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A Course Creator's Guide: What to do to Fill the Gaps in your One-to-Many Pipeline

Dec 11, 2024

Have you ever run in the sand? Simply put, it's terrible. The effort you put into it is twice that effort in order to cover the same distance. It's exactly how it is when there are the gaps in the sales funnel. And unfortunately, far more course makers have to deal with this issue.

In making a course, you're offering your company an opportunity to connect with the masses with your skills however, when was the last time you had a look at your current pipeline and identified the gaps and opportunities that aren't being tapped?

Take a look at the course creator pipeline below for tips and ideas.

Skip ahead:

Prior to diving in: The importance of personalization

As you check out the next pipeline, you'll notice an emphasis on personalization.

Many people believe that an automated pipeline is a non-personal process. But in reality there is an innumerable number of ways to ensure that automated messages are personalized and thoughtful as well as improve the quality and efficiency.

Find out how to take strategies that will not only make up the gaps in your current one-to-many pipeline, but also offer personalization opportunities which will please customers and your prospects. Don't forget to keep an an eye out for the techniques and technologies that will assist in bringing these customized pipelines to life with no expense to you.

The pipeline

    Prospecting    

This phase is all about keeping the attention of your intended audience, but this can be an extremely difficult phase for course creators. Use the following two ideas to ensure that you're addressing people who are interested with the correct offer

Inbound marketing demands that you create content for example, blog posts eBooks guides, articles, and anything that will pique your target audience's interest. You're probably doing this already, but make sure you're also using a sound SEO plan to secure the content you create. Optimizing your content to be found by search engines in turn optimizes this phase of your process and increases the effort you're putting into making content. Search engines are going to crawl everything you write to display it in search results. The more the content you have optimized more easily your intended people will be able to discover you.

Forms and landing pages: If you're not using these tools to your advantage, the prospects you're attracting by your excellent content may slip through the cracks. This is one of the largest gaps you could run into. To plug this pipeline hole and to avoid losing potential customers who you've tried to connect with make use of landing pages that convey a compelling story of your product and make use of forms to capture contact information from lead leads that are highly interested. Store those leads in your CRM and nurture them towards a sale. Speaking of nurturing leads, this brings us to our second sales pipeline phase.

    Automatic lead nurture    

In the case of nurturing leads, it is a manual process that can result in a shocking amount of gaps. Why? Because every time an important nurturing message is not remembered and a gap is created where leads could be lost. This often happens without teams even realizing the damage being created because they're taking care of other things. That's why your pipeline needs automated nurture routines.

Utilize business automation software to create nurture campaigns that consist of the various outreach efforts you need to move your customers through your sales funnel. In the case of a user who submits a request on your site the business automation software will launch a welcome series which will offer resources that are of interest to them, and then push to the next step in your sales process. Once it's triggered, your audience will get all the necessary messages at the exact time they're looking for them. And you and your team don't need to think about anything because nurture is taking place automatically.

It is possible that you are already using automatic lead nurturing, but this doesn't mean that you're not susceptible to gaps. You must ensure that you're not missing any steps in your automatic processes by incorporating relevant content in every text and email. A few effective things to include are:

  • Personalized email to introduce your business
  • No cost eBook
  • Sneak peek of your course as well as client testimonials
  • Helpful articles related to the interests of their customers (Your small business CRM can aid)
  • Webinar invitation for free
  • Exclusive discounts

All of these resources are dedicated to providing value for the leads you are nurturing and that is the primary goal to this particular phase of the pipeline. The most appealing aspect of this process is that the tools you select to nurture leads with can be automated. The result is the absence of gaps, lower effort for you to do, and a consistent experience for your leads.

    Lead qualification    

Once people are beginning to respond with your messages and begin to engage with your content, the qualifying phase begins. It's easy to improve the process and speed up your workflow by acquiring valuable information from automated nurture sequences. This data will inform the process of qualification so that you can segment those leads that are most active and are ready to purchase an online course.

Automated lead scoring is designed to speedily and precisely make your leads with high intent without manual input from you or your team.

A well-designed, effective qualification phase looks something similar to this: Business automation or CRM software tracks every contact's interactions with your brand, such as how often they open your emails, the hyperlinks they click on, which types of forms they fill out and much more. Then, it assigns points for every positive action as well as subtracts points for any bad actions, then adds these up, and determines those leads who are likely to take the next step in your brand.

    Webinar or live event    

Making a live event an element of your pipeline is an excellent opportunity to reach a wide range of people simultaneously however in a manner that is personal and enjoyable. After you've decided which leads you're most likely to be will be, you can automatically separate the leads into their respective groups. 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 need to ensure you've done three main things:

  • Provide value: Consider giving your attendees a sneak peek of a concept they might discover in your class. It's a crucial element of making the webinar worth their time as well as ensuring they trust the course offerings of your brand.
  • Feature a Q&A segment: At this stage, unanswered questions could be the obstacle that keeps prospects from buying one of your classes, therefore it's crucial to set aside time to respond. Also, since the live presentation is designed to serve multiple potential customers simultaneously, all in the group will benefit by the queries asked.
  • Give an CTA : To avoid a dead end or gap, this webinar must conclude with an appropriate next step and this could be the perfect time to invite guests to make a purchase or schedule a conference call in case they want to learn more about.

    Convert it or do a following-up    

When you've completed your live event will give you access to the list of participants to allow you to communicate with the attendees in a timely manner and create your selling pitch.

This is where a lot of businesses miss a step. They do not realize they've got an entire group of people who are interested enough in their offerings and training courses to register for their online event. One of the most important things to do to ensure that your pipeline remains airtight is to contact your contacts whether or not they actually participated in your webinar.

If you did have attendees If you did attend, set up an automatic email the following day, after the ceremony. Utilize this email to express your appreciation to the attendees for attending, provide your guests with a discount code and send them to your site where they can make their purchase.

If you have a group of participants who signed up for an event, but did not get to it, make sure to send an automated message to them, too. Invite them to attend your next live event or send an email with a replay of the event they did not attend. You can also include a link to the checkout page of your site so they don't have to go through the entire process and purchase your course if they're interested.

If you were in a perfect world, the majority of your contacts will convert after this step through your pipeline. However, that's not always the situation. Do not fret, however! You can simply divide those who did not decide to buy into a new group so you're able to continue nurturing them and provide value until you are ready to make your next pitch.

    Onboard    

Did you secure the new clients? The first step is to dance happy. Step 2: Boarding.

It's a huge deal to be onboarding and it's also a chance to be among the most common gaps. In order to avoid any missteps during your onboarding process as well as to avoid time make sure you use automatic onboarding.

Automate every step of your onboarding process so that you're not leaving potential clients confused and unhappy immediately after making a purchase. The only thing you need to create is an onboarding campaign which is triggered by a course purchase. Then, fill it with items that are necessary, such as:

  • Welcome and Thank for your email
  • How to access their brand new account (ie. login credentials, how to setup their account and so on. )
  • Materials they can use to make the most of their course
  • Invitations to a Group when their course offers groups learning or you have a community of other students they should connect and collaborate with

Going the extra mile for your company and customers

Your sales pipeline may end when someone has received all the onboarding material, however this could result in lost opportunities and an unfinished procedure. If you're looking to improve your pipeline's efficiency to be successful, you should consider completing it up with these final touches:

    Check-in    

Keep in touch with newly registered students after they've had a chance to dive into the course and begin studying. Send an email featuring an application form for them to share their experience or inquire about their experience, along with and a link to your help page, and some tutorials they might find helpful. Once you have checked in make sure to check your inbox regularly to inform the students of new materials for their courses and to congratulate them for completing certain milestones or request more comments.

    Upsell and cross-sell    

The main reason to not stop your pipeline too early is that you risk losing money. The most satisfied customers are likely to become loyal customers. So, make sure to include a step in your process to upsell or cross-sell your current customers.

But remember to customize your message to make it relevant and appealing to each person. Utilize their current course offerings, past downloads, and any other details you can gather about them to determine what upsells and cross-sells to make. The more tailored the sales pitch is, the more likely your customers will take action and become repeat buyers.

In the case of example, if a person is taking a social media marketing course from you, don't attempt to convince them with a course on the idea of starting podcasts. Instead, ask them to take a new class on social selling that is more advanced.

    Gather reviews and referrers    

Another expert tactic to boost revenue is to secure some positive reviews and promising referrals. This will create a flow of fresh leads within your pipeline.

When someone completes one of your courses take advantage of their learning positive experience by sending a thank you message which thanks them for choosing your business, and also encourages them to leave a review or refer someone else who could benefit from your course too.

Let's talk tech and what's next

As you customize this 9-step method to suit your particular business needs There's one element to remember software. The most solid one-to-many sales pipelines are dependent on having the appropriate technology. This is what allows you to execute this process time and time again, save hours of manual input, and create a stellar and consistent experience for your audience.

There are two key items you need to have in your tech stack that will help you on the way:

If you're looking to take a leap and to find out exactly what holes are in your pipeline, then take this complimentary test. This assessment will allow you to identify potential opportunities that you haven't tapped into within your customer journey and help you fix them to ensure a superior customer experience every time.