Imagine this. It's the holiday season.
And while everyone you know is busy spending money,
your digital learning products are flying off the virtual shelves.
Your sales are skyrocketing, your customer base is expanding,
and your brand is getting the recognition it deserves.
You're about to make it rain this winter.
Sounds like a dream, right?
Well, it's time to turn that dream into a reality.
I'm Aaron from Thinkific,
the best tool to start and grow your online education business.
And in this video, we're going to show you how to run marketing promotions
that will boost your sales
over the holidays, like back to school, Black Friday, Christmas, New Year's.
And really any time of year We'll walk you through, planning your promotion,
deciding on discounts, crafting compelling copy and visuals, marketing your
promotion, reviewing its performance, and of course, how to leverage Thinkific’s
powerful features to maximize your success.
And if you find this video helpful,
make sure to give it a like so that others find it
and let us know if you have any questions in the comments below.
Okay, let's dive in.
Holidays are a goldmine for creators with online education businesses.
During these times of year, people are more open to investing in themselves.
They're looking for ways to improve their skills,
make career shifts, or even explore new hobbies.
They're also more likely to spend money generally making it
the perfect time to introduce them to your digital learning products.
It all kicks off with back to school in September.
While parents are dragging their kids back to school, it's only natural
to fill that quiet time at home with something productive.
Black Friday and the other winter holidays are times
when people are actively looking for deals and are more open to impulse buying.
Additionally, the cold weather has them indoors,
so there's no fun in the sun to get in the way of self-improvement.
New Year's, on the other hand, is
when people are most motivated to make changes in their lives,
making it a great time to promote courses that can help them achieve their goals.
Naturally then, as a digital product creator,
your busiest time of year should be in the second half of the year.
So how do we get started?
Well, it goes without saying that planning is key to a successful promotion.
You want to make them smart, S.M.A.R.T.
and simple to keep you focused.
Next, you want to set a timeline for your promotion.
This should include the start
and end dates of the promotion, as well as any key milestones in between.
Typically any marketing promotions are broken out into four phases.
Building hype the cart.
Open the cart, close and the post-campaign cleanup and analysis.
At first you want to tease the promotion
and produce other content to stay top of mind for your following.
Then you want to officially launch the promotion, close it on a specific date,
and then deal with the late comers and review your stats.
When it comes to how long your promotion should run, typically
the best advice is to lean towards too short versus too long.
When a promotion is only available for a limited time,
busy people put it to the top of their priority list.
Long term promotions tend to get forgotten.
Now, to discount or not to discount that is the question.
Discounts can be a powerful incentive for customers,
but they need to be used strategically.
Before deciding on a discount,
consider your pricing strategy and your profit margin.
You want to offer a discount that's attractive to customers
but also sustainable for your business.
Now consider the different types of discounts.
For instance, you can offer a percentage off a flat dollar amount off,
or you could even do something like a buy one get one free deal.
You could also consider bundling multiple products and services
together and offering the bundle at a discounted price.
In fact, you could even join forces with other creators
and create mega bundles for you all to promote.
The only watch out we have for discounts is that you don't
want to train your audience to expect discounts regularly.
They should feel like special once in a lifetime offers
that inspire people to take action A.S.A.P.
Okay, but how do we make it look pretty?
Your promotion needs to catch people's attention,
and that's where compelling copy and visuals come in.
Your copy should clearly communicate the benefits of your digital learning product
and the value of the discount you're offering.
It can be hard to balance between persuasive and sales-ey,
but remember, people want to know what's in it for them.
So focus on the benefits.
For visuals, consider eye-catching images or videos.
These can be images of your product testimonials from happy customers
or even just a video from you talking through the product.
You can use tools like Canva for designing images
and unsplash for finding high quality stock photos.
If this creative work just isn't your bag, make sure to check out the Thinkific
store on Fiverr and our certified Thinkific Experts marketplace
to find trusted freelancers that can help you make it happen.
Now we got to get the word out.
Marketing your promotion effectively is crucial
for reaching as many potential customers as possible.
For any creator educator, there should be three kinds of audiences
that you should be focusing on.
First, you want to attract as many new prospects as possible.
Then we want to reach out to all our existing prospects
who haven't purchased any products or services yet.
And lastly, you want to make sure that you have a communications plan
for your existing customers to upsell or cross-sell to them
and to ensure they don't feel left out of your promotions.
It's helpful to consider what you'll say to each of these audiences
during your promotional phases of building hype,
the cart open, the cart close, and of course, the cleanup.
Now, there are about a million ways to market under the sun,
but all the strategies and tactics generally fall into three categories.
Owned marketing is all about leveraging the marketing channels
that you have control over.
This is your blog or your website, your email list,
and if you have it, your physical mailing list.
The goal for this kind of marketing is to always provide value
upfront to grab attention and build trust.
For example, you could send email subscribers a content series
that helps them solve a problem or achieve a prerequisite to your paid products,
priming them for the sale.
Next is earned marketing, which consists of channels that you don't
really have ultimate power over, like social media partnerships and PR.
Here you need to focus on getting
discovered, seen and appreciated by your following.
Create content that grabs their attention and keeps you at the top of their feeds.
Finally, there is paid marketing or advertising.
This could be Facebook
ads, Google search ads, or even billboards on your local highway.
This kind of marketing is great for promotions
because you can clearly see the return on your spend right away.
Just remember to treat paid advertising kind of like gasoline to a fire;
if there's no fire to begin
with, pouring your valuable gas out won't achieve anything.
Make sure your product sells organically before
investing a ton of money into paid ads.
So how can we tell if the promotion is working?
Once a promotion is live, it's important to track its performance.
This will help you understand what's working
and what's not working, allowing you to make adjustments as needed.
You're going to use analytics tools like Google Analytics or your paid
advertising dashboards to track key metrics like impressions,
traffic conversion rates and revenue from your various marketing channels.
If you think of it, creator,
we've got some really great features to help you run your promotions as well.
Let's cover a few and how to leverage them and we'll add some links below to help
you learn more about these features if you're interested.
If you ever think of a community setup, you can consider that a part
of your own marketing strategy.
You can promote your products directly to members and post your promotion there.
Thinkific’s mobile app gives you the liberty to send push notifications
directly to your customers phones during your promotion.
For example, if you post about your promotion in your think of a community,
anyone in that community will get a buzz about it.
If you're planning to discount, you can also use think of it coupons
to create any kind of discount for your products or bundles of products.
They can be time limited or use limited,
and that will increase the urgency of your promotion.
And speaking of bundles, if you have more than one product
on Thinkific, consider using bundles to create package deals for your audience.
Popular options include setting up a buy one,
get one offer, adding community access in as a bonus,
or even bundling coaching services with your on demand content.
Now, if you're looking to connect, your Thinkific site
with all of your marketing tools to make running your promotion
even easier, look no further than the Thinkific App Store.
There's email marketing tools, pop up tools, and even sales page enhancement
tools available for you to install safely on your Thinkific website.
And speaking of your Thinkific website, if you didn't know
you can use Thinkific Site Builder to add a countdown timer.
This will create a sense of urgency
for viewers encouraging them to buy before the promotion ends.
And you can and should also add testimonials.
Testimonials provide social proof which can help immensely
in building trust in your brand and product quickly.
If you're not already using TCommerce, this is definitely the time
to get started.
Thinkific Commerce is a suite of tools that helps you make much more
on the purchases you've earned from all your hard marketing work.
By using Thinkific Payments, your checkout can start offering safe buy
now, pay later options and enable customers to pay via
digital wallets like Apple pay, Google Pay, or even via bank redirects.
You can also enable one click order bumps to your checkout,
which can seamlessly add a new product to the purchase,
increasing your average checkout value by a ton.
And if you're interested in cross-selling or upselling even further,
we recommend checking out Thinkific’s After Purchase Flows.
This feature will give you the ability to redirect students
who complete their purchases to even more offers.
And finally, when the dust settles on your promotion, Thinkific Analytics
is going to help make sense of how you were able to skyrocket your sales.
With its detailed reporting, you can clearly see
where things went right
and went really right for the next time that you're running a promotion.
So boosting sales over the holidays is not a one size fits all process.
It requires careful planning, strategic decision making and effective marketing.
But with the right tools and strategies, you can make the most of these peak
sales periods and take your online education business to new heights.
Hey, thanks for watching.
And if you found this video helpful, please give it a thumbs up
and share it with others who might benefit from it.
You can subscribe to this channel for more tips and strategies on
growing your online education business in the future.
And until next time,
keep learning, keep growing, and keep inspiring others with your expertise.