Speaker 1: In this video, I'm going to show you how to successfully market an online course from start to finish. This is a complete lesson in online course marketing and I'm going to show you how to do it in a way that's ethical, not pushy or shady, like some of the things you might have seen online, not naming any names. I've had the privilege of working with some of the most successful online course creators out there, including Teachable, Jay Shetty, Susie Moore, Melissa Griffin, Caitlin Batcher and many more, helping them with their Facebook ads and also their online course marketing strategy. And what I'm going to show you in this video are the core principles and strategies that people and companies like them use to sell online courses really, really successfully. So let's get straight into it. The first thing to understand is what people actually need before they'll be willing to buy from you. And there are four key things. The first thing is they need to actually know they have a problem and be looking for a solution for it. Sounds kind of obvious, but there's no point targeting your marketing towards people who don't even know that the problem you're trying to solve exists or that they're suffering from it. And therefore are not looking for a solution for it. The second thing is they need to see you as an expert in the field, they need to see you as somebody who is actually able to solve their problem. The third thing is they need to trust you. So not only do they need to see you as an expert, but they need to trust you, there needs to be a relationship there where they see you as somebody they would be happy to actually give money to in exchange for a solution to their problem. And fourth, they need to see that you have the solution that they need to solve their problem right now. That's essentially your offer or your course, they need to understand that that is exactly what they need to solve the big problem that they're experiencing right now. Now, then once you establish those things, and they know that you've got the solution, they're probably going to have some objections. And you're going to need to overcome those objections. So objections are reasons why they aren't willing to buy your course right away. It could be something like they're not sure if they're at the right stage in business just yet to apply the materials and get the most value out of your course. Or it could be a myriad of other reasons depending on your audience and your course. Now you need to be able to overcome those objections. And the sale is right over that hill. Now the reason I'm telling you this is because people need to go through that entire journey before they're going to be willing to hand over their credit card and buy your course. And that's where so many people go wrong. They build a great course, they build out a sales page, they put it up on their website. And then they start sending people there from social media from their email list and wherever they can. But after a while, nobody buys and they wonder why. And it's because you can't simply take strangers or people who barely know you send them to a sales page and ask them to give you money. They need to go on this journey of establishing you as the expert building trust, building that relationship, and then pitching them with your product or service before they're actually ever going to give you a cent. And by shortcutting that process, you end up with a course that sits there gathering dust because no one's buying it. Now the great news is you can automate this journey. Okay, and that is what I'm going to show you now we call this automated sales process, a sales funnel or a sales process. Now there are lots of different types of sales funnels out there. But all of them contain the same core steps. Essentially, at step number one, you're going to take a new lead and collect their email address. After that, you'll follow up with more valuable content insights and continue to build that trust and relationship. Next, you'll pitch your offer for your online course or coaching and then finally you address those key objections. So what I'm going to do right now is share my two favorite types of sales funnels for marketing online courses. One of them is great for more expensive courses like $500 and up and the other one works really well for courses that are priced below $500. Now the reason we use different sales funnels for different price points is because more expensive online courses obviously take more nurturing and it takes more to build enough trust in order for somebody to buy a course that's let's say $1,000 compared to a lower value course like let's say $50 you don't need to go through as much trust building in order to convince somebody that they should buy your $50 course. You can think about it the same way as what it takes for somebody to buy a car for $40,000 versus the decision making process when they get to the checkout at the supermarket and they buy that $2 chocolate bar. The decision making process and the level of thought that goes into that is obviously much less. Alright, let's get into the first method and that is the webinar. So this is essentially an online video training where you pitch your product at the end. So what you do is you create either a live training or a recorded video training that's about an hour long, where you go through and actually give value and solve a small problem that your audience have. At the end of that training, which is about 45 minutes, you spend about 15 minutes pitching your online course, or your coaching program. And now the key here is you're teaching on a topic that is something that your audience really wants to learn about. And during that process, you're solving a small problem that your audience has that is also related to the big problem that your course is going to solve. Because you want to draw people in who are going to be interested in your online course, and they need to solve that problem that your course solves, but you don't want to solve it in the online training, because then they're not going to want to buy your course. So you want to help them in the training, you want to solve a small problem. And then you want to be able to lead into a pitch to sell them into your online course at the end. Now there are lots of different ways to structure a webinar. And I could literally do an hour long YouTube video on how to create a great webinar. So I can't do all of that in this video. But if you do some searching around, you will see some great resources on how to create a webinar in terms of the slides and the structure and all that good stuff. Now to actually set this up, I use a tool called easy webinar, which allows you to host the live or the evergreen webinars, meaning the pre recorded webinars. And this tool allows you to set up every aspect of your webinar makes it really easy. And I'll include a link to that in the description below if you want to check it out. Now once you've created your webinar, you need to then create a web page or a landing page that allows people to sign up for it. So people go to the landing page, they enter their name and email, and they register for your live or your recorded webinar. Once they sign up, they'll be able to attend, watch the training, and they will see your pitch at the end. So now you're going to be collecting email addresses when people sign up for your free webinar, which is the first step in our sales funnel. On the webinar, you're going to be teaching them some really valuable information, which is going to position you as the go to expert or authority in your space. And it's also going to be establishing that trust. And the beauty of video is it seeing you on camera actually helps establish that trust much faster than let's say email only. And when you pitch on the webinar, you're explaining to them why your solution is something they need right now. And you can also address those common objections right there on the webinar as well. So you can see, by using a webinar, we can actually fit all of those things we mentioned at the start of the video into a space of one hour. So we can compress that journey down into the space of just one hour. But it doesn't end there. After the webinar, you'll actually want to send a series of emails out in order to continue this journey. So the emails you want to send after a webinar are number one, the webinar replay email. So you need to send an email to everybody who registers for the webinar after the webinar ends. That tells them that the replay is available. Because attendance is key. The more people that actually sign up for and then watch your webinar, the more sales you will get of your course. So having a replay and you can automate this in easy webinar, and sending an email out that tells them the replay is available after the webinar means that more people are going to actually watch it if they didn't make the live or the first viewing of the recorded webinar. In email number two, which you would send the next day, you want to paint a picture of what life is going to look like if they don't solve their problem right away. So paint that picture of what things are going to look like if they continue on as they are without bothering to solve the problem. At the end of that email, you're going to reiterate your offer and your course. On the next day, you're going to send the third email which is going to be future pacing. This is going to paint a picture of what life will look like if they actually go through your course and solve that problem. So what is life going to be like once they get rid of this big problem or big pain point that they experienced? The best thing you can do here is paint that picture using an example of a past student or even of yourself and demonstrating what life looked like before and now what it looks like after you've gone through and fix the problem. In email number four, you really want to address objections. And one of the best ways to address objections is to use your testimonials or case studies from past students or clients. So if you can identify the core objections that your potential customers have, and then find testimonials or case studies that specifically speak to or address these objections, then that is the most powerful way you can actually squash those objections. Email number five FAQ. So frequently asked questions. I like to send out an email that addresses most of the questions that people have around the course like how long will I have access for? Do I have direct access to you? And all of those things that people like to ask before they join. It's surprising how often one simple question can hold people back from jumping in and joining the course. And if you can just answer that one question for them, then boom, you'll get a sale. And finally, I like to send one more email on the last day with just a final notice. Again, reiterating the offer explaining how it's going to help them what life will look like afterwards and why they should join. So that is how you market your online course using a webinar sales funnel. Now, if you've got a course that's priced a little lower, let's say $500 or below, you might want to use this second online course marketing sales funnel, which is a simple email sequence. So unlike the webinar where you have to have a live or pre recorded video training, an email sequence works like this. The first thing to do is offer them something of value for free in exchange for an email address. Speaking of value, if you're finding this video helpful, and you haven't done it already, make sure you smash that like button. Okay, now the thing of value that you can offer for your potential customers could be a cheat sheet, a checklist, a case study, or maybe even a swipe file. For example, something that I could offer for free to my audience who are interested in Facebook ads is a checklist for iOS 14.5. And how to overcome the privacy changes that came with that people are really interested in that topic at the moment. And they will be really keen to download that checklist to make sure they're prepared, and that they're doing everything they can. So think about something that you can offer for free, that's really valuable, but is something that's easy to create, but something that's lightweight and easy to consume for your audience as well. And something that's easy to apply and for them to get a result with. Now, again, it needs to be related to your online course that you're going to be pitching, but it doesn't need to solve the big problem that your course solves. Because if they feel like they've got the solution from a checklist, or whatever freebie you offer, they're not going to be likely to buy your course. So think of a small problem you can solve that's related to but isn't the same as the big problem that your online course solves. And again, once you've got your freebie, you need to create a landing page where people can enter their name and email to get that free thing delivered to their inbox. So after they enter their name and email address on the landing page, then you're going to add them to your automated email sequence. Now this happens in your email service provider, which is the software that you use to manage your email list and send out your automated email sequences and broadcasts. Personally, I use active campaign, it's a great tool for this really powerful, really flexible and can do absolutely everything you could possibly want in terms of automation. I'll leave a link down in the description below. And what happens is once they enter your automated email sequence, you're going to send out the first email. Now the first email is going to contain a link to the thing that you promised. So it's really important that you deliver on that. But it's also going to expand on that continue to give a little bit of value and then leave a cliffhanger at the end telling them that you've got even more coming for them tomorrow. Then the next day you're going to send email number two. In email number two, you want to agitate the problem, you want to continue to educate them and explain why it's really important for them to solve that problem now. So let's go back to my example where I said I could provide a checklist on how to prepare for the iOS 14 privacy changes with Facebook ads. Now, in the second email, I could go into more detail explaining that if you're not prepared for these changes, you're not going to be giving as much data to Facebook and Facebook uses that data to optimize your ads and improve your ads performance. So less data is going to mean poor ad performance. And that's why it's really important to solve this problem. And then I could also talk about how without complete data, you can't make good decisions with your Facebook ads. And so you really need to solve this problem right now. Then the next day, I would send the third email and in this email, it's where you pitch your solution. So in the second email, we agitated the problem a little bit explain why it's important to solve. And in this third email, you're going to present your course and explain why it is the best solution to that problem, and how it's going to solve it for them. So this is your big pitch for your course. The next day, you're going to send email number four. And this is going to be the future state email. So this is where I like to paint that picture of what the future looks like, after you've solved the problem. So for my example, again, the iOS 14, and the privacy changes, if I had a solution here, that just walk them through step by step everything they needed to do to get as much data as possible back to Facebook after these changes, then I could now explain what the future looks like after implementing this. So I could show examples of before and after I implemented what I teach in the course, and show what my students did and how it's improved their results. So think about how you can show that future state and what life looks like after people go and implement what's in your online course or coaching program. And then on day five, it's all about frequently asked questions and your final pitch. So I like to address any questions in this final day email that my students normally have, and then go into the final pitch and explain how the course is going to help them and why they really need to join now. Okay, so you've just seen two different online course marketing sales funnels that you can use to sell your online courses. Now what you need to do once you've set up your funnel is start sending traffic to it. So whether it be from social media, whether it be from your existing email list, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, whatever it is, you want to send them to that top of funnel email opt in. So in this case, the webinar signup page, or that opt in page or landing page for your freebie. So now instead of making that big mistake that so many course creators make, which is just whipping up a sales page and sending people they're asking them to buy, you're now sending people into a sales funnel that takes them on that journey. And I can tell you right now that you are going to have a far higher success rate in terms of sales by doing things this way. Now if you haven't done it already, please hit that like button makes a massive difference to the channel. And if you're online course creator or coach and you want insights that I don't share on this YouTube channel that I reserve for my private community, then click the link in the description to get on my weekly newsletter where I share tips, strategies, what's working right now as well as news when it comes to marketing online courses and coaching. And on your screen right now you're going to see a video here on how to make more revenue with your online course business. And up here I've got one that's going to teach you how to choose the best platform to host your online courses. Hope this has helped. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.