In this blog, I’ll share a step-by-step guide on how to use Facebook to sell your online courses.
When it comes to selling your product or services online, you can not steer yourself from Facebook. It won’t be wrong to call Facebook a goldmine for course creators as it has billions of active users per day whom you can be friends with or add to your Facebook group or page.
If you are someone who is looking for an in-depth guide that could help you to sell online courses using Facebook, then you’re at the right place!
Getting consistent leads is a common problem that every other course creator faces. Even if you have a sizable audience, you would want to reach more and more people to expand your reach and online business, right?
Don’t worry!
I have it all sorted for you.
This article is going to cover some proven reasons why you should be using Facebook to sell online courses. Not only this, but you will also get to learn about some effective ways and tips that you could use to sell more online courses.
Table of Contents
- Top Reasons Of Using Facebook To Sell Your Online Courses
- How To Use Facebook To Sell Online Courses?
- 1- Create A Business Page
- 2- Post Consistently On Facebook
- 3- Interact With Your Audience
- 4- Try Facebook Ads
- a) Traffic Campaign
- b)- Lead Magnet
- c)- Purchase Campaign
- Mistakes that you shouldn’t commit:
- 5- Create Facebook Groups
- 6- Use Facebook Live
Top Reasons Of Using Facebook To Sell Your Online Courses
Doubtlessly, Facebook is the most popular social networking site. It won’t be wrong to call Facebook the heart of all the social networking sites. Every other person whom you are in contact with online or maybe offline is on Facebook and you can not deny this fact. Hence, you can not steer clear from using Facebook to sell your online courses.
Related Blog: A quick guide to getting started with Facebook Touch
How To Use Facebook To Sell Online Courses?
1- Create A Business Page
First thing first, create a business page for your online institute before getting into the nitty-gritty of Facebook. Creating a Facebook page could help you in building a solid & professional presence on the platform.
You could create it through your personal profile or you could also create a Facebook page from scratch. Give a name to your online institute’s Facebook page and add an image. You would also have to give a username to your page, make sure it is the same or close to the name of your Facebook page to avoid confusion. You could add your own photograph or anything which is relatable to your online business.
Make sure you add all the relevant information like your services, address, contact number & email address. Write a short description about how you could help your page visitors. Use targeted keywords while filling in all the details. Adding these things to your page could help your visitors to know more about your business and it also helps in building trust and market positioning.
Launch your online course within 10 minutes
2- Post Consistently On Facebook
Creating a business page alone is not sufficient. You would need to add value to the feed of your followers. Make sure you post consistently on your Facebook business page.
You must have heard about ‘quality over quantity. This proverb holds true in almost every aspect whether it’s about friends or any product and your online institute is not an exception. Hence, make sure that you are posting valuable content on your page.
Do not run after followers or likes in the first place. Focus on creating value, everything else will follow. If you are new and not sure about what your audience would like to experiment with, keep on experimenting, run polls, and try to understand your audience as much as you can. This is the only secret that could help you in building your strong online presence.
3- Interact With Your Audience
It is impractical to think about building a strong online presence while staying in isolation. Nothing sells in isolation and online courses are not an exception. To sell your online courses you would need to interact with your audience. Interact with them frequently.
‘Facebook is a goldmine’
But you could get the gold (leads) out of it only if you get into the nitty-gritty of the platform.
Many course creators and businesses focus on building a page and posting content consistently but still they don’t get the desired results.
Can you figure out why this happens?
Let me explain it to you.
Facebook’s algorithm favors creators who create engagement. Before posting anything, analyze if that particular post would encourage meaningful conversations or not.
How to Start Your Own Online Business
4- Try Facebook Ads
Paid advertising is the most powerful feature of Facebook. You may find it difficult to reach your target audience organically or maybe you would want to maximize your reach and that is the time when you should start using Facebook ads. Ads may look like normal posts but they are highly targeted and they have the potential to reach thousands of people within a few hours.
The best part about Facebook ads is, there is no minimum Facebook ad budget. You could start small. Even a few dollar post boost could take you a long way. You could invest more in ads later as per your budget.
You must be wondering about the type of Facebook Ads campaign you should run to promote your online institute, right?
Don’t worry!
I have got your back.
You should use three types of ads on Facebook to derive your leads into your sales funnel and then finally convert them into your customers (learners).
Let’s dig deeper into Facebook ads!
a) Traffic Campaign
This is the top of your funnel campaign. Through these ads, you would be targeting a cold audience and this is the only time when you would be doing that.
As the name suggests itself, the aim of these ads is to drive traffic to your website. Video ads bring in great results. Hence, you could record a video in which you can give a brief introduction of yourself and your course. Direct your audience to your course landing page. While creating the ad include a copy that is compelling and catchy. In the end, finish it with a call-to-action like learn more.
b)- Lead Magnet
Many people would have visited your course landing page after watching your first video ad. But, the rate of conversion would be very less. Now, here comes the lead magnet campaign. This is the middle of your funnel campaign. Through these ads, you could retarget the audience that you targeted through your traffic campaign.
At this point in time, your potential learners are aware of your online course.
But they don’t trust you, right?
Therefore, this is the time to use testimonials and build trust among the people that you are retargeting. Use video testimonials as they are highly appealing and help in building trust. Write a copy that includes the transformational journey of your learner and end it with a clear call-to-action like Sign up.
But, what to do if you are a newbie and don’t have testimonials?
Aren’t you worrying about it?
Don’t worry! We’ve got you covered.
Everyone loves gifts. Hence, you could also offer a gift to your audience through retargeting. It could be a free course or a free live webinar that you are going to conduct.
When you are giving it for free, there are higher chances of getting them to register for your free course or webinar. In return, you could ask them for their details like email address & name.
In this way, you could also build an email list that you could use for email marketing purposes.
Write a longer copy for these ads and include a catchy image of your previous webinars or a mini teaser of your course. Finish it up with a call-to-action like sign up or read more.
Pro Tip: Always and always use retargeting ads. Install Facebook Pixel on specific pages of your course website. (Graphy allows you to install your Facebook pixel on your course website)
c)- Purchase Campaign
This is the bottom of your sales funnel campaign. By this time your cold leads may have converted into your followers or warm leads. Again redirect them to your course landing page to purchase your course. Give an offer or you could also use timers. For example, tell your audience that your batch is going to be full in a few hours & only limited seats are left.
The type of copy, visuals, and call-to-action remains the same as it was in the case of Lead Magnet ads.
Write a long copy and communicate about the value that your course is going to offer to your audience. Talk about the pains of your target audience and offer them medicine i.e, your course to them. Explain in brief, how your course would help them in achieving their desired result. Use targeted keywords and bullet points to explain the offer. Again, use a specific call-to-action like sign-up.
Related: How To Build An Email List From Scratch
Mistakes that you shouldn’t commit:
1- Running Purchase Campaign First
You wouldn’t want to eat desserts before eating your meal first, right?
In a similar way, a prospect has to go through the initial stages of your sales funnel first, and then you could ask them to purchase your course. Many course creators launch the purchase campaign first and then end up wasting the money that they spent on the ad.
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2- Targeting A Cold Audience
Instead of nurturing a cold audience, many course creators launch purchase campaigns just after the traffic campaign.
Would you purchase anything (especially a course or a luxurious product) from a stranger?
Probably not, right?
In the same way, your audience won’t purchase your course if they don’t trust you. Hence, use retargeting ads to build trust among your audience. Use some testimonials or social proofs.
Earn six figures by launching your first online course
3- Not Having A Strategy
Your ads won’t be successful if you don’t know the objective behind running them. Before running any campaign, plan a strategy. Define your end goals first. Understand why you are running a specific campaign and what is the purpose behind it.
Is your goal to gather attention, increase brand awareness or sell your course?
If you are aware of these things only then you will be able to get the desired results.
How to start online classes in 5 simple steps
5- Create Facebook Groups
One of the best ways to interact with your audience is to create a Facebook group. The reach of Facebook groups is very high as compared to Facebook pages.
It is highly recommended to build a community for your audience so that they won’t feel alone. In times of trouble, they could post their queries to the group and the fellow members could help them in solving their problems.
Give an SEO-optimized name to your Facebook group so that it may appear in search results. It should be something closely related to your niche. Ask your audience to join your group. You should post useful consistently as much as possible. Try to provide instant feedback to your learners. You could appoint a person who would specifically do this job.
Encourage meaningful conversations. Moreover, to enhance your community, you could announce giveaways or free goodies to your community. Like your first 100 members will get a customized t-shirt or coffee mug.
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6- Use Facebook Live
Facebook Live is an effective feature launched by Facebook back in 2016. You could use this feature to interact with your audience frequently. Many businesses use this feature instead of conducting webinars. They simply announce on their stories, community page, and business page about their upcoming Live sessions.
Since it is real-time video streaming, it could make your viewers feel as if they are having a 1-1 session with you. While conducting a Live session on Facebook keep an eye on the comments and reactions. To encourage meaningful interaction, build a personal brand and long-lasting relationships with your learners, respond to comments instantly.
Though it is not as easy as it seems because once you build your audience, you will get hundreds of comments within a few minutes. But, we know anything great, never comes easy. Hence, brace yourself and put in all of your efforts and hard work.
Pro Tip: Start running Facebook ads today!
Conclusion:
Now, you have learned about multiple ways of using Facebook to sell your online course. So, the next step is to pick a few strategies & start implementing them.
As Excuses are always going to be there but excuses can never help you to set up your online business empire.
And there’s no better time to start using Facebook to sell your online courses than today!
