6 Things You Need To Know About Selling Your Online Courses
No one is coming….
If you’re someone who is creating and selling online courses, this article is for you. If you want to create a course but need help contact me: lukeheight0440@gmail.com
As Common As The Flu
Ted is an expert in the field of writing. He has an extensive background that ranges from movie scripts to instruction manuals. If it needs to be written, Ted has done it at some point in his illustrious career. Now, Ted is looking to become an author and move away from the “writer for hire” world. He decides that he would be best off starting by building learning and development courses for young writers looking to take their work into the professional arena.
This course Ted is building is one of a kind. He spares no expense in the making of this course and aims to make it the best he possibly can. This process lasts for 6 months, making videos, additional worksheets, writing unique content and building it into a masterpiece. On Thursday, November 25th our friend decides it’s time to launch. He has great expectations for this new venture and is excited to put it out into the world. He launches, posts on Facebook and awaits for people to be amazed at his masterpiece.
Sitting in his office, a huge smile rolls over his face with satisfaction. This project has been one of the biggest undertakings of his life and has taken a lot of time, energy and resources to get to this point. So, he sits to watch the tally grow for members in his course. Time passes by and one person signs up for his course, he thinks, “progress.” Shortly after, he gets a call from his mother saying she just signed up for that little project he’s been working so hard on.
His excitement turns to agony. All the labor, all the hours spent, better yet years spent working to get to this point feels like it’s gone to waste. He spent 6 months mowing over every detail just to make $60 on his first first launch and now he’s distraught.
Medicine
Many experts that design their own curriculum, book, etc.., are so focused on the material, they totally overlook the part about sharing their work. Not just sharing their work, but letting people know that they’re sharing their work. Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist says if you do good work you don’t need to worry about people stealing it, you’ll have to shove it down their throats.
It’s true that doing the work and making it epic isn’t going to cut it. Going out and letting people know, even shoving it down their throat will be necessary for you to get the message across. In my first course development project, the project manager told me, “I’ve made the perfect product before and it never sold. In fact, it failed. Now, I’ve learned to focus more on the selling of the product and less on perfection.”
Author Anne Lammot writes, “perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.” In the case of online courses or any creative endeavor, this is the rule of thumb. We have to push ourselves to keep moving forward, keep stumbling ahead and try our best to not only make the work but to also get it out there. At My Course, we segment these two areas. Our primary focus and service is building and developing online courses, but we do offer extra services that are separate from this to market the courses we make. Why? Because they are separate entities.
Just think about it, marketing a course involves having a following, reaching out to that following. Giving them a call to action and using Austin Kleon’s words shoving it down their throat. In a professional and engaging way of course.
However course creation has very little to do with this process. Course design is a process of taking one’s work and boiling it down into parts and building out useful, engaging and insightful lessons that help the learner in some part of their life.
One process is focused on giving, the other is aimed at receiving. Marketing is input, the course is output.
How to Sell It
Have you ever worked in retail and had to sell clothes to people in the store? They come in, you talk to them, tell them how nice that outfit looks or how much you love the clothes and they usually walk away with something. Well selling online courses is not like that!!
Selling online courses is about you going to the customer. It’s like walking out into the dark with a flashlight and muddling around until you find someone. Luckily, once you find one person, they magically get a flashlight and start looking too and the process can trickle down from there. But, you always have to be looking. People aren’t always excited and willing to pay for a course when they don’t know what it entails. Better yet, they need to know who made it and feel a strong urge to learn from that expert. Which means they have to know that the expert has something to offer. So how do we do that? Talking directly to the people.
If you want to sell your course successfully, you’ll find 100 different strategies being reported online. Many of which can work and will help you gain traction. However, at My Course, we have a strategy we believe works best and is not only effective but helps truly build a strong foundation within your audience.
Here’s some of the major areas we believe are important to sell your course:
- Emails to your List
- Blog Posts
- Reach out to your community directly
- Tell them, tell them again and then tell them what you told them
- Always provide value
- Social media reachout
Email Is Your Friend
Email lists are all about capturing contacts. Think about the people you meet, the people who care about your work or buy your book. These people need to be cataloged into an email list that you can reach out to and let know about your work. I know it seems like you may be pestering, but it’s not. When I receive an email from my favorite authors, companies, etc.., I’m ecstatic to open it and if I really trust them I want to take a look at their offering. Your email list is not something you should buy. YOU CAN’T BUY FRIENDS. You have to earn their trust and let it be organic, otherwise, you’ll be wasting your time letting people know about your offering who don’t care. Build an email list and talk to them often.
A Toast For a Wholesome Blog Post
Ruth Soukup, author How to Blog for Profit Without Selling Your Soul says, “Always keep in mind that sustainable blog growth only happens if your content rocks.”
It has to be solid, value based, engaging content that makes people interested in what you’re working on. Imagine if I wrote a blog post that said, hey, you should buy my product for reasons A,B and C. It’s a superior product, you should buy it. You would quit reading after the third word. It has to be about giving.
The type of blogs that you need to write can talk about your work and even aim to get people to buy it. But, the content should be about sharing your work with them. Let the work entice them, let the fact that you’re giving them value, make them want more! Don’t try to hide it, or make them have to go through a paywall. For example, if you like Seth Godin, author of This is Marketing, Purple Cow and like 20 other books or Ryan Holiday, author of Courage is Calling, The Daily Stoic and more, you’ve noticed that they send out blog posts every day.
Every single day, they send out pieces of their work that you would have to buy their book to find out more about. But, they send it out for free, for people to see, share and digest. Why? Can’t people just subscribe and never buy their books if they’re sharing everything for free? Of course, but that’s not how it works. Instead, everytime they publish a book, they hit the top of the best sellers list. People buy. I usually will buy several copies to share with others.
The impact is greater because they give out their work for free and because they believe so much in their message, they’ll look for any way to shove it down your throat.
Reach Out to Your Community Directly
Once you have an email and a blog, reach out to the people you’ve got connected to you. Don’t just post on Facebook or Instagram, literally reach out. Set up a meeting, a group conversation and bring everyone together. Let the people know what you have going on. This is the Call To Action that will ask your community to do just that! It’s you saying, “Hey Folks, get up, take up arms and join me on an adventure.” This is scary for any author, coach or creative because we fear being rejected. But, what we don’t realize is that if we don’t put our work out there and ask people to join in with us, we are rejecting ourselves. We end up being the roadblock in our own way.
Tell Them, Tell Them Again and Then Tell Them What You Told Them
I learned this principle in college studying marketing. Rinse and repeat. The reality is that everyone is extremely busy. Each person’s lives are filled up with things that take up their time like: family, friends, work, social media and hobbies to name just a few. In order to get their attention there has to be a sense of urgency for your project. Not only urgency but you need to remind them again and again of what you’re looking for them to do. For example, during Black Friday — Cyber Monday weekend you see it all the time. In emails from places like Best Buy or Apple, the Subject Line reads, “Cyber Flash Sale, Happening Now.” Immediately, referring you to what you’re clicking into, letting you know what’s in it for you… and that a deal or discount is just one click away. But, as you read the email, it will constantly give you opportunities to click into their site and ask you to do so. On the Best Buy email, it has a countdown at the top, creating a sense of urgency for the deals, reminding you that you will miss out if you don’t click. Then, as you scroll through the email, it repeatedly shows the link to “shop now”, each taking you to the website. This way of looking at your emails and posts will change the results for your campaigns and make them much more successful. You’ll never know if you don’t ask, so ask and ask again, then ask one more time. Just Ask!
Always Bring The Value
Value is everything especially for you, an online course creator. Seth Godin, Ryan Holiday, Steven Pressfield and Nir Eyal all have blogs that aim to give people value in each post. They tell you a lesson about life, marketing, motivation, history and more. They give you ways to better yourself, to train yourself to become a better person, to make more money, to deal with day-to-day struggles. Unlike the Best Buy example above, they don’t just offer a deal, they are giving you something for free with no strings attached. Many times, I read their blog and go on my merry way. But, they also strategically link themselves into the work. They’ll say, check out my last blog post, it has even more tips for how to put your work into the world. Letting you know about their new book, providing short snippets of the concepts and asking you to read more by buying their book or taking their course.
When you think about asking someone to join your course, remember it’s all about them. Seth Godin has a line that I love from a recent blog. He says there is a simple marketing flip that we need to make to have our projects be more successful. It goes like this, “From, “Pay attention, I want you to buy what I made.”
to…
“I’ve been paying attention, and I think I can offer you what you want.” This is a valuable tool because instead of making the product or course about your work, it becomes about a tool that was made for your audience. As long as you’re providing value, your audience will always want to get a cup of free inspiration or advice whenever you pop up in their email.
Social Media Reachout
Although social media isn’t as direct as an email or direct contact, it is a great way to sell your online course. There are so many avenues to do it on social media that are proven to be effective but can be expensive too. Running ads on Instagram, Facebook or Google isn’t an option for every creator. However, we don’t need to sell our course to a million people to be a success. If you have your own social media and your own following, working to drive them to your course is enough. Look into sites like Canva to help create clean templates for your social media posts.
“But, I don’t know what to post.” Post some of the course, give out free lessons, ask questions. Dr. Ian Smith, says that he reaches out to his community all the time to see what they’re interested in. He actively looks to them to see what he should make next. If they want to know about Keto diets or intermittent fasting he will do the research to create a course for them or write a book about it. This is all about looking outward to see how to best serve your community. Instead of having to constantly generate new ideas from the inside out, just ask people what they’re interested in, learn from them and use it as tool for your social posts.
Stay tuned for more tips and tricks on how to sell your course online. After all, no one is going to buy unless you ask! Use these tips to ask.
However, if you’re an author or coach who needs help creating an online course or finding a way to bring it to market, shoot me an email: lukeheight0440@gmail.com and I can help you get your course into the world or find a way to bring people to your awesome work.
