How to Build a Successful Sales Funnel to Sell More Courses

What if you could make money from your online courses on autopilot, without spending a fortune on ads or worrying about SEO changes? What if you could have a system that brings you qualified leads and turns them into loyal customers? Sounds like a dream, right? Well, it’s not. It’s a reality with a sales funnel that is tailored to your online course business.

In this article, we will show you how to create your own sales funnel from scratch, step by step. We will explain what a sales funnel is, why you need one for your online courses, and how to set it up for success with Tutor LMS.

So get ready to learn how to sell more online courses with a sales funnel that works for you. Let’s get started!

What Is a Sales Funnel for Online Courses?

Before we discuss how to create a sales funnel, we need to understand what a sales funnel for online courses means and how it is different from any other sales funnel.

A sales funnel is a visual representation of the customer’s purchasing journey. It demonstrates how prospects, or leads, move through the sales steps from first exposure to repeat purchases. The sales funnel streamlines the customer’s and seller’s actions that end with selling products or services.

Typically, a sales funnel is a sequence of steps designed to guide potential customers toward a buying decision. These steps include marketing assets that do the work of selling, like landing pages and emails. It generally consists of four major stages. These stages are:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Desire
4. Action

Through these four stages, a sales funnel is meant to get your lead one step closer to buying.

The sales funnel for online courses conceptually looks the same but differs in execution. Firstly, in the awareness stage, the primary goal is not to generate website traffic but to redirect it to your course landing pages. 

Secondly, it’s not just about having one sales funnel, but multiple, that run parallel to each other. This allows the system to act in response to your target audience’s actions while they’re on your sales page. 

Now that you understand what a sales funnel for online courses is let’s find out why you need a funnel.

The Importance of Sales Funnel for Online Courses

There are many ways a sales funnel can benefit your online course business. Unlike traditional websites or eCommerce stores, a sales funnel is specifically created and customized for each of your product offerings. So let’s take a look at the reasons a sales funnel is essential for your online course business:

• A sales funnel can help you sell your online courses by guiding potential customers through a series of steps and pages that build trust, interest, desire, and action
• It can help you automate the selling process, increase the conversion rate, increase the average cart value, enrich the customer experience, and build customer loyalty
• It allows you to optimize your marketing efforts by using different tactics to attract, capture, nurture, and convert leads
• It helps you differentiate yourself from the competition and establish your authority and credibility in your niche

Planning A Sales Funnel For Online Courses

A well-designed sales funnel can help your online course business grow quickly. But the funnel flow will vary depending on the courses you sell and how you intend to sell them.

So here are the main things that you need to have in order to create your sales funnel:

1. Identify Your Target Audience:

• Determine the demographics and interests of your target audience
• Understand their pain points and challenges that your course can help solve
• Develop a unique value proposition that speaks to their needs

2. Understand the Stages of Your Sales Funnel:

• Understand the typical stages that students go through before making a purchase decision
• Identify the key touchpoints that you need to address in each stage
• Map out the buyer’s journey from awareness to the action phase

3. Create or Validate Your Course Idea and Content:

• Perform market research to find out if there is a demand for your topic, what problems or goals your audience has, and what solutions or benefits your course can offer
• Use descriptive and attention-grabbing titles that clearly articulate the benefits of your content
• Ensure that the content is aligned with the needs and interests of your target audience
• Keep the content headings simple and easy to understand

4. Identifying the Best Channels and Platforms to Promote Your Course:

• Identify the best channels and platforms to promote your course and generate traffic to your sales funnel
• Find out where your competitors and influencers are getting their traffic from
• Join online communities or forums related to your topic and observe what kind of content or offers are getting the most engagement and attention

Step-By-Step Guide to Building an Online Course Sales Funnel With Tutor LMS

A sales funnel is a process that leads prospective learners from discovering your online course to enrolling in it. Although a sales funnel can have varying steps depending on your strategy and goals, there are usually four main stages that every funnel should include awareness, interest, desire, and action. In this guide, we will guide you on how to effectively create a sales funnel for your online course and how to leverage  Tutor LMS, a powerful WordPress LMS plugin, to create an online course sales funnel that converts.

Step 1: Raise Awareness

The first stage of the sales funnel is to raise awareness of your online course and attract potential learners to your website. This is where you need to create a compelling value proposition that shows how your course can solve their problems or fulfill their needs.

Some of the strategies you can use to raise awareness are:

• Landing page – Create a landing page for your online course that showcases its benefits, features, testimonials, and pricing. 

• Course previews – Use Tutor LMS’s course preview feature to showcase your course content and entice people to sign up. You can create a free preview of your course and offer it to your potential students. This will give them a taste of what’s to come and help build trust in your course content.

• SEO – Optimize your website for search engines (SEO) by using relevant keywords, meta tags, headings, and links. 

• Affiliate marketing – Leverage affiliate marketing by partnering with influencers, bloggers, or other websites that have access to your target audience. You can use Tutor LMS’s AffiliateWP integration addon to easily manage your affiliates and track their commissions.

• Adverts – Run paid ads on platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or Instagram Ads to reach a wider and more targeted audience. 

The goal of this stage is to generate leads by getting your visitors to sign up for your email list, follow you on social media, or register for a free trial or sample course.

Step 2: Develop Interest

The second stage of the sales funnel is to develop an interest in your online course and nurture your leads until they are ready to buy. This is where you need to provide more value and information to your leads and build trust and credibility with them. The goal of this stage is to generate interest by showing your leads how your course can help them achieve their goals or solve their problems.

Some of the strategies you can use to develop interest are:

• Generate engagement – Create engaging content on the Course Details page that keeps your students hooked and motivated to learn more about the course.
• Communication – Send regular emails to your leads with valuable tips, resources, case studies, success stories, testimonials, or discounts related to your course. You can use Tutor LMS’s email templates feature to customize the content and design of your emails.
• Provide social proof – Share testimonials from satisfied learners who have completed your course.
• Create a sense of exclusivity – Offer your course to a select group of learners or create a VIP program that provides additional benefits.
• Provide additional resources – Offer additional resources such as eBooks, webinars, or coaching sessions that help learners achieve their goals.
• Offer personalized support – Provide personalized support such as one-on-one coaching or group coaching sessions to help learners achieve their goals.

Step 3: Action

The final step is to turn the potential student into a paying customer. In this step, it is crucial that you provide a smooth and hassle-free checkout process and deliver your course to your customers.

Some of the strategies you can use to facilitate their action are:

• Create a sense of urgency – Offer a limited-time discount or bonus to encourage learners to take action.

• Use multiple payment gateways – Offering multiple payment gateways can make it easy for users to pay for your courses. Tutor LMS offers several popular payment gateway support like PayPal and Stripe, to name a few.

• Offer multiple pricing options – Offering multiple pricing options such as one-time payments or monthly subscriptions can make it easy for users to choose the option that works best for them. Tutor LMS supports some of the world’s most powerful eCommerce plugins like WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads, among others. You can utilize these great plugins to easily set up your online store.

• Use coupons and discounts – Offer coupons and discounts to encourage users to purchase your courses.

Additional Tip: You still may be under the impression that building a custom sales funnel is a complex and time-consuming process. But it really doesn’t have to be. You can easily build a sales funnel for your online course business in just a few minutes by using a simple and fast solution like WPFunnels together with Tutor LMS. Or, if you prefer other options, you can use other similar sales funnel plugins like CartFlows, ThriveCart, or OptimizePress with Tutor LMS. Just choose the one that suits your needs and preferences best.

Congratulations! You have successfully created an online course sales funnel with Tutor LMS. Now you can start selling your courses online and grow your e-learning business.

Summing Up

Creating a sales funnel for your online course business is one of the best ways to attract, nurture, and convert your ideal customers into loyal students. It helps you sell more courses with less effort and cost. Plus, you can create multiple sales funnels to target different segments of your audience based on their behavior, maximizing your reach and results. Also with Tutor LMS, you have a powerful WordPress LMS plugin that makes it easy to create and sell online courses and help elevate your sales funnel to new heights.

We hope you found this article helpful and informative. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to share them below.