BML - Edition 33
My three big mistakes with selling online courses
I've been telling you the story of my first online business, a website for beer brewing enthusiasts.
Last week, I told you how I started selling online courses, including the big lesson I learned about positioning your course for maximum sales.
Many of my subscribers (including you?) are interested in growing sales of their online courses, so I'm dedicating a second email specifically to selling online courses.
I've sold online courses for fourteen years and across dozens of topics and industries. After a while, you learn what marketing strategies are timeless—and what's temporary.
I'll share three big mistakes and lessons learned using my beer brewing website as an example.
1) I suffered from "homepage-itis."
Homepage-itis is a term I invented, and it's both literal and figurative.
Literally, it's where you're overly obsessed with your website's homepage. And it's a symptom of a larger problem of being too focused on your business and your products rather than going out and meeting your customer where they are.
With my beer website, I was constantly fiddling with my homepage.
However, for how much attention we give it, the homepage rarely plays a significant role in sales conversions. If I look back on the financially successful online businesses I've worked with, and if we were to study the customer journey to buying their courses, we might ask:
"How significant a role did the business's homepage play in people becoming customers?"
The answer is almost always: "Not very significant."
Think of it this way . . .
No stranger has ever had your website URL magically pop into their head, causing them to pull out their iPhone, visit your website, and then purchase.
Here's what we usually see . . .
A customer encounters the business from outside of the homepage. It could be through social media, a Facebook ad, or the business owner's talk at a conference.
That is the first interaction with the business—not the homepage. And if that business owner is smart, they will not send people to their homepage but to a landing page. Then, that person will opt into the email list, and eventually, they will buy.
Nowhere did the homepage come into play. Heck, you'd be shocked at how many 7-figure businesses don't even have a website.
With my beer website, I should have paid more attention to:
1) Where people first encounter my brand
2) The path that led them to becoming a customer
Think of a hub and spoke model. The homepage is the hub, and these satellite locations (like a Facebook ad or a talk) are the spokes. Put more attention into the spokes, and you'll stop worrying so much about the hub.
Focusing more on the spokes also alleviates the problem of speaking to multiple avatars because you can tailor the messaging to the customer avatar you're putting your message in front of. In this scenario, you don't need to worry so much about speaking to multiple avatars on your homepage. Instead, each avatar has a tailored path from first touch to sales conversion.
2) I went after customers who had low stakes
When someone has low stakes, it means they don't have much on the line. When it comes to your topic, they don't have much to lose.
High stakes is the opposite. A person with high stakes has much on the line and much to lose.
For my beer website, someone with low stakes is a guy who brews beer just once every six months. Such infrequent brewing tells me this person isn't too passionate about the hobby.
Someone with high stakes is a guy who brews multiple times per week and enters his beer into competitions. With such a large investment of his time and money, not to mention the added stakes of the competition, this second person has far more to gain from improving his brewing.
Another high stakes customer I could have targeted was a home brewer who wanted to open their own brewery. Back then, everyone wanted to open a brewery, and I (stupidly) ignored this market segment. Selling a product to them would have been an easy sale.
When deciding on your customer, start with a customer who has high stakes.
Another mistake—I wanted the low stakes people to be high stakes. I wanted everyone in my audience to be as obsessed with homebrewing as I was. Have you ever felt that? Do you ever want your audience to be more passionate about your topic than they currently are?
It's not a fun feeling. It's tough to sell a $200 homebrewing course to someone not very passionate about homebrewing.
Don't try to make people more passionate about your topic than they are. It's too far outside your control.
I should have only created products for the people who were super passionate about homebrewing. They were a smaller group, but quality is better than quantity.
If I had followed this path, I could have made more tailored offerings, charged higher prices, had less sales resistance, and been better able to identify my customers.
3) I took a misguided approach to free content
You start to build your online business, and all these experts tell you, "Create free content!"
The argument is that publishing enough free content will lead to sales of your paid content. My experience shows this advice is misguided.
Here's the problem . . .
Like me, the new online business owner says, "Okay, I'll create free content and share it online. But Mr. Marketing Expert, can you tell me what this content should be about?"
"Your topic," they reply. "Post about your topic."
So, that's what I did. I created content around my topic. I wrote articles about beer styles, brewing techniques, equipment—you name it.
This topic based content did bring me some benefits. That's why this advice is tricky. It has some truth. But that doesn't mean it's the best approach.
When it comes to free content, don't post about your topic. Instead, make an argument. There's a world of difference.
Posting about your topic will lead to frustrations like:
- Feeling like you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall
- Running out of ideas for posts
- Attracting freebie seekers and tire kickers
This approach can work for building an influencer business, but it's not as effective for selling courses, coaching, and consulting.
Just ask all the people who are cranking out free content and not seeing any sales.
I finally realized my mistake and found a better approach. It found it when I began to study copywriting. I learned that the best copywriters make arguments.
With the argument based approach, you're still creating free content, but that free content isn't based around topics. Rather, your free content stems from a core argument.
You might consider your argument "your stance" or "your philosophy". In my Five Lightbulbs framework, it's represented by Lightbulb 3.
For my beer website, I wasted many hours on free content that did not lead to sales. If anything, it cost me money in the time I spent responding to people's endless questions in the YouTube comments. I felt bad not responding, but at the same time, I was thinking, "Just buy my course and you won't need to ask these questions."
Maybe you've felt the same.
(If this resonates, my Five Lightbulbs Methodology offers an alternative to the topic based approach to free content. Our method helps you create an argument for why someone should choose you. Hundreds of people now follow our marketing system and they feel relief from getting off the free content hamster wheel. Join our movement right here.)
There we go! Those are the three big lessons I learned around selling my courses.
To summarize:
1) Consider where people first encounter your brand and the messaging they see. Your homepage simply isn't that important.
2) Go after customers with high stakes. Ask yourself, who in my audience has a lot on the line?
3) If you want to sell your courses, don't crank out free content expecting people to buy. Your free content should stem from a core marketing argument that leads back to your product.
Next week, I'll send the final edition of this series. You'll hear how I was eventually able to leave my 9-5 job. And how a few years later, I sold my beloved beer brewing website.
Rooting for you,
Billy