One Message, Everywhere: Consistent Messaging for Course Creators
How one teaching principle became the backbone of six sales pages—and helped Leila Gharani grow her course business fast.
Welcome to the final Behind the Message. You can find the entire series on the main page.
For this final edition of Behind the Message, I want to share an "aha" moment I had while working with Leila Gharani.
It taught me something important about why our clients struggle with messaging.
Leila runs XelPlus, an online education company. She teaches Excel and related tools, such as Power BI, to corporate professionals.
Leila already had good business traction when we met, but when she looked at her website, she saw a problem:
“When I look at our messaging, even I’m bored,” she told me.
Her sales pages said things like “Become better at Excel” and “Become the Excel expert," generic language that could describe anyone’s Excel training.
Through working with her, I noticed Leila already had everything she needed for compelling messaging. She just didn’t have a structure to organize it.
For example, when I asked her to describe how she actually taught Excel, three things came up immediately:
1) She spoke in plain English instead of technical jargon.
2) She used real-world examples from chaotic business environments, not sterile training scenarios.
3) And she helped people see the big picture instead of getting lost in formulas.
But none of this appeared on her website.
This story keeps showing up. It’s not that professionals lack good ideas or compelling stories. Rather, they lack a structure to extract and organize what they already know into a clear argument.
The Five Lightbulbs framework gave Leila that structure. Her three teaching principles became her Lightbulb 3, her unique approach that sets XelPlus apart.
The results were immediate and measurable.
"Halfway through the cohort, I updated one of our sales pages using our new Five Lightbulbs messaging," Leila told me.
"Our sales instantly improved. I tracked our numbers closely, and over two weeks we made an additional $7,000 over what that page normally generates. And those numbers have continued."
But that was just one page. We ended up rewriting six of her sales pages total: some existing products, some new ones. One new course launch alone brought in over 3,000 paid students using her new messaging.
"Needless to say, we're now rolling out the Five Lightbulbs across our entire product catalog," she said.
Structure doesn’t just improve one piece of messaging, but makes everything you do faster. When you have a clear argument, you’re not starting from scratch every time you write.
Below, you'll find screenshots from Leila's website. You'll see how the same three principles (her Lightbulb 3) appear in four different contexts.
But remember that this was deployed across six sales pages in total, as well as her homepage, about page, videos, and more.
Do you see the one-to-many pattern? We create one Lightbulb 3, and then distribute it across many marketing assets.
Then we do that with all your Lightbulbs.
It's a smarter way to approach marketing, and why I'm so passionate about this work.
Our clients are not full-time marketers. They don't have 40 hours a week to spend on marketing. They need a script that works across everything they create.
Their Five Lightbulbs is that script.
Leila said, “Now, before I create anything, I’m thinking about who this is for and how it fits our argument. It makes everything simpler because I have this structure to follow.”
Way to go, Leila.
That brings us to the end. If these Behind the Message case studies have resonated with you, take the next step and read my book, Simple Marketing for Smart People.
Or, for my direct help with your marketing messaging, reach out here.
Rooting for you,
Billy