Caitlin Bacher:
Ever wonder how some online course creators are able to grow so quickly?
Today, I’m unpacking 3 things that I’ve seen help our most successful clients turn their course into a six or even seven figure business.
So let’s get started.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, founder and CEO of Scale With Success®. And I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. We are sharing revealing conversations about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join us here to discover the tough decisions we’ve had to make, the biggest failures we’ve had to bounce back from, and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. We are so grateful that we have the chance to share it all with you right here on Scale With Success®, The Podcast Built for Course Creators™. Let’s get started.
It’s easy to look at other people’s success and make assumptions about why they’re so successful.
And what I’m going to be unpacking today are some of the things that those really successful businesses have going from them that are beneath the surface.
So the revenue and sales are just the tip of the iceberg, but underneath are all the things that are really making that business thrive and keeping that business in momentum so it can grow and grow year after year.
Key ingredient #1 to building a million dollar online course business is offer and market alignment.
In order to stand out online today, you really need to be tuned in to what your market wants. Your offer should always lead with what your market wants.
Your market always knows what they want. They may not know what they need, but they do know exactly what they want.
Don’t make the mistake of trying to sell them what you think they should want. They will tune you out, and you’ll waste all your time and energy yelling into an empty void.
Now, there’s a chance that if your online course is stuck at six figures, and you’re trying to get to seven, there’s a chance that what your market wants has changed over time.
This doesn’t mean that you need to change your course, but you may need to change the way you talk about your course.
For example, I’m sure there are a ton of benefits that are associated with your online course. Some of those benefits may have resonated with your market two years ago, but now they may find other benefits that your course offers, maybe even some that you’ve never even talked about before, more attractive.
The world is very different from what it was even a few years ago. And those global changes have likely impacted the needs, desires, aspirations of your ideal customers.
What happens to a lot of course creators is once they get into the spot where their revenue is stuck, they believe that what they really need to do is create a brand new course. And that is rarely the case.
So you probably don’t need to change anything about your course, but you do need to change the way that you articulate its value inside of your marketing.
When you do this, your course will deliver what they want and what you know they need.
But in order to grab their attention, you need to meet them where they are.
Now, if your online course hasn’t even reached six figures, then you are likely still working on figuring out exactly what your market wants, and you might be overly focused on what you want.
My first year of business, I was on the phone with my target market, a lot, not to sell, but to ask.
I wanted to know everything about them, what they wanted, why they wanted it, what was at stake if they didn’t get it, what they tried before to make it work, and why they believed they weren’t getting the results they wanted.
I learned that if I asked the right questions, it would become clear why people weren’t buying.
We’d be chatting, and then, sometimes they would say something that would unlock an entirely new line of questions that I hadn’t even considered before.
➡ Side note, we actually give our clients templates and surveys of exactly what to ask in order to discover what their prospects want the most. So if that sounds interesting to you, go ahead and send me a DM on Instagram, and maybe I can make a future episode that shares a few of them with you.
The 2nd key ingredient to a million dollar online course business is an automated sales webinar.
Now, the best part of this type of webinar is that it makes sales completely hands free for your business, no more sales calls, no more DMS.
You do not need to host a sales call for a $997 or $1997 offer, period. You can sell an online course in that price range with a completely automated sales process.
What this does for you is it gives you more time to spend on generating traffic, not selling. If you’re constantly stuck doing sales calls, you’re not going to have the time that you need in order to generate enough traffic to your sales process.
So once you automate that sales piece with an automated webinar, you’re then going to have lots of time to connect with your audience and really build demand for your webinar and for the offer that you are going to sell.
So if you’re attempting to scale your online course business to six or even seven figures, you need to free up your time so that you can focus your energy on driving traffic to the sales process.
You don’t have time to focus on lead generation and sales calls. It’s too much.
Now, when it comes to running a profitable automated webinar, you need to make sure that you are tracking the right numbers.
This is why so many people who think to themselves, “Oh, all I need is someone to come in and build my funnel” end up failing.
Building the funnel is actually the easy part. We give you all the step-by-step training that you or your team needs in order to set up your tech so that you’ll be able to do it even if you hate tech.
The most challenging part for many course creators comes after the funnel is built.
That’s because, once it’s built, now you have to optimize it for conversions. And this is where people tend to get really confused.
They have hired a funnel builder, the funnel builder built their funnel, and now they’re left high and dry with a webinar funnel that isn’t working, and they don’t know why. They don’t know how to fix it.
So they end up tracking the wrong metrics and getting led down rabbit holes they have no business being in. They don’t know what the right benchmarks are, so they have no clue what to prioritize first.
The best thing about an automated sales webinar is that even small tweaks can make a huge difference, but you need to identify which tweaks to make, and how to know if the tweaks you are making are helping or hurting.
There has never been a better time to generate traffic to your automated webinar, yet this is what most creators struggle with.
In the old days, you had to spend loads of money on advertising to get your funnel to work, but there are so many new opportunities now to generate traffic to your funnel that are completely free. They will cost you time, but they won’t cost you money.
Once you nail some of those free organic traffic strategies, then you can move into paid traffic, and this is where things get really exciting.
Now, some people want to skip this step. They think, “Oh, I’ll just hire a funnel builder to build my funnel. And then I’ll just hire an ads agency to fill my funnel.” No, this is quite literally the worst way to go about building a profitable six or seven-figure online course business.
Pouring money into ads with messaging that doesn’t resonate down a leaky funnel that doesn’t convert is the fastest way to run out of money. And the worst part is you’ll have no idea what to fix. Please don’t do this.
Skipping over steps, like refining your message organically and optimizing your funnel based on data will end up breaking everything.
The 3rd thing you need in order to scale to a six or even seven-figure online course business is a consistent client experience.
That’s right. It’s not just about marketing and selling. You also have to deliver on the promised result, and you have to do it in a way that is sustainable for you so that you don’t burn out.
There’s two main things to consider when it comes to really creating that consistent client experience.
The first is the initial onboarding.
When it comes to creating a stellar onboarding experience, you really need to prioritize connection.
That’s because it’s normal for new students to feel a little bit nervous right after they purchase.
If your onboarding experience is planned correctly, and you’ll be able to support those nervous new students, and turn them into thriving customers that won’t stop telling everyone about how incredible your course is.
The second key to a consistent client experience is that you need to have sustainable support systems.
I’m sure you can do a great job of supporting 20 new students in your online course this month, but what about 200? What about 2,000? Not just this month, but each month, and they’re all enrolling at different times.
When our clients come to us, they’re not just interested in enrolling as many students as humanly possible. They want to make sure that they are enrolling as many new students as humanly possible, but that they aren’t doing it in a way that sacrifices their students’ experience.
They’re here to make a difference and they want to give their students the desired result.
Years ago, when we made the decision to switch from the launch model to an evergreen model with our online course, someone on my team asked me a question. They said, “How are we going to set this up so that our evergreen students do just as well as the live launch students?” My response was, “It’s not going to be as good. It’s going to be better.”
What I’ve seen again and again from our clients is that they’re able to design a sustainable support system that enables their students to get results that outperform anything they were ever able to do in a live launch.
Here’s why.
Marketing, selling, and delivering your online course with an evergreen model ensures that the right people are buying your course at the right time for them.
That means that once they’ve gotten into your program, you’ve already taken them on a journey of curated content that has broken through their limiting beliefs, that has shown them what’s possible, and that has galvanized their commitment to getting the transformation that they desire.
Launching is one size fits all. And unfortunately, many evergreen methods out there are also one size fits all, but our evergreen method is completely different. It’s personalized.
And that personalization acts as a catalyst for connection between you and your prospect.
So we’ve covered 3 key ingredients to a million dollar online course business.
- Offer and market alignment.
- Automated sales webinar.
- A consistent client experience.
➡➡➡ If you want to learn more about how to turn your online course into a six or even seven-figure business, then I invite you to join me on my free masterclass.
I’ll share exactly how I was able to generate millions in revenue from one online course with one automated webinar. So go ahead and click the link around this video. You can watch it free today.
I’ll see you next time on Scale With Success®: The Podcast
Are you ready to scale your online course business so you can impact the lives of more people and create real change in the world? Join us inside our signature program, Scale With Success®, where you’ll get the content, coaching, and community you need to successfully implement our proven process to help you scale so you can start reaping the rewards of running a highly profitable online course business. Scale With Success® is a multi-year group coaching experience built for online course creators who are ready to scale their business to and through $1 million with certainty as a result of having the right support at the right time. What are you waiting for?
Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale With Success® Accelerator — an online course designed to help you generate launch-sized revenue without lanching. If you want to learn MORE about our proven method for success, click here to watch my free masterclass. See you in there!