How to Market Your Online Course to Increase Sales

So you’ve created an online course that you know your audience is desperate for. You’ve done the market research, checked that it’s viable and you know it fills such a huge gap in your industry. 

Now you just have to sell it right? 

Because without the right marketing strategy, your course could be a flop. So, if you’re sitting there right now thinking of all the ways of how you can market your online course, but unsure what’s best or where to start, I’ve got you. 

Today I’ll be talking you through some of my favourite strategies for selling online courses so you can build a stable stream of passive income. 

Can you make money with online courses?

Firstly, I want to address the elephant in the room. 

Because there are some of you out there who’ll doubt whether selling online courses is profitable. 

But the answer is absolutely YES! 

I’ve helped so many of my coaching clients create and sell an online course this year and I know there’s a high demand for people who want to learn how to do this themselves. I find pretty much all of my coaching clients wanted to launch some form of passive course, which is why I created Freedom Course Creator. 

Since launching, my clients have literally made tens of thousands of pounds selling their online courses so I know that there’s opportunity for you too. 

Plus, if your course answers questions you’re commonly being asked by your 1:1 or done for you clients, then you’re probably onto a winner. E-learning is a booming industry and there are lots of success stories of people generating 6 figures and more from online courses. 

Live Launching Method 

As you’ve likely created your course to sell as a passive offer, you might question whether live launching will work. 

But it can. 

And not just the first time you launch it too.

Even with evergreen products like courses, you can still do a live launch a couple of times a year (or as often as you want) to help build up that hype and momentum for your course. 

There’s a lot of chatter in the online space as some of you “hate” launching, but I feel a hybrid approach is a great way to create constant interest for your passive offers. 

New people are joining your audience everyday, so many of them might not have seen you live launch yet and it could be the thing that gets them over the fence to buy. 

If it is the first time you’ve launched, you could even offer a pre-sale/waitlist bonus for your first launch to build that momentum.

Selling Your Course Evergreen

The best way to sell an online course, if you value time-freedom and want to earn passive income, is through an automated sales funnel. 

This requires you to have some kind of evergreen free offer and email marketing software. 

Depending where you host your online course, you may have email marketing software built into your course creation platform. Plus, if you have less than 1000 subscribers right now, then most email marketing platforms are free. 

What you’ll want to do is create a free offer like a masterclass, challenge, PDF/Guide, whatever works best for your audience, and then build a nurture sequence off the back of that. 

Depending on the price of your online course, the length of your nurture sequence will vary.

Some sequences can last as long as 30-60 days for higher ticket offers (I’ve even seen longer), whereas a lower ticket offer that doesn’t require much thought before buying may only need a 7-14 day automation. 

This is something I discuss in depth as part of module 10 of my course creator framework in Freedom Course Creator (the full strategy would be impossible to fit in a single blog post – that module alone has 5 lessons just on evergreen sales strategy) 

Driving Traffic to Your Freebie so you can Sell Out Your Online Course

Once you’ve decided whether you’ll live launch your course, adopt an evergreen strategy, or create a hybrid of both. You need to focus on how you’ll drive traffic to your freebie landing page.

Remember the sales funnels you build out will be doing the majority of the leg work for you, nurturing your audience and adding value over time but now we need to market your freebie. 

An omnichannel marketing strategy will work best for you here; one of my predicted marketing trends for online course creators and online business owners in general is that more visibility will be required to garner results in the new year. 

But, in short, you could talk about your freebie on Instagram stories and turn your bio into a big call to action. 

You can create attraction, nurture and conversion content on TikTok that will take your buyers on a journey and encourage them to check out your free offer. 

You could talk about your offers on a blog, or YouTube channel, by weaving things in naturally throughout the post or video – you’ll see I do this a lot. 

And you can even create pins that target peoples questions that they’re asking. 

For example, I have a free passive income masterclass about how to create and launch an online course. On Pinterest I promote that with static pins that say things like “How to make Passive Income in 2023”. I’m targeting people who are actively solution seeking. 

If you’re struggling with how to create more content for multiple platforms, this post will help you out. 

Directly Marketing Your Course

With all this in mind, you don’t have to get every single person into your sales funnel. Some people will just want to buy your course through the content you put out on social media. 

It’s essentially still a sales funnel, but instead of being on your email list, this will be all the content you share publicly, for example on your Instagram stories, through your YouTube Channel 

The key is that you’re giving your audience multiple pathways to purchase your online course. 

Some people need more nurturing and the email sequence will work perfect for them; others, likely those who’ve been in your space for a while, already know, like and trust you enough to buy straight from socials. 

This is why having multiple methods of marketing your course is important. 

So, let me know your thoughts below, which one of these routes do you think you’ll take to sell out your online course? I’d love to know!

Claudia xx