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The economy is super weird right now. I know personally I have been extra stressed out about money and it’s something a lot of business owners are feeling right now too.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me if online courses aren’t worth selling right now and if people just aren’t buying right now. The answer is people are STILL buying, but their purchasing habits have changed. If you’re seeing a dip in sales it’s probably time to rethink your strategy and change up some of your offers.

Episode Highlights

• How customer shopping habits have changed with the economy 
• If it’s worth your time to sell an online course right now (spoiler alert YES!) 
• Common tech issues that keep people from buying
• How you might be confusing your customers with inconsistent language and long sales pages
• How to grow your email list and launch to NEW people
• Why your course might be boring and how to fix it

#1: No one can find your course

This is such a simple fix, but something I see all the time. People might not be buying your online course because they haven’t seen it! So often as course creators and business owners, we think it’s super obvious how to work with us, but it isn’t always as easy to find as we think. 

Start by doing an audit of your website, social media and email welcome series. Literally, go through and count the number of places where you link to your online course or offer. How easy is it for people to actually find the sales page?

You’re also going to want to make sure:

• You regularly post about your course on social media (share testimonials, share a behind-the-scenes look at the course or talk about new content you’re adding) 
• None of your links accidentally go to an old or broken sales page 
• Google the name of your course and see what comes up! Sometimes Google will have indexed an outdated sales page that no longer works

The goal here isn’t to bombard people with links to your sales page, but it should be easy to find what course you sell and how to buy it (even if the how to buy it means joining a waitlist or waiting for a future launch).

#2: Your technology is broken

PSA: Go and test your checkout page right now. Things break all the time. No matter what software you’re using sometimes something breaks and you don’t realize it. Either create a coupon code to test your checkout or if your software offers a “test checkout” function you can use that.

You want to make sure that: 

• It’s actually possible to complete the transaction
• All of the “enroll” or “buy” buttons work on your checkout page (literally click on every single button)
• Checkout works on desktop AND mobile
• Your thank you page is well designed and up to date
• Once someone buys they get exact instructions on what the next steps are
• Everything on your sales page is displaying correctly and you can read everything
• There’s not out of date information like having the wrong year in the footer of your sales page or talking about current events that happened years ago

Pro-Tip

Make sure you use an email to test everything that is not already a “student” of your course. As business owners we test things so often that it starts to confuse our email software and the regular email that you use might not behave the same as someone who is brand new to your world. 

You can create as many test emails as you want by adding “+insertwordshere” to your email. For example my main email is hi@marakucirek.com if I type in hi+test123@marakucirek.com I’ll still get emails to my main inbox, but my course creation software will think this is a brand new email!

 #3: Your sales page is too long and confusing

Sales pages are really challenging. I just released a podcast episode with Emily Conley talking all about the costly mistakes people make on sales pages. 

So many people create their sales page once and then never look at it again. If you can afford it hiring a copywriter is super helpful, but if you can’t it’s still really important to block off dedicated time to review your sales page and make sure it aligns with your target audience.

Sales page mistakes to look out for:

1. Having a really wordy or long sales page that doesn’t make it clear what people get when they buy your course.
2.  Leaving out-of-date information on your sales page. Make sure you’re reviewing places you mention, bonuses, prices, how old you are or anything else that might have changed since the last time you read the sales page.
3. Making it difficult to find the enroll button so people aren’t sure how to actually buy your course.

Read More: Mastering the Art of Sales Page Copywriting: Tips and Tricks for Converting Visitors into Customers with Emily Conley

#4 You’re launching to the same people over and over again

Sometimes I’ll do an online course strategy call with someone or I see this a lot in business Facebook groups where someone will say I had a terrible launch. They will go on to share that their last launch had a 10 percent conversion rate, but their most recent launch only had a 5%.

After you do a little digging you find out that in between launches they didn’t grow their email list or audience so they were launching to the same exact people twice. There’s nothing wrong with continuing to launch to people who have said no before. Some people just take longer to make a decision, but if you’re not adding anyone new into your circle and continuing to launch often it’s normal to expect that your conversation rates will be lower. 

If you’re feeling like your last few launches haven’t been as successful look at your growth metrics and double-check how many new people are entering your world in between those launches.

#5: The content inside of your course isn’t that good

Yikes…I said it. This is the answer that people never want to hear, but it’s one of the most important things in the online course world. Most entrepreneurs who have an online course don’t start off as a teacher so it might not be natural to structure your lessons in a way that is interesting and educational to others.

To start diving into whether your course is having an impact or not you can:

1. Look at the stats inside of your online course software

• What videos are people watching?
• What lessons are people not finishing?
• Is there a specific point people are dropping off
• How often are people logging in?
• How active are students in your community group or forum?

2. Survey your students

You can send out a survey and ask your students what they think of the course. Make sure to ask them:

• How do they like the course?
• What feels challenging about the course?
• What other resources would they love to have included?
• What do they feel like is missing?
• How do they like your teaching style?

3. Ask someone to audit your course and provide feedback

This could be a good business friend or someone on your team. It’s hard to see everything for your own online course so having someone who is more neutral that can go back and review everything really helps see some of the gaps you might not be able to see.

Then you take that feedback and make a list of updates for your course. People love it when you update your course by the way and add new lessons and new modules. It’s something you should constantly be doing and allowing your online course to evolve into a better course.

Summary

People will ALWAYS want to learn new things! That’s one of the huge benefits of having an online course. If your course makes someone’s life better, then there’s someone out there right now that needs that extra support. You just need to make sure your sales and marketing align with where they are at!

Links Mentioned

• Connect with Mara on Instagram
• Subscribe to Create a Better Course on Apple Podcasts
• Subscribe to Create a Better Course on Google Podcasts
• Listen to the podcast on Spotify!
• Episode 21: Mastering the Art of Sales Page Copywriting: Tips and Tricks for Converting Visitors into Customers with Emily Conley