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

Dec 11, 2024

Have you ever tried running on Sand? In all honesty it's a disaster. It's twice as much effort for half the distance. That's what it's like when you have the gaps in the sales funnel. And unfortunately, far more course makers face this dilemma.

When creating a course, you're offering your company a perfect opportunity to reach more people with your expertise however, how long has it been since you took a good look through your course to see any gaps or untapped opportunities?

See the sample course-creator pipeline below for tips and inspiration.

Skip ahead:

Before we dive in the importance of personalization

When you look through the following pipeline there is a focus on personalization.

Most people think that an automated pipeline is a non-personal process. But in reality it is possible to create an endless number of ways to make automated communications sensitive and personalized, while also improving quality and efficiency.

Find out how to take ways to not just fill the gaps in the current pipeline that is one-to-many, but also offer personalization opportunities that will delight your leads and customers. Don't forget to keep an on the lookout for strategies and technology that can assist in bringing these customized pipeline stages to life, and without consuming your valuable time.

The pipeline

    Prospecting    

This is about capturing the interest of your targeted audience, but this can be an extremely difficult phase for course designers. Consider the following suggestions to help ensure you're reaching the right audience with the correct offer

Inbound marketing requires you to create content, such as blog posts, eBooks, guides, ads or anything else that can pique your target audience's interest. Most likely, you're already creating content, but make sure you're implementing an effective SEO strategy to back the content you write. Making your content search-friendly for engines, in turn, improves the efficiency of this stage in your workflow and boosts your time and effort creating content. The search engines are crawling everything you write to display it in results, so the better optimised your content more easily your intended people will be able to discover your site.

Landing pages and forms: If you're not using these effective tools and forms, the potential customers you're attracted with your stellar content will slip through the cracks. This is among the biggest gaps that which you may encounter. To plug this pipeline hole and to avoid losing potential customers that you've worked so hard to get Use landing pages to tell a clear story about your solution and use forms to collect contact details from leads with high intent. Store those leads in your CRM system and guide to make a sale. In terms of nurturing leads we are now in our next sales pipeline.

    Automatic lead nurturing    

When it comes to nurturing leads, doing it manually can result in a shocking amount of gaps. Why? because every time a crucial nurturing message is not remembered and a gap is created where leads can be lost. It's not uncommon for teams to do this without not even being aware of the harm caused because they're taking care of other things. That's why your pipeline needs automated nurture sequences.

Utilize business automation software to build nurture campaigns consisting of all the outreach required to guide the people who visit your website through your funnel. For example, after someone completes a contact online form Business automation will automatically start a welcome sequence with resources to interest them and push to the next step in your sales process. After it's fired the audience will receive the right messages exactly when they need them. You and your staff will not have to think about anything because nurture is taking place in a way that is automatic.

There's a chance that you're already using automated lead nurturing but it doesn't mean you're invulnerable from gaps. Be sure that you don't miss the steps of your automated sequences by including valuable content in every text and email. The most efficient things to add are:

  • Personalized email to introduce your business
  • A free eBook
  • Sneak peak of your course as well as client testimonials
  • The most useful articles about their interests (Your small business CRM can assist)
  • Webinar invitation for free
  • Exclusive discounts

All of these resources are dedicated to providing value for your leads as a top priority during this stage of the pipeline. The most appealing aspect of this process is that what you decide to provide leads with could be automated. This means zero gaps, less effort for you to do as well as a smooth satisfaction for your customers.

    Lead qualification    

When people begin to interact with your message The qualification process begins. It's easy to improve the process and speed up your process by collecting important data from your automation of nurture cycles. These data points will help inform your qualification process so it can be able to identify your most interested leads who want to buy a course from you.

Automated lead scoring was developed to quickly and accurately make your leads with high intent without any manually input from you or your team.

A well-designed, effective qualification phase looks something like this: Business automation or CRM software monitors every customer's interactions with you, which includes the frequency they check your emails, the websites they visit, the types of forms they fill out and much more. Then, it assigns points for each action that is positive as well as subtracts points for any negative ones, adds the points and indicates the leads most likely to move on to next steps with your brand.

    Webinar or live event    

Making a live event in your one-to-many pipeline is an excellent opportunity to reach a wide range of people at once however in a manner that is personal and enjoyable. Once you've identified 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 an alternate nurture route until they're ready. However, your most qualified leads will be invited to join a free webinar.

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

  • Provide value: Consider giving your attendees a sneak peek of the concept that they will learn about in your course. It's an essential element of making the event worthwhile and establishing their trust in your brand's courses.
  • Incorporate a Q&A section at this point, unanswered questions could be a stumbling block that's keeping leads from purchasing one of your classes, therefore it's crucial to set aside time to provide answers. And since this live event will serve multiple prospects in a row, everybody in the group will benefit from questions that are addressed.
  • Create an CTA : To prevent a dead-end or gap, this webinar must conclude with an appropriate next step and this is an ideal time to ask attendees to complete their purchase or schedule a telephone call should they wish to know more about.

    Convert, or following-up    

Following the event is live You'll be able to access an inventory of the registrants and you'll be able to contact the attendees in a timely manner and create your pitch for sales.

It is the place where lots companies miss an opportunity. They do not realize they have a whole group of people that are interested enough by their products and courses to attend their live webinar. A key element to make sure the integrity of your process is to follow up with contacts regardless of whether they participated in your webinar.

For those who did attend the event, you can schedule an automated email for the day after the ceremony. Use this message to thank them for their participation and provide the attendees with a special discount code and send them to your website where they will be able to make their purchase.

If you've got a number of participants who signed up 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 email an email with a replay of the event they didn't attend, however you could also provide a hyperlink to your checkout page, so they can skip a step and purchase your course if they're interested.

In a perfect world every contact would be converted to convert after this stage within your pipeline, however this isn't always the situation. Do not fret, however! You can simply divide those who did not decide to buy into another group so that you'll be able to keep nurturing the prospects and offer value until the time is right for the next opportunity.

    Onboard    

Did you secure the new clients? Step one: Happy dance. Second step: Onboarding.

Onboarding is a big deal and it's also a chance to be one of the most common gaps. To avoid any missed steps during your onboarding process and also to cut down on the time of manually completing your onboarding choose to use an automated onboarding.

Automate each step of your onboarding process so that you don't risk leaving new customers confused and unsatisfied following an purchase. The only thing you need to create is campaigns that are triggered after an order made by a student. After that, you can fill it with items that are necessary like:

  • Thank you and welcome to for your email
  • Guides to accessing their latest courses (ie. login details, steps to set up the account, etc. )
  • Material they could use to maximize the value of their brand new course
  • Invitations to a Group when their course offers group learning access or if there is a group of other students they should be a part of and work with

Going the extra mile for your customers and business

Your sales pipeline may end right after someone gets all the onboarding material, however it could lead to missed chances and a sloppy procedure. If you're looking to maximize your pipeline's potential for maximum success, think about rounding it out with these finishing elements:

    Check-in    

Contact your students who have just had a chance to dive into taking classes. Send an email featuring an online form that allows them to discuss their experiences or have questions. Include and a link to your help webpage, as well as some instructional videos that they may find useful. After this initial check-in, consider popping into your inbox regularly to inform them about new course materials and to congratulate them for completing certain milestones or request more information.

    Cross-sell and upsell    

One of the main reasons not to end your pipeline too soon is the risk of losing money. The most satisfied customers are likely to become loyal customers. So, make sure to add a step to the process of upselling or cross-sell to current course customers.

However, remember to tailor your message to make it relevant and appealing to each customer. Make use of their courses currently offered previous downloads, their past courses, and any other details you can gather about them to inform what upsells and cross-sells to pitch them. The more targeted these sales pitches are, the more likely your clients will act on them as if they were repeat buyers.

In the case of example, if a person has taken a social-media marketing class from you, don't try to cross-sell them a course on the idea of starting podcasts. Instead, ask them to take a new training course in advanced social selling.

    Gather reviews and referrers    

Another effective method for increasing revenue is to secure some positive reviews and promising referrals. This creates a flywheel of new leads in your pipeline.

Once someone has successfully completed one of your courses make the most of the experience by sending a message thanking them for selecting your business, and also encourages users to write a positive review or suggest someone else who could benefit from your course too.

We'll talk about technology and next steps

When you modify this nine-step procedure to fit your specific business but there's one aspect you can't forget software. One-to-many sales that are the most effective pipelines depend on the appropriate technology. This is what allows you to execute this process time and time again and save time of manual input, and create a stellar and constant experience for your clients.

The following are the two particular items you need to include in your technology stack to aid you in your way:

If you're looking to get started and would like to pinpoint exactly what gaps are in your current pipeline, take this free assessment. It can help you identify the opportunities you missed in your customer lifecycle and help you remedy them so you can ensure a superior customer experience every time.