Online course marketing that starts on your sales page

If people who like you won't buy from the page, strangers won't either. You can find that out for free this week, or you can pay for ads and find it out next month.

"...adults rarely sign up for a serious course while scrolling a feed." Abe Crystal, co-founder and CEO of the course platform Ruzuku

In his article on marketing a course, he says what gets people to buy is hearing you teach, in a long interview or a live class. A friend's word can do it too. So your marketing has two jobs: let people hear you teach, then send them to a page that finishes the job.

Why the page comes first

Here's a made-up sum. A podcast host has you on, and 300 listeners visit your page. Your course costs $297.

It's the same podcast and the same hour of your time. The better page earned twice as much.

Ads work the same way. If each click costs you $1 and 1 in 100 visitors buys, each sale costs you $100. If 2 in 100 buy, it costs you $50. So every hour on the page makes every later channel worth more. (A channel is just one way of reaching people, like email or podcasts.)

Find your number

Count how many different people visited your sales page, and how many of them bought. Five sales from 250 visitors means 2 out of every 100 bought.

Your course platform shows your sales. For visitors, go to Google Analytics and click Reports, then Engagement, then Pages and screens. Find your sales page in the list and use its Active users number. That counts each person once, and Views doesn't.

Now you need something to compare it with. Anouska Rood, who helps course creators build steady sales, suggests aiming for these:

• People who already know you, like your email list: 3 to 5 out of every 100 buy.
• Strangers, like people from an ad or a podcast: 1 to 2 out of every 100 buy.

These are one expert's goals, and your price and topic will move them. They're good enough to tell you which row you're in:

Fix the page in an afternoon

Show the first screen of your sales page to a friend for five seconds, on a phone. Then take the phone away. Can they tell you who it's for, what they'd be able to do at the end and how long it takes?

If they can't, start there. Rood says the headline and the first section are where a change usually helps most.

Here's a made-up example for a dog trainer:

• Before: The Complete Puppy Course
• After: For first-time puppy owners. Walk past other dogs without the lunging, in four weeks, with ten minutes of practice a day.

Then answer the doubts in the reader's head. The sales psychology is plain enough: people buy once the worry stopping them has an answer. Three worries come up again and again:

• "I don't have time." Give the real hours per week.
• "Will it work for someone like me?" Say who it's for and who should skip it. Add a student story with a name, a starting point and a result.
• "What if it doesn't work?" Put your refund terms in one plain sentence.

A vague "great course!" won't help. A line like "By week three, my puppy walked past the neighbor's dog without lunging" will. Getting lines like that from real students is the best thing you can do for the page.

Now watch how people read it. Microsoft Clarity is free and shows you recordings of visits, plus how far people scroll. If most people never reach your price, the trouble sits above your price. Also ask five people who could be customers to read the page out loud while you stay quiet. Jakob Nielsen, a long-time expert on how people use websites, says a small test with about five people finds most of a site's problems. It's a slightly painful afternoon, and it's cheaper than a month of ads.

The bigger plan for how to sell online courses gets much easier once this page works.

Send each person to the right door

A stranger and a subscriber don't need the same page. Your subscriber knows you and only has to decide. A stranger from an ad has known you for four seconds.

So choose where each person lands based on what they already know:

The podcast row is the one people miss. Your interview goes well, and a crowd of new people types in your name. They land on your homepage, nothing there mentions the show, and they wander off.

So build a simple page before you go on the show. It takes an hour. The top could say:

Heard me on The Puppy Hour? Here's the leash checklist I promised, plus the first lesson of my course.

The show name is made up, but the idea isn't. The words on the page should match what brought them there. People who see the words they just heard know they're in the right place.

Give every channel its own link

If you can't tell where your buyers came from, you'll keep doing whatever feels busy. And busy can fool you. The video about your course will get 212 views. The one where your dog wandered through the shot will get 40,000, and every comment will ask about the dog.

There are three easy ways to find out what really brings in buyers.

A tagged link. Google's free Campaign URL Builder adds a label to the end of your link. You paste in your page's address. Then you fill in where you're sharing it (like "puppy-hour"), what kind of link it is (like "podcast") and a name for the campaign. Later, in Google Analytics, go to Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Change the drop-down at the top of the table to Session source / medium, and you'll see how many visits each link brought.

A coupon code for each partner. Elizabeth St. Hilaire runs an art masterclass with 13 guest artists. Ruzuku says each guest gets their own coupon code. That shows her who sent each student. If you're on Teachable's Builder plan or higher, you can use affiliate links instead. These track each person's sales and pay them a share. Anyone you pay this way has to say so. The FTC, the US consumer watchdog, says people should make affiliate links clear, with words like "paid link."

One question. Add this to your welcome email: "How did you first hear about me?" It's low tech and it catches the things links miss, like a friend telling a friend.

Then keep one small spreadsheet, with one row for each channel: visitors, sales, money spent and hours spent. Look at it once a week.

Add channels, starting with the people who trust you most

Pick one. Give it six weeks. Then look at your spreadsheet and decide if it stays. The list below runs from the people who trust you most to the ones who've never heard of you.

1. People you already know. Write to 20 past clients, students or colleagues, one at a time. Say what you made and who it's for, and ask if they know anyone it would help. Yes, this is awkward. It also costs nothing and takes one evening.

2. Your email list. Offer one small free thing tied closely to the course, such as a checklist that solves one small problem today. Then write every week. Put the course link at the bottom of every email, so people don't have to wait for a launch to find it. A free mini course can do this job too. Ruzuku says 2,198 people have signed up for Kay Adams's free journaling course. It leads to her paid programs.

3. A free live class. Teach one thing properly for most of the hour. Invite people into the course in the last ten or fifteen minutes, and stay for questions. Rood's goal here is for 2 to 5 of every 100 people who attend to buy. Pick one date and fill the seats before you worry about the slides.

4. A class with a partner. Find a teacher with the same students and a different skill. A sourdough teacher could team up with someone who teaches how to sell at farmers markets. You teach together, you both tell your lists and you both keep the sign-ups. This is the best move if your list is small. You're borrowing trust someone else spent years building.

5. Podcasts. Pick ten small shows your students already listen to. Small is fine. A tiny show about exactly your topic can beat a big general one. Send each host a short note:

"Hi Sam, I liked your episode on [topic]. I teach [who] to [result]. I could talk about [three specific ideas]. I'd bring a free checklist for your listeners."

Then have your page ready before you record.

6. Your students. Someone who finished your course and loved it is your best salesperson. So help them finish. On Ruzuku's own courses, about 51 of every 100 students finished when lessons had a place to talk. Without one, about 37 finished. Ask for a story right after a student's first win. It's also a good moment for a course upsell. You're offering your next step to someone who has just seen that you can help.

7. Articles that answer one question. Write down the questions your students ask before they join, then answer one in each article. Each one should end with your free first lesson. This takes months to pay off, so start it alongside something quicker.

8. Reminder ads. These are small ads shown only to people who've already visited your sales page, sometimes called retargeting. You add a small piece of code from Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, to your page. Then you spend a few dollars a day. Try these once your page sells. They only remind people who've already seen it.

9. Ads to strangers and daily social posts. These come last. Before you buy a single ad, do this sum: if each new email address costs you $5 and 2 in 100 subscribers buy, each sale costs you $250. On a $97 course, you lose money every time.

Social posts can be worth doing if you enjoy them. Just count sign-ups and sales. Views don't pay for anything.

When strangers land with a question

Every channel above ends with a stranger on your page at 11pm. They're wondering if this is too advanced for them, or if they'd ever finish it. Your email reply will come far too late. We built Possible for that moment. It's our own product, so take this with a pinch of salt.

Possible is an AI built on real sales psychology. It asks each visitor the right question at the right moment, remembers what they say and guides them to a sale, sign-up or booking. It's free to start. Here's more on our AI sales assistant for course creators. If your page still fails the five-second test, fix that first.

What to leave for later

• A long list of tactics. Press releases, trade shows and a Pinterest plan can all wait. One channel you've tested beats nine you've tried for a week each.
• A new logo or brand. Nobody ever left a sales page because the logo was only fine.
• A new course platform. Moving takes weeks and answers nobody's doubt.
• A big discount. It won't help someone who doubts the course will work for them, and it teaches your list to wait for the next one.
• Judging a channel too soon. At 1 or 2 sales per 100 strangers, 40 visitors will often bring no sales at all. That tells you nothing. Wait for a few hundred visitors from a channel before you decide.

Once new people are arriving, you can increase course sales by going back to the ones who came close and didn't buy.

Your next 30 days

1. Today: Work out your number. Then buy your own course on your phone.
2. This week: Do the five-second test and rewrite the first screen.
3. Next week: Ask five people to read the page out loud. Fix what trips them up, and add one real student story.
4. Days 15 and 16: Set up a tagged link for each place you share the course. Add the "How did you first hear about me?" question.
5. Days 17 to 20: Write to 20 people you already know, and email your list with the link.
6. Days 21 to 30: Check your number again. If your own people are buying, choose one channel from the list and book it, such as a free class or ten podcast pitches.

Questions about online course marketing

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