How to Sell An Online Course – Growth Hack 2024

There are many proven methods over the web on how to sell an online course. Our aim is to convert customers by simplifying, structuring, and creating eLearning courses. But what should be the next step for the owners of eLearning sites?

Selling your online course is necessary to generate revenue and recover your investment. You want your funds back as you spent a lot of time and effort creating your eLearning website. With the aid of marketing, the buyer’s justifications and arguments are strengthened, ultimately culminating in the sale of your eLearning courses. 

You must make a proper strategy and go through your customer’s psychology to produce sales. This article will present some growth hacking techniques you can utilize to sell courses online. We will also show how different content creators are implementing these hacks. 

Filter Your Customers and Their Buying Intent 

To learn how to sell the online course and implement the growth hacks, filter your customers and their buying personnel. 

Defining your target audience is crucial for a number of reasons, including the fact that you can approach and catch them by understanding who they are, their tastes, preferred platforms, social media platforms, and so on.

With the use of all this knowledge, you’ll be able to draw them to the locations that appeal to them and cut your marketing costs on sites that are inappropriate or underutilized by your target market. 

For instance, placing pop-up advertisements on a university website won’t help you in terms of marketing if the consumer is a working professional. Using job directories, LinkedIn, and other job sites will be appropriate in this scenario.

Highlight The Benefits To Your Customers 

People are not only buying a product; they are investing in getting a better version of themselves. They want to improve in whatever ways your course promises—speaking, programming, negotiating, parenting, music, marketing, etc.

When you highlight the benefits your course will bring, learners will realize the necessity of the course. Ultimately, you will move one step ahead while selling your courses. 

The message on your sales page should reflect the changes that your customers are expecting in their lives. This is why it is so important to use contrast in copywriting, design, and imagery to boost sales of online courses. 

Look at the course offered on Coursera by Meta:

They have highlighted all the benefits that will attract visitors and learners to take this course. Also, they have highlighted in detail what you will learn from this course. 

Implement Effective Sales Message 

To successfully implement the hack techniques of how to sell an online course and spread effective sales messages. 

A fantastic illustration of how compelling messaging motivates readers to take action is echoing. With echoing, you will deliver the message in your customer’s communication style, including certain words and expressions. 

It facilitates communication and puts you and your visitors on the same page. Moreover, it demonstrates that you are conversant in their language, comprehend their issue, and possess the answer they seek.

So how can you listen to what your target audience is saying and use that information to create more persuasive marketing materials? The answer is simple: by following them on social media, interviewing them, looking through internet evaluations, and delving deeply into forum conversations.

Look how edX implemented their message swiftly through their landing page. 

Become Sherlock Holmes and use your investigative skills to explore the terms your target customers use to explain their difficulties in constructing a sales page for your online course. 

You might learn useful ideas by investigating similar courses, looking at the comments on articles on the subject of your course, reading product reviews on Amazon, participating in conversations, and keeping an eye on social media.

Increase Your Customers’ Needs Towards The Product  

So you need some extra cheese on your pizza? Should I make it large?

If you’ve called for pizza delivery, you must have heard about the offer to get extra toppings or a large one. You wouldn’t believe it, but these offers have increased massive amounts of sales for pizza shops due to straightforward cross-sells and upsells. 

Look at this digital marketing course offered by Udemy, which offers 13 courses under one roof. 

The consumer feels a sense of urgency when offered a great deal and chooses the upsell. They seem to think that they are receiving a terrific bargain.  This motivates their need and greed in a good way and accelerates their buying intention.

Set up multiple course options: 

• One that focuses on a single course content 
• Another one that is a bit expensive but offers more benefits. 

To increase the value of your course, add additional lessons, course templates, resources, and interview sessions with the learners. You can also leverage your past webinar sessions, blog posts, video courses from YouTube, and numerous other free materials to enhance your service. You are not spending too much, but by offering more, you are getting more. 

But since consumers believe they are getting a wonderful bargain with all those extras, it does a terrific job drawing customers.

Lure Customers With Price Baits 

The subject of pricing is intriguing and illustrative of the peculiar ways in which our brains function.

Have you ever purchased a ring from a jewelry store, for instance? Most jewelers will ask you what kind of ring you would like before showing you something that is much more expensive. They would take out a stunning ring that is precisely in your desired price range after you inform them it is beyond your means.

Let’s take a look at the following example for a language learning course of Rosetta Stone 

Consequently, you accept the offer without the haggling and believe it’s a great deal. This is what price anchoring is all about.

The salesperson trained your thoughts to embrace anything within your price range by presenting you with an expensive item. Therefore, you unconsciously evaluated the costs and gladly purchased the second ring.

The price anchoring technique is often used by eLearning course sellers and subscription providers. But how? 

They settle on a favored strategy privately. Then, to make the pricing plan look more appealing, they add more expensive plans to the pricing page. 

However, hosting providers and SaaS enterprises use this method with tremendous success. Here’s an example of a price bait with an anchoring technique: 

Increase Sales by Generating Scarcity & Urgency 

How to sell an online course with growth hacking techniques by creating a sense of urgency and scarcity about the product in your customer’s mind. 

Since scarcity and urgency have their own psychological effects, they persuade your visitors to take action. When customers need your product and you offer limited availability with a great deal, they will rush to get it.  

You must ensure that you are implementing a deadline to influence your customers’ decision-making process. Because time-sensitive offers will force your customers to give them serious consideration. 

Check out the following example where Academy LMS offers a time-limited deal that customers will surely want to grab before it ends. 

To be on the safe side, if you indicate an offer is time-sensitive, keep your word and don’t open it for anybody before the following session. If not, your offer would become less credible, and your deadlines wouldn’t have the same impact.

Highlight Social Proof to Increase Reliability

Social proof works like magic regarding how to sell an online course with hack techniques. It works like a conversion boosting factor on a landing page. Also, it demonstrates to your viewers that individuals already believe in you, have paid for your course, and have received the outcomes you guaranteed.

It lowers obstacles to conversion, calms prospects, and improves your chances of making the sale. Customers are mostly willing to believe product recommendations given by real customers rather than paid advertising. 

According to studies, 84% of buyers place equal faith in internet reviews and client testimonials. Therefore, you should implement social proof about your online courses on your eLearning site.

This is an eLearning course on Coursera by Google on Technical Support Fundamentals. As you can see, real learners have provided reviews about the course that will help you decide whether you want to take it. 

Make Your Customers Feel Regret To Convert Them

Letting go of regret for anything creates desperation and helplessness, and that’s the emotion you can leverage. 

However, crafty copywriters and astute marketers utilize it to rouse dozy customers and compel them to act.

But you should employ precaution when applying this strategy to your writing since it has the potential to backfire on you and alienate readers. Conduct thorough research on your audience and then employ this strategy.

Find out which iteration of your landing page generates the most conversions by testing several variations.

Create Fear by Demonstrating Unwanted Consequences

Fear pushes humans to take actions they don’t think they’re capable of. Therefore, marketers can employ fear to terrify potential customers away from bad outcomes. 

You can employ fear in your marketing approach when it comes to How to sell an online course with simple hack techniques. How?

Show learners what they will miss if they have yet to learn the course you are offering. Consequently, highlight all the benefits that students get after taking your course. How they have achieved a better career path after completing your course.

Let’s say your eLearning courses will enhance skills that will help learners earn a better position and more money.  Then highlight how much-skilled people earn compared to those who do not have those skills. 

You may also emphasize how not improving your skills might affect your future earnings, employability, social standing, and, eventually, your life objectives.

Show Them The Vision Of a Better Life 

Showing your visitors a vision of a better life is another effective growth hack for selling online courses. Everyone wants to build a better future and enhance their career to get a better life. Therefore, show your visitors how they can dream bigger by signing up for your courses. 

Check out these courses on Coursera and learn how to raise your living standards to the next level. 

Take note of the clever use of transition and uplifting wording to produce a powerful and convincing statement. This strategy succeeds because it convinces readers and creates confidence within themselves. 

Offer Free Materials At First To Close the Deal

People love to get free products in the form of reciprocity because it motivates people to get more. If you provide some valuable free offers, people will eventually come back to you for your premium products. 

The propensity of people to reciprocate favors favorably is represented by reciprocity. Giving clients something for free up front increases their likelihood of accepting your offer, according to marketing theory. This strategy is the same for online courses and consulting firms.

Therefore, don’t directly promote your paid product when finding answers for how to sell an online course. Firstly, offer them something free, give them a taste of your exclusive course material, and then offer an even better course as a paid product. 

Look at this great collection of free courses offered at OpenLearn. Intriguing right?  

You can offer your visitors free webinars, eBooks, workshops, and teaching sessions. After that, maintain the connection by continually delivering value. 

How well your free materials are received by prospects affects how they perceive your brand. They are considerably more inclined to accept your pitch for your main product after receiving a significant amount of free material.

Portray An Exclusive Brand Image 

People love exclusivity, and the same goes for selling online courses. Brands are spending tons of money to make their offerings exclusive to visitors. They are even collaborating with celebrities for their marketing campaigns. 

Your course’s worth is heavily influenced by its appearance, advertising, and launch style. Thus, when launching a premium course, it’s critical to spend money on expert landing page design as well as top-notch images and video material.

Similarly, any recommendations and testimonies from renowned influencers and marketers also create an exclusive brand image and aid in your ability to influence customers.

Implement Reverse Psychology For Lead Generation

CTAs may significantly raise your sign-up rate, assist you in generating additional leads for your online courses, and eventually boost sales of online courses by using reverse psychology through your landing page.

Adding a negative CTA beside the main CTA button creates negative psychology. This kind of CTA will push your customers to think again before rejecting the offer. 

Using fundamental advantage as the primary CTA and including a detailed negative CTA highlighting what the customer would lose if they declined your deal is the key to striking reverse psychology CTA on your website. 

For example, you are offering a language course, and the CTA should be

Primary CTA: I will Learn English and French 

Reverse CTA: I will only learn English 

Convince Via Disrupt Then Reframe Technique 

How to sell an online course with growth hack techniques includes disrupting and then reframing techniques. It is a copywriting strategy that involves rephrasing an offer to make it seem simpler and more approachable.

Your first message will offer a course at a low price with a per-day pricing indicator. On another page of your eLearning site, you will inform your customers of the total price of the course, which is higher, but the per-day price will be shown along with it. 

Though the pricing page indicates a higher price range, the per-day pricing will convince customers to get the deal. The primary goal of this tactic is to assist the visitors in realizing the value of your product and to eliminate any objections they may have to make a purchase.

Connect Your Course With a Higher Purpose 

Connect your course with a greater movement that customers will care about. In this way, you can grow your sales outcome through your sales page. 

You allow your audience to enroll in your course and have an effect on a cause that matters to them by tying it to the greater good.

For instance, you may indicate on your sales page that a specific portion of your profits supports causes important to your audiences, such as veganism, immigrant rights, education for women, or feeding people in poor nations. 

But make sure the money is genuinely going to the charity you say and that your viewers can follow it too.

Send Emails To Your Prospects 

Email marketing is a trending marketing approach that you must utilize for promoting your online courses because it is the best way to inform customers about the activities going on on your eLearning site. 

You can inform customers about newly released courses on your eLearning site. Then you can inform them about discounts and deals that you are offering on your site.

Instead of promoting, you can offer free ebooks, informative blog posts, and other eLearning advice through your eLearning site. 

By sending emails, you are keeping your customers in the loop and keeping them updated with your site. This will motivate customers to learn new information and encourage them to pay for eLearning courses. But remember that you must provide your clients with valuable course materials that will be worth their money. 

Final Thoughts on How to Sell an Online Course

Your marketing strategies or growth hacking approaches won’t be effective if your online course isn’t worthwhile. As a result, you must first produce engaging course materials before working on the hacking techniques that will ultimately help you increase your sales.

This article provides all the strategies that have proven effective in boosting sell online courses.  We advise you to put these strategies into action right now for the best results.

Have you ever used any of these strategies for sell online courses? Or do you have any suggestions for additional tactics we missed in this article? Feel free to let us know in our comment section.

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