use social proof on your website's landing pages your social media, email marketing and many more.

  Looking for more ideas for marketing and selling online courses? Check out our comprehensive guide on all you need to know about how you can sell online courses.

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

To show just how easy it is to make online courses more profitable, we've picked 3 case studies from successful course creators that started out the same way as you.

Here's how they learnt the art of selling online classes to their customers and develop six-figure businesses in the procedure.

    Mimi Goodwin - Sew It! Academy

The creator of the course Mimi Goodwin first started her online sewing business as a blog back in 2012. Making use of YouTube to create and share tutorial videos, Mimi quickly grew her following to over a million viewers.

The next step was create the Sew It! Academy, which would allow her to earn money through her blog and turn it into a thriving business - which has seen huge growth of online course sales.

Mimi says her success is due with a'sell without sale' ideology. YouTube tutorials on her channel provide valuable information for her audience who are introduced to her brand as well as her knowledge. The users can later sign up to a subscription-based membership platform to get more exclusive help and resources.

Mimi is also using Instagram as a method to market online courses, by writing about the successes of customers and posting her personal photos as well as stories. Since she is the person who represents the company she believes authenticity and personal touch is key to building an enduring community.

Important takeaways

• Use social media for growing your audience organically
• Free resources such as video tutorials
• Be genuine and authentic when selling

    Mike Nelson - 9to5Dropouts    

When he quit his job at a corporate company to launch his own company, Mike Nelson knew he must learn to sell online courses fast. He was most concerned the possibility that people wouldn't consider the course seriously and be willing to invest in his course - but the course was a success regardless.

Through the use of free webinars to raise awareness about his expertise and pre-sell his online course, Mike was able to start the first class in his 9to5Dropouts academy. Mike then set about growing his online course business, making use of influencer marketing, pay YouTube ads and his own community of Facebook courses.

Paid ads help Mark reach a highly targeted audience, and create greater brand recognition. When they buy the customer is welcomed into the Facebook community, which turns them into brand loyal advocates.

By using these strategies to market online courses Mike has grown his business and created an academy which earns seven figures per year.

Important takeaways

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

    Mina Irfan - Universe Guru    

In the beginning of Universe Guru, Mina Irfan played around with a range of different strategies to try and sell online-based courses. The company sunk a significant amount of time and money into innovative technology and designed an impressive sales page - but it didn't have the success she had hoped for.

In the end, Mina found that the most effective strategy to sell online course was to keep it simple. Mina utilizes YouTube to bring organic traffic to her course page. In addition, she hosts coaching sessions using Zoom.

To increase sales during slow times, Mina also uses discounts and incentives to entice new clients, such as flash sales, course bundles and even. This introduces new customers to her academy and then gets the students hooked.

Mina was officially one of the most popular creators 2021 due to her easy ways of selling online classes. Mina uses only a handful of channels to generate leads and drive conversions - which is a fact!

Important takeaways

• Use the marketing channels already working for you
• Utilize incentives and discounts to increase sales
• Host webinars and coaching sessions in order to increase the number of leads.

Three Top Tips for selling online courses

Three top points that you should keep in mind when trying to sell online courses and build your company, regardless of what stage you're in.

    Make a Community    

One of the most effective methods to market online courses is to create a course community. The examples below show that community is essential in bringing your customers into the fold, build brand loyalty and increase sales of your courses both now and in the near future.

    Modify as you need to    

If you have the ability to read student reviews and learn by the feedback you receive, you can create courses that you know your students want - not just the one you imagine they would like.

Related:

    Make it Easy    

The secret to how to market online online courses isn't to think too much about it.

First time course creators often have imposter syndrome, as well as the desire to be extra ready before they start - but evidence from instructors in our community shows you can just begin and work out from there.

In the case of selling classes, it's best to keep the course easy. Focus on one core product, one offering and one main message. It is a good idea to test pre-selling before launching into creating a premium product.

  Sell Online Courses with  

How to market online courses is much simpler than you imagine. This step-by step guide was created to help you sell additional courses, increase the number of people who take part in your courses and improve your revenue.

Remember, keep simple, and don't think about it!