Online courses are an amazing — and relatively new — development in the entrepreneurship world.

Knowledge is now a commodity.

It’s something you can package, market, and sell.

Not only on a one-to-one coaching basis as in previous decades… but in a digital format that allows for infinite scalability.

If fact, many of our Two Comma Club members here at ClickFunnels (meaning they’ve generated more than $1 million in sales through their ClickFunnels account) are online course sellers!

Take a look at some of these other stats…

The global eLearning market is expected to quadruple in size from around $250 billion in 2020 to $1 trillion in 2027.

Udemy, the leading online learning marketplace, saw a 425% increase in student enrollments in late March 2020 compared to the previous month.

57% of learners spend more time learning online than they did three years ago.

In other words, the online course world is booming.

There’s tons of opportunity.

Still…

It’s not as simple as creating a course, crossing your fingers, and waiting for raving fans to knock down your digital door.

You’ve got to market your course.

And in this guide, we’re going to show you exactly how to do that… step by step.

Click below if you want to build your online course sales funnel with real-world experts.

Build Your First Sales Funnel With Real Experts!

Step 1. Identify Your Dream Customer

The first step in any marketing plan is identifying your dream customer.

And that doesn’t change when you’re marketing an online course.

You need to know who you want to reach with your message before you can start creating content that resonates.

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you try to identify your dream customer:

Who is your ideal student?

What are their demographics?

What do they want to learn?

What are their pain points?

What are their goals?

Once you have a good understanding of who your dream customer is, you can write copy for your landing page and sales funnel that speaks directly to them.

It’s also worth figuring out where your dream customer falls in terms of awareness. Are they…

Unaware — They don’t know they have a problem. But they are experiencing the symptoms of their problem.

Problem aware — They know they have a problem but don’t know there’s a solution that can help them.

Solution aware — They know there’s a solution but don’t know about your specific course.

Product aware — They know about your course and the problem they have. But they don’t know exactly how your course can solve them.

Most aware — They know about their problem and they fully understand how your course can help them.

In most cases, the people you’re targeting with your online course will fall somewhere between “Unaware” and “Problem Aware” — they don’t know there’s a solution, much less that you have it in your back pocket.

This information is critical to have so that you can create compelling marketing messages for your target market… also, as we’ll talk about in the next step, it’ll help you drive tons of high-quality traffic.

Make it your goal to call at least 10-20 people within your target market and just have a conversation with them.

You’ll learn a ton by talking to them directly.

Check out the video below to learn how to put together a compelling customer avatar.

Step 2. Find Their Hang-Out Spots

To start, let’s talk about what we believe should be the foundation of your lead-gen strategy — regardless of your industry, niche, or target market.

We call it… the Dream 100.

The Dream 100 diagram.

Here’s the gist.

The people you want to serve — your dream customers — are already congregating in lots of different places online.

They’re listening to the same podcasts, reading the same blogs, signing up for the same newsletters, and following the same Instagram influencers.

What if you could implant your business, your message, and your offers into those congregations?

That’d be super valuable, right?

Heck ya!

The first step is to make a list of 100 different places — hence the name, although it could be more or less than 100 — where your dream customers already congregate online.

Find…

10+ top websites & forums where they spend time

15+ active Facebook groups

50+ influencers they follow on social media

30+ podcasts they listen to

40+ email newsletters they read

You could also target YouTube Channels, blogs, or even magazines.

Why is this useful?

The people in these congregations are already interested in what you have to offer. You just need to show up and introduce your solutions!

We’ll show you how to infiltrate these congregations in Step 5 of this article. For now, just make your list and hang on to it.

Step 3. Build Your Sales Funnel

Now let’s build your sales funnel!

This is where you’ll send your dream customers when you start driving traffic in Step 5 — it’ll be your avenue for building rapport, creating curiosity, and making sales!

First, create a free ClickFunnels account.

Once you’re in, click on “Build a Funnel.”

Build Your Sales Funnel

You’ll then be asked some questions about the type of funnel you’re wanting to build. Click on “Sell Your Product.”

Sell Your Product

Then choose the type of funnel you want to create — in the case of selling an online course without an existing audience or email list, we recommend choosing “Sales Funnel.”

This funnel will allow you to sell your online course and generate leads at the same time. You can then re-market to people who don’t convert on their first go-around.

Sales Funnel

Name your funnel and click “Build Funnel”.

Now you’ll be able to choose from a ton of different free sales funnel templates.

Don’t overthink it.

You’ll be able to customize whichever template you choose to your heart’s desire. So just pick one that you think fits the style you’re wanting to convey.

And if you don’t know where to start, just choose the same one as me!

Customize whichever template you choose to your heart’s desire.

Click on “Edit Page” and now you can turn your sales funnel into something special (without hiring an expert designer).

Click on “Edit Page” and now you can turn your sales funnel into something special.

On the Squeeze Page you’ll collect email addresses and phone numbers.

On the sales page you can introduce your online course and try to make the sale. If you don’t want to use one of the pages in the funnel, just hit the red X to remove it.

Once you’re done designing, you can easily attach a custom domain and create an automated email sequence to deliver your online course!

If you want more step-by-step help building your sales funnel… take our One Funnel Away Challenge.

Step 4. Write Compelling Copy

When it comes to selling your course, nothing is more important than the words you use.

What are you going to say on your landing page to persuade your dream customers not only that your course is awesome… but that they need your course to solve their problems?

We’ve created a process we use here at Clickfunnels to write compelling copy for our landing pages and sales funnels… every time like clockwork.

It’s called “Hook, Story, Offer”.

Check out the video below to see how Russell Brunson explains it…

Now let’s dive into that concept a little bit deeper and look at some specific examples so you can go away and write amazing copy for your sales funnel.

Hook

First up is the hook.

This is where you grab your visitor’s attention and make them raise their eyebrows with curiosity — usually, the hook section of your sales page includes a headline and a subheadline.

In fact, curiosity is exactly what you’re trying to create.

Why?

Because big promises mixed with curiosity make people stick around.

Let’s look at an example. In its first version, this webinar headline was…

How to Add 6 Figures to Your Web Design Business by Copying My Secret Method For Helping Companies Get More (Real) 5-Star Reviews WITHOUT Selling, Spending Lots of Time or Money

Hook

What do you think?

I suppose if you’re someone who happens to be struggling with getting 5-star reviews right now and that pain is acute (a very small portion of business owners) then you might be willing to sign up for the webinar.

But it’s not surprising that the cost per registrant is so high at over $24.

Let’s take a look at the second version.

The new headline was…

How I Added 6 Figures to My Web Company by Adding This One Easy to Offer Service THAT DOESN’T Require Cold Calling, Spending Lots of Time, Money or Require Extra Resources

The new headline

This headline is much more interesting!

Why?

Because he doesn’t tell you what he’s going to show you how to do… he just tells you the results he got from this secret process and gives you some examples of what it’s not.

That creates curiosity.

And curiosity creates conversions.

This is the first step to writing compelling copy on your sales page.

Hook the reader with a big promise and don’t tell them exactly what they’re going to learn (not in the hook, at least)… just tell them what they’re not going to learn.

You can explain more specifics during the offer section of your sales page (or not… depending on what it is exactly you’re trying to sell).

Story

Next up is the story.

In your hook, you made a big promise and built curiosity.

The person is continuing down your sales page to sate their curiosity and see if your offer can really live up to the promise you made.

The first step to proving to them that you really can deliver is to tell them a story — specifically, a story that reveals you really do know who they are, what they want, and how they feel.

It’s all about empathy.

Why?

Because they won’t trust anything you have to say until you show them that you know them (this is why it’s so important to identify your dream customer!).

Here’s a sales page I created for my own digital product where I told a compelling story.

Here was the hook at the top of the page…

Story

And right after the headline hook, the page dives into the middle of a dramatic story where a friend of mine, Mason, lost his biggest client.

It continues…

He’d just lost his biggest client. One of three. The client that he’d been working with for years… and made up 75% of his income.

And he had no idea how to find a new client who’d pay him that much.

Doubts attacked his flank — am I even good enough to keep doing this?

He fingered his pocket for his phone.

Scrolled to the phone number for his old boss.

He contemplated asking for his job back.

He even typed out the text.

A thousand emotions flooded his chest.

He hit send.

My name is Mike Blankenship. I’m a full-time freelance writer, Forbes-mentioned copywriter, and world traveler.

If you don’t know where your next client is coming from…

If you’re afraid of the freelance writing dream coming to an end…

If you hate fighting for new clients on crowded platforms like UpWork, LinkedIn, and Facebook Groups…

And if you want to grow your freelance writing business to 6-figures and beyond…

…then you need to read EVERY WORD on this page because I’m about to show you a proven system for surviving and THRIVING as a freelance writer for years or even decades — for finding clients, getting paid what you deserve, raising your rates, and more.

I’ll unpack the system — or “survival kit”, as I call it — for you in a sec.

First, quick backstory:

See how I’m showing the reader that I know who they are and where they’re coming from?

The rest of the story (which is quite long) explains when I lost my biggest client as a freelance writer and how frustrating and scary it was…

Article that explains when I lost my biggest client as a freelance writer and how frustrating and scary it was.

I use this story to introduce the system I created — what I refer to as my “Freelance Writer’s Survival Kit”…

I use this story to introduce the system I created — what I refer to as my “Freelance Writer’s Survival Kit”.

Here’s a bit more…

I use this story to introduce the system I created — what I refer to as my “Freelance Writer’s Survival Kit” and a bit more...

See how the hooks lead into the story and the story leads into the offer?

To give you an idea of how compelling this process is for writing copy, this page got a 20% conversion rate from cold traffic on a $47 product.

Pretty cool, right?

Offer

Up next is the offer!

When most people go to write a sales page, they often want to start here without thinking about it.

But now (hopefully) you understand why you can’t do that.

You’ve got to make a big promise and hook the reader with curiosity. Then you’ve got to tell them a story they can relate to, one that reveals your empathy for their situation. And finally, you’ve got to show them the way out… this is where you reveal your system and make your offer.

Continuing with my previous example, here’s what that looked like on my “Freelance Writers Survival Kit” page…

Offer

And a bit more…

Offer continued

Again, notice how I’m focusing far more on the value they’re going to get and the results they’re going to achieve with my system than I am on the system itself?

That’s important… as illustrated by this graphic.

That’s important… as illustrated by this graphic.

Stack your offer with as much value as you can.

Don’t just fulfill the promise you made at the beginning of your sales page — go above and beyond! Give them bonuses and extra free stuff they might want.

See how Russell does it…

See how Russell does it…

The better your offer, the more conversions you’re going to get.

If you want to learn more secrets to writing great and compelling copy, click here.

Step 5. Drive High-Quality Traffic

Now there’s something you need to understand before you drive traffic to the amazing sales funnel you’ve created.

Not all traffic is created equal.

I’ve seen it happen where a marketer creates an awesome funnel, drives traffic, and it doesn’t work… so they try to fix their funnel over and over again…

…not realizing that they have a traffic problem, not a funnel problem.

So how do you drive high-quality traffic?

There are two things you need to pay attention to…

Your Ad Copy — What are you saying in your ad messaging? Is that copy going to drive high-quality traffic? Or is it going to attract tire-kickers who aren’t actually a part of your target market? Get crystal clear with the messaging of your ad copy and make sure it speaks the right message to the right people.

Targeting — This is the biggest one. Who are your ads targeting? If you set up your ads on a social media platform, then you have a lot of control over the type of people you show your ads to. Make use of that and drive the highest quality traffic possible! Try to only attract your dream customers.

Now earlier you created what we called your Dream 100 list of places where your dream customers already congregate online.

The trick to driving high-quality traffic is to infiltrate those communities with your message and your marketing.

How?

You can either work your way in or buy your way in…

Work Your Way In — This usually means cold calling, text messaging, emailing, and even direct mailing your influencers to try and build a relationship with them and “bribe” them into some sort of collaboration. For example, you might send a free version of your product to influencers and ask them for an honest review.

Buy Your Way In — If you want to cut to the chase, then you might consider just paying influencers to get in front of their audience. This might include getting a banner ad on their website, putting your YouTube ads at the beginning of their videos, or contacting them and asking what other paid promotional opportunities they offer.

Buying your way in is pretty clear — just pay to play.

But what if you want to work your way in?

Here’s a brief overview of the three-phase process that Russell Brunson outlines in his book, Traffic Secrets.

Phase 1 (Day 1-14) — The goal during this phase is to follow and subscribe to all of the influencers you’re pursuing, and then to engage with their content so that they become aware of you. Comment and share content of theirs that resonates with you. Look for ways to serve them and do so!

Phase 2 (Day 15-30) — After two weeks of consistently engaging with the influencer’s content, reach out to them directly. Your goal isn’t to pitch them anything, but simply to open a friendly dialogue between you and them. Ask them a question about who they are and what they do to get the conversation started.

Phase 3 (Day 31-60) — During the next month, your goal is to turn the influencer into a fan of your service or brand. Give them a free account, send them free merch or a copy of your book, offer to promote them to your audience… focus on building goodwill with the influencer.

By the end of those three phases, you will have likely built an army of influencers who love your products or services.

At this point, the influencer might promote your stuff simply because they like it. If they don’t, you can ask them more directly much like you’d ask a friend (“Hey! I just launched this new service. What would it take to get you to share it with your audience?”).

Step 6. Test Everything

Digital marketing is always changing. And if you want to keep up, then you need to be prepared to change with it. That means always testing new strategies and tactics to see what works best for your business.

But don’t get overwhelmed by all of the options! Simply focus on the few digital marketing channels that are going to have the biggest impact on your business and then double down on those.

For most businesses, that means focusing on Google Ads, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and content marketing. But it could also include social media advertising, email marketing, or even influencer marketing.

The key is to focus on a few channels and then to test, test, test!

What works today might not work tomorrow, so it’s important to always be testing and optimizing your digital marketing strategy.