- If you want the best resource
for marketing online courses, then this video is for you.
Through my agency,
I've spent the last six years marketing online courses,
and over that time,
I've helped many online course businesses grow
to seven figures and beyond,
and I've also grown my own online course business
on the way as well.
And in this video,
I'm going to show you everything I would do
if I was marketing a new online course business
from scratch.
In fact,
I'm currently using this system that I'm about to show you
for a brand new online course business that I'm partnered in
to grow it from scratch,
and it's working really, really well.
So no surprises there, it still works right now.
Just to demonstrate how well it's working,
in the past seven months,
we've grown from zero email subscribers
to over 14,000 email subscribers,
and we're currently adding over 200 new email subscribers
on average every single day
in that new online course business.
And that's without paying for any ads whatsoever.
That's all organic.
So that's all happened in the space of about seven months,
and now we're about to launch a course
that we know the audience really wants,
and as a result, we're expecting to do six figures
in this business in the very first year.
So let's get into it
and talk about step one of this process.
The very first step is to start with an organic channel
and start producing content on a regular basis.
What that means is choosing something like a blog,
YouTube, or maybe a podcast,
or any other organic content distribution channel,
where you can be putting things out on a regular basis
that help your audience.
The goal here is to attract people who are interested
in whatever it is you're talking about,
so they can come and learn from you,
and you can, most importantly,
start to build a relationship.
Now, yes, you can go and buy traffic
through ads like Facebook ads or YouTube ads,
but the key thing that is missing from something like this,
is the relationship building.
Because what happens when you create regular organic content
that really helps people,
is they not only start to become connected to you,
but they start to trust you.
They start to see you as the person they go to
for information on whatever it is that you talk about,
and that is what's truly powerful.
Building those relationships,
as well as growing your audience, is the key,
and that's why you really need an organic content piece.
Now, the important thing to do here is,
whenever you release a new piece of organic content,
you need to provide something for free
in exchange for an email address.
So you release a piece of content, and within that content
you need to mention something that the viewer,
or reader, or listener can get for free of value.
So it needs to have some value to the listener,
but you're giving it away for free
in exchange for an email address.
This is often called a lead magnet.
That way, as you start putting more
and more organic content out into the world,
you're going to be growing your email list.
Then, as your email list starts to grow,
every week you need to be emailing that list with tips,
ideas, stories, and sharing the new content
that you're putting out there.
And what that's going to do,
is that's going to continue to build those relationships
with those people who've joined your email list,
who are now your audience,
and continue to position you as the authority
in your industry for whatever that person is learning about.
I can't stress the importance
of building and nurturing that email list enough.
It really is at the core
of everything else we're going to do,
and you're going to find out why
as we continue to go through each step.
Speaking of which, before we move on to step number two,
if you're enjoying this video,
please just tap that like button.
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helps me grow the channel,
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You'll get notified whenever I release a new video
on Facebook advertising and digital marketing
for online course creators, coaches, and consultants.
All right, that said,
let's move on to step number two in this process,
and that is to start posting regular content
to Facebook and Instagram.
Now, you wanna start doing live video
in particular on Facebook.
I like to do it weekly, and that's what I recommend.
And on Instagram as well, at least once a week,
doing an Instagram Live video can be really, really helpful.
Now, there are a few reasons why this is important.
The first one,
is you're building what we call retargeting audiences,
meaning that everybody who discovers you on Facebook
and Instagram through this content,
and through these videos,
become part of your audience
on those platforms that you can then show ads to.
So later down the track,
when we get to that stage of running ads,
you're going to have these huge audiences
on Facebook and Instagram who are already familiar with you,
that you can run ads to for a very, very low cost.
It's going to be an advantage that you will have
that most others in your industry won't.
And the other reason this is important,
that not many people will talk about is that,
if you have a highly engaged Facebook page
that you are running ads from,
you actually get cheaper ad costs.
So by doing live videos on Facebook, you get more engagement
than just about any other type of posts
you can do on the platform.
So there's regular live videos,
get lots of engagement, they get lots of reach,
and they tell Facebook that this page
is a good sort of citizen in the Facebook ecosystem.
People love this page.
So when you start running ads from that page,
it has a high quality score,
which is an internal score that Facebook kind of keeps
on pages and ad accounts.
So if that page is seen as high quality by Facebook,
when you start running ads,
you will actually see lower costs.
Again, that's another advantage that you're going to have,
by putting in the work now and doing these things early on
in your online course business.
All right, so after a little while,
you're going to have grown your email list.
You might have a few hundred people
maybe even a few thousand people.
You're going to have an audience on Facebook,
and by doing these live videos,
and by doing those live videos on Instagram,
you're actually going to have had quite a few conversations
with people in your audience.
It's amazing how much engagement
and how many conversations you can have
by doing those live videos.
And that's something I didn't really dig into earlier,
but I just wanna touch on it a little bit more now,
because this is so crucial.
When I mention building relationships,
those live videos on Facebook and Instagram are key.
The interactions that you have
with your audience through those live videos
are unlike any other interaction that you have
in the business.
They're an opportunity to talk
almost one-to-one to audience members, to answer questions,
and to really build and strengthen that relationship.
I remember when I launched my first online course,
when I opened the cart,
I'd been doing Facebook Lives every single week.
And the majority of people
that bought that first day when I opened the course,
were people that I recognized from these Facebook Lives
that I've been doing for several months beforehand.
To say that that time was a good investment,
is an understatement.
It really, really did help.
And also while I was doing it,
and I was answering my questions, I was taking notes.
You need to be paying attention to what they're asking,
how they're describing their problems,
and that's going to feed into the course that you create,
which is a great little segue into step number three
in this process, which is surveying the audience.
You're going to have that email list now,
you're going to have that audience.
You can send out a survey
and get them to tell you exactly what it is that you want.
This is something that's so many people fail at
when it comes to marketing online courses.
They will go create a course and then try to sell it,
and what they I find, is that their course is a square peg,
and they're trying to fit it into a round hole.
Doesn't work.
Nobody buys, and then they wonder, why?
But if you send out a simple survey
to a preexisting audience that you've worked hard to build,
they will tell you what they want.
We actually just did this
with that new business that I mentioned.
We got 400 responses to our survey,
and there were very clear patterns and trends
that we saw in terms of what people actually wanted.
So guess what we did?
We created a course
based on what most of that audience asked us to create.
Now, this is surprisingly easy to do.
There are lots of tools out there.
I like to use a tool called Typeform.
Simply create a quick survey in Typeform,
send it out to the email list.
You can post it on social media as well,
and you will get responses.
Now, if you wanna see exactly what questions we ask,
it's just a few simple questions,
but it's really important the way we word that,
and the way we word the email,
when we ask people to complete the survey.
I'll pop a link down below in the description,
where you can get the exact questions
that I like to ask in my surveys, plus a little tutorial
on how to set that up in Typeform and how to send it out.
You'll also see the email template that we use
to get people to open the email,
and to actually click and complete the survey.
Another bonus of sending out a survey
is you get quite detailed responses from your audience.
You'll be surprised prized
by how much detail people will go into
when they're describing their problems,
and what their ideal solution would look like.
And you can use that then in your marketing copy.
When you're writing your sales page,
when you're writing your emails,
you can pull the vibage
and the content from those survey responses,
and actually use it to help you sell the program.
Now we move on to the fun part.
Step number four is to actually create your first course.
So take what you learned from the survey
and use that to build a course
that's going to help them solve the problems
that they've told you they really want solved.
What I encourage you to do,
is actually start with a small product.
Don't go all out and create something that has 50 videos,
and 10 hours of content, and everything else.
Start small.
Create a minimum viable product,
something that solves their problem
in the shortest amount of time possible,
and then create it and get it out there on the market.
Your first course isn't going to be a masterpiece.
It's not going to be perfect,
because this is probably the first course
you've ever created, right?
So you wanna create something
that is going to help your audience.
Create something small with a relatively low price point
so you can get it out there fast.
Am I saying, create something low quality?
Absolutely no.
Create something that's really high quality,
but solves a very small or narrow problem.
So something that doesn't have to take
a ton of your time to create.
And then what you're going to do
once you've created your product,
package it up, put it in an online course platform.
I like Thinkific.
Pop a link to that in the description below as well,
if you wanna use a platform for grading your courses,
and then you're going to sell this course
to your existing email list,
and that audience you've built on social media.
Again, that's another benefit of step one,
where you start creating that organic content from day one
and building that audience.
Once you've created your course,
you've already got people there ready to sell to.
And this is also the first time
I recommend starting to use Facebook ads.
And the way that I start using Facebook ads at this point
is simply with retargeting.
We're going to retarget that email list,
we're going to retarget those social media followings
with ads that tell them
about the new course that we're releasing, okay?
The reason we do that is because these Facebook ads
are going to convert well,
because we know that those audiences that we're targeting,
the email list, and the social media following,
they already know, like, and trust us.
Meaning those ads are going to be low cost,
they're going to convert really well,
because we're not going out to brand new people
and trying to sell them something
as a person that they've never heard of.
We're putting our ads in front of people
who already know who we are,
who've already consumed that content,
and who already trust and see us as an authority.
All right, step number five is to smash the like button
below this video.
No, no, just kidding.
But if you are enjoying this video, please,
and you haven't done it already, hit that like button
as it really does make a huge difference.
Now, number five is to simply iterate
and improve on the program.
So get some feedback from that first group of people
that go through your course, and improve on it.
Make the changes that you need to make
to make the course even better.
Wow, that's a lot of marks, but I got through it all.
And just make it even better.
Really polish it to make the best product you possibly can.
Once you know you've got a great product
and your students love it,
and they're getting results from it,
that's when we move on to step number six,
which is building out an Evergreen Sales Funnel.
In case you don't know what an Evergreen Sales Funnel is,
it's simply a sales system or a process that is automated,
that allows you to sell your course on an ongoing basis.
You've probably seen these in terms of webinars,
where you can sign up, go through a free online training,
and then they'll pitch the course
at the end of that training,
and there's a series of sales emails afterwards,
people can buy it at the end of that.
That's an evergreen funnel.
So that's what you wanna do here.
Once you know you've got a great product,
you can then go and set it on evergreen.
And every time someone comes in
through your organic content,
all of that content you've been putting out,
whether it's on YouTube, your blog, or a podcast,
people are downloading your free opt-ins
or your lead magnets.
They're getting on your email list,
and you have an automated system there that then moves them
into your evergreen funnel, and pitchers your new course.
What that's going to do,
is create a system where you're getting sales every day
without having to actively market and sell that program.
This is also where I have ongoing ads running,
retargeting people inside the sales funnel.
So my Facebook ads are going to tell people
when the product is available and share what it's about,
they're going to be testimonials
that I'm going to be showing people
in order to show them results that past students have had,
and also ads around the cart close,
or any particular points of urgency,
if those points of urgency are real.
Okay, nothing fake here.
If there is no cart close or the offer doesn't expire
or you don't have a special deal
that runs out in a certain amount of time, don't fake it.
Don't run ads that say
that it is going to disappear when it's not okay.
But if you have a real deadline,
if you have a real expiring offer,
that's where we run some ads to emphasize that urgency.
The other Facebook ads that I'm running at this point
are ads to my warm audience
in order to get them onto the email list,
if they're not already.
So I'm running ads to people who engage on social media
or who visit my website,
promoting whatever it is that gets them
into my evergreen funnel.
So if it's a webinar, I'm promoting the webinar to them,
if it's a challenge, I'm promoting the challenge,
and getting those people who have discovered me
through my organic content to then come, take the next step,
join the email list, and move on into the evergreen funnel.
This is where things are getting really good.
At this point, you're getting regular sales coming in
through your organic content.
You've got ads running now on an ongoing basis
that should be running a nice profit,
two to three, maybe even four times return on ad spend,
and now it's time to move on to cold traffic.
And now you can start to think about really scaling.
So what we wanna do in step number seven
is to improve the sales funnel.
So what you should be doing here
is looking at your sales funnel,
and really optimizing everything
to turn more of your leads into customers.
You're going to be getting a certain number of people
going through your sales funnel every day or week,
and a percentage of them are going to turn into customers.
You wanna increase that percentage
as much as you possibly can.
For example, let's say we're doing it for a webinar.
So we're offering a free training,
and at the end of that free training
we're pitching our course.
In that case, I'm going to be looking at
how I can improve attendance rates.
So maybe the emails that go out
before the webinar to get people to join,
how can I improve those?
I'm going to be looking at,
how can I improve the webinar itself or the training itself
in order to get more of those people to stick around
and watch the whole training,
and then get more of the people
to actually purchase the product?
I'm going to be looking at the followup emails,
and how I can improve those follow-up emails
to get more people to open them, more people to click,
and of course, more people to buy the course.
Things like improving the sales page as well,
are really going to help.
I'm gonna optimize and tweak
every single piece of that funnel
to really get my conversion rates as high as I possibly can.
And once you do that, it's time to move on to step eight.
And that is running ads to cold traffic
to bring them into the sales funnel.
Cold traffic simply means,
people who have never heard of you before.
They don't know you, they don't like you,
they don't trust you just yet.
This is the hardest traffic to convert into a customer,
and that's why we leave it
until we've done all of those other steps
before we start doing it,
because it's the most expensive traffic to get,
and it's the most difficult to turn into sales.
So we wanna minimize risk here,
but once you really get this figured out,
it is how you can scale up in a big way.
A lot of people that I see who tell me,
Facebook ads didn't work, will do something like this.
They'll create a course
that they think is going to resonate with their audience,
but they haven't done a survey, they don't have an audience,
they've simply created a course,
and then they go and run traffic to cold audiences,
and expected to convert into sales.
But if you follow the process that I've just outlined here,
you can see how you can significantly reduce risk.
And by the time you actually start running ads
to cold traffic, you're in a much,
much better position to run profitable ads.
And then from there, you can actually scale those ads up
and really grow the business.
So that's it.
That's the eight steps.
Let's quickly recap what those were.
Step number one was start with organic content,
and start posting organic content regularly.
Whether it's a blog, YouTube, or a podcast,
choose what suits you best,
and start creating organic content every week.
Part of that is to also start adding free downloads
in exchange for an email address
into each piece of organic content that you create.
So you're growing your email list
and then emailing them every week to nurture them
and to continue to build that relationship.
Step two was to start posting regular video content
and doing live videos on Facebook and Instagram,
so you can build those retargeting audiences,
build those relationships,
and have those conversations with your audiences,
and so you can lower your CPMs
when it comes time to run ads.
Step number three was to survey the audience,
ask them what they want,
get them to tell you in their own words,
what their problems are, and how you can solve them.
Step number four is to create a course
that your audience actually wants
based on the survey results.
Start with a minimum viable product, something small
that you can create and get out to your audience quickly.
Seven number five is to get feedback
and improve your course.
Step number six, build an Evergreen Sales Funnel.
Start converting that organic traffic
and those organic emails that you're collecting
into evergreen sales.
Then once you've got that evergreen funnel up and running,
and you start converting those organic leads into sales,
then start to improve that funnel, tweaking it,
and optimizing it as much as you possibly can.
Then step number eight is to start those ads
to cold traffic, optimize those ads,
get them running really profitably,
and really grow and scale your online course business.
Now, I'd love to know if you're new to online courses.
What type of course are you thinking of creating,
or what industry are you in?
And if you've already got an online course,
and you've just been trying to figure out
how to sell online courses,
but haven't been too successful with it yet,
have you skipped any of these steps that I just mentioned?
Are you going to implement or add any of these steps
to your existing online course marketing process?
If so, let me know in the comments,
I'd love to hear about it. And if you've enjoyed this video,
remember, tap that like button,
click subscribe, click that little bell.
You'll get notified whenever I release a new video
on Facebook advertising or digital marketing
for online course creators, coaches, and consultants.
All right, thanks again for watching.
I'll see you soon.
Bye.
(upbeat music)