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A Course Creator's Handbook: What to do to make up the gaps in your One-to-Many Pipeline

Dec 11, 2024

Have you ever ran in the sand? Simply put it's a disaster. You're putting in twice the effort to get half the distance. It's exactly the situation with holes in your sales pipeline. And unfortunately, far too many course designers have to deal with this issue.

When making a course, you're providing your business with the chance to engage the masses with your skills however, when was the last time you looked at your current pipeline and identified areas of opportunity that you haven't yet tapped?

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

Skip ahead:

Before we dive in: The importance of personalization

As you check out the pipeline below You'll see a strong emphasis on individualization.

People often believe that an automated pipeline is a non-personal process. However, in actual fact, there are an infinite variety of methods to ensure that automated messages are thoughtful and personal, while also improving consistency and conversion.

Find out how to take strategies that will not only help you fill in the holes of the current pipeline that is one-to-many, however, they also present opportunities for personalization that are sure to please your leads and customers. And don't forget to keep in mind the techniques and technologies that will 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 target public, but it can be a tough phase for course creators. Consider the following suggestions to ensure that you're addressing your intended audience by offering the right offer:

Inbound marketing demands you to create content, like blog posts, eBooks guides, videos, or anything else that can pique your target audience's interest. It's likely that you're already doing this, but make sure you're also implementing a solid SEO plan to secure your content. Optimizing your content to be found by search engines enhances this part of your process and increases your time and effort making your content. Search engines will be crawling whatever you create and serving it as outcomes, and the more optimised your content more easily your intended people will be able to locate your site.

Landing pages and forms If you're not making use of these effective tools that you're drawing in prospects through your amazing content could slip through the cracks. It's one of the largest gaps you could run into. In order to close this gap and to avoid losing potential customers who you've tried to connect with make use of landing pages that provide a concise description of your solution and use forms to gather contact information from high-intent leads. Store those leads in your CRM and nurture to make a sale. When we talk about nurturing leads, this brings us to our second sales pipeline phase.

    Automatic lead nurturing    

In the case of nurturing leads, doing it manually could result in an alarming quantity of gaps. Why? Because every time an important nurture message is forgotten there is a gap that leads could be lost. The majority of the time, teams don't ever realizing what damage has been caused because they're juggling other things. The reason your pipeline requires automatic nurture sequences.

Utilize business automation software to design nurture programs that comprise of all the communication required to guide your customers through your sales funnel. In the case of a user who fills out a online form the business automation software will launch a welcome series which will offer resources that interest them and push to the next step within your sales process. After it's fired then your customers will be able to receive the right messages precisely when they're looking for them. And you and your team don't need to do anything since the nurturing process happens on a regular basis.

It is possible that you are already using automatic lead nurturing, but this doesn't mean that you're not susceptible to gaps. Make sure you're not skipping the steps of your automated processes by incorporating relevant content in every text and email. The most efficient things to consider include:

  • Customized email to announce your company
  • No cost eBook
  • Sneak preview of the course, and an accompanying customer testimonial
  • The most useful articles about their interests (Your small business CRM can aid)
  • Free webinar invitation
  • Exclusive discounts

The entire list of resources is dedicated to providing value for your leads, which is a priority to this particular phase of the pipeline. One of the best aspects of this process is that the tools you select to cultivate leads can be automated. This means zero gaps, less manual work for you as well as a smooth experiences for leads.

    Lead qualification    

When people begin to interact with your messages and begin to engage with your content, the qualifying phase begins. It's easy to improve and streamline this phase in your pipeline by collecting valuable information from your automation of nurture cycles. This data will inform the qualification process, so that it can be able to identify your most interested leads who are ready to purchase your course.

Automatic lead scoring was designed to quickly and accurately create high-quality leads with no manually input from you or your staff.

A well-designed, effective qualifying phase is similar to the following: Business automation and CRM software track every single contact's interactions with your brand, such as how often they open your emails, which hyperlinks they click on, which kinds of forms they complete and so on. Then, it assigns points for every positive action and subtracts points from negative actions, tallies them up and signals those leads who are likely to make next steps with your company's brand.

    Webinar or live event    

The inclusion of live events as part of your one-to-many pipeline is an excellent opportunity to reach a wide range of people in one go however in a manner that's personal and fun. After you've decided who your most qualified leads will be, you can automatically separate the leads into their respective groups. All other leads will continue along different nurturing paths until they're ready. your most qualified leads will be invited to join a free webinar.

During this online event, you'll want to make sure you do three things that are essential:

  • Offer value: Think about giving attendees an overview of the concept that they will be able to learn more about during your course. It's an essential aspect of making your webinar worth their time as well as ensuring they trust the course offerings of your brand.
  • Include a Q&A session: At this stage there's a chance that unanswered questions can be an obstacle that prevents potential customers from purchasing your classes, therefore it's crucial to set aside time to provide answers. And since this live event can be used to help multiple leads in a row, everybody in the group will benefit by the queries asked.
  • Create a CTA : To avoid a dead end or an in-between, the webinar must conclude with the next possible step and this could be the ideal moment to encourage participants to purchase or make a time to call if they still want to know more.

    Convert, or following-up    

After your live event will give you access to the list of participants to allow you to communicate with those who are registering and then make your sales pitch.

This is where a lot companies miss an opportunity. They do not realize they've got an entire group of people who are interested enough in their products and courses to attend their live event. The key to ensuring your pipeline is secure to keep in touch with your customers whether or not they actually attended your webcast.

For those who did attend, schedule an automated email the following day, after the ceremony. Use this message to thank your guests for taking part by providing the attendees with a special discount coupon code, and then send them to your website where they will be able to make their purchase.

If you've got a number of attendees who have registered at your event but couldn't get to it, make sure to automatically send a note to them, too. Invite them to your next live event or give them a replay of your event that they missed, but you could also provide a hyperlink to the checkout page of your site so they won't need to do anything and purchase your course if they're ready.

If you were in a perfect world, the majority of your contacts will convert to convert after this stage through your pipeline. However, this isn't always the situation. Be patient, though! You can simply divide those who did not buy into a new group so you can continue to nurture the prospects and offer value until you are ready for your next pitch.

    Onboard    

Have you secured some new customers? 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 one of the most common mistakes. In order to avoid any missteps in your onboarding and to save hours of manual work make sure you use automatic onboarding.

Automate every step of your onboarding process so that you don't risk leaving new customers unsatisfied and confused following the purchase. What you must create is campaigns that are triggered after a course purchase. Then, fill it with items that are necessary like:

  • Thank you and welcome to you email
  • Guides to accessing their latest account (ie. login credentials, instructions on how to setup your account for the first time, etc. )
  • Material they could use to maximize the value of their new course
  • Invitations to a Group when their course offers group learning access or if there is a group of others students, they must join and collaborate with

Doing 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 chances and a sloppy process. If you're looking to maximize your pipeline's potential for maximum success, think about rounding it up with these final details:

    Check-in    

Keep in touch with new course registrants after they've been able to get into the course and begin studying. Send an email featuring a form where they can share their experience or have questions. Include a link to your support page, and some tutorials that they may find useful. Once you have checked in, consider popping into your inbox regularly to inform the students of new materials for their courses, congratulate them on completing different milestones or simply to ask for more information.

    Cross-sell and upsell    

The main reason to not end your pipeline too soon is that you risk not making enough money. Happy customers often become repeat customers, so add a step to your sales process to either upsell or cross-sell to current course customers.

Be sure to personalize your offer so it's pertinent and relevant to each customer. Make use of their courses currently offered as well as past downloads as well as other data you have about them in order to decide what upsells and cross-sells to present them with. The more tailored your sales messages are better, the more likely customers are to act and then become repeat customers.

In the case of example, if a person is taking a social media marketing class from you, don't try to convince them with an online course about creating podcasts. Instead, invite them to take a new training course in advanced social selling.

    Retrieve reviews and referrals    

Another expert tactic to boost the revenue of your business is to obtain 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 thanking them for selecting your business, and also encourages the user to review your course or suggest to someone else who might benefit from your course too.

Let's discuss technology and what's next

If you are able to customize this 9-step process to align it with the specific needs of your business There's one element to remember software. The best one-to-many pipelines are dependent on having the right technology. It's the only way to be able to carry out this procedure repeatedly, save hours on manual input, and create a stellar and constant experience for your clients.

Two particular elements you must be able to include in your tech stack to help you along the way:

If you're looking to dive in and want to pinpoint exactly what gaps are in your current pipeline, then take this complimentary test. This assessment will allow you to identify any missed opportunities within your customer journey and guide you on how to fix them to achieve an optimized satisfaction for every customer.