5 Simple Ways to Find Students for Your Online Course (without huge ad spends)
Need more students for your online course?
I bet you do.
I want to walk you through 5 simple ways to find students for your online course (without huge ad spends).
To fill up your funnel, you need traffic strategies in place in your business.
Basically, this means you need eyeballs on your lead magnets such as a webinar, 5-day challenge, bootcamp, or whatever you’re doing to take your online course prospect on a buyer’s journey from the awareness stage, to the consideration stage and finally toward deciding about whether to invest in your business.
When online course creators come to me and wonder why their online course did not sell, most of the time it’s because they did not get enough traffic coming into their sales funnel.
It’s typical for an online sales funnel to convert anywhere from 1% (a cold audience) to 5% (warm audience). This means that for every 100 people that attend your webinar, challenge, or view your video series, only handful (1-5 people) will buy.
You need volume to sell online courses.
But you’re in a crowded market. How do you get the eyeballs on your business?
Let’s walk through my Funnel Fill up Formula and talk about various traffic strategies to get eyeballs on your content.
Funnel Fill Up Formula
Funnel Fill Up Formula #1: Social Media
I want you to avoid this mistake. Posting your online course all over social media asking your followers to buy your course.
I’ve had course creators come to me and say, “I’ve 25K followers on social media, but they aren’t buying my course! Why?”
I tell them it’s very simple. Your followers on social media are not interested in your online course. They are only interested in the transformation you can help them with.
And to demonstrate this transformation, you must take them on a buyer’s journey.
Your goal is to get them to click on your call to action from social media and sign up for your email list.
Once they’re on your email list, then you should start your email welcome sequence to start building rapport and establishing yourself as the expert to help them.
Funnel Fill Up Formula #2: SEO & Content Marketing
This is one of my favorite strategies to fill up my funnel and it’s completely free!
I’m very clear on the goals for my content. It’s to educate my ideal client and inspire them to take action.
Many online course creators get stuck in a process where they’re busy, but not working on what’s important to grow their online course business.
All my content is focused on these topics with one goal in mind: To help my audience sell their online course!
It’s important for you to have a clear goal for your content and the action you want your audience to take after reading.
If you want to have a sneak peek into how I come up with content ideas and tie them into my promotional calendar, check out this post which includes a free Content Management System (aka Google sheet).
SEO is a long-term game and most likely you won’t show up on the first page of Google overnight.
However, I’ve used Pinterest and Tailwind tribes to explode my organic website traffic. And you can too!
Funnel Fill Up Formula #3: Affiliate Marketing
Here’s why I love affiliate marketing.
For online course creators with no audience or a small list, it’s a great way to sell your online course and build your community.
Affiliate marketing programs are mostly automated and super simple to set up.
I use the affiliate option in Kajabi to pay my affiliates when they sell one of my programs.
Here’s how it works.
I create a share link for my affiliates to share with their audiences.
This link will place a cookie that the prospects browser for 30 days.
If their customer purchases from my site using the same browser and the purchase is made within that 30-day time period, the transaction is counted as an affiliate transaction and they earn a commission!
If you want to find some affiliates to help sell your online course, reach out to known authorities in your niche and build a relationship with them. Follow them on social media, interact in the comments of their social posts and blogs. Get on their email list and respond to their emails.
The key here is to get to know them and allow them to get to know you. If they’re a good fit, ask them to be an affiliate for your next launch.
But wait! You’ll want to put together your affiliate program details before you reach out to potential affiliates.
You’ll want to determine the % commission and pay system. Many affiliate programs pay anywhere from 40-50%, but if you’re providing hands on 1:1 service with your program, your commission percentage may be lower.
Don’t forget to provide awesome marketing materials and affiliate education. Your affiliates aren’t familiar with your online course and cannot speak to it the way you can. Give them email templates, social media templates and images so they can just copy/paste. A frequently asked questions document is also recommended.
Also consider some type of incentive for affiliates who’re selling your online course like hotcakes. One way to do this is to give top affiliates a greater commission (e.g. 50% instead of 40%).
Funnel Fill Up Formula #4: Public Relations
A great way to find students for your online course is through public relations (PR). And it's FREE!
My favorite way for free PR is to be a guest on a podcast.
It’s simple and not as time consuming as guest blogging.
But how do you find guest podcast opportunities?
One way is to sign up for podcastguests.com. Every week, they send out an email with podcast hosts that are looking for guests just like you.
Do you need a pitch template to contact a podcast host? Here’s one that I use:
Hello (contact's name),
I've been following your (blog/podcast) for quite some time, and I love your content and what you share with your (listeners/followers). Every time I (read a post/listen to an episode), I feel that I'm able to walk away with a single, clear action item. One recent example that really resonated with me was (input example).
I believe that I can add value to your audience on a few different topics. I've included a few proposed ones I think would benefit them:
1. (proposed topic/title)
2. (proposed topic/title)
3. (proposed topic/title)
Thank you for considering my request! I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Your name and contact information
Funnel Fill Up Formula #5: Paid Advertising
Hands down, this is the best way to find students for your online course.
However, you’ve heard the stories of ad campaigns with high cost per lead or ones that didn’t net any sales.
There is an art and a science to running ad campaigns that convert. And sometimes you just need to test to find the audiences and lead magnets that work for your online course and business.
If you’re on a budget (who isn’t!) the key is to start small and test, then scale.
I like for clients to start with list building ads a few months prior to their launch.
This gives them the opportunity to test lead magnets, audiences, ad copy and creative without the high pressure and time constraints of a launch.
I also like offering tripwires to help offset the cost of the Facebook and Instagram ads.
If you’re not familiar with a tripwire, check this out to see how a tripwire works.
There you go! 5 simple ways to find students for your online course (without huge ad spends).
Need help in finding students for your online course? Let’s chat today!
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