Having a solid sales funnel is essential to any business. It’s especially great if you’re wanting to sell your online course on autopilot while also generating an excellent passive income. So, sales funnels are fantastic, but how exactly do you get into it and what does it actually do for your business?
If you’re running an online course and you don’t have a sales funnel, then the chances of you staying in business for very long are low. A sales funnel is designed to help you guide your potential students through a process which ends with them making the decision to enroll in your course.
Be sure not to confuse marketing techniques with a sales funnel. Marketing tactics are used to help bring people into the sales process, but it doesn’t make up the entire sales process.
Continue reading below on tips to get you started on creating a sales funnel for your online course.
End Goal
Keep your end goal in mind before you even begin your sales funnel process. Where exactly do you want your customers to end up at the end of this funnel? It’s best that you know where you’re heading before you get there so that you’re prepared for whatever comes your way.
You can start by jotting down your offer. For example, if you’ve created an online digital marketing course for people who want to learn the ins and outs of digital marketing and you want to sell that for $300, then your offer should be a $300 course for students interested in digital marketing.
Once you’ve got this down, highlight the benefits of your course and create a list of possible objections from customers so that you can prepare yourself with information to counter those potential objections.
Create An Email Sequence
One of the best ways to build up trust between you and a customer in the initial phases is to nurture your subscribers through your email list. However, this doesn’t mean you should be sending out random and irrelevant emails. You should create emails that address their problems and objections.
I find that laying out a proper email strategy plan is one of the best ways to achieve a good conversion rate. Don’t send out your emails all at once. Make a plan to strategically send them out in a way that allows them to address all the potential objections you might face.
Lead Magnets
Don’t underestimate the power of lead magnets! Lead magnets (also known as freebies) are a great way to capture your targeted audience. If I were to create a digital marketing course, I might offer a short and downloadable PDF which would address a specific topic in that industry and provide it for free to my readers.
By doing this, I would be able to pick out the most relevant and qualified leads. The entire point of having a lead magnet is to attract the same sort of customers who would be interested in purchasing my course. In turn for this free download, I would ask the reader for their name and email; thus I would have an additional person added to my email list.
Landing Page
This is probably one of the most important steps in creating a sales funnel. Once you’ve nailed down your foundation and ideas, you need to figure out where and how you want people to sign up for your course. You can do this by creating a captive landing page consisting of a call to action and a contact form or sign up form.
Do yourself a big favor and decide where you want your entry points to be and get those set up before starting your sales funnel.