If you want to see the best tips to promote and sell your course all in one place, then you’ll love this guide.
I personally researched or tried all of these 111 tips.
And you can skip ahead to the different sections of how to promote and sell your course using the list of topics below.
Also, I have included recommendations for a few tools and wherever it made sense I added my affiliate code. I’m only recommending tools I trust or have used myself.
Check out the different tips here:
- Course creation tips
- Website optimization tips
- Course sales page optimization tips
- Course promotion tips
- Get more traffic
- Email marketing tips
- Youtube marketing tips
- Accelerate your learning to sell more
- Paid advertising tips
- Course launch tips
12 ways to boost sales by creating a better course
1. Define who the ideal customer is for your course – I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times: define who your perfect customer is.
And if you’ve been trying to sidestep this so you can jump straight into creating your course, don’t.
The earlier you are in your course career, the more detailed your avatar should be.
The real benefit of defining who you will serve with your course is that the critical parts of your course align with the avatar and their needs (ex: course name, transformation, pricing, modules, and more)
2. Make sure the market for your course is suitable – Having a clearly defined avatar is essential, but creating a course for a good market is even more critical.
For example, if your course is about investing in crypto, you could easily say that your market is expanding.
If your course is about buying ads in print magazines, you’re probably in a dying market, and you should create a course for a different market.
3. Get clear on the transformation
Once you’ve defined who you want to serve, it’s time to state what you want to teach them.
A great way to think about this is seeing your customer at the edge of a river wanting to cross over to the other side and your course being the bridge that will get them there.
Your transformation can be stated as “go from [current state] to [transformed state]”.
4. Define a timeline for your course transformation using the 1x Rule
Our most important asset is our time.
Therefore, your students will be more likely to buy your course if they can get the transformation in the shortest time possible.
Keep in mind that there are intermediate steps your avatar will experience for every significant transformation.
For example, if your course is on making rye bread, the last change could be to make a variety of rye bread.
An intermediate step could be to get access to all the recipes. Another step could be to learn how to make yeast.
5. Make it easier to achieve success with your course – there are a million and one courses out there already.
One way to make your course stand out and increase your revenue is to make your customer’s life easier.
You do this by thinking of all the effort the user has to exert to solve their problems.
Then you remove as much of it as possible.
A course that teaches you how to lose 10 pounds without running on a treadmill or starving yourself will remove two of the biggest things people hate about losing weight.
6. Build a community feeling into your course
People are highly social creatures.
A sense of community can dramatically impact how well your customers feel taking your course and how much they know and retain with what you teach.
Here’s what creator Mark Tan, Product & Community Expert said when I asked him, “what is one tip I can implement today to make the community for my course better?”:
“Set expectations and facilitate connections immediately before it gets busy. Give them options to set up 1:1s, groups, and workshops.
It may feel like you’re giving them a lot of work, but they will see the value after participating in one of these in-depth conversations.”
Mark Tan, Product & Community Expert
7. Deliver your course live – recorded courses (aka self serve, evergreen course) are super scalable.
But the number of people that start courses and never finishes them can be as low as 5%.
Live courses can deliver higher completion rates (upwards of 80%) because of the accountability & social interactions baked into the course.
8. Don’t forget to be a good performer, not just a good teacher – I get it, being good at teaching is already a big hurdle for most of us.
But believe it or not, people also want to be entertained.
If you can up your ability as a performer, you’ll help people retain more information, have fun, make your product better, and have more people talking about your course.
Here’s what Cam Houser, Creator of Minimum Viable Video had to say about this tip:
One thing we dont adjust for is the energy of the students.
A good educator will manage that (energy of the room) and will think about that..
A group that does this obviously really well is standup comics.
Standup comics read the room.
And they pay attention to the energy in the room and they respond to it accordingly.
And I think that as an educator if you can do this it makes you
incredibly effective and impactful.
Cam Houser, Creator of Minimum Viable Video
9. Create an enticing course by solving the correct problems – One of the single best ways to get more sales for your course is to solve the correct problems.
This means the final transformation and all of the intermediate problems you will solve for your customer.
Make sure to continuously monitor your students’ needs and solve the most high-value obstacles with your course.
10. Make your course interactive – as a course creator today, you are fighting an uphill battle when it comes to gaining and retaining your customer’s attention.
There are too many other things vying for their attention, if you give your students a series of videos where they sit there and watch them and expect your course to sell, you will be disappointed.
At the very least, you must include clear opportunities for your student to take action.
Plan your lessons with moments to ask questions, provide feedback, work individually, work in a group, or play games.
11. Use worksheets to make it stick – don’t just talk about the learnings.
Make it easier for your customers to remember how to implement the education with a few prompts to help them think through the problem.
Checklists help students to gauge If they’ve implemented their newfound knowledge the right way.
12. Decrease the number of refunds – if you already have customers, you’ve probably encountered a few refunds.
Make sure to dig into why your customer asked for a refund and do your best to address the issue.
Either by updating your course with anything that was missing or that your customer didn’t enjoy. Or by making it clear on the sales page what the expectations are.
13. Increase the percentage of people that buy and finish your course – selling a course is great, but getting more of your customers across the finish line of your course is arguably more important.
Provide support, community, and coaching to ensure people complete the course and put their knowledge into practice.
6 ways to optimize your website for more leads
14. Create an email capture form
This should be one of your top priorities so that you can convert visitors into leads.
Once a visitor gives you their email address, you can market to them using email.
15. Promote your lead capture form on your top pages – once you’ve created your lead form, make sure to expose it to as many visitors as possible by placing it on your content with the most number of page views.
16. Optimize your homepage for conversions – most homepages, of course, creators that I see these days have attractive photos, solid descriptions of what visitors can learn, and links pointing to other content.
However, so many of them fail to optimize for conversions.
Place your lead form in your header with a headline that clearly states why someone should give you their email address.
17. Use images with your lead forms
Believe it or not, adding a picture next to your lead forms can improve your conversions.
Keep it simple by adding an image.
18. Use pop-ups the right way – Pop-Ups aren’t going anywhere.
That’s because they work at grabbing users’ attention and converting them into leads.
The most basic way to launch your first pop-up is to display an exit-intent pop-up across your site. You should see anywhere from 1%-5% conversion when you are getting started.
19. Use landing pages to share your lead magnets
You can embed a lead form on your blog posts and in pop-ups, but a super effective way to convert traffic into leads is to create a landing page.
A landing page allows you to focus all of the content, images, and calls to action to highlight the value of the lead magnet and make it irresistible for your traffic to opt-out of what you have to offer them.
23 sales page optimization tips to make your course more appealing
20. Name your course the right way – Give your course a name that clarifies what it’s about, and if possible, what the transformation will be.
Start with a clear name, then optimize for a name that sounds great.
Bonus points if your course name is three words in length.
21. Create a catchy tagline – The tagline for your course is important because it clearly states what your customer gets from your course.
Use the 6-figure offer formula we use for your tagline:
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
This course is for early-stage entrepreneurs (favorite customer) that want to raise their first seed round(metric) in the next 30 days (time) without wasting countless hours on useless meetings (obstacles), so you can get the most value for your startup.
22. Create some branding for your course – A wordmark or logo for your course is a great way to make it stand out in the market and in the mind of your consumer.
Once you’ve got the name right, create a logo or wordmark for your course that is clear and unique.
Clear means that it’s easy to see even if you shrink it down.
Unique means your logo doesn’t look like a copy of someone else’s logo.
23. Add a video to your sales page
A video can greatly enhance your sales page by allowing you to tell more stories, provide examples, display testimonials and build excitement in a way that text cannot.
24. Use a decoy tier – In a recent launch that I worked on with a client, we were able to get over 90%+ of all of our sales from our main course offer.
We displayed three offers: offer A (decoy), offer A+, and offer B.
- Offer A: had a shortlist of benefits.
- Offer A+: included all the benefits and was only slightly more expensive than “Offer A”, but it had a ton of bonuses.
- Offer B: was different from the other two offers and was three times more expensive than “Offer A+”.
25. Gather testimonials
Testimonials can have a massive impact on your course sales because they decrease risk perception for people on the fence.
It also increases the believability of what you are claiming because someone else is saying it and not you.
An excellent framework to use is to ask what your customer was trying to do before taking your course and ask them what they could do after taking your course.
You can collect testimonials in any format like an email, a text message, a tweet, or even in video with a service like Videoask.com
26. List the risks to your customer if they don’t take your course – Listing out the risks of not taking action is an excellent way to increase the urgency of your course launch, which can boost your sales.
Do this by highlighting how not getting the transformation of your course will leave them struggling with the same problems, wasting time trying to solve it with other inferior solutions, or doing it alone without your support.
27. Price your course the right way – Pricing is a common roadblock for many, and it’s probably the most critical thing you can change to earn more with your course.
Plus, studies have shown that a higher price makes people believe your product must be better than your competition.
28. Increase the average order value of your course – This is easier said than done.
But it’s one of the fundamental ways you can grow your course business.
The more your customers pay on average, the more revenue you are going to make.
See tip on increasing your prices.
29. Name your modules as benefits – Name your modules in a way that makes them sound more enticing by mentioning the following variables: outcome (1), time-frame (2), obstacle (3), name the avatar (bonus).
Example of a bad module name for a Twitter growth course: “Module 1 – Setup”.
Example of a good module name for the same course: “3-Steps to your Perfect Twitter Profile”.
Notice how I did not include all 4 of the variables. That’s okay; use as many as that makes sense for you and your brand.
30. State who your course is for – Listing who your course is for is a great way to increase conversions on sales pages because you tell the customer who is most likely to benefit from your course.
And if what you display aligns with the image your customer has of themselves, you’ll have their attention.
31. State who your course is not for – We all learn through contrast, and listing who the course is not for helps your customer understand who it’s for.
You can list the expected outcomes, a key metric, a level of experience to make this clear.
For example, if you were selling a course on how to use video to get more sales, you could list that the course is not for people that:
- want to get rich quick (expected outcome)
- People that are not willing to do the work or be coachable (behavior)
- People who cannot invest at least $500 in video equipment (metric)
32. Highlight the benefits to your customer’s social status – People buy all sorts of courses to improve their health, wealth, and relationships.
But in the end, I believe the goal is to achieve a status outcome.
Ex: Take a weight loss course → to lose 15 pounds → make your friends jealous on the beach. Take a productivity course, → get more done faster, → make your wife happy that you are there for dinner, and be mentally present when it matters.
See my point?
Make sure you think about this and highlight that on your sales page and in your emails.
33. Increase your customers’ perception that they’ll achieve success – we all want our customers to win and win big.
And guess what? So do they.
One of the biggest things standing in their way is the belief they can achieve it.
Address this by providing solutions to the external factors that usually get in your customer’s way.
For example, suppose you teach a course about launching a fashion product and one of the steps is negotiating with a supplier.
Some of your customers will instantly believe they can’t win because they are bad at negotiations.
Therefore, include a lesson, technique, or resource that anyone can use, even those who hate negotiation.
34. Limit the duration of your sale – A well-known psychological trigger you can use to increase your course sales is urgency.
Urgency means that you must take action before a particular time.
Having a firm date when you open and close the cart instantly creates this in your consumer’s mind.
It’s also why most of the sales of course launches happen in the last 24 hours of the launch campaign.
35. Limit the number of seats for your course – Another psychological trigger you can put into practice is scarcity.
Not to be confused with urgency, scarcity is the limitation of resources.
You can employ scarcity by limiting the number of seats or bonuses.
36. Increase the perceived value of your course – You want to have the highest-value course on the market.
What I mean is the value of your course should outweigh the price so that someone feels like they got a 10x return on their investment.
Do this by solving more of your avatar’s problems than other courses.
If you’re out of ideas, think about what your avatar will need after they complete your course and solve those too.
37. Offer course bonuses – course bonuses can help to sway your prospects into buying.
Bonuses that work well for courses are items students can use after your course is completed.
For example, if you teach karate, you could offer a discount on kimonos, supplements, nutrition bars, and future lessons.
38. Offer course upsells – an upsell is an additional offer you display to people after entering their payment details.
A course upsell I’ve seen work well is a lifetime upgrade to the course.
39. Offer course downsells – a downsell is an offer of lesser value displayed after an upsell.
A course downsell that could work for you could be access to a smaller course or a book.
40. Offer scholarships – I don’t like offering discounts, but I do like the sound of a scholarship.
You can give out several scholarships to people who apply based on merit, income, or whatever other criteria matters to you.
41. Schedule a sales call with interested prospects – If your email tools allow you to score your prospects, it can be a good idea to book a quick 15-minute call with people that have shown interest in your course but have not bought yet.
42. Add a guarantee that people can’t resist – You may question the utility of a guarantee for your course.
But the fact is they work because they decrease the perception of risk.
Choose an unconditional guarantee where you give people their money back if they ask for it.
Or a conditional guarantee where you only give the money back if a condition is met like this: “if you don’t reach your weight loss goal in 30 days, I’ll give you your money back and send you a month’s supply of supplements to help you with your plan, on the house”.
18 ways to promote your course
43. Storytelling – When it comes to promoting your course, storytelling can be a helpful approach.
The first stories you can focus on are those from your own experience or your customers.
For example, if you have a productivity course, you could tell stories about how you’ve struggled with productivity or how becoming better at productivity has changed your life.
44. Guest posting
Guest posting is the practice of posting blogs on the website of other people.
Guest posting is the practice of sharing a blog post on a website that is not your own.
This strategy usually takes time to deliver results but can provide a lifetime of targeted traffic if you get your content on the right website.
45. Join a targeted discord server – Discord is a platform that allows people to share over text, video, audio.
Search for a Discord (https://disboard.org/search) server on a channel related to your course.
Join the server, listen, engage then invite people to learn about your course.
46. Build in public – Gary Vaynerchuk is the most well-known example of someone that does this well.
As he puts it, “document, don’t create.”
Here’s what Kevon Cheung told me when I asked him how people can get started building in public:
“Instead of talking about your course over and over again with pitch, promotions, and success stories, you can share the behind the scenes of how you’re creating the course. You can share a quick story around how you design your live sessions by making lectures the least essential component, why it is crucial to wrap up with a round of gratitude, etc.
By sharing your approach and philosophy, you’re subtly bringing your course to light. When your prospective students are ready, they’ll click that “Enroll” button.“
Kevon Cheung, Building in Public, Expert
47. Create a Twitter thread
Twitter is now one of the most used social networks out there.
It’s also a great place to sell your course.
Twitter threads are tweets that are connected in sequence around a common topic or theme.
It’s like a mashup of a tweet and a blog post and can generate lots of engagement.
48. Search & help – Twitter has millions of active users who are having conversations and looking for solutions.
Search for people tweeting about common topics your course solves, then respond to their tweet with a tip.
Place a link to your course in your bio, and you’re almost guaranteed to convert some of them.
49. Promote inside other Facebook groups – Facebook has its haters, but Facebook groups are great places to promote your course.
Search for groups with a relevant audience, ask to join, and then participate by answering questions.
Add people you engage with as friends, then send them a DM with more info about your course or a lead magnet.
50. Advertise your content – have a new piece of content, blog post, infographic, or video?
Use the power of Facebook’s network to promote your content to more people than you can reach organically.
51. Create slides for a webinar – a webinar that highlights a small part of your course or topic is a great way to increase your exposure and the trust people have in you.
The key is to teach but not to give everything away.
Once your slides are ready, deliver your webinar in summits or to the new leads on your email list.
52. Make a list of people that can promote you
Make a list of podcasts, YouTube channels, newsletters, Facebook groups of people with an audience that is not in direct competition with you.
Start with a list of at least 50 people.
53. Share a lead magnet with someone else’s subscribers – do you have a lead magnet that helps people solve a significant problem?
Then offer to share that with one of your partners as a way to help their audience.
This is a high-leverage way for you to grow your audience.
54. Join someone’s podcast or Youtube channel – Most podcasts out there operate by interviewing people.
Therefore, they literally need people to run their show.
Reach out to podcasters to get on their show and spread the word about you and your course.
55. Offer your skills & knowledge to people with an audience – when you are getting started with building your audience, it can help people get on their radar by sharing a skill you have.
I’ve seen designers help bloggers, and in exchange, the blogger promoted the designer with links on their website, their newsletter and sent them a few referrals for years after that.
56. Offer a commission to people that refer customers to you – Affiliate marketing is great if you can get it to work.
The easiest way to begin is to use the built-in affiliate functionality in the platform where you host your courses like Podia or Teachable.
If you run your course on a WordPress website and use the popular LearnDash plugin, you can utilize their affiliate functionality to get other people to sell your course for you.
If these options don’t work, use coupons and track the sales for each affiliate.
57. Use forums on Reddit or Quora to promote your course – Quora and Reddit are thriving with curious people, asking questions that your course solves, so why not head over there and answer a few questions to get in front of the right people?
58. Email people in your personal list of contacts – you already know many people, and chances are some of them could be interested in your course or know someone who is.
So go ahead and send a quick email notifying friends, family, work colleagues, and anyone else in your personal network.
You never know who could be interested.
59. Send a direct message to people following you on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram
If you haven’t been living under a rock, you have a profile or two on social media.
And if someone follows you, there’s a good chance they already know, like, and trust you to some degree.
Send a DM to your contacts, inviting them to learn about your course page or get your best lead magnet.
60. Ask your customers for referrals – Your existing customers can become your best marketing channel.
To get started, simply ask them to share your course with their network.
This can be as easy as sending out an email to existing customers a few times a year or giving away prizes to people that refer new customers to you.
10 tips to get more traffic to your website without paying for ads
61. Setup Google Search Console – SEO can be challenging, especially without the correct information to track your progress.
Therefore, install a Google search console on your site to see what keywords bring traffic to your site.
62. Create a hub page with your course content
If you’ve already created a few blog posts around your course topic, create a hub page that links to each of your posts and includes breadcrumbs from each post back to the hub page.
63. Combine similar content on your website – Look at the list of blog posts and look for similarities.
If you find that some of your posts are very similar, combine them into a single post.
This can help you to earn more organic traffic to your website without creating new content.
64. Delete unnecessary tags and categories on your blog – Most blogs I’ve worked on have more categories and tags than they need to have.
This is not ideal because you’ll end up with duplicate content on multiple pages.
If your website is just starting out and you have fewer than 25 posts, you can probably stick to one single category and get rid of any tags altogether.
If you are using WordPress, take a look at the Yoast plugin to help you manage these.
65. Use Link Whisper to build internal links quickly
Building backlinks to your website is the best way to get more organic traffic to your website.
However, you have to rely on the goodwill of other website owners or have a big budget to scale it.
On the other hand, internal links can also help get more organic traffic, and you don’t have to rely on anyone else.
Use LinkWhisper to scale this fast.
66. Get rid of as many 404s as you can – Now that you’ve installed Google Search Console for your website, take a look at the “coverage” report, then scroll down to “details” and look for any 404 errors.
Then fix as many as possible by creating a 301 redirect to a page you know exists or pointing your links to the correct page.
67. Optimize your menus – The main menu at the top of your website should point users (and website crawlers) to the most important pages, not every page on your website.
Look at the links in your main menu now, and remove any links that point to blog posts with a low number of views, your contact page, and pages that do not speak to how you and what you offer are unique.
Add any other links to your footer menu.
68. Don’t overlook your design – There are millions of courses out there. One way to make your course stand out from the rest of the pack is by having a distinct visual aesthetic to your website.
If you have the skills or have the budget to invest in graphic design, it can be worth every penny.
69. Use bold and value-driven headlines
When creating your blog posts, make sure to add plenty of headlines to break the content down into smaller sections.
Use large bold fonts to make sure each headline is easy to scan.
Then, rewrite your headlines so they include a benefit; think more like the title of your blog post.
For example, I could have used “SEO tips” for this section, but instead, I chose “Get more organic traffic to your website with these tips” because that is the benefit of implementing SEO tips.
70. Update your about page – your about page is one of the most visited pages on any website.
That’s why you want to make sure that your about page clearly states what you are an expert in, a backstory of how you got to where you are now, a list of past clients or projects, links to your most important content.
10 email marketing tips to get more engagement & sales
71. Reply directly to your email list – one of the most straightforward yet most powerful email marketing tips I’ve ever learned was to ask people to respond to your emails.
Especially the first email in your drip sequence because it can increase the odds you don’t land in a spam folder, and most importantly, it can start an honest conversation with your leads to learn what they are looking for and how you can help them.
72. Increase your email open rates
Use people’s names and descriptive text in your subject lines; experiment with different times and days to get more people to open your emails.
73. Increase your email click-through rates – display your call to action as early as possible in your emails to increase the odds that someone will click on your link and take action.
74. Segment your list
Segmenting your list means grouping people into smaller groups.
There are a million and one ways to go about this, but I’ve found segmenting by behaviors to be the most useful to get your emails going.
For example, segment your email list with people that opened your launch sequence emails so you can follow up with them more consistently.
75. Add a scoring system to your leads – scoring your leads is an advanced feature, and not every email software will allow you to do this out of the box.
However, even the most straightforward scoring system can make it clear for you who is most likely to convert and who you should follow up with.
76. Train your audience for what to expect from you – There are two schools of thought regarding the consistency of sending your newsletter.
One approach is only to send an email when you have something valuable to share.
The other approach is to stick to a publishing schedule. Choose whatever works for you, then stick to it.
77. Create lead magnets that highlight a module, phase, or action step of your course – One of the first places you should start when creating your lead magnets is to pull out something you’ve already created inside your course.
Be that a worksheet, an infographic, a template, or anything you use to teach your course.
You’d be amazed at how effective these can be.
78. Highlight the problem your lead magnet solves – If you have a form on your website with “join my newsletter” or something like that, please optimize it by using this framework: “download the [sheet/template], so you can get [outcome] without [obstacle].”
Ex: download this one-page lead generating cheat sheet to 3x your lead conversions without complicated funnels.
79. Write 7/14/21 launch sequence emails – If you are just getting started with your launch, make sure to have at least seven pre-written emails ready to send to your list once you “open cart” for your course.
Continue to write more emails as you gain experience until you have about two emails you can send every day during your launch, with 3 or 4 during the last two days.
80. Schedule your email launch sequence – Now that all of your emails are written, don’t forget to schedule your emails in your email marketing tool and select who should receive your emails.
Lastly, make sure to test this sequence, so you know it actually works.
10 Youtube marketing tips to get more views, likes, and shares
81. Create videos on Youtube – Youtube is the second largest search engine globally and has more than 2 billion daily logged-in users.
Get your content on youtube as soon as you can to leverage this vast audience.
82. Optimize the intros of your Youtube videos
The first 15 seconds of your video are arguably the most important because that’s when most people will decide to watch or skip.
Do this by telling them what you will be teaching/sharing in the video and why this is important for your viewer.
83. Optimize the middle part of your Youtube videos – The middle part is where you share the meat of your video.
When done well, your middle section will keep your viewer tuned in until the end.
To do this, use a list of, say, five tips, and count down through each of your tips.
Use on-screen visuals to make it clear what step you are covering along the way.
84. Optimize the ending of your Youtube videos – Now that you’ve optimized your intro and middle, it’s time to maximize the end of your video.
Yes, this is where you ask for the like.
An excellent way to do this is with the “if-then” framework: “if you [enjoyed/like/learned something] then [like, subscribe, comment].”
85. Add a video card to your videos
Video cards link to other videos.
Use one at the end of your video to direct viewers to the next best video for them.
86. Optimize the description of your Youtube channel – Add the main keyword of your video to the beginning of your description.
Then provide the highlights of what topics you will cover, and why someone should watch your video.
87. Optimize the branding of your Youtube channel – Add a customized banner for your youtube channel with a picture of yourself and a headline that states the key benefit is from your channel are.
88. Optimize the titles of your Youtube videos – Add your most important keyword to the beginning of your youtube title.
For example, if you are trying to rank for a keyword like “notion template,” begin your headline with “Notion templates that will save you 10 hours of work this week”.
This will signal to Youtube what your video is about.
89. Optimize the tags for your videos
Tags are often overlooked or used the wrong way.
To get this right, use no more than 9 tags. Where 3 are super specific, 3 are broader, and the last 3 are broader still.
For example, if your video is about “notion templates,” you should use notion, notion templates, notion app as your specific tags. “notion tutorial,” “notion tips,” “notion features” as your broad tags. “Productivity”, “productivity tools”, “gtd” as your broadest tags.
90. Promote your launch on Youtube with a “description campaign” using Vidiq
Video has an exciting tool that allows you to update the descriptions of your videos without needing to open them individually.
Use the description campaign to add a link with a CTA to the beginning of your descriptions when you are ready to launch your course.
7 tips accelerate your learning to sell more
91. Install google analytics – Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help you see what’s working with your marketing.
Make sure to install this on your website and set up at least one goal so you can track when a visitor converts into a lead on your website.
92. Install Hotjar
Google Analytics is an excellent tool for telling you what happened and where, but it’s not great at telling you why.
HotJar helps to fill this gap by recording how users interact with your website.
Activate Hotjar on your sales page and landing pages so you can optimize them for conversions.
93. Run a Seed launch – A seed launch is a term used to describe your very first-course launch, where you sell the course before you create it.
A seed launch is characterized by having a small group of people who pay a discounted price to get access to the training that you make with this group as you go along.
This is a great way to learn what people need, then learn and teach it as you go.
It also validates that people are willing to pay for it before you build it.
94. Ask your leads and customers how they heard about you – Create a simple “how did you hear about us” survey and display it to your customers after they become a lead or complete a purchase.
You can do this using a tool like Typeform.
95. Call your new leads – having a zoom call or phone call (gasp) with your new leads can be very illuminating because you can understand why they converted and what they are looking for so you can adapt and earn more.
96. Create a buyer journey – Here’s a process to create your buyer journey: email your existing customers, and get them on a call (zoom or phone).
Then, ask your customers what triggered them to start searching for your course (ex: a new baby on the way triggered a search for a class on how to work from home), then ask what the next steps were until you can see the complete picture.
Aim for at least 10 calls to spot patterns like common triggers, channels, obstacles, goals.
97. Listen to your competitor’s customers – If you don’t have customers yet, the previous tip makes no sense.
But what if I told you that you could do the same process with the customer of a competing service.
Get their attention by browsing Twitter for people mentioning your competitor, then DM them to start the conversation.
6 tips to improve your paid advertising results
98. Install tracking pixels
Install the tracking pixel for all of the ad platforms you plan on using (ex. Facebook, Google).
Installing these tracking pixels will ensure that the ad platforms can track who is clicking, converting, and not.
This helps the ad technology to know to who they should display your ads.
99. Use custom events in your ad campaigns – Most ad platforms like Facebook and Google allow you to track specific events on your website, often referred to as custom events.
Setup and use these custom events to track actions such as a conversion on a sales page.
This will allow your ad platform to optimize your campaign for that outcome, thereby improving your return on investment.
100. Use a custom audience – Custom audiences is a feature you can use inside Facebook ads that allows you to target audiences that have already come into contact with your brand.
You can, for example, create a custom audience of people that converted into leads, watched a specific video, or visited a sales page but did not convert.
101. Create a lookalike audience
Facebook can automatically generate lookalike audiences to look for people most likely to behave like a group of people.
Upload a list of your existing customers and use that to build a lookalike audience of potential buyers.
102. Improve your ads’ click-through rates – Experiment with different images, then headlines, then descriptions to see which changes get you the highest click-through rates.
103. Send people to a landing page first – A great way to improve the conversion rates of your ads is to send traffic to a landing page instead of a sales page.
A landing page offers something for free (ex: cheat sheet, e-book, webinar) in exchange for people’s email addresses.
Then market to them via email or remarketing ads.
This is more effective because you aren’t asking for the sale the right way.
10-step checklist for your course launch
104. Start a launch list – if you are coming off a launch or planning one, make sure to start collecting emails from interested people.
Do this by adding a form to your course sales page, noting that registration is currently closed, and allowing users to sign up for email notifications once your course goes on sale.
105. Plan and run a virtual summit
A virtual summit is an online event inviting some experts to speak over a few days.
The details and formats can change, but a basic structure for you to experiment with is running a 3-day summit with 5-10 experts where you interview them on a topic related to your course.
For example, if you have a system that teaches people about marketing themselves on LinkedIn, you could have a personal branding summit.
106. Plan and run a Bootcamp or challenge – A Bootcamp or a challenge is a multi-day event organized before opening the cart for your course launch.
Bootcamps are great because they give your prospects a chance to see you, interact with you and get a feel for what your course/product will feel like.
107. Use Jeff Walker styled videos to launch your course
Jeff Walker is the creator of the Product Launch Formula and thought leader on how to launch businesses and courses online.
His “sideways sales letter” is a way of creating videos on four different topics revealed one day apart.
Each video teaches core concepts about your course and then teases people to return and watch the following video until finally you “open cart” and invite people to join your course.
108. Schedule posts on social media – Tools like buffer are perfect for scheduling content en masse to your social media profiles.
Set some time aside on your calendar, then cue up at least a week’s worth of content so that you can get your content out to more people.
109. Advertise to people who abandoned your course sales page – Create ads for people who visit your course sales page but do not convert.
Experiment with ads that have testimonials from your students, your guarantee, course bonuses, and simple reminders that your cart is closing.
110. Use remarketing ads – Remarketing ads are ads displayed to people that have already come into contact with your brand.
This can be a group of people that saw one of the videos or posts you shared on Facebook or to an audience that visited your website.
The idea is that showing ads to people already familiar with you will deliver better results than showing an ad to someone that’s never heard of you before (cold audience).
111. Open cart on the right day of the week – Timing is crucial for launching your course, and picking the right day is vital.
Avoid Mondays and Fridays because people’s minds are usually occupied by starting the week or their weekend.
Instead, launch your course on a Tuesday to maximize your sales.
112. Beware of the season – Plan ahead and make sure not to launch your course during a major holiday or a time where your course does not make sense.
If you teach a course on Ice Fishing, you should probably avoid the summer and spring months for your course, for example.
113. Use a pop-up or ribbon to promote your course launch – When your course is open for sale, make sure to add a banner or ribbon and a pop-up to your main website to let people know that your course is on sale.
Conclusion
There you have it, over 100 actionable tips you can use today to grow your course business.
Was your favorite tip not included here?
Leave a comment below and I’ll add it ASAP.
Hey man this is massive.
I like the tips around Youtube. Never heard of some of those.
Curious if you have more tips for Twitter or Linkedin.
Thanks Jeremy!
I’m glad you enjoyed the tips.
Actually, I do have a few more tips I could share for using Twitter and Linkedin, thanks for asking.
Wow, this is so comprehensive, must read. I personally like the 8th one, it’s all about performance. Thanks for sharing this!
Hey Mark, I’m glad you enjoyed it. And thanks for your tip on building community into your course.