The Thousand Solutions Blog

The Course Creator's Guide: How to Fill the Gaps in Your One-to-Many Pipeline

Dec 11, 2024

Have you ever run on the sand? To put it frankly, it's terrible. You're putting in twice the effort to get half the distance. That's the situation with the gaps in your sales pipeline. And unfortunately, far too many course designers have to deal with this issue.

If you're creating a course, you're offering your company a perfect opportunity to reach many more potential customers with your knowledge But how long has it been since you had a look through your course to see the gaps and opportunities that aren't being tapped?

Check out the example course-creator pipeline for some tips and ideas.

Skip ahead:

Prior to diving in the importance of personalization

If you go through the next pipeline there is a focus on personalization.

Most people think that an automated system is an impersonal one. But in reality it is possible to create an endless variety of methods to make automated communication more personalized and thoughtful and improve consistency and conversion.

Read on to discover ways to not just help you fill in the holes of your existing one-to-many pipeline but also provide personalization options that are sure to please your leads and customers. And don't forget to keep an eye out for the strategies and technology that can help bring these personalized pipeline phases to life and without consuming your valuable time.

The pipeline

    Prospecting    

This phase is all about getting the interest of your targeted viewers, however this could be a difficult time for course creators. Consider the following suggestions to make sure you're reaching your intended audience by offering the right offer:

Inbound marketing requires you to create content, such as blog posts, eBooks guides, videos, and anything that will pique the interest of your audience. You're probably doing this already but ensure that you're implementing an effective SEO plan to secure the content you create. Optimizing your content for search engines, in turn, optimizes this phase of your workflow and boosts the time you put into producing content. Search engines are going to crawl whatever you create to serve it up in outcomes, and the more optimised your content and the more likely your targeted audience can locate you.

Formulas and landing pages If you're not making use of these tools to your advantage and forms, the potential customers you're attracted with your stellar content will fall through the cracks. This is among the biggest gaps that you'll encounter. In order to close this gap and avoid losing prospects that you've worked so hard to get, use landing pages to convey a compelling story of your solution and use forms to capture contact information from leads with high intent. Store those leads in your CRM and nurture leads towards making a purchase. Speaking of nurturing leads, that brings us to the second sales pipeline phase.

    Automatic lead nurture    

In the case of nurturing leads, it is a manual process that will result in a surprising amount of gaps. Why? Since every time an important reminder of a nurture is lost, a gap forms where leads can be lost. The majority of the time, teams don't not even being aware of the harm done because they're too busy managing other tasks. This is why you need automated nurture sequences.

Utilize business automation software to create nurture campaigns that consist of all the outreach required to guide the people who visit your website through your funnel. As an example, when someone fills out a request on your site, business automation can automatically initiate a welcome message which will offer resources that are of interest to them, and then push to the next step in your sales process. After it's fired then your customers will be able to receive all the necessary messages exactly when they need they need them. And you and your team won't have to lift a finger because nurture is taking place in a way that is automatic.

It is possible that you are already using automated lead nurturing, however this doesn't mean that you're not susceptible from gaps. You must ensure that you're not missing the steps of your automated processes by incorporating relevant content in every text and email. Some of the most effective items to consider include:

  • Personalized email to introduce your company
  • No cost eBook
  • Sneak peek of the course, and an accompanying customer testimonial
  • Helpful articles related to their areas of interest (Your Small Business CRM could help)
  • Webinar invitation for free
  • Exclusive discounts

Each of these tools is designed to provide value to your leads, which is a priority during this stage of the pipeline. One of the best aspects of this approach is that what you decide to nurture leads with can be automated. The result is no gaps, less effort for you to do, and a consistent experience for your leads.

    Lead qualification    

Once people are beginning to respond with your message The qualification process begins. It is easy to optimize and streamline this phase in your workflow by acquiring valuable information from automation of nurture cycles. This data will inform the qualification process, so that you can identify the most engaged leads who want to buy an online course.

Automatic lead scoring was developed to speedily and precisely make your leads with high intent without any manually input from the team or you.

An optimized, efficient qualifying phase is like this: Business automation or CRM software monitors every customer's interactions with you, which includes the frequency they check your emails, what links they click, what forms they submit and more. Then, it assigns points to each positive action and subtracts points from negative ones, adds them up and signals the leads most likely to move on to the next step in your brand.

    Webinar or live event    

Making a live event in your one-to-many pipeline is an excellent method of serving a large number of people simultaneously, but in a way 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 a different nurture path until they're ready. the most qualified leads are invited to attend a free webinar.

In this event You'll need to ensure you've done three important things:

  • Provide value: Consider giving your attendees a sneak peek of a concept they might discover in your class. It's a crucial element of making the webinar worth their time and deepening their trust in your brand's courses.
  • Feature a Q&A segment: At this stage, unanswered questions could be the obstacle that keeps potential customers from purchasing your classes, therefore it's crucial to set aside the time needed to answer questions. Since this live session will serve multiple prospects in a row, everybody is going to benefit from the questions asked.
  • Create a CTA : To prevent a dead-end or gap, this webinar needs to end in a logical next step, and this could be the perfect time to invite attendees to complete their purchase or make a time to telephone call should they wish to learn more about.

    Convert it or do a following-up    

Following the live event will give you access to an inventory of the registrants and you'll be able to contact the attendees in a timely manner and create your selling pitch.

That's where the majority businesses make a mistake. They don't realize that they have a whole group of contacts who are enthused enough about their offerings and training courses to sign up for their online seminar. The key to ensuring your pipeline remains airtight is to follow up with contacts whether or not they actually attended your webinar.

For those who attended the event, you can schedule an automated email for the day after the ceremony. Use this message to thank the attendees for attending by providing the attendees with a special discount coupon and direct the link to your website so that they can purchase their items.

If you have a group of people who registered for your event but didn't make it, don't forget to send an automated message to them too. Invite them to attend your next live event or send an email with a replay of the event they did not attend. You may also add a link to your checkout page so they don't have to go through the entire process and pay for your course when they're interested.

In an ideal world, the majority of your contacts will convert following this process within your pipeline, however that's not always the case. Do not fret, however! Simply segment those who didn't decide to buy into a new group so you can continue to nurture the prospects and offer value until it's time for the next opportunity.

    Onboard    

Did you secure some new customers? Step one: Happy dance. Step 2: Boarding.

It's a huge deal to be onboarding however, it is also known to be among the most common inconsistencies. In order to avoid any missteps in your onboarding and to save hours of manual work make sure you use automatic onboarding.

Automate every step of your onboarding so you're not leaving potential clients confused and unhappy immediately after making the purchase. The only thing you need to make is create a campaign that's triggered by a course purchase. Fill it up with the necessary elements for example:

  • Welcome and Thank you email
  • Guides to accessing their latest course subscription (ie. login credentials, how to create their account for the first time, etc. )
  • Resources they can utilize to get the most out of their brand new course
  • Invitations to groups when their course offers group learning, or if you are part of a community with others students, they must be a part of and work with

Going the extra mile for your customers and business

Your sales pipeline may end when someone has received all their onboarding materials, but it could lead to missed opportunities as well as a non-finished procedure. If you're looking to maximize your pipeline's potential for success, consider rounding the process with these final details:

    Check-in    

Contact your new course registrants after they've had a chance to dive in and start learning. Send an email featuring an application form for them to share their experience or ask questions, a link to your support page and a few tutorials they might find helpful. Following this first check-in make sure to check their inbox periodically to notify the students of new materials for their courses and to congratulate them for completing certain milestones or ask for more information.

    Upsell and cross-sell    

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

Be sure to personalize your message to make it pertinent and relevant to each individual. Use their current courses, past downloads, and any other details you can gather about them in order to decide which cross-sells and upsells you can pitch them. The more specific these sales pitches are, the more likely your customers will take action as if they were repeat buyers.

In the case of example, if a person takes a social media marketing course from your company, do not try to cross-sell them the idea of the idea of starting a podcast. Instead, ask participants to join a brand new course on advanced social selling.

    Retrieve reviews and referrals    

A different method to increase the revenue of your business is to obtain positive reviews and promising referrals. This creates a flywheel of new leads in your pipeline.

Once someone has successfully completed the course make the most of the positive experience by sending a thank you message that thanks them for choosing your business, and also encourages them to leave a review or refer another person who may be benefited from your training course.

Let's discuss technology and next steps

When you modify this nine-step method to suit your particular business needs, there is one thing you can't forget software. The best one-to-many pipelines hinge on having an appropriate system. It's what will enable you to carry out this procedure time and time again to save yourself time and effort of manual input, and provide a fantastic and constant experience for your clients.

The following are the two particular items you need to be able to include in your tech stack that will help you on the way:

If you're eager to get started and would like to find out exactly what gaps are in your current pipeline, take this free test. It can help you identify potential opportunities that you haven't tapped into within your customer journey and guide you on how to fix them to create a better customer experience each time.