5 Ways to Up-Sell and Cross-Sell in Your Online Course

One of the biggest benefits of being an online course creator is that you can always add new product offerings to your business to generate additional streams of leveraged income.

So if you are selling more than one online course, digital product, membership site, challenge or coaching offering, you need to know how to up-sell and cross-sell in order to increase revenue in your business and offer the best value to your customers.

Upselling is a sales strategy aimed at convincing customers to purchase a more expensive, upgraded, or premium version of the product they chose or other add-ons that contribute to a larger sale.

Upselling works wonders because you are selling to your existing customers: studies show that your current customers are 60-70% more likely to purchase from you again, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%.

When you are upselling and cross-selling, you are increasing the customers lifetime value, learn all about how to do this here: Earn More From an Online Course by Increasing Your Customers' Lifetime Value

In today's article we will cover 5 simple ways for online course creators to start upselling products to their audience.

#1: Educate Your Audience About Your Product Offerings

To successfully upsell your products, you need to make sure that your audience and website visitors and aware about everything they can get from you - or at least the products you want them to see.

So make sure that you are clearly communicating what it is that you are selling and what kind of products you are offering.

On your website this means repeating your message over and over to make it clear, having a dedicated landing page where you list your product offerings and clear CTAs (call to actions) for your visitors to follow.

Within your online course, students should be able to browse through other products they did not purchase yet (unless you want to keep them hidden for a specific reason).

Heights Platform allows creators to build unlimited courses, digital products, community channels, challenges all from one place so students who purchased one of your product can easily access and purchase another one.

#2: Use The Right Online Course Platform

The easiest way to add upsells is to use an online course software that does it for you.

Heights Platform lets you easily customize upsells for each product purchase, and set a unique upsell price to make the offer even more enticing.

You can choose to offer upsells right at checkout, or once someone completes an online course, as shown in the picture above (or both!)

#3: Add Up-Sells to Your Welcome Email and Thank You Page

Another way to make sure your customers are aware about other products you are selling is to add up-sells to your email sequence and landing pages on your site.

After a students purchase your online course you could send them a welcome email with all the information they need and one or more upsells, or sends them to a landing page where you thank them for their purchase and show your upsells.

Pay attention to the nature of your upsells: are these products complementing your main offering or replacing its value?

For example, let's say a customer just bought your course about puppy training. Your upsell could be an eBook about how new pet owners can take care of the health of their new pups. Something that adds value and complements your main offering without replacing its content is a great add-on to upsell after a purchase.

#4: Add Cross-Sells at the End of an Online Course

The timing when you propose an upsell and cross-sell also plays a role on your sales: so when is it the best time to offer an upsell?

This depends on the nature of your products.

Ideally, you should have many different product offerings for each stages of the customer journey.

For instance, before we talked about offering an upsell right after a customer purchases a product from you, by adding it to the thank you email or landing page. In this case, the best cross-sell to offer is something that complements what the customer just purchased, so an add-on.

But when is it the best time to take a customer to the next level and offer a more expensive, higher value upsell?

Probably the best time would be at completion of your online course, once students have gone through your program and are starting to witness the result, the real value of your teaching.

This is when - if they liked your online course - they are the most satisfied with your business and would want to get more from you and maybe are willing to invest more time and money into a higher ticket program (another online course or a coaching session, mastermind...)

There are many ways you can upsell at this stage, let's see the most common approaches:

• Send an email once a student completes your course offering an upsell
• Ask them to review your course, and if they enjoyed it, contact them with an upsell
• Add a lesson at the end of your online course with an upsell (or if you are using Heights Platform you can do this automatically)
• Redirect students to a landing page once they complete your course

#5: Create Bundles of Products

Another great way to upsell is to add different products to a bundle.

A bundle is a collection of products: on Heights Platform you can create bundles and include online courses, challenges, digital downloads, coaching sessions and access to a community channel.

If you are selling multiple products individually, you could offer the bundle at a convenient price but still significantly higher than the single product, making it a great deal for both you and your customers.

For example, let's say you are selling your main flagship online course for $500, another online course for $250 and one digital download for $30. A customer could buy all of your product individually by spending $780, or could purchase the bundle for - let's say - $700.

Related article: Ultimate Guide to Pricing Your Online Course (With Earnings Calculator)

In this scenario, you would be able to capture revenue that otherwise would be lost (cause most of your customers would not buy all of your products) and your customers would get a much more valuable product, resulting in better reviews, more loyal customers and better end results for them.

Conclusion

Upselling is a great way to increase revenue and sales for online course creators. In this article, we walked through our top five ways for upselling and cross-selling digital learning products.

To recap, make sure that your audience is aware of your product offerings by clearly communicating this on your website and communications with your students. Add upsells and add-ons that complement an order to your welcome emails and thank you landing pages your students will see once they complete a purchase.

Propose an upsell once students are completing your online course and are starting to witness the value and reaching the result they desire, and last but not least, create a bundle of products that offers value to your students!

So if you haven't tried these strategies yet, give it a go! All you need is an online course platform where you can create upsells for each product, keep all of your learning content in one place for your students to browse, send emails to your students and create bundles with different pricing plans.

All of these actions and much more are possible with Heights Platform, so if you haven't already, start your free account below: