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The Course Creator's Guide to How to Fill the Gaps in your One-to-Many Pipeline

Dec 11, 2024

Have you ever tried running in the sand? To put it frankly it's a disaster. The effort you put into it is twice that effort for half the distance. That's the situation when you have gaps in the sales funnel. It's unfortunate that too many course creators are faced with this problem.

If you're creating a course, you're giving your business a perfect opportunity to reach more people with your expertise But how long has it been since you looked at your pipeline to identify areas of opportunity that you haven't yet tapped?

Check out the example course-creator process below for ideas and ideas.

Skip ahead:

Before we get into The significance of personalization

If you go through the following pipeline You'll see a strong emphasis on individualization.

Most people think that an automated pipeline is a non-personal process. However, in actual fact it is possible to create an endless number of ways to ensure that automated messages are personalized and thoughtful, while also improving efficiency and consistency.

Read on to discover steps that can not only make up the gaps in your current one-to-many pipeline, but also provide personalization options that are sure to please your leads and customers. Keep an in mind the methods and tools that could aid in bringing these personalized pipeline phases to life with no expense to you.

The pipe

    Prospecting    

This is about getting the attention of your intended viewers, however this could be a tough phase for course creators. Use the following two ideas to make sure you're reaching the right audience with the correct offer

Inbound marketing calls for you to create content, like blog posts, eBooks, guides, ads or anything else that can pique your target audience's interest. You're probably doing this already however, make sure that you're also using a sound SEO plan to secure your content. Making your content search-friendly for engines, in turn, enhances this part of your workflow and boosts your time and effort creating content. The search engines are crawling everything you write to display it in search results. The more optimized your content is, the easier your target viewers will discover you.

Forms and landing pages In the event that you're not utilizing these powerful tools, the prospects you're attracting with your stellar content will fall through the cracks. This is among the most costly gaps you'll encounter. To fill this pipe and to avoid losing potential customers that you've worked so hard to get, use landing pages to provide a concise description of the solution you have developed and utilize forms to capture contact information from leads with high intent. Store those leads in your CRM, and then nurture them towards a sale. Speaking of nurturing leads, we are now in our second sales pipeline phase.

    Automatic lead nurture    

When it comes to nurturing leads, it is a manual process that can result in a shocking amount of gaps. Why? Because every time an important reminder of a nurture is lost, a gap forms where leads can be lost. The majority of the time, teams don't ever realizing what damage has been done because they're too busy juggling other things. That's why your pipeline needs automated nurture routines.

Use business automation software to build nurture campaigns consisting of all the outreach you need to move your audience through your pipeline. For example, after someone fills out a online form Business automation will automatically initiate a welcome message that will provide resources that interest them and push to the next step in your sales process. Once it's triggered the audience will receive all of the messages they need precisely when they're looking for them. You and your staff don't need to do anything since the nurturing process happens automatically.

You may already be utilizing automated lead nurturing but this doesn't mean that you're not susceptible to gaps. Make sure you're not skipping every step of your automatic routines by incorporating valuable information throughout your emails and texts. Some of the most effective items to include are:

  • Personalized email to promote your company
  • Free eBook
  • Sneak peek of the course, and an accompanying feedback from a customer
  • Articles that can help with their areas of interest (Your small-business CRM may aid)
  • Free webinar invitation
  • Exclusive discounts

The entire list of resources is focused on providing value to your prospects, which is a priority for this phase in the pipeline. The most appealing aspect of this method is that the tools you select to provide leads with could be automated. The result is no gaps, less effort for you to do as well as a smooth experiences for leads.

    Lead qualification    

When people begin to interact in your content The qualification process begins. It's easy to improve and streamline this stage of your workflow by acquiring valuable data from your automation of nurture cycles. This data will inform the qualification process, so that you can identify those leads that are most active and want to buy a course from you.

Automated lead scoring was designed to rapidly and efficiently make your leads with high intent without any manually input from the team or you.

A well-designed, effective qualification phase looks something like this: Business automation or CRM software tracks every contact's interaction with you, including the frequency they check your emails, the links they click, what forms they submit and more. It assigns points to each positive action and subtracts points from negative ones, adds them up and signals the leads most likely to move on to next steps with your business.

    Webinar or live event    

The inclusion of live events as an element of your pipeline is a great opportunity to reach a wide range of people at once, but in a way that is personal and enjoyable. After you've decided who your most qualified leads are, automatically segment your leads into groups of their own. The rest of your leads will follow different nurturing paths until they're ready. However, the most qualified leads will be invited to join a free webinar.

In this event, you'll want to make sure you do three main things:

  • Give value to your attendees: You could offer your participants a glimpse of the concept that they will discover in your class. This is a pivotal element of making the event worthwhile and establishing their trust in the course offerings of your brand.
  • Feature a Q&A segment at this point, unanswered questions could be an obstacle that prevents leads from purchasing one of your programs, which is why it's important to schedule the time needed to answer questions. Since this live session will serve multiple prospects simultaneously, all in the group will benefit from questions that are asked.
  • Provide a CTA  to avoid a dead end or gap, this webinar should conclude in a logical next step, and this could be the ideal moment to encourage attendees to complete their purchase or schedule a conference call in case they want to learn more.

    Convert or further follow-up    

After your live event You'll be able to access a list of all registrants to allow you to communicate with them accordingly and make your pitch for sales.

That's where the majority businesses make a mistake. They forget that they have a whole group of people who are enthused enough about their products and courses to attend their live event. The key to ensuring the integrity of your process is to follow up with contacts regardless of whether they attended your webcast.

If you did have attendees If you did attend, set up an automatic email the following day, after the event. Send this email to say thank you the attendees for attending and provide your guests with a discount coupon code, and then send them to your website where they can make their purchase.

If you have a group of people who registered for an event, but did not attend, be sure to send an automated message to them as well. invite them to the next live event, or email an email with a replay of the event they did not attend. You could also provide a hyperlink to your checkout page, so they can skip a step to purchase the course once they're ready.

In a perfect world the majority of your contacts will convert following this process within your pipeline, however that's not always the scenario. Be patient, though! Simply segment those who didn't buy into another group so that you're able to continue nurturing their interest and add value to them until the time is right to make your next pitch.

    Onboard    

Have you secured the new clients? First step: Happy dance. Step 2: Boarding.

The process of onboarding is important, but it also happens to be among the most common mistakes. To avoid any missed steps during your onboarding process and also to cut down on hours of manual work choose to use an automated onboarding.

Automate every step of your onboarding so you don't risk leaving new customers unsatisfied and confused immediately after making the purchase. All you have to do is set up a campaign that's triggered by the purchase of a course. Fill it up with items that are necessary like:

  • Thank you and welcome to you email
  • How to access their brand new courses (ie. login credentials, how to set up the account for the first time, etc. )
  • Materials they can use to maximize the value of their brand new course
  • Invitations to a Group when their course offers group learning access or if you are part of a community with other students who they can join and collaborate with

Doing the extra-mile for your customers and business

The sales funnel could close just after a person has completed their onboarding materials, but that would result in missed opportunities as well as a non-finished procedure. If you're really looking to improve your pipeline's efficiency for success, consider rounding it out with these finishing touches:

    Check-in    

Keep in touch with students who have just had a chance to dive in and start learning. You can send them an email with an online form that allows them to discuss their experiences or have questions. Include an address to your support page and a few tutorials they could find beneficial. Following this first check-in make sure to check your inbox regularly to inform them about new course materials or to thank them for reaching certain milestones or request more information.

    Cross-sell and upsell    

One of the main reasons not to stop your pipeline too early is to avoid leaving money on the table. Customers who are happy tend to be regular customers. Therefore, you should make sure to include an option in the process of upselling or cross-sell current course customers.

Be sure to personalize your offer so it's relevant and appealing to each customer. Utilize their current course offerings previous downloads, their past courses, as well as other data you have about them to determine what upsells and cross-sells to present them with. The more targeted your sales messages are, the more likely your clients will act on them and then become repeat customers.

If, for instance, someone takes a social media marketing course with you, don't try to cross-sell them an online course about creating podcasts. Instead, invite participants to join a brand new training course in advanced social selling.

    Retrieve reviews and referrals    

Another expert tactic to boost sales is to get positive reviews and promising referrals. This will create a flow of new leads in your pipeline.

When someone completes the course, capitalize on their satisfaction by sending them a note that thanks them for choosing your company and invites the user to review your course or refer another person who may benefit from your course too.

We'll talk about technology and what's next

When you modify this nine-step method to suit your particular business needs but there's one aspect that you must not forget: the help of software. The most solid one-to-many sales pipelines depend on the right technology. It's the only way to be able to carry out this procedure over and over again and save time in manual input as well as create an outstanding and constant experience for your clients.

The following are the two key things you should be able to include in your tech stack that will help you on the path:

If you're ready to dive in and want to know exactly where the holes are in your pipeline, you can take advantage of this no-cost assessment. It will help you discover the opportunities you missed throughout the customer's lifecycle, and show you how to rectify them in order to ensure a superior customer experience every time.