How to Create a Sales Funnel to Sell Online Courses

Sales funnels are usually broken down into four categories. But we only need to focus on three: traffic, leads, and sales.

For the funnel to work, we need people to enter it. This is known as traffic. We get this in two ways:

In this step, you’re not promoting your course. You just want viewers to sign up for your mailing list.

This is done so that you can build a relationship with prospects before asking them to sign-up. Think about it, you’d rather support a friend than a stranger.

By slowly leading them to your course page, you can customize their journey and ensure conversions.

The people on your mailing list are now leads.

They’ve shown interest in what you have to offer and are more likely to enroll in your course.

You can send personalized emails to let them know more about your course.

This is an important step in determining whether your course will be successful.

Even though you love your topic, you have to make sure others are also interested.

By reading comments on blogs and social media, you can easily find out where your people are.

At this stage, you can decide whether there’s a market for your idea or if you’d be better off teaching something else.

Digital marketing services help you set up your sales funnel by allowing you to:

They also serve as a platform to create and host your course.

They’re fairly inexpensive and the value they provide is vital for your growth.

If you’re worried about spending money before you’ve made any then, you can always try out the free trials.

Platforms like systeme.io actually offer you Freemium Plans so that you can use their services at absolutely no cost, forever! No credit card details are required for this.

It’s time to collect your target audience’s email addresses.

Email marketing has the highest conversion rates in digital marketing.

And it’s set to grow even more in the next two years.

But it’s unlikely that people will give you their email address just because you ask for it.

This is why you need...

The best way to advertise your offers is through pop-ups.

Some digital marketing services offer exit intent pop-ups.

These are pop-ups that appear when a visitor hovers their mouse over the exit box.

Systeme.io allows users to create blogs. Having your own blog is a perfect way to generate more leads.

You can post content that your audience will be interested in. Then you get them to join your mailing list to receive additional content.

Now that you have a substantial mailing list, you can start promoting your course.

You don’t just want to send emails, you want to send emails that turn prospects into students.

Tips for sending emails that convert:

Use these to create an email campaign.

We’ve broken it down into two steps.

Set up an autoresponder.

This is an email people get after they've performed a specific action.

In this case, a welcome email is triggered once people enter information on your opt-in form.

This email can provide the free content you promised.

Having their email is not enough, you need their permission.

Remember to ask them to confirm they want to receive future emails from you.

There are various laws in place to protect customers' rights.

Also, sending promotional emails without consent is unlikely to get you students.

Follow-up emails are the heart of your funnel.

This is where you throw out your line and start reeling them in.

You can choose how many emails you send before you lead them to your course sign-up page.

Here is an example of a follow-up series for a course about gardening.

Day 1: Is gardening just a hobby? How I made $50,000 gardening

At this point, you can share more about yourself, while slowly introducing your course topic. Keeping your audience interested ensures they will open future emails from you.

Day 2: Use this 5 step method to rake in profits

Now you're introducing the idea that you’re willing to teach them how to do what you did.

Day 3: Step 1 of the method

Offer them free content from your course. This way they've already become your student.

Day 4: Sign-up for my online course to learn the full method and a few extra tips.

Convert them into paying students.

Provide links to your course page and entice them to register.

In a perfect world, everyone would sign-up but you have to consider that various factors play a role in this.

Building a sales funnel is a surefire way to increase your course sales.

The process does take a bit of work in the beginning but thanks to numerous automation, you can soon sit back and watch it work for you.

I hope you find this guide useful for bringing in more course enrollments. There are many ways to build a successful sales funnel.

You just have to prod and poke till you find the right approach for your audience.