4 Sales Tips on How to Sell an Online Course "Without Selling"

5 minute read

We all know that sales are an integral part of any business: without sales, your business would not exist!

But there are many different ways and strategies you can use to sell your online courses and promote your business.

Many creators get intimidated whenever they hear the word "selling" as they picture pushy salespeople knocking on their doors, and they think this is what they have to do to get new customers.

While cold selling techniques are something you should try for your business, there are other sales techniques you can and should use to increase conversions for your online course or coaching business.

If you hate selling or pitching your products to complete strangers who are simply not interested and you wish there was another way, stay tuned and keep reading below. In today's article, we will share our top strategies to sell without actually selling.

The concept is simple, instead of begging your customers to buy from you, let them come to you.

By applying the strategies below you will reverse the roles: instead of you needing your customers to make sales, they will need you in order to solve a specific problem they have.

Your goal is to position yourself as the ultimate expert in your niche and attract your customers to you by guiding them towards a purchase: this involves a lot of research and market analysis to help you understand who are the potential customers that need your help and target those people who will happily buy from you.

So before you start implementing the strategies below, it is important to carry out market research and truly understand who your customers are, what problems they need help with and where to find them. If this is something you have not figured out yet, check out this article from our blog: Why You Should Do Market Research Before Starting an Online Course Business + How to Do it

Once you have a clear idea of your ideal customers and you did your market research, you can go ahead and start selling without selling using the tips below:

#1: Build Your Brand First

If you look at successful entrepreneurs who sell online courses or coaching programs, the last thing you notice is actually what they are selling.

This might be because they are not only focusing on one product or service, instead, they sell a multitude of product offerings. But it is mainly because before selling anything to you, they build their brand around themselves.

The best advice I can give anyone aspiring to build a well-known personal brand is to hold off on monetizing their audience for as long as possible. The longer you go without monetizing, the more economics you’ll build on the back end.
Gary Vaynerchuk

The quote above is from Gary Vaynerchuk, influential entrepreneur, author, and speaker. If you look at his website or everything he shares online, it is rare that you will see him trying to sell a product to his audience. However, when he does, he manages to sell to thousands of people.

This is because he managed to build a strong personal brand that resonates with his following. Now that Gary Vee built his brand, he can easily monetize his audience by simply selling himself through conference tickets, coaching, keynote speech and so on.

Learn more about building your personal brand: How to Build A Personal Brand to Promote Your Online Course Business

If you don't have the time or resources to focus on building a personal brand and not sell your products, the next tip might be a better way for you to grow your brand and sales at the same time:

#2: Position Yourself as an Expert with Content Creation

Another great way to make your customers come to you instead of pitching your products to them is by positioning yourself as an expert in your niche.

This is a similar idea to point number 1 of building your brand, except now you are promoting your online courses or coaching programs at the same time thanks to content creation.

The idea is to leverage free content to bring your business in front of the eyes of potential customers. However, the message you are sending to your leads is not "Come buy from me", instead you are showing them how to solve a problem for free.

If you do this well enough, people will start to think of you as the ultimate expert in your niche and come to you whenever they need more help or want to learn more.

A good example can be to start your own YouTube channel and share videos that can help your target audience solve (relatively small) pain points they experience in their daily lives. If they need more or want to receive one-on-one assistance, that is when you offer them your paid courses or coaching program.

Learn more about growing your business with content creation: 5 Tips to Grow Your Business With Content Creation and Build an Audience Around Your Online Course

#3: Start an Online Community

Managing a thriving, engaging online community is as powerful as being able to invite your target audience to your website or online course page and making them want to come back every single day.

If you manage to build an engaged online community around your brand, you’ll gather a pool of potential customers available who are interested in your product or online course and trust you.

A thriving online community is a great idea to improve website traffic and sales for your online course or membership site.

If your community members are excited about your program, they’ll be the marketing voice you need. By leveraging word-of-mouth marketing, you’ll be able to spread the word about your product and generate more sales in an indirect, non-pushy way.

Learn more about growing your own online community with these articles from our blog:

#4: Leverage SEO to Show Up in Search Results

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can help you rank higher in search engine results over time.

Being on the top-10 results in Google searches for keywords related to your business is a huge advantage that can help you show up right where your potential customers are looking.

Studies show that the first five organic results for a certain search, account for 67.60% of all the clicks.

SEO can help you generate more leads for your online business and increase the level of trust in your brand. Your goal is to show up on the top Google search results for keywords that are related to your business and that you know what your potential customers are looking for.

If you look at your analytics and you do find that you have a webpage ranking near the top of the search engines, use that as an opportunity to sell and position your brand in the page copy, and think about ways to improve that page in terms of conversions.

So how can you leverage the power of SEO to generate more sales? Learn all about it in this article from our blog: All You Need to Know About SEO to Sell Online Courses

To Conclude

Bringing in new sales and gaining new students for your online course can be challenging, and many creators don't feel comfortable with cold selling.

There are a few strategies you can implement in order to start selling your online course or coaching program, without actually "selling". Our advice is to focus on building a personal brand first, build your audience and credibility with content creation, start an online community around your business and leverage the power of SEO to show up in the Google searches of your target customers.

Are you already implementing these techniques? What has worked for you in the past to gain sales without actually selling?

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Post Topics: Build and Promote Your Course