If you’ve been struggling to sell your online course, you’re not alone and I can help. It’s normal for a business to have variability in their sales day to day – even if they have an automated funnel – but OVERALL sales should be increasing each month. So, while one day you might sell 2 courses and the next you might sell 6 courses – if you tally up the total number of sales for each month, things should be moving upward.
If they’re not, don’t panic. Just listen to this episode ALL the way through because I guarantee your temporary revenue dip is caused by one of these three reasons – which I’m about to reveal today, so stay tuned.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, 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. I’m sharing revealing insights about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join me here to discover the tough decisions I’ve had to make, the biggest failures I’ve had to bounce back from, and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. I’m so grateful that I have the chance to tell you everything right here on Scale With Success®: The Podcast. Let’s get started.
When a business has a revenue dip, that’s an indicator that your business is experiencing distress. The good news is this distress CAN be temporary, but only if you take action. What I don’t want you to do is make that revenue dip send you into an emotional spiral where you make it mean something that it doesn’t.
Revenue dips do not mean your business is doomed…
…it doesn’t mean you’ll never sell anything again…
…it doesn’t mean everyone hates you and you’ve entered your flop era.
Today, I’m sharing three things that YOU can do (and that don’t require TONS of work) in order to get your revenue moving back in the right direction.
#1 Get Visible
Just as a plant needs sunlight to flourish, your business needs visibility to grow. And I get it, sometimes life happens and we start focusing on other things – taking us away from tasks that introduce us to new people and spread awareness about our brand.
If you’re like me, then sometimes it feels like you have multiple things happening in your business pulling you in different directions all at the same time.
Whenever I begin to experience that kind of overwhelm I know that I need to get realigned with my priorities.
Priorities are a great way to get clarity on what actually needs to be done – and usually it’s a lot less than you think.
Being a course creator and having a personal brand means that visibility is a non-negotiable. Hiding behind “busy work” and “hoping” new people will magically find out about you is not an effective way to generate brand awareness.
You need to share content consistently. If you want to run ads, fine. But, those ads shouldn’t completely replace your social media presence.
Organic content can feed your paid traffic and make your ads perform even better…and if you don’t want to mess with ads at all – that’s also ok. We have clients now that are generating four, five, and even six figures per month from selling their course using their Profitable Sales Engine’s that they built and they don’t spend a dime on advertising.
There has never been a better time to grow your business on social media – especially since all the popular platforms are heavily promoting short form content. When you create one short form piece of content (less than 60s) you can literally post that same piece of content EVERYWHERE. LinkedIn, TikTok, YT Shorts, IG, etc. Post one video daily and watch your engagement spike.
I like to batch create content and then drip one video out each day, but I also listen to my body’s energy levels. Sometimes I create 20 videos at a time and others I create 7 videos at a time. What makes this possible is that I have a running list of content ideas inside a google sheet. Anytime I have an idea, I write it down. So, I can quickly create all the content I need for the month in an hour or two.
Course Creators burn out on creating content when it feels like you’re working hard and not seeing big results right out of the gate. They become obsessed with likes, number of views and they think those numbers are set in stone – so they give up after a week or so and then of course they have no visibility and no sales and they tell themselves that social media doesn’t work for them.
It’s not that social media doesn’t work for you – it’s that you’re not allowing it to work for you.
You don’t need 100,000 people in your audience to sell 1 course – you need 1 person. So, don’t get caught up in metrics that don’t matter. If you have ONE person who saw your 60s video, you have ONE potential buyer. So, get out there and keep going.
#2: Increase Connection
Showing up each day is important, but it will be even MORE effective if you are creating content that connects directly to the exact problems they’re experiencing.
The key to reversing a temporary sales dip EVEN IF you have a tiny audience is that each piece of content you create needs to connect with the person you’re trying to reach. Doing this allows you to build an audience full of people experiencing the exact problems your course can solve. Educate people about their problems and describe their problems using the same language that they would use if they were describing it to you. This practice activates connection and let’s your audience know that you get them.
Don’t waste your time trying to convince someone they have problems they don’t know they have. Once they’re inside your online course, then you can begin to educate them about the root cause of their issues and lead them through your own step by step process to overcome their problems and have the transformation they’re looking to have…but the content you make for social media shouldn’t be about any of that.
Why? They’re not ready. Your Profitable Sales Engine™ is the bridge between educating your audience about the problems they KNOW they have and enrolling them in your course where they can learn about the problems they don’t know they have.
The concept of connection requires you to meet someone where they are. If someone is suffering because they need water, but all they can talk about is the headaches they’ve been having – you are wasting your time holding out a glass of water and telling them to drink. Instead, get their attention by speaking about headaches and educate them about what they are, what mistakes people make when they try to get rid of headaches, and why those other strategies don’t work. THAT will slow their scroll and THAT will allow you to increase your revenue from a tiny audience, helping more and more people along the way.
#3: Inspire Action
Now the key to making that content is to include a CTA in each post, leading people to your Profitable Sales Engine™ where they can learn more about your unique process and enroll in your program.
Our most successful clients (I’m talking about those that are making five or even six figures per month WITHOUT paid traffic) include a Call to Action in EVERY piece of content they post and we do the exact same thing to grow our own mutli-million dollar online course business.
The majority of your audience on social media will NOT see all of your videos. So, it’s important that you make the most of the attention you have from them, when you have it.
Now, if you don’t have a Profitable Sales Engine™ and you want some help attracting and converting leads into sales, there is still time to enroll in our Accelerator program where we’ll help you do just that. Trust me, it’s WAY more fun to create content online when you realize that everytime you do, you can make a sale.
To recap, here are three ways to boost your online course revenue:
1. Get visible by making showing up for your audience a top priority.
2. Increase connection with your audience by speaking directly to the specific problems your ideal customer is actively experiencing.
3. Inspire action by giving a clear call to action in each piece of content.
I appreciate you being here and make sure to tune in next time for another episode of Scale With Success® The Podcast.
Are you sick and tired of launching and looking for a proven method to generate consistent revenue from your online course on auto-pilot?
Sign up for my free masterclass, “How To Generate Launch-Sized Revenue Without Launching” and I’ll show you how our clients are making MORE money in LESS time than they ever did while launching.
If making sales everyday in a way that is completely automated and doesn’t require paid advertising sounds good to you, then click the link around this episode and sign up for my free masterclass today.
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!
