Crealanta Magazine

A Course Creator's Guide on What to do to fill the gaps in the One-to-Many Pipeline

Dec 11, 2024

Have you ever run on Sand? In all honesty the experience is terrible. You're putting in twice the effort in order to cover the same distance. It's exactly the situation when there are holes in the sales funnel. It's unfortunate that more course makers have to deal with this issue.

When creating a course, you're offering your company an opportunity to connect with many more potential customers with your knowledge however, what was the last time you looked through your course to see the gaps and opportunities that aren't being tapped?

See the sample course-creator process below for ideas and ideas.

Skip ahead:

Before we dive in The significance of personalization

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

Most people think that an automated process is an impersonal one. But in reality there is an innumerable possibilities to make automated communications thoughtful and personal and improve consistency and conversion.

Learn more about ways to not just help you fill in the holes of the current pipeline that is one-to-many, but also offer personalization opportunities that are sure to please your customers and leads. Don't forget to keep an an eye out for the methods and tools that could help bring these personalized pipeline phases to life with no expense to you.

The pipe

    Prospecting    

This is about keeping the interest of your targeted viewers, however this could be an extremely difficult phase for course developers. Use the following two ideas to make sure you're reaching people who are interested with the right offer:

Inbound marketing calls for that you create content such as blog posts, eBooks, guides, ads and anything that will pique the attention of your intended audience. It's likely that you're already doing this however, make sure that you're implementing an effective SEO method to support the content you create. Making your content search-friendly for engines, in turn, improves the efficiency of this stage in your pipeline and maximizes your time and effort making content. The search engines are crawling every piece of content you make to display it in results, so the better optimised your content more easily your intended audience can find them.

Formulas and landing pages If you're not making use of these effective tools that you're drawing in prospects through your amazing content could fall through the cracks. This is among the most costly gaps which you may encounter. In order to close this gap and prevent losing leads who you've tried to connect with, use landing pages to provide a concise description of the solution you have developed and utilize forms to gather contact information from leads with high intent. Keep those leads in your CRM, and then nurture to make a sale. When we talk about nurturing leads, this brings us to our second sales pipeline phase.

    Automatic lead nurture    

In the case of nurturing leads, doing it manually can result in a shocking number of lapses. Why? because every time a crucial nurture message is forgotten, a gap forms where leads are lost. It's not uncommon for teams to do this without not even being aware of the harm done because they're too busy managing other tasks. The reason your pipeline requires automatic nurture sequences.

Use business automation software to design nurture programs that comprise of all the outreach that you require to get your customers through your sales funnel. As an example, when someone completes a contact form on your website, business automation can automatically launch a welcome series that will provide resources that interest them and push to the next step in your sales process. When it's activated, your audience will get all the necessary messages at the exact time they're looking for them. You and your staff will not have to lift a finger because the nurturing process happens in a way that is automatic.

There's a chance that you're already using automated lead nurturing, however it doesn't mean you're invulnerable to lapses. You must ensure that you're not missing every step of your automatic processes by incorporating relevant content within every email and text. A few effective things to include are:

  • Personalized email to promote your business
  • No cost eBook
  • Sneak preview of your course and accompanying feedback from a customer
  • Helpful articles related to their areas of interest (Your small business CRM can help)
  • Free webinar invitation
  • Exclusive discounts

Each of these tools is focused on providing value to your prospects as a top priority for this phase in the pipeline. The best part of this process is that what you decide to provide leads with could be automated. This means the absence of gaps, lower time spent on manual tasks for you as well as a smooth experience for your leads.

    Lead qualification    

Once people are beginning to respond with your message The qualification process begins. You can easily optimize and streamline this phase in your pipeline by collecting valuable information from automated nurture sequences. This data will inform the process of qualification so that it can be able to identify the most engaged leads who are looking to purchase a course from you.

Automated lead scoring was developed to rapidly and efficiently bubble up your high-intent leads without any manually input from the team or you.

An optimized, efficient qualifying phase is similar to this: Business automation and CRM software track every single contact's interactions with your brand, such as how often they open your emails, the websites they visit, the forms they submit and more. Then, it assigns points for each action that is positive and subtracts points from negative ones, adds them up and signals which leads are most likely to make next steps with your brand.

    Webinar or live event    

A live event that is in your one-to-many pipeline can be a fantastic way to serve a lot of people in one go and in a way that feels personal and engaging. After you've decided the most suitable leads are, automatically segment the leads into their respective groups. Your other leads will continue along an alternate nurture route until they're ready. your most qualified leads will be invited to join a free webinar.

In this event You'll need to make sure you do three things that are essential:

  • Provide value: Consider giving your attendees a sneak peek of a concept they might learn about in your course. It's a crucial aspect of making your webinar worth their time as well as ensuring they trust the course offerings of your brand.
  • Feature a Q&A segment at this point 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 respond. Also, since the live presentation is designed to serve multiple potential customers at a time, everyone is going to benefit from the questions that are asked.
  • Provide the CTA  to prevent a dead-end or an in-between, the webinar should conclude in an appropriate next step which could be the perfect time to invite attendees to complete their purchase or make a time to conference call in case they want to learn more about.

    Convert, or Follow-up    

Following your live event will give you access to a list of all registrants so you can communicate with them accordingly and make your pitch for sales.

That's where the majority businesses make a mistake. They do not realize they have a whole group of contacts that are interested enough by their courses and products to attend their live event. One of the most important things to do to ensure that your pipeline remains airtight is to follow up with contacts whether or not they actually attended your webinar.

For those who did attend the event, you can schedule an automated email to be sent out the next day following the ceremony. Utilize this email to express your appreciation to your guests for taking part, provide the attendees with a special discount coupon code, and then send them to your website where they can make their purchase.

If you have a group of participants who signed up for your event but didn't make it, don't forget to automatically send a note to them too. invite them to the next live event, or email an email with a replay of the event they missed, but you can also include a link to your checkout page, so they won't need to do anything and pay for your course when they're interested.

In an ideal world, the majority of your contacts will convert after this step in your pipeline, but this isn't always the case. Do not fret, however! Simply segment those who didn't make a purchase into a new group so you're able to continue nurturing their interest and add value to them until you are ready to make your next pitch.

    Onboard    

Did you secure some new customers? Step one: Happy dance. Second step: Onboarding.

It's a huge deal to be onboarding and it's also a chance to be among the most common gaps. In order to avoid any missteps when you are onboarding, and to save hours of manual work, opt for automatic onboarding.

Automate every step of onboarding to ensure you won't leave new clients confused and unhappy immediately after making the purchase. All you have to do is set up an onboarding campaign which is triggered by the purchase of a course. After that, you can fill it with the necessary elements for example:

  • A welcome and thank you email
  • How to access their brand new account (ie. login credentials, how to create their account and so on. )
  • Materials they can use to get the most out of their course
  • Invitations to a group if their course package includes groups learning or you are part of a community with other students they should connect and collaborate with

Go the extra mile to help your business and your customers

Your sales pipeline could end right after someone gets all necessary onboarding information, but that would result in missed chances and a sloppy procedure. If you're really looking to maximize your pipeline's potential for success, consider rounding the process with these final details:

    Check-in    

Keep in touch with newly registered students after they've been able to get into taking classes. Send an email featuring an application form for them to share their experience or inquire about their experience, along with an address to your support webpage, as well as some instructional videos that they may find useful. After this initial check-in and review their email inbox on a regular basis to remind them about new course materials and to congratulate them for completing various milestones, or to solicit comments.

    Cross-sells and upsells    

The main reason to not close your pipeline in a hurry is to avoid losing money. Customers who are happy tend to be loyal customers. So, make sure to add a step to your sales process to either upsell or cross-sell to current course customers.

Be sure to personalize your message to make it appropriate and attractive to every person. Make use of their courses currently offered, past downloads, as well as other data you have about them to inform what upsells and cross-sells to present them with. The more targeted these sales pitches are and the more likely customers will take action and then become repeat customers.

If, for instance, someone has taken a social-media marketing class from you, don't try to cross-sell them an online course about creating a podcast. Instead, invite the student to attend a class on social selling that is more advanced.

    Collect referrals and reviews    

A different method to increase sales is to get positive reviews and promising referrals. It creates a flurry of new leads in your pipeline.

When someone completes any of your classes take advantage of their learning positive experience by sending a thank you message which thanks them for choosing your business, and also encourages users to write a positive review or refer another person who may be benefited from your training course.

Let's talk tech and what's next

When you modify this nine-step process to align it with your particular business needs, there is one thing you can't forget the assistance of software. The best one-to-many pipelines are dependent on having the right technology. It's what will enable you to perform this task repeatedly, save hours on manual input, as well as create an outstanding and consistent experience for your audience.

The following are the two particular items you need to have in your tech stack to help you along your way:

If you're ready to dive in and want to find out exactly what holes are in your pipeline, take this free assessment. It can help you identify potential opportunities that you haven't tapped into in your customer lifecycle and show you how to rectify them in order to achieve an optimized customer experience each time.