The Reason Your Online Course is Not Selling (and how to fix it)
Reasons Why Your Online Is Not Selling
Your online course sales are less than desirable. Even embarrassing. But you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.
You know that your online course is exactly what your audience wants. You’ve set up your sales funnel correctly (or so you thought), but the sales aren’t rolling in.
Guess where the issue lies? Your marketing. This may include your messaging, webinar or course positioning, or a few other little things that you can test and tweak.
The good news is you don’t have to ditch your entire sales funnel and start over. You need to review your key metrics at each step to figure out where it’s broken or needs a little tweaking.
The Anatomy of a Webinar Sales Funnel
Before we begin, let’s review the anatomy of a live launch webinar sales funnel for an online course.
In your funnel, you will have your main lead magnet for your course. This is a checklist, roadmap or something similar. This lead magnet should be related to your online course to attract the right prospects.
You should put your lead magnet everywhere. It should be your call to action on social media, on the front page of your website, and as an opt-in on your blog posts or podcast.
The goal is to get people to sign up for your email list. The saying that “the money is in the list”…..is especially true for entrepreneurs selling online courses.
After people sign up for your lead magnet, you will send them a welcome series. The purpose of this email sequence is to highlight pain points and stir desire. It’s not to tell them about your life history. They don’t care.
For your Facebook and Instagram ads, you should test out variations. One may include sending people to a blog post that has your lead magnet as an opt-in. Another may be sending them to your webinar registration page for your free training. You can also test out an ad that sends them to your lead magnet.
About a week before your webinar and cart open date you will start inviting people to register for your webinar. You will send out an email invite to your email subscribers. You can invite people to your free training on social media. You can also launch a Facebook and/or Instagram ad inviting them to register for your free training.
Once they register, you will send them to a thank you page and send out a confirmation email from your webinar platform provider. In addition to the reminder emails they get from your webinar platform provider, you will send emails to get your participants excited for your event.
Your goal is to get them to show up live.
At the end of your webinar, you will tell them about your online course and then direct them to your sales page.
You will retarget non-purchasers until your cart closes (5-7 days after your webinar). The retarget emails will have your replay link and then direct prospects to your sales page.
Got all that?
Now onto the good stuff.
When your online course sales are embarrassing, how do you know what’s working and what’s not? You don’t want to ditch the entire funnel that you worked weeks and weeks building.
It’s All About the Data
To figure out where your sales funnel needs tweaking (or an overhaul), it’s time to review the data.
Every touch point you have with your prospect is measurable.
Here are some key launch metrics to review:
Lead magnet landing page conversion
Paid ad costs per lead
Paid ad click-through-rate (CTR)
Number of sales leads (people who signed up for your webinar)
Registration page conversions
Email open rates & click-through rates
Webinar attendance rates
Completion of webinar
Sales during live webinar
Sales after live webinar
Earnings per lead: total revenue/number of leads
Landing Pages
For your landing pages, you will measure how many registered divided by the total unique views. A good landing page converts at around 30%. I like to see it around 40%. I’ve also seen landing pages that are converting over 50%.
If your landing page conversion is on the lower end, use this landing audit checklist to find areas for improvement.
For your ads, there are two key metrics to review: the cost per lead and the click-through-rates (CTR).
For your cost per lead, you divide ad costs by your number of sign ups. These numbers vary by industry, but I’ve seen anywhere from $2 to $10. If your costs per conversion is higher than $10, start with reviewing your ad copy and creative along with your CTA.
Email Open Rates
Here's what you need for email sequences:
1. Welcome series emails
2. Invitation to your webinar training
3. Email sequence to excite webinar registrants to attend live
4. Retargeting emails after the webinar for those who didn't buy
For all email sequences, you need to review the open rates and the click-through-rates. If a email is performing poorly, first, review the headline. If you need help with writing your email headlines, here are 164 Best Email Subject Lines to Boost Your Email Open Rates.
Webinar Attendance Rates + Completion of Webinar
You want your attendees to attend your webinar LIVE. At a minimum, you want a 30% attendance rate, which is the number of people who registered / the number who attended live.
If your number is lower than this, review your reminder emails. Is your webinar system sending out reminders to let registrants know that the webinar is starting? Also, review your emails to get attendees excited about your webinar. Do they highlight pain points and stir desire? Do they let the attendees know what they will get by attending your free training?
Also, don’t forget to review if they completed the webinar. If you have a large number of drop-offs, consider reviewing the content of your webinar. Is it engaging? Are you providing value or giving them your life history?
Should you send out a replay?
Some people don’t believe in sending out a replay. That’s fine, but they’re leaving money on the table. So, my vote is YES, send out the replay.
No matter when, you should send out your retargeting emails to people who attended, but don’t BUY on your webinar. You are measuring the sales you get during your webinar and AFTER your webinar through your retargeting email series.
Earnings Per Lead
You need to understand for each new subscriber, how much they are worth for your business. This lets you know how much a lead is actually worth so you can determine how much you’re willing to spend on paid ads to get a new lead.
The last thing I want to point out is that sales funnels don't need major overhauls. It's all about reviewing your data and tweaking and testing. Happy sales funnel tweaking!
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