In today’s episode, host Julie Hood shares the 7 P’s that will take you from zero sales to profitable sales of your online course. Start implementing them today to see your course sales soar.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Amy Porterfield’s Digital Course Academy
https://CourseCreatorsHQ.com/DCA
24 Hour Course Creator
https://24HourCourseCreator.com
FREE TRAINING
More on course marketing – including a webinar checklist - https://CourseCreatorsHQ.com/marketing
Is My Course Idea Any Good?
https://coursecreatorshq.com/idea
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This week, I've been watching Amy Porterfield market, her online course, digital course academy, and she's already had a multi seven figure launch and it's still open. So today let's chat about what it takes to market your online course. Welcome to the course creators, HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses. And now here's your host Julie Hood.
Hello there. And I'm thrilled. You're here today. So we can work through some of the things to consider when marketing your online course. So first I've been watching and I really hope you have been to Amy Porterfield and her marketing process during the past week. And actually it's been going on for the past month and honestly even longer. So if you want to know more,
her courses only open for a couple more days. At coursecreatorshq.com/DCA that's D C A for digital course academy. So today in this episode, I'm going to share the seven Ps that are essential to marketing your online course. And these keys have been pulled from my 18 years of marketing online, but you can start implementing them today. So you don't want to miss them all.
Let's get started with the very first P imagine for a moment that you go to the doctor because you aren't feeling very well and the nurse leads you to the room and takes your vitals, and they all seem normal. And she doesn't ask you any questions. Then the doctor swoops into the office clipboard in hand and says, Hey, you aren't feeling very good.
Well, no worries. I just spoke with this outstanding pharmaceutical rep and he has the perfect solution for you. Here's a prescription, just get this filled. And I'm sure you will feel so much better. He promised it would work and make all my patients feel better. He sends you on your way out the door and you're left standing there with your mouth open because no one asked you what your problem was.
So your first P when you're trying to sell your course is making sure that, you know, the problem that your course is solving for your student. Your second P is related to this. You must understand the promise that you're making spend some time on this and think about what solution are you offering and how will your students get there? What will they need to do?
What are you promising will happen for them? Write this down and then get some feedback on it. Keep refining and tweaking. For example, my promise for 24 hour course creator is that you will spend 24 hours an hour at a time and get your course done in just 24 hours. And so that promise has been very popular because it's something quick and easy and people can get their first course completed in a short amount of time.
So you want to work on your promise and figure out how you're going to communicate that to your students in a way that resonates and gets them really excited about what you're doing. So the third P is also really essential. So let me tell you a story about when I began online, I spent an entire year creating my first product and I poured everything I knew into a 200 plus page ebook.
I edited it myself and it was jam packed with all kinds of resources and my buyers love it. But the problem was I was only charging $14.95 for all this knowledge. And it's really hard to make a living on a $14.95 product. So your third P is pricing. You need to get the pricing right for your course. So I like to start lower and then keep tweaking the price to increase it and adding to the course and increasing it.
So the first version of 24 hour course creator was only 1999, and it didn't stay there very long. And now it's up to $497 because I've added some things I've gotten more experience. We've changed the formatting and changed up how the process works. So each of those tweaks gives me an opportunity to increase the price. Plus it helps train my audience that they want to jump on the deals at the beginning because that's the best price.
And then it's going to go up from there. So if they're really interested, they need to jump in at the beginning. So they have access to all those improvements. Okay? So let's continue with the fourth P and its positivity. Positive activity means that your potential students are positive, that you can help them and solve their problem. They're positive that they can do the work of your course,
and they are positive that this is something they need, need to solve or improve their lives. So there's lots of ways to get potential students to positivity. First, make sure your message resonates with your prospective student and the more you know about their problem, the more your language can work for them. You can also use testimonials to help build your credit ability.
And you can use case studies that describe how you've done this for other students. So that may mean that you sell your course with a recommendation from your joint venture partners, who could also vouch for you and increase that positivity factor. But you may have to give your potential students more time to get, you know, get to know you. So that leads into our fifth P,
which is patience You have to be patient with sales of your course. And I have something I use called the rule of 97. And it means that potentially when a hundred people see your course, 97 of them probably are not ready to buy yet. So you have to be patient with these prospective buyers. You want a way to stay in contact with them,
either with your email newsletter, podcasts, maybe YouTube videos or Facebook lives or video channel. All of these methods let you stay connected while they get a chance to get to know you and get more convinced that you're the perfect person to help them. And I realized recently that all the high end courses I've purchased the ones that cost a thousand dollars or more.
They have all been from people whose podcasts I listened to for a long time. I bought Amy Porterfield's digital course academy. After listening to her every week for several years, I bought Pat Flynn's power-up podcasting when he was in my ear for years, too, talking about podcasting. So is easy enough for them to stay in my ear with their podcasts. So you want to think about doing something similar to help stay in front of your audience and keep top of mind with them.
Okay. So the sixth P is your page where you're selling your course, a really good sales page is essential to building all these pieces of the puzzle and putting them together for your students. You talk about their problem and the promise that you're going to help them. You share your testimonials and case studies to help with the positivity side, you list your pricing and your money back guarantee,
and you make it really easy for them to take action with buttons throughout the page. And so stay tuned because we're going to talk about this topic quite a bit more. And in the meantime, start paying attention to sales pages. You come across that you like, and don't like, and start noticing what makes you click? What gets your attention? What headlines work,
what things are you noticing on the page? What pictures do you like sales page that really resonates. And then in future episodes, we're going to talk a little bit more about that. And then I'll also tell you real quick something. I'm sure you'll disagree with me about, and that is that sometimes your sales pages need to be long and your first thought will probably be,
oh no, one's going to read all that. But I tell you that's wrong. The people who are interested will read a long page if it's put together well, and it flows for the reader. If it's answering their questions and addressing their objections, a really good page will reel in your potential students like a really good fishing lore. So the final is to create a party,
make it fun. And just like a real party, your friends are so excited to hang out with you. And that's why we can have more than one person teaching on the same topic and having a course about the same topic. The way I teach will resonate with the students who are perfect for me, and they'll be ready to party because they liked the way I teach.
Another expert will reach their audience in a different way. And the, the potential students will enjoy their party more. And that's great. That just means there's a plenty of students for all, all of us. So you have to find your friends for the party. And sometimes this can be the most challenging part of marketing, your course, and that is trying to get your party invitation,
your sales page in front of the right people at the right time and the ones who are ready to buy right now. So that was just a quick summary of the seven Ps. And trust me, we're going to be talking about these a whole lot more going forward in the podcast, but let me end with recapping the seven PS for you. Number one is problem.
That's the problem that your course solves. Number two is the promise. And that's the transformation that you're promising to your students. Three is to get your pricing just right. So they understand what they're paying for and feel that it's worth the value. Four is positivity, where they're positive that you can solve the problem for them. Five is patience, which is having the patience to understand that your students might not be ready to buy just this minute.
Six is the page or the sales page that you've set up for your course. And seven is to party with the people who are perfect for your course. So if you're ready for more on better marketing, please sign up. At coursecreatorshq.com/marketing. You'll be able to jump in to a webinar checklist that I have put together for you. Plus some other resources that we've gathered,
and that's at coursecreatorshq.com/marketing, and you can sign up there. You'll get on my list and I've got some more marketing stuff coming down the pike. I can't wait to share it with you guys. So if you have something specific that you're really interested in, please let me know, come comment. At course, creators, hq.com or join us on the Facebook page.
And you can comment. I'd love to hear what you have questions about and what you're struggling with. I also have another quick win that I want to share with you if you're considering an online course, and you're trying to figure out if your idea is any good. I have a $37 training that I'm giving away to my podcast listeners. And it's called is my idea any good?
And it'll help you decide if your course idea is any good or not. So you can get that at coursecreatorshq.com/idea. So I have one last request. If you don't mind, could you please hit subscribe in your podcast app? I would love to have you as a subscriber. And if you learned anything helpful today, I'd really appreciate a five-star review.
Those reviews have me doing a happy dance, and I really appreciate your help because they help us get in front of more potential course creators. So thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing and reviewing. I so appreciate it. And I can't wait, connect with you next time. When we continue talking about marketing and creating your online course, have a great week.