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The Art of Selling Online Courses
The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses.
The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
205 $124,717 in 30 days with This Simple Funnel
š„ Work With Me - https://datadrivenmarketing.co/done-for-you
Ever wonder what would happen if you stripped away all the fancy marketing tactics and just focused on the basics? Boris and I found out when we helped a guitar teacher make $124,717 in 30 days. That's $100,000 more than his usual monthly revenue.
Here's the kicker - we didn't do anything revolutionary. Actually, the whole thing was almost embarrassingly simple. New course, decent sales page, order bump, one upsell. That's it. No complex automations, no 47-step sequences, just solid execution of the fundamentals.
Boris shares the entire blueprint in this episode, including why we created a brand new course from scratch (in just 6 weeks!), how we used survey data to find a massive gap in what this creator was offering, and why positioning bonuses as "Christmas presents" made such a difference to conversions.
My favorite moment? When Boris admits our order bump only converted at 12% - way below our usual 30-50% - but still added an extra $7,000 to the launch. Sometimes good enough is exactly that.
If you've been overthinking your next launch, this episode might annoy you. Turns out that "90% research, 10% implementation" beats clever tactics every single time.
š Free guides mentioned in this episode:
- Sales Page Elements PDF: https://datadrivenmarketing.co/resources
- Checkout Page Guide: https://datadrivenmarketing.co/checkout-page
- Upsell Guide: https://datadrivenmarketing.co/upsell
Want help implementing this in your business? Drop me an email at john@datadrivenmarketing.co
We give them a timeline of what could potentially happen in the next one month, three months or ninety days. That's ninety percent research, ten percent implementation. So making a very, very transparent process, especially for somebody who hasn't sold courses to his audience or not as much. You can't just tackle all the information. You need to know what to put there to make sense and not just over overdo the page. It was really sales page and a very, very good upsell which had the copy, had a VSL, it was basically our system that worked. Uh I guess it's one of the main things if you want to be successful. Following the instructions we give you to prove our system, but then also being able to execute very fast.
SPEAKER_00:Extra hundred thousand dollars for this guy. Fucking fantastic. Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses. We are here to show winning strategies and secret to the top performers in the online course industry. My name's John Antwerp and today's guest is Forrest Med. Now Forrest is a funnel expert at data curve marketing. He's got eight years in sales and marketing, he has scaled multiple 7 and 8 figure coaching consulting in course product, he specializes in creating icon version funnels, optimizing payday campaigns, and informating effective email marketing strategies. Now, today we're gonna be talking about a guitar course creator who has made$124,000 in 30 days. That is a hundred thousand dollars more than his usual results, and 50% more than his absolute best results he's had before. We're gonna talk through what we helped him to do, what worked, and how you can replicate this in your course business. Boris, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me again. Happy to be here. Alright, so talk us through just very briefly what kind of courses is this guy selling, what kind of price range are we talking about here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we're starting from a very good baseline of a good audience, but then the guy was not having that many courses, so it's really just a couple of courses. So we had to create something brand new, which is what we did right now. Uh collaborating on that one. But the ranges, the mid-range, so in this case it was from$100 to$200. That was the range of products we are aiming for. So the so-called bread and butter products for um course creators.
SPEAKER_00:Perfect. All right. And what kind of size audience did he have? Was it like mostly YouTube or where was where is his audience built up? Primarily YouTube, yeah. It's about, I'd say 80 to 90% of the audience was uh driven by YouTube traffic. Yeah, and that's what we're seeing with like most of our clients, isn't it? That YouTube is the the primary YouTube works great as a as a main traffic source for course creators. It's like a really good fit. Like better than Instagram, better than LinkedIn, better than TikTok, what have you? That's what I seem to be seeing. Would you agree? Does that seem to match what we're seeing across our clients?
SPEAKER_01:100%, yeah. Uh almost every single time. I can't even think of a time where Instagram or Facebook uh method platform is outperforming YouTube as a lead generation source for organic traffic for our clients, at least so far.
SPEAKER_00:And how big of an audience did this guy have on YouTube? It's over a million. Over a million. Okay, so in the music space, that's really solid. Like if we're looking at uh language space, then that's like obviously a lot still, but in music space, that's like I feel like that's even it's a much bigger deal to have that kind of size. Okay, so his courses were generally a couple of hundred bucks, a hundred to a couple of hundred bucks. He had uh over a million subscribers on YouTube. Absolutely fantastic. How big was his email list?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the email list we actually started growing it. It was already existing, but we started growing it when we started working together about a month and a half ago. Um at the time when we were promoting and working with the list actively, it was the engaged part that we were actually using was about 80 to 90,000 people.
SPEAKER_00:80 to 90,000. Okay, so a substantial sized email list already, but you've been doing more work to grow that faster. Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_01:Uh whenever we work with someone, I mean one of the main things we do, and whoever is joins us, it's always the first step is just generating more fresh leads, like fresh traffic, getting in and getting engaged. So re-engaging the prior traffic and then just bringing in more people to that are ready to get up something from this person to learn more from them. Usually there's a lot left on the table uh for most people, for most costrators. They're just not actively um funneling the traffic from somewhere on the internet, hence YouTube in our case, to their own uh email system.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so when you're working with a client, you'll start setting up systems for that before you even start work on email promotions?
SPEAKER_01:100%, yes. A lead gen comes first, is the first thing, and it's an ever-green thing, it just never ends. You should constantly be generating more leads, and it's the first thing you do, then you can do everything else. Because while you're doing everything else, while you're bringing conversions, while you're selling courses, while you're doing I mean, while while whatever you're growing and monetizing your audience, all the time, 100% of the time, there should be a lead gen funnel from the start that's constantly running in the back and generating you new fresh leads, new people who are coming in into your uh world, into your email list and into your funnels.
SPEAKER_00:Perfect. Okay. So talk everybody through. Someone's listening to this and it's like, well, I've got a big YouTube audience and I'm not doing that much to grow my email list from it. Give us some like top-level tips of what is it that you have set up for this guy so they can kind of learn from that as well. Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Um actually we have a separate episode for that, the two of us just discussing this, but top-level view, it's really um as simple as having a link. Because what ads are, paid ads are just uh an image or a video with a link. The same thing with organic. You need to have your links everywhere. Obviously, the product should be relevant to whatever you're uh having as a topic of the YouTube video, for an example, or the Instagram post. However, it should there should be links, people should be able to go to a next step. Almost nobody is not is getting people from where they are to the next step. It's the first missing link. And then the second thing is when they get there having an optimized opt-in page. Again, something we've discussed, but basically having an optimized lead generation page that's bringing people into your email list and it's giving them some kind of an incentive to start opening your your emails.
SPEAKER_00:Great. So if you want to go check that episode out where we discuss this in more detail, it's episode 179, why high opt-in rates are killing your sales. So that's kind of the top-level tips, but today we want to really talk about like what is it that you actually did that brought in that extra hundred thousand dollars in that month, and like one and a half months in from working with this guy. Okay, so you mentioned that you created a new offer. Like, what did you mean by that? Was it it wasn't creating a new course, I'm guessing, because that sounds like not enough time to do that. Actually, it was exactly that. We created a brand new course. A whole new course. Wow, that's fast. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, the person that's behind this is an absolute A player. He was super fast with everything, delivering everything on time. One of the I guess that's one of the main things if you want to be successful as our client, even is following the instructions we give you, because it's a proven system, but then also being able to execute very fast. And this guy was absolutely crushing at creating a course, giving us the data, giving us the exports of the sales. Everything was super on time. He was having a separate team of developers handling some uh development work that he needed done, absolutely managing everything to the point where it was done very fast, and we were able to work with him and monetize it. Now, it was a brand new offer, also a brand new course. Um, the main thing here was that well, we didn't did anything that's truly different from what we usually do. We just did it very in a very good way when we implemented it methodologically, and we were able to implement each part step by step, which led from having this audience to this audience buying um to a very high degree of them. Like the conversions were very, very high. So, yeah, it just gave us the opportunity to create this brand new offer that fits this audience. We knew what they wanted because this guy was he is very much aware of what his audience needs, what they think, what they want, and we were able to get hit this knowledge from um the said guy and implement it into our uh copywriting, uh, which probably made the work about 90% easier.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so let's talk through what the topic like how he chose what course to create. Did he already have in mind what course was needed? Like people have been asking for something. Did you run a survey to find out what to create? Like, how did you decide on the topic for this course?
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Good question. So we did run a survey, uh, and there's also a couple of topics, a couple of high-level topics in the set industry that make sense to be creating to a course. So in every industry, there are a couple of topics that everyone is searching for. It's like high-level topics. So in English learning, it could be how to become like fluent to a B1 level or B2 level.
SPEAKER_00:B1 is B1 and B2 are like the most popular courses, aren't they? It's like C1, C2, yes, people do want that. But the B1, B2 courses are super popular, so you know that's going to sell really well when you make that one. Okay. But in this niche, in the guitar niche, there was a specific topic that needed needed creating, like everybody else was selling it, everybody wanted it, and he just hadn't got that yet. Is that right? That is exactly right.
SPEAKER_01:He didn't have that particular topic, uh, and his audience was just curious about learning more about what he's gonna share with them. Now, funny enough, most of his audience is not super interested in this specific topic, and it was still a big chunk of the audience. So we're obviously gonna create a lot more um relevant courses in the future, but this was the one that was the one that we can make the fastest, and there was untapped potential in his audience to to work with this particular course.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so did that that untapped potential in terms of which thing to choose, which topic to choose, come out from the survey, or was it more interesting? It was from the survey. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Surveying a lot of discussions and really just researching other people. I mean 90% of the marketing, the more time I spend in marketing, you said eight years initially. Um the more time I spend in it, the more I realize it's 90% research, 10% implementation. It's such a big point of it. Because there's like this phrase garbage in, garbage out. If you put good work up front and you research it properly, it's so much easier later on. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:So you chose a topic that there was demand for. He didn't have a course for already, and a good percentage of his audience wanted to get great. Amazing start, right? You're already gonna have a good launch just by having that, even if you did the a terrible funnel and terrible email campaigns, you're probably still gonna have decent results from it, right? Because of the demand. Okay. What else did you do to then improve the offer once you had uh made, you know, once he's making the course about that topic?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh you have a great point here. There was already some demand. Our job was to maximize this demand as marketers and get everyone who's on the on the fence, get them on the side where, okay, I want I want to join this now. What we did is um, apart from creating an absolutely amazing landing page, and I'm very happy, and Nicola, who I work with from our team, did an amazing job with the design. Um, we created this page that was really tapping into the audience interest, explaining the problems they were currently having, and that was possible only because of the research. Then we just presented the course the right way, in a way that people would understand it and it would make sense to them, plus adding bonuses, plus making a slight discount because it's the launch and it's the first group of people who would get it, so on early bird access, and we wanted to make sure that people would clearly understand what they're gonna get right after getting this course. So making a very, very transparent process, especially for somebody who hasn't sold courses to his audience or not as much. This audience was quite new, so they they had to have a transparent view of what's gonna happen. They're gonna get instant access, they're gonna get this, that, third thing, and listed everything and make it extremely, extremely uh visible what they're gonna be having.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So there's a couple of points I want to hit on there. We're talking first about how do we make an amazing offer, right? So we've got the great course. We've you've done the research, you figured out what topic it is that we want to have the course about. He's making the course, he does an amazing job making that really quickly, fantastic. Then you mentioned as well there's a discount, and you mentioned there were bonuses as well. So talk us through that. What kind of things were included as bonuses and what percentage discount was given?
SPEAKER_01:The discount was 25%. So we wanted to aim for a number. Well, the course was sold at$97. So why we did with that? Why we didn't do$127 or$147? It was purely my psychological decision that people would see two digits. They would see 9 and 7, and they won't see three digits on something. At this point, we know that volume sometimes is better than just getting a lot of high-paying customers. A lot of businesses are making a lot more money just by having more buyers. If you can drop the price with 10% more, probably go with that. You're gonna get more sales. And this is what we did with this guy. That was the discount. The bonuses, there were three bonuses. They were a nature or extension of the course to make it a lot better. One of them was an extra module that was combining their existing understanding of guitar with this particular uh segment of it. So it was a link between the the two, their current knowledge and what we're selling. And then the other one were just additional bonuses that would help them implement the course better, learn some more stuff, and just expand a bit on their knowledge.
SPEAKER_00:Now, if someone's I think bonuses is a place where people get often get stuck. Can you talk everybody through why they should include bonuses and not just put those extra those as extra modules in the course? You know, why they should position them as bonuses rather than just part of the course. Let's start with that actually, and then I'll go to the next question.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I always thought of it as when I was a kid, like seeing just the one big present under the Christmas tree versus seeing a bunch of presents there. It just looks more. It just gives you the psychological idea of you have all these things to unwrap. Now, yeah, you can you can undersell it and put it as, oh yeah, it's also this is part of the module. You can do that, but you're doing a disservice to yourself and to your audience because first they're not as excited, second, they don't really read every single line on the page. You need to write very consumable copy, especially in the AI world where content becomes so much commoditized, you should be able to really make it consumable. And then the third thing is uh, I mean, people would not understand what they're getting if you don't explain it in very clear detail because people are like after work, they're stressed, they have other stuff. They don't need to go through every single line. Having the bonuses separates the additional stuff they're getting and gives them and puts them in a very clear perspective apart from the course. So the course is there, but there are also these bonuses that make it so much better. Just doing the service if you don't do that, if you bundle it with the modules or whatever.
SPEAKER_00:I was off to meet a friend the other day for his birthday and uh had I think three presents for him between me and my girlfriend. And um she was like, we went to some some stationery shop or something and bought she bought a bag to put the presents in. And she's like, why don't you just put your present in the bag as well? And I was like, because then it's it's it's more fun. When it's if you have it in multiple bags, it feels like you're getting more things. Even if when you open the one bag, there's three things in there. If you have three separate bags, it's like, oh my god, I got three things. It's fun, it's like it makes it more enjoyable experience, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01:It does grow a blank, the the emotion behind it sometimes.
SPEAKER_00:I think another thing with bonuses that really helps is if you you the main course needs to be everything that you need in order to learn that topic. But then the bonuses are things that you're getting on top for free. And people like getting additional things for free. It's like it just makes the experience of it more enjoyable. And you they everyone still gets exactly the same things as if you've included them, but you've made it more fun, more enjoyable, you've positioned it as an extra thing that they're gonna get that makes them feel good about what they're getting. No, and it's just like there's no there's no harm in that whatsoever. And it increases sales, it increases excitement. So let's now look at the second part of bonuses, which is how do you decide what things should be made as a bonus or how to take which things to take out and position as a bonus? Oh, that's that's always a complicated topic.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, and it boils down to what I've been saying throughout the whole recording so far. It's you should do a research and uh having our systems in place, we just do a very much in-depth research of the person, what they're having with the courses. We discuss a lot of things with them. Uh, we have spent, I don't know, hours every week on course discussing these stuff before we have the final results. So it's not like you just come up with it. Uh, but one of the ways is really something that can stand alone on its own. You won't say get the introduction module as a bonus because it doesn't make sense. The introduction module, it's part of the course, it cannot stand alone. Um, but something that can stand alone from the rest of the course, you can actually separately bu separately sell it, I'm sorry, as uh as an order bomb, for an example. So something that could be used as an order bomb could also be used as a bonus. So anything that could stand alone on its own and it would make logical sense, then uh again what you what you said that just something that makes the whole product more enjoyable and fun and expands on it, just having another part that makes logical sense to be part of it, maybe, and that's what we did here, it bridges a gap between where they currently are and what they're learning. So there's like a small gap, it's not a huge one, obviously, but if you have a problem with this, we have it covered for you. So if you have any kind of a problem or any kind of an issue you might get stuck on, we have also all these small problems covered already with our bonuses. That would probably my go-to way, actually. Now that I say it out loud, is just whatever small limiting beliefs or any small objections people might be having, they could be solved within the bonus sections.
SPEAKER_00:Nice, I like that. Okay, so we've got a few angles there. Let's just go through those. And I really like the last ones, we're gonna come back to that. Is we've got anything that's gonna help you to uh achieve what you're doing through the course faster or more easily or more cheaply, something like that. So the course is gonna teach you everything you need to know in order to do it. But if this is gonna make it quicker for you or easier for you or cheaper or something, that potentially could be a bonus. It's something that could be potentially an order bump. So it's a standalone kind of uh element course module, something like that that could work on its own. Something that bridges the gap between where they are now and where they want, and and actually the the course, so in case there's an ob uh an issue there. And the last way you positioned it was anything that they've got that's like a blockage or an objection. And I really like that as a way of coming up with bonuses. It's like, what are people's main objections, the things that are going to stop them from going ahead and buying? So not cost necessarily, but oh, I'm not going to be able to do that because I don't know this other thing yet, or I don't understand this other topic, or this thing's gonna take me too long, or I'm gonna get stuck here. Anything like that, you can create a bonus that solves that problem. And then the bonuses are also handling objections at the same time. And that is that's a really nice sales way of approaching coming up with bonuses. What would you say in terms of number of bonuses that you should include? I I never thought about it.
SPEAKER_01:I usually go with three just because of the number is very uh easy for us to consume it and just read it just one to three. You get these three bonuses. Uh, it's kind of a number people are used to seeing. Uh I I don't have a specific number because of uh for any other reason, but usually it's three, three to five. Uh more more than five, it just becomes too much. Less than three. I mean, you can get away with two, but I guess three is like a good uh number that you can just go with.
SPEAKER_00:Cool, perfect. If you want more detail about bonuses, then check out episode 66, how to sell more courses with bonuses. Um, and uh go into more detail in that episode there. Okay, cool. So here's where we're at so far. We've got a great course creator, he's got a big YouTube audience, we've got an 80,000-something email list, he's we've found out what topic to make, we've made a new course, we've added bonuses in there, excellent. Now we're getting into like the email marketing and funnels part of it. So talk me through like what was the what's the next step that somebody should be thinking about if they want to be replicating this great success? Is it the sales page we should do next or the the emails? What do you think? Was there a step before that? Was there like a re-engagement campaign that you ran, anything along those lines?
SPEAKER_01:So probably the m most of heavy lifting here in this particular example was done via the sales page. Um one of the reasons was that for this was that the person was not having all of courses, and we just had to work with what we've had. So because we have this brand new course, we put all of our effort into maximizing the first sales page, uh, which meant the video sales letter or VSL, uh optimizing the offer, everything we just discussed, the bonuses, the discount, and presenting everything the right way possible. Then we optimize the checkout page. Again, we have an episode on that, uh, where we added order bumps uh just to increase the average order value, and then we have an upsell of one product we were having available. The take rate on that product was great. Plus, we did a lot of segmentation because some people, because we had just a few courses, some people were already uh already had access to let's say the upsell course, so we had to segment in a way so we don't show them the same product already twice. Um, so we had to do a lot of segmentation there. However, apart from that, it was really sales page, bump, and a very, very good upsell, which again had the copy, had a VSL. I think we already have an episode on that too. And yeah, it's it was basically our system that worked. Plus, of course, an email marketing campaign.
SPEAKER_00:All right, cool. Let's do those one at a time then. So let's cover the copy on the sales page. So what's the and we we're not gonna obviously do like a full 30-40-minute episode just about the sales page part, but give people some of the top um points on what did you do to make sure that the copy for the sales page was excellent.
SPEAKER_01:We started with um the above-the-fault section, which we always like implement the system of the four use. I'm I'm a big fan of it. So useful, urgent, unique, and ultra-specific. So how is this course useful? Why is it urgent to get it now? Uh obviously, we had right now um the the offer that was uh for a short period of time, but we also implemented a macro urgency, which is basically getting it within a specific uh if you delay getting this decision now, you would continue being stuck at the position you are and you won't get the results for another year, for example. Then you have we wanted to make it unique from whatever everyone else was selling and unique to this audience, and then making it ultra specific, making it resonate with this audience. Uh so these were the four things we've implemented on the above-default section. Then we had a VSL. Uh, we usually, again, not going to the whole sales page, but we spend a lot of time explaining the product in depth. Uh, we realized that this audience wants to get more stuff from this person. They wanted to get more info. However, the only blockage wasn't writing an emotional copy, it was explaining in depth what they were about to get. So, in the levels of awareness, we were we knew that these people were solution aware, uh, or at least problem aware. So, we didn't have to explain the problem in depth. We just had to get them to the point where we have the right solution for you. That was the whole mindset behind this particular sales page.
SPEAKER_00:Got it. Alright. So there's you just covered something very briefly that I think we should probably give a give an explanation of for people. This is from, I'm trying to remember which book. It's from something in the 60s. Which one is it? It's not scientific. Is it break through advertising? Break through advertising, Eugene Schwartz. Yeah, Eugene Schwartz. Great book. Fucking hard work to read. It's like it's it's like a marketing textbook. It's like a real dense, incredibly well thought through, amazing book. You have to be like ready with your notebook and actually paying attention as you're reading through. You can't just like not like a Seth Godin book. You just kind of read it and go, Oh, yeah, I kind of get the idea. That's nice. So, what's the five levels of awareness? Um, can you take everybody through that? Or do you want me to kick you out? I think I can. I think I can. Okay, go for it.
SPEAKER_01:Uh well, we should be unaware, the stage one. Unaware is first, yeah. So people who are not aware of what if there is a if there is even a problem. So you need to show them that there is a problem, so they should be aware of the problem, which takes them to the next stage, which is they become problem aware. They know they have a problem, they just don't know what the solutions are. Now you need to present the solution. That takes them to the solution aware phase. Now they know about different solutions. And then you have the product aware phase, which is now they're not only aware of the solution, they're aware of your particular solution. And then you have the most aware these are actually existing buyers or people who already bought something from you and they're ready to buy the next thing.
SPEAKER_00:So what we had here, it sounds like, was people who were certainly solution aware. I think they knew that they knew that they wanted a topic, uh a course on this kind of topic, and they were even they're familiar with this brand, right? They're in the email list of this brand, so that already helps there. Um and they kind of knew they wanted a course on this, they wanted a course on this topic. So therefore, the sales page was much more like information-based about exactly what's included. If I understood properly, that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_01:Obviously, you still want to touch on these other parts. You don't want just to leave them, not not not add anything that's problem-aware or solution aware. However, you don't spend that much time on that one. You spend more time on um the actual product. And that also goes to the digital real estate space that you're having, because you can't just stack a lot of information. You need to know what to put there to make sense and not just over overdo the page.
SPEAKER_00:And this is this is like a massive difference between if you were doing a sales page for, let's say, Facebook ads about a product that people had never heard of before. They didn't know that it might even solve their problem, they just kind of know they've got a problem. Then you're writing that sales page really quite differently than if you're selling to your existing audience with a product that they already know that they would like from you, but they just didn't know that you had it. And that changes a whole bunch of things in terms of the sales page, doesn't it? So it's important to know your audience before you get started. Okay, let's go back to the sales page now. So you've got the above the fold section, you've you've implemented the four U's on that. You've got the the VSL, which was also above the fold, I'm guessing. That's right, yes. Right. And just quickly, for anybody who doesn't know what above the fold means, could you explain that one? Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I think it goes from the old uh like from the newspapers when people were just folding them. So you just see the top part that were the best headlines on the newspaper. So in digital space, that's like the first part of the page, the first thing you see when you land on it. So without touching the mouse, without scrolling down, you just see the above-the-fold section.
SPEAKER_00:And obviously that varies depending on whether you're on mobile or if you're on desktop as to what shows on there. But we what what do you find in terms of the percentage of buyers who are buying on mobile versus desktop? Do you know?
SPEAKER_01:I haven't looked into the numbers of mobile versus desktop. It's signific it it's it's in favor of the desktop. Oh, sorry, in the favor of the mobile, but I don't have the exact numbers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we should check on that because I think a lot more people, from when I've looked into this before, a lot more people buy on a computer. They're they're like, you know, scroll information and what have you on mobile, but then might buy on the computer. But I we need to check if that's actually the case. Like how many people who got through to the the end of the checkout process were on a desktop or on a laptop versus how many people who started the process? Because that might help us to decide as well. Do we focus? Like, how much do you focus on what the mobile version of this looks like? But either way, the idea is before you start scrolling, that's the above-the-fold section. Okay. Give people some more ideas or tips that they can implement from what you did on this particular campaign from the sales page that might help them to make more sales next time they're running a campaign.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so one or well, two sections that are were very important in this case because we introduced the product, was very clear and transparent, but we wanted to solidify the idea of how this product is gonna help them, or two sections right below that that were extremely, extremely useful, I believe. Uh, and they were comparing the not taking action versus taking action, and then a third section that is like, if you take action though, here's what's gonna happen, and we gave them a timeline of what could potentially happen if they implement the course in the next one month, three months, or 90 days. In our case, it was 90 days or three months, but just a timeline of the results that they're gonna be getting. This adds to the transparency of what's gonna happen after I put my credit card details there. I know not only what I'm gonna get, I know what's gonna happen. It increases the certainty and the belief that this is gonna work for you.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. And we normally refer to that as future casting, um, and that is a technique that very few people use in their sales pages and is incredibly powerful. Um anything else that you did on this sales page that you think people can learn from for their own campaigns?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we did the structure that we're usually having, so the FAQ section, the money-back guarantee, the bonuses. Uh, we explained the method of this product in depth. Uh, so why is this different from everything else? This goes into the four use again. So, how is this unique compared to everything else? Uh, and we also had some problem sections that at least touched on the issues that people are having. Probably many people skipped it, but some of them read it. Uh, and we stacked a lot and we had a lot of work, a lot of assets to work with, but we added a lot of badges. That increase the trust in this person. So students, subscribers, previous results. So everything that we increase the trust that this would make sense and it'd work for so many other people, it would probably work for them too. Nice.
SPEAKER_00:So Boris referred there to we've got like standard elements that we always include on sales pages. We've got 15 crucial elements we always include. And I'm gonna list off all the ones I can think of. Boris, anything that I miss, see if you can catch it. And I'm gonna give you a resource so you can just go download this list. Um and it's gonna have notes and an explanation about it as well. So we want to have an eyebrow headline above the fold, right at the top, to call out the audience. We want to have a really compelling headline. Then we want to have a compelling sub-headline that goes into more detail of that main benefit. We want to have subheadlines throughout the page to grab people's attention for whatever section they're on. We want to have a strong call to action button, uh, probably written in the first person. And what is your favorite uh words to put on a call to action button? Get instant access now. Get instant access now. We've got a VSL, a video sales letter, probably above the fold. The call to action button, by the way, should be consistent text on throughout the entire page. Underneath the call to action button should be a guarantee. Um just in small text telling people what the guarantee is. But further down the page, we're gonna have the guarantee in a whole section all on its own. We're gonna have a meet the um instructor section so they can get to know a little bit more about you. There's gonna be details of exactly what's in the course. Uh, I've done this slightly out of order, but the next bit after the fold is gonna be the pain agitation solution section. We're gonna want to have features and we're gonna want to have benefits. There'll be an FAQ section, future casting, like we've talked about as well. A recap towards the bottom, and I probably missed a couple. Can you think of anything else that I've missed in there?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, the bottom section side book is like really comparing not taking actions versus taking actions, subtriving like the visually we put it into the same uh column next to one next to the other, and just visually seeing here's what's gonna happen if you don't take action, and here's what's gonna happen if you take action, which goes into the future cast that you said. The method I I I usually like to explain, especially for some products, not for every product, but I I kind of am a big fan of this. This I think also goes back to Eugene Schwartz and breakthrough advertising.
SPEAKER_00:Um and I think that's it. Yeah, the way that Eugene Schwartz describes that is he talks about a unique mechanism. He says there's five, it's the five levels of awareness, but there's also five levels um in terms of the the market sophistication. And so what happens is when something first comes out, you can just say it solves this problem, and people are like, oh shit, I've got that problem, I want it solved. And then everyone's claims start to kind of increase. This is stage two, and people are like, oh, it solves the problem better, 20% faster, it gets your breath even fresher than the other person. Then the next one that comes up is you've got to have a unique mechanism. That's your way of explaining how your product is gonna work differently to other people. Oh, you you tried something before and it didn't work? Don't worry. My one has a unique way that it works, and that's why you're going to get the result with my product. So that's the unique mechanism and like kind of the how this model works, how your system works that Boris is referring to. Uh, if you want those 15 elements that every optimized sales page must have, go to data-drivenmarketing.co slash resources and we've got a downloadable PDF. It's just got the list of all 15, but notes about each one as well, explaining it a little bit, giving you more information about it. You get that for free. And if you want to listen to a podcast episode about it, episode 1616, how to create high converting sales pages. We might need to do another episode just about sales pages and all the stuff that you and uh you and Nicola have been working on with that recently, actually. Okay, so we've got a great sales page. The next thing was the checkout page. Give people the highlights, the the um the top things that they must include on their checkout page that you included this time that are gonna help them to get that high conversion rate.
SPEAKER_01:So on the checkout page, we have usually what we do is we have two columns. Left one is a checkout, right one is the explaining the product again. That's on desktop. If you're on mobile, that means that they're gonna go this way where the left one goes on top, hence the where you put details, and then everything goes below that. That explains the product. So that's why we do it this way. So whenever we go on mobile, it doesn't add more columns, it switches the right way that we want it to. Now, left side, obviously, contact details, payment payment details, right side, image of the product again, just making it more tangible. We usually do monitors, uh books, like uh in a digital format, just presenting it in a single image, like a bundle image that we call, and then we list everything again, like a value stack, which is basically list all the products that are included. So the bonuses again, the modules again. If you want to go one step further again, you can list how this would benefit them again. Uh so have a list of things that reminds them of what they're getting and why they're putting their uh credit card details right now. So even if they're like have a second uh they're on the fence, they start having some doubts about whether they should buy right now, there is this part showing them here's what you're getting, don't worry about it. A countdown that increases the urgency, obviously, because the offer expires in our case. If it's an evergreen offer, maybe you don't have that one. But if you do have the countdown to remind them that this would end soon. We add testimonials, we add the money back guarantee again just to make sure that, hey, if you don't actually like it, which could happen, maybe it's not your thing. At the end of the day, maybe it's not your cup of tea, you can refund it. It's not that like you cannot get your money back. If that's important to you, just refund it and we're gonna send you back the money. Most people don't want it. There is usually a very small percentage of refunds, but either way, you can have it there just for a peace of mind with the people, and any uh elements that would help them just increase the trust that this would make sense to them. So, again, more student, how many students you've helped, how many subscribers you have on YouTube, or anything along these lines.
SPEAKER_00:You listing all that out made me notice two things that I'd missed on the the sales page that people should have. One is a countdown timer. Can't believe I missed that one, and the other one was social proof with with the testimonials, number of existing students, number of subscribers on YouTube, any awards you've won, all of that kind of social proof as well. Very, very important. Okay. So Boris and I did a whole episode, it's uh about half an hour just talking through about checkout pages and all the things that you should include on there. So if you want to go through that in detail, it's episode 186. 12 checkout page tricks to get more sales instantly. If you go to data drivenmarketing.co slash checkout dash page, that's datadrivenmarketing.co slash checkout dash page, then there is a free guide there that takes you through exactly how your checkout page should be set up for maximum conversion rate. Okay, so now we've covered everything through the sales page and the checkout page. Talk to me about the order bump. What did you choose for the order bump?
SPEAKER_01:What was the price of it? I think the price was uh quite low. It was between 20 and 30 bucks. Um the number got out of my head, but I think it was somewhere in this range. Uh it was one of the pros that the person was having. I was not as active. However, uh I I kind of we used it. The take rate wasn't amazing on that one. It was very good, but it wasn't amazing. One of the reasons was that it was a big thing. Do you know about what the take rate was? I think uh from memory, I think it was somewhere around 12% from the low for a check.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so for everybody listening, if you're looking at your order bump conversion rates, we're typically looking for somewhere between 30 to 50 percent. Our ideal is 60. I mean, we've had one that converted at like do you remember it was like 80 or 90 percent? But that's a real outlier. Like that is not common at all. Uh so kind of 30 to 50 percent, you can be pretty happy with something in there. And so this one sounds like wasn't quite the perfect fit. It wasn't I I also have a suspicion that some people already had it.
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah, so it was a couple of things working together, nonetheless. It was one of the parts that still quite increased the average charter value because if you get a lot of upfront buyers, I mean a lot of people would see that one. So even though the percentage is not amazing, it's still good. And when it comes to a quantity of people buying it, then it's still a a big chunk of revenue coming from it.
SPEAKER_00:So that probably added something like a 12%, something like an extra five, seven thousand dollars, which is like, I mean, man, that's nothing to be sneezed at, is it? Another five or seven thousand dollars, you know. You'd lean over on the on the pavement to pick that up, wouldn't you? Okay. So got the order bump. Oh, and how did you decide what that was? Was that just an existing product that he had?
SPEAKER_01:It was an existing product, yeah. We basically at this point tapped out most of the products. We had the main spaces, which were the main product, and we had the upsell, because that was more important to us at this stage. So the mid-product, the the order bump was something that we decided to go with that one because it it made sense. It was within the price range we were aiming for, and uh it was the one that we haven't used at this point.
SPEAKER_00:Perfect. Okay, cool. And I'd suggest to you always, if you're thinking of selling something as an order bump, don't wait until you have had time to create the perfect order bump. Like every month you should be running a promotion, get an order bump in there, and later on, maybe if you go and promote this thing again, the next time you come up with the perfect order bump that goes with it or whatever. But like just you sometimes have to go with what have you got that's the best fit that already is gonna fit in there. Um and I think I did an episode, episode 96, here we go, just about order bumps. Uh so if you want that, then go go uh check that out. It's gonna give you more detail about that. The upsell sounded really interesting, what you'd done with that one. Uh, because you said you had different upsells for different people. Was that did I understand properly?
SPEAKER_01:In in a way, um, we had an episode just for a segment of the audience because again, we're working with a limited amount of products at this stage because we're just starting out to work. Uh obviously, once we create a catalog of products, the catalog would help us uh mix and match them in a different way. In our case, we didn't have that. So a chunk of the audience already had that product, so we didn't want to show it again to them. Um one of the reasons was that we could give they could have got it a we could give them a better view right now on this upsell page, but they've already bought it. So uh what we decided is to separate the audience and this particular audience that didn't have the product saw the upsell page. The rest of them didn't really sell it.
SPEAKER_00:So you just didn't show upsell page at all to people who already had the product. So it's just not to kind of make them not feel weird to them, you know.
SPEAKER_01:So like it it was in a way in a way it's an idea to preserve the audience for long-term growth because you don't want to piss off your audience and make some money for two months and then half of them hate you. You you want to actually have a long-term sustainable business, which means you need to segment and be smart every time you run any kind of a campaign or even evergreen uh funnels.
SPEAKER_00:So technically, how did you do it? Did you set up two versions of the funnel and then have different links for the different segments? That's right. Okay, got it. And what kind of price point was the the upsell for those who did see it?
SPEAKER_01:It was a 20% discount, I think it was hundred and uh right right above hundred dollars, hundred and fifteen, twenty dollars. Got it. Okay, and I'm gonna check if we've got an episode just about upsells. And something very important for this product though, it wasn't just a regular product, it's a membership. So the lifestyle membership product for one-year access and then it renewals.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay. So yeah, you definitely don't want to show that to people who are already members. Okay. Uh and what was the conversion rate on that? Because I'm always wary with memberships as having them as an upsell. Because it it sometimes works, but sometimes it's not a good conversion rate on those.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:Um from the top of my head, I think it was about 15%. 15, 1.5. That's great. For an upsell, that's really strong. Good price point for it to be at. And it's a membership, that's great. Okay, cool. Nice.
SPEAKER_01:Although I'd say our best upsells that really match the product. So when you have a big catalog, you can really match them in the right way, that it would just make sense to buy the next thing. Uh which didn't it wasn't the case here. But we get 20, 25%, up to 30% for uh somebody recently that we work with in the language learning space. 25-30% was their take rate of the upsell.
SPEAKER_00:Got it, got it. Okay. All right, so for upsells, if you want to learn more about that, episode 183. This simple strategy made 200k in 12 months, which is a slightly obscure episode title. It doesn't tell you what it's gonna be about, but I'm telling you now, that's about upsells. So you can go listen to that one, check that one out, and that's gonna be in a lot of detail exactly how to do it. And to go with that, actually, there is a uh free guide at data drivenmarketing.co slash upsell. Datadrivenmarketing.co slash upsell. And that is gonna take you through to the the the download that's gonna uh detail exactly how to set up your upsell pages and everything like that. Okay, so we've gone through pretty much everything, I think, apart from the sales page design. We didn't talk about that at all. And you said Nicola had done some great work on that one. Amazing work. Yeah, nice. Okay, tell us because I don't know how much people think about design beyond make it look pretty. What did what did Nicola do to make this sales page design convert better?
SPEAKER_01:I think the main well, he's just an amazing designer. I mean, he can explain it so much better than I do what he did. It just to me it looked like a very professional page that I can trust buying from. If the page looks sloppy, I I mean, me personally, if I look at a sloppy sales page, I believe I would get a sloppy product. I I wouldn't trust this company. It just it would create a lot of uh resistance to me to buy, and I would start rethinking my decision. If the page looks amazing, I don't even notice it, it's just a part of what I'm expecting, and it uh creates a subconscious belief that this would be a great product, this would make sense, I can trust these guys. So it's in a way it's a trust building element, just like everything else. It also helps people consume the copy a lot better. If you don't have a great conversion focused designer, a designer who understand how conversions work, why people are buying. Uh, I mean you can make a pretty page, but then having a conversion focused designer would help your copy stand out the right way, and people would consume the copy. And if people consume the copy and it's good, it's going to convert more.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, I think that's everything in terms of the campaign. Um so what we had as a recap for you listening is that there was a lot of research done. Pick a course that the audience is going to want that there's demand for. Make a new course. I sometimes say let's focus more on selling what you've already got. But if you can sell a new course, you are going to get generally better results, especially if there's big demand for it. We've got bonuses, we've got a discount, we've got a great sales page cop, we've got a great sales page copy and a great sales page design, we've got a great checkout page, an upsell and an order bump, all of these things. And we're going to talk through like some tips about each of those, but then also some resources on where else you can learn more if you want to go. If you're like, okay, that's the one I'm going to go work on. Oh, and of course a great email campaign that we didn't actually cover in a lot of detail. I think we're going to stop there just to save kind of running too long. But uh, if you want to check out uh episodes about email, then we have a ton of those. Um let's see if I can get you a uh good example of one of the ones uh about email. How I 2x revenue in 90 days with these emails. Uh that is episode 180. Um and I think as well, I think episode 131, how to send more emails without sending to salesy, is gonna be a really good one if you want to learn more about that. Okay, so got that whole campaign, worked amazingly. What's next with this client? What are you gonna do to make sure he has another great month the next month and the month after? What's what's some of the ongoing kind of tactics that you're gonna be using?
SPEAKER_01:Oh well, we'd be having a value one thing, but we have like a we start using this thing. Uh well, I start using it particularly with the team, but Q4 for course creators is starts in November. It's November, December, and January. January being the new year resolution type of um month where people set new year resolutions, and you can join that conversation there and present them your your offer and help them get their uh get the results they want. So we created a very in-depth calendar of uh what we're gonna do in the next three months, especially. So Black Friday is coming. We have a secret campaign that we do before Black Friday, we have a Cyber Monday, we have obviously Black Friday, we can do something around the holidays, and then we have the new year campaign happening in January. Nice.
SPEAKER_00:If you want help with anything like this, if you're like, man, I want Boris running a campaign and making me an extra hundred thousand dollars per month. Drop us an email or get in touch. You can go to the website datadrivenmarketing.co, and you can book a call with us, or drop me an email, John J-O-H-N at datadrivenmarketing.co. Uh, we have a little chat and check if we would be a good fit. Um, otherwise, Boris, thanks so much for coming on today. Really appreciate you sharing this amazing success. I mean, that is like mind boggling, isn't it? An extra hundred thousand dollars for this guy is fucking fantastic. Yeah, I'm super happy and thank you for having me, John. Perfect. As always, thank you for listening. Love you guys. Uh, if you need any help with anything, just drop us an email. Um, otherwise, we'll see you in the next episode. Talk to you soon.