Why you're not selling your online courses: Traffic vs. Conversion

In today's episode I'll be diving into a crucial topic for anyone selling online courses: why your courses might not be selling as well as you'd like.

There are usually two issues at play, and they go hand in hand. So I'll be focusing on these two main issues: traffic and conversion. Understanding these can make a huge difference in your sales. So, let's get started!

Show notes:
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Transcript

Welcome to the new School of Marketing podcast, the place for smart, simple strategies that will amplify your business results. Sharing practical tips, insider knowledge and actionable advice. Because marketing is something that every business owner can do. Now let's get started. Introducing your host, Bianca McKenzie, mum, lover of snow sports, camping, horse riding and in demand launch strategist and Facebook advertising knowledge bank.

Hello. Welcome back to the new School of Marketing podcast. I am so grateful to you for tuning in. And before we dive into this episode, I would love to pay my respect and acknowledgements to the Palawa people of Lutruwita who are the traditional owners of the land on which my business operates. And I pay my respects to their elders, past and present. I hope you're well. We are right in the middle of winter here in Tasmania and we're going through a bit of a cold spell. So every morning the landscape is white with frost and it's absolutely beautiful. And it's one of the reasons why I kind of love Tasmania so much. In a way, it reminds me of my home country of the Netherlands. And even though I'm venturing out in the cold each morning to feed all of the animals and it is like brutally cold to me, I just find myself appreciating the beauty of it. The days, I just beautifully sunny days and the nights are like frosty cold and winter in Tasmania is just stunning. But as I am recording this, I am sitting in my office with a cozy lap blanket, hugging my warm mug of tea just so that my hands actually stay warm because I don't know anyone who works on a computer and works with a keyboard. You know how cold your hands get on the keyboard and on the mouse. So, yeah, as I'm sitting here, I'm literally hugging my cup of tea. Anyway, in this episode I really want to talk to you about selling online courses and why your courses might not be selling as well as you'd like. And I want to focus on two main issues that I come across all the time and like, it comes down to numbers in a way. So I want to work on traffic and conversion and when you understand these two, it can really make a big difference to your sale or your sales, so to say. So, let me share a quick story. When I first launched one of my online courses, I really struggled to get sales. I was putting in so much effort and I was. I thought I was doing all the right things and in a way I was. I just didn't know certain numbers and it wasn't until I actually looked at my traffic and then my conversion rates, that, one, I realized where I was going wrong, and two, I also realized how I could fix it. So I made some changes, and that's how things turn around. And I do this with every single client that I take on as well. I look at all the numbers, I analyze all of the numbers of what they already have, and then I basically, I can almost predict what's going to happen when they work with me as an ads manager. So, yeah, let's look at that. Let's first talk about traffic. So, in the context of online courses, traffic basically means the number of people, the number of visitors going to your website or your landing page. And if you don't have enough traffic, it's actually really challenging to make enough sales because not enough people are seeing your offer. It kind of makes sense, doesn't it? Like, you need eyeballs. You need people to go through your funnels. And that could be a simple funnel from like an application or a phone call. And it sounds simple. It's not always that simple. Or it can be a more complex funnel where you have an email nurture sequence and a launch calendar where you only open day, open cart on like a number of times a year. Like, it can be as simple and as complex as you want to make it. And it depends on the offer as well, obviously. But yes, traffic, you need enough people through your funnels. And a number of traffic issues that I come across a lot is like a low number of website visitors or a low number of people going into the funnel. So if you're doing a launch, you almost need to flood that funnel, whether that is going through an email nurture sequence or like when you do a webinar, like you almost need to flood that to be able to get enough output. Like, it literally sounds so non human, but it comes down to numbers. It is input. And then there's like a formula and then there's the output. I don't know, it sounds like so not exciting when you think about it that way, but it does add up. Like when you look at the numbers time and time again, I see this when I work with clients. So, yeah, you might not be getting enough visitors to your landing page. You might not be getting enough visitors or enough people entering your funnel. You might have ineffective organic strategies. Whether that is like search engine optimization, whether that is social media, whether that is networking, it's all the pieces that people refer to as free marketing. I don't necessarily see that as free marketing because you're putting in time, but it is like it's organic marketing. And like there's all these pieces that in a way prevent you from having enough traffic. And then one of them is also paid ads. But that's like a, that's a separate side of things. So if you wanted to increase your traffic, there's a lot of things that you can do. One thing is paid, but there are also a lot of organic things that you can do. So you can work on your SEO, your search engine optimization. I am not an SEO expert. I always refer people to Kate Toon. I will pop her details in the show notes. Just a few little steps so you can do keyword research so that you know what your audience is looking for. Like what are they already searching for in terms of your course? Like is it something that they are looking for on Google? And then what you can do is optimize your website's SEO, like on page SEO. And I don't want to go into too much detail here because like I said, I'm not an SEO expert, but there's things like meta tags and headings and content that you can really focus on that will help your audience find you in a way. And then there's also off page SEO, which is building backlinks, which is things like writing articles for other places so they link back to your website. That's what backlinks mean. I will pop Kate Toon's details or her a free SEO course in the show notes because that's a really good start. Another way that you can increase your traffic would be content marketing. So blogging, and that will help with SEO as well because it has content. So you can write posts that really talk about what your audience is desiring. I don't like to say pain points. I guess it is pain points. You know, they're at a certain stage right now and they are, they want a solution, whether they really know that they do or whether they don't know, because some people are problem aware and not solution aware, some people are not. Like they're solution aware and they're looking for the solution. So blogging can be really good to help people find your content, especially with optimize SEO, and then you can lead them into your course. Another thing is podcasting. It's the same thing, especially if you use transcripts, which in a way are kind of like blogs because you talking about the content and Google can find this. Another way of content marketing is creating video content. So you can start a YouTube channel or do it organically on social media and try to improve your search engine rankings that way. So in a way, all of your pieces, whether it's your website, your landing pages, your blogs, your content, all of the pieces need to lead to one specific outcome like you to that funnel. So if you think about it in a way that you have all your content, whether that is social media content, blogging, podcasting, video content, that all sits at the top, and the more quality content you put out there, and I'm saying quality because it's not just content for content's sake. The more quality content you put out there, the more doors you are opening for traffic to come to your website and into your funnel. The next one I want to talk about is social media marketing. So I know it's really hard to be everywhere, but you can repurpose a lot of content. So let me just start off by saying that you don't have to create new content for every single platform, but social media marketing. Engage with your audience by sharing valuable content, respond to their comments, participate and talk in discussions. Have DM's it's not just a one way street anymore. It used to be a little bit more like that, but it's not. So when you are putting out content, whether that is on your website, through blogs or through a podcast, and also on social media, make sure that it is actual valuable content. And don't just put the content out there and then just like disappear. You want to start connections, you want to start building that relationship. And social media is that it's meant to be social. So to use it just to dump content and then disappear again, that's not really what it is used for. If you are not willing to engage on social media and to really have that relationship, then I would say don't go on social media or find a different kind of more passive strategy for social media and instead focus on blogging, on building that valuable content. But if you don't spend the time to actually have conversations, then I'm not sure if social media is the right place for you. And also, of course, consider running ads and like spend some money on the platforms where your target audience spends their time. I am going to say this with a caveat, because I want to talk about traffic as well as conversion. So let's hold off on this piece for a little bit because, yeah, it's a bit of the chicken versus egg situation. There is traffic, there's conversion, and they both need to work hand in hand. So let's hold off. But obviously to get more traffic, you can run paid ads and other ways are partnerships, collaborations like get together with some people. Like there's bundles, there's summits, there's ways you can guest blog on other people's websites, especially like not direct competitors obviously, because that's not really going to work. But people that share the same audience but don't have offer the same solution or products. So for me, that could be someone who offers SEO, so they could write an article on my blog about SEO and I could write an article on their blog about Facebook advertising or potentially like Google advertising, how the two work really well together. They're not in competition. So think outside the box. How can you work with others in the space to broaden up your audience and potentially get more traffic? You can also partner with influencers if you really wanted to. It's a bit of a minefield to navigate, to be honest. But how can you get in front of more of your ideal audience and who already has that audience that you could potentially tap into? So there's a few ideas for that. Now I want to move on to conversion problems. So whenever I speak to someone who is not selling enough of their courses or their courses are not selling, I look at two things, traffic problems versus conversion problems, and the two really go hand in hand. So let's look at conversion. Conversion refers to turning your website visitors, or potentially your landing page visitors or your funnel visitors, I guess, into paying customers. You can have all the traffic in the world, but if you're not converting that traffic into sales, obviously something's not right. So this is why there's that chicken and egg situation. It's like, okay, well, if you have all the traffic in the world, like you're getting a really good amount of traffic, but you're not converting, then that's where the issue is. But you need to work out first what the issue is. Are you not getting enough traffic or are you not getting enough conversions? And that's often a tricky one for people. Now let's look at some conversion issues. So some common conversion issues that I see are really just an unclear value proposition. So someone finds you, they get in touch with you, like as in not directly, but they look at your website and they are not entirely sure what youre course is going to do for them. And this happens a lot when you build a sales page and you have all your inclusions there, like all your features, it's got five videos and it's got three checklists and like that kind of thing. But what is it really going to do for the person who does the course? They don't care that it's going to be five videos, they want an outcome that is going to solve their problem. So if your value proposition, your messaging isn't right and it doesn't really paint that picture where they are at now and that imagine when you are and then, you know, you fill in the blanks. That outcome, if you don't communicate that well, you'll lose people. You'll have a conversion problem because people do not see the value in a way to spend money on the course that you created. Another one could be a poor website or user experience. So if someone goes to your landing page and it's actually, or even your sales page and it's actually really hard to find the sales button or, you know, to give you money and trust me, you'd think, well, why would that happen? Surely you'd put a button on there. Trust me, there are a lot of people that somehow are hindering their sales because they don't make it easy for people to buy from them either. You have to go through 50 million hoops and it's just not easy sometimes. And I come across this quite a lot at the moment because I do mentoring with local businesses and it's quite common in local business to make a phone call. Nothing wrong with that. There is absolutely a time and a space for that. And I actually wish that more businesses would offer this home, Facebook, because you can't get on the phone with anyone at Facebook. So yeah, there's a time and a place for that. But not offering other options can also hinder your sales. So if a phone call is the only way that people can get in touch with you and buy from you, you might also be hindering sales. Making it easy to make a booking through an online platform can actually increase your sales. So a poor website or a poor user experience, if it's really, really hard for someone to buy from you, that will also block your sales. And you might be like, oh, how am I making it hard? I've gone through it all and I can do it all and go through it. From a user perspective, is it actually easy or are there too many steps? Are there too many pieces of forms to fill out and another button to click and another page and another page. And so the less steps means the less barriers to entry. So yeah, another common issue that I come across is just the lack of trust and the lack of credibility. And this is where the traffic side and what I've spoken about before comes in to blogging, podcasting, video content, social media content, really showing that, you know what you're talking about. Sharing of valuable content. That is one piece of building trust. Having a website that looks somewhat decent and not like shady and having trust icons so that, you know, people know that if they are going to spend money and something isn't quite right, that they're not scammed. Having information on your website that talks about you, a lot of businesses that. And again, this comes back to some of the mentoring I'm doing at the moment. There is no about page. I don't know who I'm dealing with. I don't know that this is, you know, a one man, like a one man band and it doesn't matter. Like, you can have a team, but I want to know that I'm actually buying from a person and nothing. I think we might have been a little bit in the past, like, you know, been taught that looking bigger is a good thing. And I don't think it actually is. Not in a small business sense, not when you are purchasing an online course and you're learning from a person because, you know, let's face it, you're not being taught by a corporation. You are taught by a person. Even when I worked in universities, it was important that the actual academics and the actual lecturers came out to schools and for example, on open days that they were right there. So that the people that were attending university and university in a way, is like an institution and somewhat sometimes faceless. But on the open day and on school visits and all the work that we did for student recruitment, the academics would be there so that you knew who was going to show up in the classroom and teaching you right there. And we need to remember that when we do online courses as well, we are learning from a person. So when I go to a sales page for a course or a website, I want to know who I'm learning from. So trust and credibility is another one. And then trust and credibility can also come from things like reviews, testimonials, case studies. How have you helped other people? What are people saying about you? And as uncomfortable as it is to ask for that, you need to ask for that because that builds trust. Whenever I go and buy clothes, I go and look at the reviews because I want to know, is this actually, like, does it fall smaller? Is it like, you know, does it. Is it the right fit? How does it kind of look on my body? So I want to see as many photos, for starters. But also I want to know from other people that have bought if the quality is good, if the fit is good. So I'm talking about clothes now. So it's slightly different. But really, reviews and testimonials is another one for credibility. Now, how can you improve your conversion rates? I've already given you some ideas, but make sure that your messaging is clear. Make sure that it's concise. Make sure that your visitors immediately understand what it is that you offer and how it's going to benefit them. What is it going to do for them? How is it going to solve their problem, their pain point? Or how is it going to match their desire? Because not everything is a pain point. Some of, some things are just like a want, not a need. So how is your course going to benefit them? And then you can also highlight the unique selling points of your course. So you can say like, you know, in five minutes or like whatever, like, or in like in less than an hour. If you have some videos, you will walk away with blah, make it sound, make it sound really good. Obviously it has to be true. And it could be like, watch the videos where I actually physically demonstrate something. Because, you know, some things are better taught in video, some things are better taught like audio or reading. Everyone actually has a different learning method, so it's not necessarily applicable to everyone. But then you can highlight unique selling selling points. For example, with my program, the aimful ads academy, one of my unique selling points is that my attendees or my students get basically unlimited access to one on one private calls with me. So that is a massive selling point for me because every week they can book a call with me privately. You don't get that in a lot of programs. So I have to make sure that I communicate that really well, that it's not just a course and you do it by yourself and like, there's no interaction and there's no way to ask questions. And yes, there is a group call as well, a group call option, but the one on one aspect is very unique in the space that I'm teaching in. So really highlight the unique selling points of your course. I also touched on the user experience. So really just make sure that your website is easy to navigate. Make sure it's mobile friendly. A lot of people forget that because they build their pages, their websites, as well as their landing pages on a desktop computer. And they don't always check what it is like on a mobile. So make sure that it's mobile friendly because a lot of people will be looking at it on a mobile and a lot of people will be buying on a mobile. If the layout is confusing, people will leave. If it like makes no sense to them. The user experience is not good. People will leave. And simple thing, and I don't always check this, I should, is make sure that your website speed is actually pretty fast. Like a slow site will just frustrate people and they always leave if they have to wait for something to load and it's just not loading. They're like, oh, it's not working. I'm out of here. So another one, build trust, have testimonials, reviews. Another way to build trust is to offer money back guarantees. So if people are like really worried, you can literally say, you know, try this for two weeks. If it's not what you want, you get a, like a money back guarantee. Very few people, if the product is good, very, very few people will take you up on that, but it will really reduce that sort of worry in them. So it's definitely an option. And then sales funnels. I don't really want to make this a sales funnel class, but think about the journey that your customer is going to take. Most people will not hand over a big chunk of money from reading a blog post to then going to a sales page or just literally direct to a sales page where the price point is like high three or potentially four figures. Most people will just not do it. So this is where a funnel comes in and where you will find like lead magnets, like for example, free ebooks or webinars to capture someone's email address. And then you can nurture those leads. So you get someone's email and then you start sending them, sending them regular emails that in a way give them more valuable content because they might not have seen all your pieces. So you give them valuable content, so you build that authority, showing them that you know what you're talking about as well as building that trust because you can weave in testimonials, case studies and yeah, implementing like email marketing sequences to keep your audience engaged and to really kind of guide them towards buying from you. So, yes, that's like a whole conversion piece. So we've talked a bit, talked a bit about traffic, we've talked a bit about conversion and the balance between the two is really, really important. And this is why I keep saying chicken versus egg. Traffic and conversion basically go hand in hand. So you need to have a steady stream of visitors and you need to have a well optimized site to convert those visitors into customers. But it's like, where do you start? So it's a little bit of a dance. You send some traffic or like a decent amount of traffic. And then you look at your conversions. What is it doing? And then technically, what you should be able to do is calculate, if I send double that amount, am I going to get, you know, double the amount of sales? You should be able to look at those numbers, and technically, it should all work out like that. It doesn't always. So what you want to be looking at. So you want to send, I don't know, like a thousand people through your funnel. Ideally, let's start with 100 and then look at the numbers, but ideally a thousand. And then how many people purchased? And here's another thing to remember. Course, sales conversions tend to hover between one to 3%. And you might go, oh, I can beat that statistic. Well, maybe, maybe you can. Look, maybe you can. Here's the thing. Your first round, or maybe your first two rounds of your course launch will probably be quite good. If you have a warm audience, and this is because you have a warm audience, because people have, in a way, been waiting for it. After that first or potentially second launch, you've exhausted your warm audience, and you need new people in your audience. If you don't have the traffic and you're not adding new people into your audience to warm up, to nurture, your sales will drop. It's just what it is. The other thing I want to say is that I have been doing this for ten years, over ten years, and I follow people's launches. I follow their launch debriefs. I look at their reports. And over the past ten years, every single person that I'm following that has six and seven figure launches has a conversion rate of between one to 3%. It is just pretty standard. So that's what you want to be aiming for, and that's what you need to do your numbers with. You need to look at, well, what if I get 1% conversion? Like, you know, how many, if I get this many people into my funnel and I get a 1% conversion, what's the outcome of that? 2% and 3%. You got to look at those numbers. And so if you want, like, x amount of sales, which equals x amount of money, you need to do the sums of, well, what, how many leads do I need if I get a 1% conversion, how many leads do I need if I get a 2% conversion? How many leads do I get when I. To get a 3% conversion? And evergreen funnels tend to dip up and down even more. Launches are slightly more predictable, but they are also more volatile in a way that you're putting all your eggs in a basket up front, not knowing what the outcome is going to be. So there's pros and cons for both. I tend to do a mixture of evergreen and launches because launches tend to convert at a higher rate. But it also is that. Yeah, that scary factor of, oh, I'm going to put all my money towards Facebook ads, not knowing if the people that come into my funnel are going to convert. So this is where it's so important to know how many leads you need. Know, in a way, what your conversion rates are. And then, look, things change. There's economic situations, things do change. But overall, it is a numbers game. Overall, it comes down to having enough traffic and being able to convert that traffic and constantly optimizing your sales page, constantly optimizing your sales methods. And this is why a lot of people actually do webinars, because webinars have, it has that factor of authority. Like you're building or you're showcasing that you know what you're talking about. You're building trust because you're showing up, you're talking to people right there and then. And it creates that hype as well that, you know, you. It's that live element that does help. So, yes, very, very tricky. Over the years, I have worked with so many people, and it's usually a traffic problem or a conversion problem. It's so easy to pinpoint, like, okay, well, it's because we didn't get enough leads. We got, you know, we still got the same amount of conversions, but we didn't get the right amount of leads. Sometimes your lead costs might be higher or, you know, Facebook ads are not always playing right. So it's always that two sided aspect, traffic versus conversions. Sometimes we get the leads, but if you're not getting the conversions, it's like, oh, what's going on? What's not right in my funnel? And I, with people who are starting out with selling courses and ads, it is often, the issue is often both they don't get enough traffic, but once they get the traffic piece sorted, it often comes to light that often they also don't have the conversion rate. So gotta go back through the funnel. Where are the missing pieces? How can we optimize the sales page? How can we really nurture people so that they work towards buying that they are literally one those, you know, those oh, my God. Hell yes. Kind of customers. So it is usually not a straightforward case, but you need to look at your traffic. You need to look at your conversions and keep measuring and testing. And it is a long road. Most people that are now six, seven figure launch and business owners. Their first launches were usually okay, like I said, warm audiences. They might have sold like two spots, three spots, four spots, five spots. They've been building on it. Now they might get 500. But at the start it was, it was small numbers, and it's all got to build on it. It's persistent. Keep going, continue with it. And that's literally the key. So little recap. Not getting enough traffic and not converting the traffic. Those are the two primary reasons that you're not selling your online course. So you can focus on organic methods like SEO, content marketing, social media, collaborations, partnerships. So work on all of that to boost your traffic. You can also use paid ad to boost your traffic, but you want your conversions to work as well. So work on your value proposition, look at the user experience and incorporate credibility and trust to improve your conversions. So, yeah, some homework for you. Go and have a look at all of it. Have a look at your numbers, have a look at how much traffic. Have a look at your conversions. And if you have zero conversions, you probably just absolutely have not had enough traffic. If you have not had like a hun, at least a hundred, really, ideally a thousand people through your funnel, keep working on the traffic piece because you haven't got enough data. So start working from there and just keep going. Keep refining, but keep looking at the numbers. Don't drop everything and go, oh, well, this is not selling. I'm going to try something new. Most likely the reason is that you have not had enough traffic to even get to one to 3% conversion. So keep going. And I would love to hear your experiences. I would love to hear your questions. Please feel free to reach out to me if you want me to have a look at things. I do audit funnels and things like that as well. So I would really love to hear from you if one, if this is helpful because, yeah, there's so many people that build courses and they kind of just sit there gathering digital dust because they've tried once, twice, and most likely it's traffic. And obviously conversions link to that. All right, I'm gonna wrap up. My tea is almost cold, by the way. It's kept my hands nice and warm, though, but it's not very drinkable right now. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the new School of Marketing podcast. I hope it was helpful, and I can't wait to share more marketing tips with you next week. If you are ready to take your business to the next level with Facebook and Instagram advertising. Make sure that you visit newschoolofmarketing.com to download practical, free resources. Plus, remember to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Until next time, take care and market your business every day.