Earn More From an Online Course by Increasing Your Customers' Lifetime Value

If you want to earn more from your online course or coaching business but are not sure how then you are in the right place.

In today's article, we will share a powerful concept you can apply to your business to unlock extra revenue. The concept that we will share in the post is often overlooked by creators, who end up missing potential revenue.

If you are an online course creator or coach and you want to get to the next level in terms of revenue, the first impulse is to think:

"How can I get more customers?" "How can I find new people to sign up for my online course?"

Many creators spend so much time and money trying to figure out a new, better way to acquire customers for their business - which is great, you should always try to promote your online course and test new marketing strategies.

However, you should not forget about your existing customers and people who have already purchased from you: these are the people who know you, trust you and most likely will purchase from you again!

So why not keep nurturing this audience of proven buyers to increase your earnings?

Instead of promoting old products to new customers, why not promote new products to old customers?

A lot of creators almost forget about their current students once they enroll in the course. Or at least they forget about the earning potential that can come from this group of customers.

Maybe you interact with your current students every day, and maybe you have some kind of community built into your online course. But did you try to increase their lifetime value by offering additional products or services to them?

Before we get into why you should increase your customers' lifetime value, let's see what "lifetime value" actually means. The lifetime value of a customer refers to the total amount of money your average customer will spend on your business during their whole life.

You can calculate the current value of a customer simply by seeing how much they spent on your business so far. As far as the lifetime value, that depends on what kind of products or services you are offering and how likely are your customers to purchase from you again.

If you are only offering one product and you are not planning to expand your business, unless your customers buy the same product again, then you have already reached their lifetime value. The majority of businesses out there offer more than one product, and often depend on repeat purchases from customers to drive growth. Keep reading below to learn how to increase your customers' lifetime value and why you should do it!

Benefits of Targeting Your Existing Customers

Your current and past customers are the perfect audiences for your products. Let's see why:

• They are familiar with your business: your current students already know what your value proposition is and they are familiar with your brand.
• They like your teaching style: if they are enjoying your online course, your current customers clearly like your teaching style and will be happy to take another course from you.
• They trust you and consider you an expert: you have already demonstrated your expertise to your current customers, so you don't have to try hard in order to appear as an expert in front of strangers.
• They are not afraid of spending money on you: your current and past customers already purchased from you, which means that they trust you with their money and are probably willing to purchase from you again! (Put simply, your buyers are the most likely to buy from you!)

Because of all of these reasons, your current customers are your most qualified leads: they already bought your online course or digital products, they are engaged with your content and most likely will buy from you again in the future.

Targeting your current customers is also much easier and less resource-consuming: in other words, it is easier to convince an existing customer to buy from you again, rather than trying to acquire a brand new customer who has never heard about your business before.

As you probably know, promoting your online course to a cold audience requires you to invest a large amount of time, energy and money. While promoting your other digital products or services to your existing customers guarantees a higher return on investment.

That said, you should keep marketing your business to new audiences to expand your customer base and increase your sales, while also trying to increase your existing customers' lifetime value.

Ideas To Increase Your Customers' Lifetime Value

Now that you know all about the benefits of retargeting your current customers and promoting new products to them, let's see how you can actually do it and capture additional revenue.

Create Extra Product Offerings

The easiest way to increase your current customers' lifetime value is by creating additional products for them.

This means crafting extra product offerings that are tailored to your existing students' needs.

If you don't know where to start, try having a look at the products you are currently selling. Maybe you built one flagship online course or membership site. Or maybe you already have an array of products available for your audience.

Either way, think about what kind of resources your current customers might need that they are not already getting from your online course. Can you create some low-cost offerings such as an eBook, some ready-made templates or tutorials to complement what your students are learning in your main online course?

Or maybe you want to create something more valuable to bring your current customers to the next step in the learning journey. Think about offering high-ticket coaching sessions, or one-on-one training with you that you can offer to students in your course who need even more guidance.

Related articles:

• 5 Leveraged Income Ideas for Online Course Creators
• 9 Profitable Digital Product Ideas You Can Start Selling Online To Earn Extra Income

Come Up With a Value Ladder

A great way to structure the product offerings in your business and get new ideas on how to generate more revenue from your existing customers is by coming up with the value ladder for your online course business.

You can think of a value ladder as a collection of products organized from the least valuable and least expensive, to the most valuable and most expensive.

The value ladder is simply a concept that can help you organize your product offerings and visually understand the customer journey for your business. Creating your own value ladder can also offer you insights into which products you might want to create for each different stage of the buyer's journey.

Learn all about creating a value ladder: The Value Ladder - How to Improve Online Course Sales by Segmenting Your Audience and Product Offering

Offer a Private Community

When it comes to increasing your customers' lifetime value, you could leverage the power of private communities in two ways:

#1. Paid Community

You can choose to offer a paid community for your online course students. In this scenario, people who purchase your online course would have to pay an extra monthly fee in order to access your online community. This is an idea to increase your customers' lifetime value and gain extra revenue easily.

#2. Free Community

You can offer a private community for free to your existing customers, and use it as a way to promote other products to them.

This is a great idea especially if your goal is to sell more expensive products (such as a coaching program) to your existing customers since it provides a win-win situation for both you and your customers.

The "win" for you is that you get to create an online space where you can easily promote other products and increase your sales. The "win" for your customers is that they get free access to an engaging online community where they can keep learning, share ideas and get even more guidance.

Choose an Online Course Platform That Helps You Scale Your Business

None of the ideas explained above are possible if you don't have a powerful online course platform that helps you scale your business with ease.

To tap into more revenue and increase your customers' lifetime value, you need to offer multiple extra products, maybe coaching services or an online community. So you need an online course platform that lets you create and sell unlimited online courses, digital products, challenges, membership sites and so on.

You also need an online course platform with a powerful online community element, that gives you the flexibility to structure a community the way you want.

Heights Platform is the perfect solution for creators who want to grow their online course business to the next level without having to worry about limits on their accounts or extra fees.