The Art of Selling Online Courses

Why Your Audience Want You To Make Money From Them - with Monica Badiu

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 128

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Welcome to "The Art of Selling Online Courses" podcast! Today we talk with our team over at Data Driven Marketing so meet Monica Badiu our Copywriting Chief & Copy Coach

Monica's passions extend across the realms of paper art, psychology, and entrepreneurship. As our in-house copywriting chief and copy coach, she brings a unique blend of creativity and strategic insight to the table.

Monica has carved a niche for herself in the world of copywriting, specializing in crafting compelling sales copy for online course creators. With her expertise, she empowers entrepreneurs to create copy that not only resonates with their ideal customers but also drives conversions. Her journey is a testament to her commitment to mastering the art of persuasive communication and helping businesses thrive in the online landscape.

Today we'll be focusing specifically on selling to your audience and the troubles you might face having a personal brand.

If you're interested in growing your online course sales and funnel optimisation contact us at https://datadrivenmarketing.co/

Speaker 1:

You get to build so much report with your audience, because the more money you make, the more value you can give to your audience. Collect all that information and then start to analyze it.

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is John Ainsworth and today's guest is Monica Badoe. Now, monica is our in-house copywriting chief and copy coach. She specializes in sales copywriting for online course creators who want to produce copy that speaks to the ideal customer avatar and generates conversions. Now that might sound nice, like OK, cool, that's all fine, but you have to get an idea of just how good she is at this. She has generated over $3 million in revenue for our clients in 2023. $3 million, like fuck.

Speaker 2:

Now, today, we're going to be talking about using email marketing, specifically sales emails, when you've built a personal brand and, as you're listening to this, you probably have built a personal brand in terms of your own marketing, and so this is going to be a really great episode for you about, like, how to use that email marketing in that situation. We're going to talk about why it's so difficult to sell through email for personal brands, why it's important to do it and how to do it. But before we start learning from you, from Monica, I want to take you on a quick and hopefully helpful trip back in time. Do you remember what the highest-rated TV show was on MTV in 2005? It was the real world. But the second highest-rated show was a series called Pimp my Ride. Do you remember this show? You might need to be as reminded by Monica before we started. You might need to be in your 40s to properly remember MTV and what this is all about, or what happened in every episode. There would find some poor soul who was driving this broken-down beta and turn it into a souped-up, tricked-out dream car. I'm talking like a new engine, hydraulic spanking, new leather interior, big fat tires, rims that rebuild everything on this car.

Speaker 2:

The reason I referenced that show is because right now you have the chance to get me and my team to pimp your funnel. So we're going to select this month up to 10 course creators and we're going to help them go from a broken-down funnel into a super pimp-out pimp-tup one. So if you're interested in getting your pimp-tup funnel, then go to pimpyourfunnelcom pimpyourfunnelcom and fill in all the questions there and we are going to select 10 people who are going to get a video breakdown of exactly what they need to do in order to improve the sales page, the checkout page and the homepage and make a lot more sales. So go to pimpyourfunnelcom and fill that in. It's 100% free for 10 people this month. So, if yours is, if your funnel is more like a, is your funnel like a brand new Mercedes-E-Class or is it like a 2014 Toyota Corolla with dented fenders and missing hubcaps? Go to pimpyourfunnelcom to win your free consultation. Monica, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1:

Great to be here again, nice.

Speaker 2:

So talk us through. Why is selling through email marketing difficult for some personal brands?

Speaker 1:

Well, they have a lot of fear about it. First of all, if you've built, your personal brand.

Speaker 1:

You built it based on how much value you deliver and how much free stuff you deliver, like free content. So when you deal with marketing from the perspective of selling through email marketing, a lot of people think that they appear to salesy or maybe too aggressive. They worry about their reputation. They worry about the common things like subscribers leaving and subscribers complaining. There's a lot of fear about receiving negative feedback. And the other one is about a misconception about what it is to deliver quality email content, cause it's like if I sell through email, then that email is not going to be high quality, right, which is completely different to what can actually happen when you start doing email marketing properly. Okay, anything else that people are kind of worried about Losing control.

Speaker 2:

Losing control of what Well losing kind of control of the brand and maybe even the interaction.

Speaker 1:

So if you're working with an agency or if you outsource your email marketing to an agency or a copywriter, there's a lot of worry about losing control of where the brand is going, where their business is going. And it's normal because most personal brands they have either a very small team or it's like just one person trying to do it all. So that's a major, major trigger for a lot of people in this personal branding area, which is Okay.

Speaker 2:

So the reason that it's difficult To do email marketing through personal brands is not because it like is technically difficult, it's because of a lot of like fears. Is that? Is that fair?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, so we can kind of go through about why some of those fears maybe aren't true, but then also what to do in order to take some of those away, cause you mentioned in there like losing control and about worrying about, um, the emails not having any value in them. So obviously there's actual technical solutions to that. You can just make sure the emails have got value in them. So I'm sure we can kind of go through that. Okay, so people are worried about it appearing to sales, the people unsubscribing um, damaging their reputation, not having good quality to it, um, and then if they're working with an agency on doing it, they may be losing control. So what actually happens when people start emailing their subscribers and offering your course?

Speaker 1:

The results are awesome. So when you do it properly and I'll explain in a little bit later what properly means You're going to get so good results. You're going to get your audience reaching out to you and saying this is amazing. I love having the opportunity to talk to you, because that's what people want. They want to be able to communicate with you. And doing the email marketing strategy whether it's for selling something, enrolling them in a coaching service or whatever it gives them that specific channel of communication and since it's email marketing, it's a direct channel they have your email address and they can send you their questions.

Speaker 1:

They can share stuff which is both amazing and scary to personal brands.

Speaker 1:

Cause fear of negative feedback. But it's that first thing, like you get to build so much report with your audience and so much engagement and you can actually help. You can deliver so much more value once you start communicating with them. And then there's the trust factor. So the more you connect with your audience and deliver value, the more trust will be building, which is also going to help you with authority and reputation and overall creating a more stronger personal brand. And finally, you get revenue, which I think is very, very important.

Speaker 1:

You know, they kind of rely on the visibility they have in your niche and if they are worried about I'm going to appear a pure sales, if I sell something, they're going to build more authority, but they're not going to put anything out there, which means that they could have millions of subscribers or millions of people on their email list, but they're not necessarily earning enough compared to the amount of leads they actually have, which is triggering a lot of people, because when you talk about you have millions of subscribers which could lean to more revenue, it can feel to them like they're taking advantage of their audience, which is not necessarily true, because you can use marketing and you can use email marketing to deliver value, to help the audience that is following you to achieve their goals, because they're looking up to you for advice, right For coaching, even, maybe. So that's how you can do it and the results it's like an extra, an extra zero that can earn in one year, and I think that's a very powerful way to deliver value as a personal brand, because the more money you make, the more value you can give to your audience. You can create more products, you can refine them, you can work with more people, you can hire more people on your team that help you convey your message, which means that your audience is getting a lot more value from you. So, yeah, the results are fantastic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one of the things I'm going to mention, there was like an extra zero and like. So she means like, in case it's not really obvious, like on the end of the amount of money you make each month. So instead of 20,000 a month, 200,000 a month and that's it's not. Yeah, that sometimes happens Like we've got actual clients where they've been making like 25,000 a month and then in November they made $200,000. Like that's an actual. We've had some even more like you know one client who was making like 3000 a month and then in Black Friday she made over 400,000, I think something like that. Yeah, and it grows over time.

Speaker 1:

So the more you communicate via email marketing, the more you deliver that kind of value and personal touch. Your revenue increases gradually, not just for, like, black Friday, yeah, but you position yourself as on authority in your niche, which means that in a very competitive niche and we have so many influencers becoming authorities and personal brands, if you use email marketing as a channel to communicate that value and communicate what differentiates you from your competition, then that actually helps you long term as well.

Speaker 2:

So there's a couple of other things I wanted to pick up and what you said there. So one of them is people feel like worried about, about selling as if it's kind of doing something wrong, which is a theme we've had on this show like a whole bunch of times. I think one of the things there to remember is you're you're promoting a course that you made. That is presumably I'm just going to assume this that it's really good and that, like, if people buy the course and take it, then their life will be better. Like you shouldn't be ashamed of letting people know that this course is there and that they could get it and that they should take it. It's like you should be delighted to be telling people about this. And, of course, some people it's not right, for they either can't afford it Because they've got, like all you know, no money at all and or, you know, struggling to pay the rent or something, in which case, great, you got the free content for them. Or some people it's not right because they're too advanced or they're too beginner level or that's not exactly what they should study, and so you cover that on the sales page and you make it really clear to people who this is right for and who it's not right for.

Speaker 2:

We're not trying to just flog stuff that isn't useful. We're trying to help people to solve a problem in their life. People want to learn to do a thing, whether it's learn English, set up a home recording studio, train their dog, but run an architecture practice whatever it is right and they're watching your content because they want to learn how to do it. And you've made a course which is amazing, which teaches them how to do that thing, and then it's probably a good idea to let them know about it and to give you know, remind them that they could get it and give them a discount, and that's a great deal. You know, like really really help them out. So now let's get into the. You said earlier like run these email promotions properly. So let's get into the properly bit. What does that mean?

Speaker 1:

So I think it's like two essential things. First of all, you need to understand that For email marketing to work as a good strategy, you need to be very strategic about it, which means that you don't just go and start sending emails. You need to understand your audience.

Speaker 1:

So, customer avatar, but not the useless, pointless exercise which is imagine for your ideal client is that is complete bullshit and it's not going to help you. That's just your assumption that hasn't been tested or backed by science. You, if you have an email list, if you have a social following, ask them, send surveys, see what they're saying, collect all that information and then start to analyze it, because what you think their problem is Might not be the exact problem they have, or where you think they are in their life or in their business Might not be where they are actually at. And we see this with our clients every time they come in and they say well, my Customer avatar is someone who's been in business for five years. And then we look at who's on the email list and who's buying and we discovered that it's people who are In their first year of business or are thinking about starting. So if you have this kind of mismatch between what your emails are trying to say and what your emails are trying to do Versus what your audience wants, then you're not going to be successful.

Speaker 1:

The other element to this is email marketing for personal brands is very different from, I know, eco or for conventionally marketing for a business that I know sells insurance and Personally, for me as a copywriter, it's both a blessing and a curse. I find it's very difficult to figure it out, because personal brands rely heavily on Authenticity and storytelling. As a copywriter, I can research the problem, I can research the industry and I can talk about the problem and the potential solutions as offered by the personal brand for hours, but I can't really convey the same power that the personal story has, which means that you need to go really in depth and figure out what are the personal stories. That makes sense to your audience. Because this leads to the other thing. When a personal brand shares their personal stories, their values, their experiences with the problems their audience have at this moment, that's how they can connect With that audience on a deeper level and they can achieve you know that the big stuff, which is like sell without selling. Because that's what you're doing. You're proving to your audience that you're not just like some kind of influencer who decided to teach people how to use and procreate. You're actually someone who has created a business and who has had the same concerns you have right now, maybe even like the very specific problems you're having right now, as you're considering, should I start Using procreate to create the business for me and sharing those personal stories.

Speaker 1:

That's how you get there and you bypass all the objections, even like internal objections around why you shouldn't be selling stuff through email marketing or in general, just like create more content, more content, and then people, people are gonna come. So um, for instance, um, let's say you are teaching people, I know entrepreneurship. You have to remember that they're not where you are right now. So if you have, if you're making six figures, they're probably not making six figures If your content is geared around beginner level stuff.

Speaker 1:

So if you're gonna sell them a product that says I'm gonna help you Make seven figures in one year, then you need to make sure that the person who is reading your email is a business owner who is already making six figures, because that person can achieve that outcome a lot faster, which means you need to make sure that your email email list is made up of business owners who are making six figures. So, if you're in that position, research your audience to make sure that you're offer your emails and your content to really talk to the right person. No-transcript, I know you could write hundreds of emails. You're not going to get really amazing results.

Speaker 2:

Okay. So you need to use storytelling as one part of it and you can tell that's like a thing that you can do, because it's a personal brand rather than an overall business, kind of a bit more faceless. So you tell stories in order to get your points across. It makes it maybe harder for a copywriter because they don't know all of your stories, so you've got to work together with the copywriter to tell all of those. And then you have to understand your audience and where they're at now and make sure you're telling the right stories and helping them kind of get from where they are to where they want to be and not like assuming that they're further ahead.

Speaker 2:

And in order to do that you need the customer avatar, which is then based on a survey, not based on kind of wishing and imagining, but like actually survey audience and find out where are they now, where do they want to get to, what some of the pain points they've got, what's their desires, what courses do they want to take? All this kind of thing, so you know exactly what to talk to them about. Is that, does that cover it? Does that kind of summarize where we just, okay, cool, good, all right, so what does that mean once you get down to the point of actually writing the emails?

Speaker 1:

So we've been following the same strategy we're using for normal brands let's call them that. So the difference between like a normal and a personal brand and, let's say, a traditional brand it's like John Asworth and he's the personal brand versus data driven marketing and it is like a traditional brand. Let's call it that. Data driven marketing talks about KPIs and revenue and funnel optimization. John Asworth talks about pimping your funnel, but that's kind of the difference. It's like John is going to talk more about his values and his life experiences and how that has helped him. I know, even working with clients, how that has helped improve the overall perspective or mindset he has about increasing revenue for other clients. Versus data driven marketing, we're talking like us, together we're doing this. So that's the difference I don't think lots of people are going to pay attention to. Like you know, the values of data driven marketing in terms of that specific element. Another good example is like Simon Sinek and his company, the Optimism Company. I think that's what it's called. Pretty, two different things.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, let's go back to like emails. So the strategy we use is the same. We start with a Walmart period, which is usually three emails. They're very nicely connected. They focus on a very specific theme and then we start into the sales part of the promotion, which is eight emails and I'm going to trigger people now. Eight emails. Is that why?

Speaker 2:

you're laughing Because people are going to get upset Emails over seven days.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're saving one email per day and it's a gain. Logic, fear it's frequently asked questions feature. The themes of the emails matter less and we have several episodes where we talk about that. You can just search the history. The idea is that with personal brands, you can still adapt the same strategy but you tweak it to include personal stories and it's stuff like behind the scenes stuff of running your business or for when you started your business 10 years ago, five years ago, what was happening then? Because who you are, who you were back then, is potentially where your audience is right now and people.

Speaker 1:

They want to learn from personal brands. You're super curious about what they do, how they do it. It's like what's their mindset? What are they reading? What's interesting about their life and who are the mentors? Who are the people that they look up to? What are the podcast ideas they listen? What are some of the I know thoughts that they woke up to today? What's something that you can share as a personal brand that is inspiring to your audience, Because that's what moves people into paying attention and buying your stuff.

Speaker 1:

And then it's all about you know, introducing your product, and the idea with this is that you know a lot of people. They do very hard sales which don't feel good for anybody, especially when it comes to personal brands, and I totally get why a lot of brands are just. I think email marketing is good, but I don't know how to do it in a way that feels good to me, because you have this self-selement, which is not always, does not always equal authenticity, and there's a great podcast episode we have here with Jason, and I don't remember his last name, but he talks about this exactly like selling with love and Jason Mark Campbell.

Speaker 1:

It's episode 111 exactly listen to that episode as well, because that explains exactly what I'm talking about selling with authenticity, because you don't have to push people, you don't have to be aggressive, you don't have to shame people into buying your stuff. You can, however, show them how it is useful. You can prove to them that what you're selling is not just something you're doing for money. You're selling it because you know it's useful. You're selling it because you've used it or you are still using it right now. You are selling it because it delivers results, which means you need to have some key studies, some testimonials, and those are very important, because if you don't have all of that, then all you're basing your sales pitch is on your reputation, which, long term, if your offer isn't good, yes, it's going to impact your reputation. So you have to take all those things into mind. What really really helps whenever it comes to email marketing especially when you're like a personal brand, because I know people have this major concern what am I going to write about? And they feel like you know. They hear like eight emails that sound so much overwhelming, and sometimes I see email promos from our coaching clients who are kind of all over the place. So what really helps is have a thing like create a theme for your I know, january promotion, february promotion, march promotion, whatever find out what's one of the the biggest problems your audience is struggling with in January or what's the goal. Maybe it's like new year, new me, um, what are some of the issues they have, that they that you could help them with, or something that you have solved for yourself a long time ago and you're inviting them? Okay, let's do it together, because I know that pain. I've been there two years ago, five years ago, when I was and describe the exact situations they are in. But through this and this and this, I was able to overcome it. And now I'm going to teach you how to do it and I'm going to be sharing some emails over the next few days and I'll help you plan for 2024.

Speaker 1:

And what this means is that, even though you are sending sales emails, you're making them so valuable and so actionable and so useful that, even though they do have a sales pitch in them, they're still going to be perceived as something valuable. And in it has actually happened for our clients. He had people who kind of like unsubscribed from a promo, but they were still could receive, like the newsletter. And then they emailed him and said he put me back into your sales funnel and you know, okay, I want to receive them. So that's a very good lesson in like what can happen if you have a good offer, you are an expert in your field and you bring that authenticity to the table. And I know that sounds great and scary at the same time, because it's like, well, how vulnerable can I get? I don't want people, you know, hating me online, but you know that's just one of the risks. It's not as bad as it sounds all right.

Speaker 2:

So here's what I got from all of that Overall. You have the three warm-up emails. That's pain, agitation, solution. And then you've got the eight emails over seven days, which is gain, logic, fear, frequently asked questions, future casting, going, going, going. And we're not gonna go into the details of each of those today because we've covered that before and I could use some podcast episodes. If you wanna go back and listen, so try episode 93, mastering the Art of Warm-Up Emails. And episode 84, this is again with Monica writing emails for different decision makers.

Speaker 2:

Episode 70, we covered three promotions to have in Q1. And episode 67, should you have a Christmas sale, and in those we've covered a number of times about that structure that I just explained. So then, in terms of what actually goes into the emails, you said have a theme. So you're promoting one course, but you've also you've got a theme in the way that you're promoting it. Maybe it's New Year, new you, Maybe it's that's about the beginning of spring and the change in the seasons, maybe it's to do with something that's going on in that industry, Maybe it's to do with the Olympics. It's like you find something, some kind of a hook in the world, in your customer's world, in your world, in, you know, in stuff that's happening in the news, some theme that you can have in those emails. And then you are vulnerable and you share stories about like what's something that you went through, that was difficult, that people can relate to, and that's something that you get to do because you've got a personal brand, whereas a more faceless brand doesn't have the chance to kind of do that and that gives you a number of things that you can include in each of those emails. So now you've got the chance to actually have the overall structure, the theme to help you kind of plan out what kind of things you're gonna cover, and then personal stories to bring that whole thing to life.

Speaker 2:

How am I doing? Start trying to summarize.

Speaker 1:

Perfect summary.

Speaker 2:

Beautiful, all right, cool. Anything else that people need to know about email marketing for personal brands that we haven't covered.

Speaker 1:

The easiest thing you can do is to think of your emails as like a coaching opportunity. So you're not forcing people into buying anything. You're not forcing them or, you know, pushing them into buying your product because that's gonna solve all of their problems. You're just coaching people through all the different solutions they have to achieve the goal they want. Your course is just one of them, but it's not gonna solve all the problems, right? You just need to inform them of what you can offer them and they make the decision, knowing everything that you can deliver through that email, through that product. Sorry. So coaching instead of you know, sales rep stuff.

Speaker 2:

Beautiful, all right. So if you've listened to this and you found this useful, please, and you wanna get future episodes, please subscribe wherever you listened. And I wanna put a specific shout out If you are listening to this and you've got a big audience on YouTube, in particular, if you've got over a million views a month on YouTube and you've got an email list over 30,000, then think about reaching out to us, because that's exactly the kind of person that we work with. We turn away most people who wanna work with us, but if you fit that profile, there's a good chance it'll be interesting working together. If you wanna be one of those people who adds a zero to the end of your monthly revenue and has Monica work on your emails, then reach out, go to datadrivenmarketingco and click on the link to book a call and we'll have a chat and figure out if you would be a good fit to be able to work with us. Thanks so much for listening and, monica, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom today.