Helpful and Friendly Ways to Sell More of Your Courses with John Ainsworth

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On today’s episode, I am talking to John Ainsworth. John Ainsworth is an expert in helping people to build funnels to sell more of their digital courses. We are going to learn many different lessons from John including copywriting, storytelling, course design, and understanding your audience all built around how we sell more digital courses that we worked so hard to create.

John is the CEO and founder of Data Driven Marketing. John has been building automated funnels for over 10 years. He’s certified by the Chartered Institute of Marketing and Digital Marketer. He’s helped online course businesses increase their revenue by 25-300%.

This is a great episode if you have a digital course and what to learn how to sell more of it or maybe you are considering creating your first digital course and aren’t sure what that would look like or the best way to go about it. Listening to John today will give you some really good insights into what is most important when it comes to selling a course and keeping people engaged and successful through your course.

We discuss:

[02:38] John shares about his defining moment.
[03:47] His job taught him the importance and power of charm. One book he has read about the topic is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
[05:38] Kyle shares about a technique called “Start in the Middle.” This is a fabulous storytelling tip to really capture people’s attention right away and bring them in.
[09:06] John builds automated sales funnels for selling courses.
[09:46] The part that is missing in most cases is having a funnel that bridges the email list and course together.
[09:56] There are many different types of funnels including webinars, tripwire funnels, launch funnels, email promotions, and many more.
[10:18] How do you market in a way that is helpful and friendly and not aggressive and pushy?
[10:53] If you just explain what is in the course, it is not going to help somebody be able to see why they should get it. What they really care about is how their life is going to change. What problem are you going to solve?
[11:23] You can use storytelling to show what their life is going to be like after taking the course.
[11:38] When you share someone that had the same struggle, their process, and where they are today it helps them to imagine they can do it too.
[13:16] These types of stories are so powerful and fragile because if you are too obvious then people catch wind that it is salesy. But if you are authentic and delicate that is the charm.
[16:07] You need to give people a chance to imagine themselves in those shoes without being pushy.
[16:57] By the end of the talk, they will know that I have a program, but they won’t feel like they have been pitched. This is a subtle way you can talk about what you are doing and how you get results.
[18:35] The first thing is to try to identify the big idea or one thing you want to get across.
[19:37] If you know what that one thing they have to believe is, you can work backward from there.
[20:15] We know from marketing research that the headline and title are vitally important and have an overwhelming impact on what you are trying to do.
[22:12] We need to be able when we are being creative to let ourselves off the hook.
[23:18] A key aspect of entrepreneurship is releasing these boundaries and expectations.
[26:19] People who have bought something from you are twenty times more likely to buy something else from you and people who have bought something and had a great experience will buy something more expensive.
[26:50] John recommends a straight forward email sequence to follow-up with customers that have bought a course. Include reasons they should continue to follow through and complete the course.
[27:25] You can also use a Facebook group, site group, or internal webinars to keep them motivated, sharing, and excited to finish.
[28:22] At the end of each course it is important to talk about what is next and you can share what else you have available.
[30:19] You can create a course to supplement or enhance something you are already doing instead of being a stand-alone product.
[32:06] A course can be part of a larger program. The training course can help better prepare you for your one on one coaching calls.
[33:04] An entry-level offer gives people a chance to try out the course and if they like that they can buy the whole course.
[35:01] You have to charge people enough so they take it seriously.
[36:28] It needs to be on a big enough scale. You should be selling them their dream to really get their attention.
[39:19] John is launching the Advanced Online Course Summit soon. He shares more about this summit.
[41:37] Courses are a hot topic right now. It is a hugely growing market and more and more people are wanting to take online training.
[42:20] Entrepreneurs need to be clear about who their audience is and is not.