The Art of Selling Online Courses

213 What's the Right Price for Your Course?

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 213

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🔥 Grow your course revenue up to 30% in 7 days - no paid ads, no sales calls 📈 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/roadmap

This week I'm chatting with Phillip Henry, an award-winning slide guitar player who has performed at Hyde Park, the Royal Albert Hall, and toured all over the world. He's now teaching slide guitar online and has built a fantastic community around his niche.

Phil is one of those teachers who makes something that feels mysterious and out of reach totally accessible. He told me he has a hundred percent success rate with his students, and after talking with him I can see why.
In this episode we talk about finding a niche inside a massive market, growing a Facebook group, the transition away from sales calls, and whether your pricing reflects what you're actually delivering.

If you've ever wondered whether you're charging enough for your course or coaching, this one's for you.

🎸 Check out Phillip's work:
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/@UCA-Vhff-ng4NDrlUAQoQDTg 
🔗 https://www.instagram.com/phillip.henry/
🔗 https://philhenrymusic.com/

SPEAKER_01:

It's a good niche, I think, but inside a very big market. I have a hundred percent success rate so far. Grown that Facebook group to 7.6 thousand and it was only 3000 at the start of this year. Maybe about 8,000 though pretty active, about 2.6 thousand aren't we? In the YouTube subscribers. Probably about 20,000. I've got a few on there that have gone over a hundred thousand. Sounds like you're selling that too cheaply. Yep, I thought you would say that. I'm giving too much uh overdelivering for that price for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We are here to share winning strategies, secret hats, and top performers in the online course industry. My name's John Edward, and today's guest is Philip Henry. Now Phil is a musician and a teacher with over 20 years' experience. He plays supplied guitar all over the world, from Japan to South Africa, Australia to Canada. Phil is known for his work on new play folk and root team, particularly with his duo X Bart, for which he won the BBC Folk Award for Best Duo. He also performs with the Gig Spanner Big Band, music producer, he's written soundtracks for shows such as Operation Grand Canyon and Joe Pickett, where they're playing for an audience of 70,000 high park to a sold-out Royal Albert Hall for an intimate house concert. Phil's playing never fails to mesmerise his audience. He's passionate about passing on his love and knowledge of all things like guitar in a way that's friendly and accessible for all. Today we're going to be talking about Phil's course business, his plan for his upcoming promotion, his pricing, and how I think he could probably increase it, and how he's going to make a lot more money. Phil, welcome to the show. Hey there, John. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_01:

So tell us all what slide guitar is. It's a specific way of playing the guitar where you sound the notes by sliding a piece of material, maybe a bottleneck or a piece of metal in your hand on the strings. And it dates back, well the history's quite interesting. It could go back to ancient India perhaps, but the it's most known for its use in early blues music, country music, and those kind of American styles. But yeah, I've been specializing in this technique for over 20 years, and it's um it's a good niche, I think, inside a very big market, which is the guitar market.

SPEAKER_00:

So I watched some of your videos because I was like trying to understand because I I play bass as you know, and I I use slides in that, but I was like, oh, but what is it when it's actually slide guitar? And so I was watching this, and you've got like a like a giant ring on your finger, haven't you, that like moves up the up the Yes a tube.

SPEAKER_01:

A tube, yeah. Um it traditionally it's called bottleneck when you put it on your finger, so it would have been cut off the bottle of a wine bottle or whiskey bottle or something like that. No way. That would be the original way of doing it, but you could use a metal tube or glass tube, and exactly, yeah, it's like playing a fretless instrument because every note must be tuned with that now. The frets don't do anything anymore except give you a very rough guide as to where you should be.

SPEAKER_00:

I was chatting with someone the other day who used to play violin, and I'm just like, oh my god. It just sounds terrifying playing something without frets because I feel like I just miss it half the time, you know?

SPEAKER_01:

A fretless bass would be uh the the the the next step for you if you wanted to go fretless, I think. Um Jacob Pastorius and people like that, the fretless, fretless players. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Is it it sounds fucking hard, like because you it must be like such a small area that you have to hit in order to get the right note.

SPEAKER_01:

It's yeah, it's a bit like walking a tightrope, I say to my students. Um and i I don't lie to them, it's not easy, but it's not rocket science and it's not mysterious. That's kind of my angle with it, really. People think slide guitar, oh I'll never be able to do that. Only certain, you know, guitarists can do that. But my angle is anybody can do it. If they come to me, I'll make sure they come out at the other end being able to do it. And I have a hundred percent success rate so far. Nice.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, cool. So let's talk a little bit about your your audience. Where are you where you've been growing that? YouTube, Instagram, like what's been your main focus?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it it kind of piggybacked off my audience that I had had gained initially through 20 years of being a professional touring musician. So that gave me my launch pad. So I launched it organically just through my Facebook profile um and and that kind of avenue. I have a YouTube channel. I've never put the effort into regular posting on there, so it has very much just stayed on the level. Um that is something that I really want to grow in the coming years. Um so I launched it organically, and then I I bolstered it with um some paid ads, basically, to um with like an evergreen funnel, a webinar funnel, and that brought in uh through basically ads on YouTube, brought in a lot of guys um and good leads, you know, quality leads. I've also done some advertising on Facebook, the lead's not quite as high quality, but an easy way to hit a very wide and international market there on Facebook as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice, okay. So are you still running ads on YouTube?

SPEAKER_01:

I've I've just switched them off. I I want to um go back in and and tweak it all. Um my ad training that I did two years ago is now, I think, very out of date because things change on there all the time. Um and so I want to go in and yeah, retweak all that, relaunch that Evergreen funnel. But I am aiming to move away from the sales call-based approach of taking people on as well, which was that was it was all about um calls booked, you know. Um so yeah, I've switched that one off. I've still got the Facebook ads running at the moment, which is a a lead magnet, a free PDF that brings in a lot of people. And what it does is it kind of hooks them around into my Facebook group. So they get the PDF and then they get automatically redirected to the Facebook group, excuse me, with the promise of um some more free material in there. So they generally come in and join the Facebook group as well, which has grown that Facebook group to 7.6,000 members. Okay. Uh and it was only three thousand at the start of this year. So that funnel that funnel's been going like a Boeing, as we say. Um Do we?

SPEAKER_02:

Who says that?

SPEAKER_01:

Is that what they say in uh is that what they say in Devon? Maybe it's just round here. Um but yeah, that that funnel was going really strongly at it's slowed down a bit now. Again, the the ads need refreshing. The the landing pages, I'm sure you could say uh say something about those. That all needs refreshing. Right.

SPEAKER_00:

But yeah, so that's that's brought in uh a lot of a lot of clients as well through the Facebook um Okay, so you've got Facebook ads to a PDF, which then redirects to a Facebook group. We've got YouTube ads that were that you've just paused that were running to a book a call funnel?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. A short webinar, 14-minute webinar, giving some free advice, um and so on. And then and then obviously the email sequence that follows that was where most people would book through.

SPEAKER_00:

Got it. Okay. And then what size is your YouTube organic audience at at the moment?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh just over two, well, about two point six thousand, aren't we, in the YouTube subscribers. Uh-huh. Um so it's not terrible. It's um but as a musician, that is an an avenue that I should really be uh putting a lot of effort into that I'm not, you know, because p when when I play guitar, people think, oh, I want to be able to do what you're doing, so I just need to put more of me out there, actually playing. Yeah. Uh and that's something I plan to do. I just need to free up a bit of time, get rid of the sales calls, and spend time growing the YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_00:

That's my Yeah, I think long term that's very much the way to go. I mean, it's what we see basically with with pretty much all of our clients who are doing well, is uh YouTube is the main traffic source, like for their for their audience, because it just converts way better than uh Instagram, for example, or TikTok or something like that, where it's much shorter form content. So long form views on YouTube. So I think if you if you can free up whatever it might be, one day a week for doing a video a week on there consistently, you know, like I think in a in a year's time, 18 months' time, you're gonna be like, thank God I did that. You know, that was a that was a great decision that I made. Um Do you have anybody you worked with on like how to get better at your thumbnails and your titles and all of the you know the elements of of uh YouTube?

SPEAKER_01:

I have a small amount of training um from ad outreach. I don't know if you've heard of those guys. They do um specifically um Google ad training. Uh though as I said, that training's become a little bit out of date. But no, I need I need I don't know the best way to make a YouTube video so people actually look at it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I just put it out there and I generally get disheartened when it gets 300 views. I've got a few on there that have gone, you know, over a hundred thousand, but they've been on there for quite a long time. Yeah. But um, you know, so you have lead magnets linked to from those? I've I've started doing that recently. Yes, well, my man. Good, okay. A lot of this since listening to your podcast, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh good, that's what the podcast's for. It's just to help with exactly this problem. So nice, okay, cool. Um yeah, I was chatting with someone the other day, who was it? Jack Hopkins, he runs uh Piano in 21 Days, and he was telling me how he's got one of his videos, I think, is like half of all of the views he's ever got, or something crazy like that, you know? It's like it's an incredible amount. So it's really like, yeah, it's there is a certain amount of unknowableness, like which video is it that's gonna take off with uh with YouTube. But um I'm I'm by no means an expert in in YouTube at all, but I know that there are some great coaching programs out there for helping with exactly this kind of thing to be like and like I've seen I'm I'm seeing like friends of mine or or clients of ours who have who are more at the beginner level who are getting going, who haven't got the massive YouTube audience yet, and seeing how much tweaking they're doing and refining they're doing of it of a thumbnail, like okay, I've got to tweak this and tweak that and tweak this the other, and then their their click-through rate is going up considerably, and then their views are increasing considerably, and it's like okay, it's uh there's still a lot of work to do, but like that knowledge of exactly what to do is is uh I think super helpful. I think that would really serve you well. Um do you want me to connect you with anybody who might be like who I've heard good things about in terms of YouTube and coaching? Cool. Yeah, happy. I think I should be on the podcast actually talking about that. I think we could do some really good episodes about like what is it that's working right now in making better thumbnails in the music space or the language space or whatever I happen to be. Yeah, yeah. Nice, okay, cool. So you've got you've got a kind of an audience there, you've got YouTube ads, Facebook ads, uh 2,600 on YouTube, subscribers. I think how many do you know how many views you're getting a month on YouTube? Because that kind of matters more than subscribers.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh possibly about 20,000, uh something like that. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00:

That's not so bad then. Okay, cool. Um what size is your email list at now?

SPEAKER_01:

Nine and a half thousand, though. It's a little bit um yeah, maybe about eight thousand that are that are pretty active, you know. There's there's there's a I've been trying to clear out the dormant and and clean it up a bit. I was I was seeing the uh the open rates dropping a little bit, so you know, I was just trying to clean all that up recently. But yeah, so I've I started running a bit of Black Friday stuff to them yesterday and getting getting some good feedback because lots of inquiries coming through that. So Nice.

SPEAKER_00:

Alright, well talk us through that then. So you're this is we're recording this on the 5th of November. Um so talk us through like what have you started sending out to people at the moment.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, we recently we were driving around on tour, and my wife who helps me run this business, we were listening to your podcast and specifically the Black Friday episode with your colleague.

SPEAKER_00:

Yesip, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and it and we were like, whoa. We've got a lot of work to do uh because we yeah, we never really put that amount of effort into it. So we've we've you know we've we're just building up to it now. Um so yesterday was more like a warm-up email saying I am gonna be running a Black Friday sale. Yeah. My my voice to the subscribers is you know, I'm a bit of a um an easygoing, slightly sarcastic northerner. Uh so I'm I'm putting it through that lens, you know, oh yeah, bloody Black Friday, I'm running a sale, blah de blah. Um, but um this is gonna be the cheapest that my course is gonna be this year or next year. Get in while you can. Just hit reply and let me know if you're interested, and lots of replies come have come back. Nice. Um but I am selling I'm gonna try and sell the coach the coaching programme first of all. Yeah. Um, which is I I'd say high ticket, it's probably more like what you would call mid-ticket price-wise. Um but I've always held the price back and tried to get people onto a call before I reveal the price. Because as you know, that converts better with things that are a little bit more expensive. Um but what I've decided to do is I made a a VSL where I talk through the course um in you know, a very kind of face-to-face, uh down to earth kind of way. Yeah. And uh and and basically added a couple of bonuses and have put a reasonably good re reduction on it. Uh and yeah, so I I what I try to do is maybe chat to them a couple of emails first and then send the VSL so they're confident they're talking to a human being, build a bit of rapport. Some of them I've spoken to before, some of them have bought my low-ticket course already, so the there's already a bit of back and forth. And then send the VSL and um yeah, converted one straight away last night. There's a few that are uh in business.

SPEAKER_00:

Sorry to interrupt. Have you included the uh the pricing in the VSL then as well? Yeah, I have, yeah. Got it. Okay. And what price are you selling that for?

SPEAKER_01:

So it's uh the twelve the course is twelve hundred normally, and I've dropped it to eight nine five for Black Friday. So a reasonable reduction.

SPEAKER_00:

Not what's included with that? Is it just the course, or is you mentioned coaching as well?

SPEAKER_01:

So my approach has been to give people um some one-to-one coaching and they get access to the community and the group sessions as well as part of that. So they get the the on-demand material which isn't teachable. Um they get into the f the private Facebook community where we chat and share videos, and then I run two group sessions a week, one of which is often a master class, uh, or a guest session or something like that, or an open mic session. And um they also get my calendar so they can book in to see me for one-to-one check-ins as well during a 90-day period. How many one-to-one sessions can they have? I keep I I leave it fairly open. Okay. Um and what tends to happen is people will come a few times and then they're quite happy and they're just happy working through the material. So it's a bit of a gamble on my part. I could end up with a calendar that's chopped out, but at the moment it's not working out too bad in on that front. I did go through a period of limiting it to one per month over the three month period. And um that's probably what I should do again, but um at the moment I kind of leave them, leave it to them to I say to them, you know, you book in when you feel you need to see me over this three-month period. What and and I say to them, what I expect to happen is once you get going, you won't really need many one-to-ones, because all the information is in the material and you can come to the group sessions to get any help you need. And that tends to be what happens.

SPEAKER_00:

That's really interesting. There's a a lady I talked to, Jane something, a long time ago on the podcast, and what she was doing was she was selling a something like a five thousand dollar-ish program, and there were six modules to it. And instead of saying to people, you get whatever, one call every two weeks, something like that, she said, when you complete the module, then if you want to, you can book a call before going on to the next one, and we can kind of go through it. Or if you're fine, you just kind of keep going. And she found she got a lot less calls booked that way than if it was every two weeks. And also people were happier because sometimes they would come on for their call every two weeks and then feel bad because they hadn't done the stuff that was on there, or other times they needed a call but they didn't couldn't have one anymore because all the calls had been used up. And it's just like, oh, that's quite an interesting blend of it. I think sounds like you're selling that too cheaply. Yep. I thought you would say that.

SPEAKER_01:

I can and I feel that in my, you know, in my core as well. That I I'm giving too much uh over delivering for that price for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

It's talk to me about the group stuff. How long can someone stay in that group for at that when they've paid that money?

SPEAKER_01:

I give them lifetime access in the community. Okay, and there's that to the group sessions as well. Yeah, yeah. I find that useful because it keeps it keeps the group buoyant in terms of numbers. Um I don't want group sessions that have only got a few in. So I I have people that have been coming in like regulars, and then you have you have the ones that are enthusiastic and then they vanish. Um so it just seems to balance out that I have a nice number in each session with some of the old ones and some of the new ones in there if you if you get my drift, and it's it's a nice atmosphere for that as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you have anything else that you can then sell to those people who are your most loyal members who've who are in that group?

SPEAKER_01:

It's funny you should say that because um you you inspired me again a few weeks ago with the podcast. We I've just sold a coaching add-on package, uh, well, just put it out yesterday as a as a Black Friday thing. Um where they could it's basically yeah, they can they can come back and have a couple more one-to-ones, but we'll focus in on something specific that that came up during the original pass through the 90 day program or a bucket list piece they want to do. So a bit more targeted, uh based on we'll do an an assessment and it's based on that. So yes, I've I've sold that probably too cheaply again. Said to said to them full price five nine five, but I've reduced it to three nine five for Black Friday just to just to drive it, you know, a little bit. So I got three of those sign up yesterday, um, you know, and I probably won't have to deal with that until January. So it's quite a nice little booster for for yesterday. Um but I don't know, do you think again, selling myself a bit cheaply there? Yeah, I'm with the one-to-one access.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think the one because the one-to-one access is the the most the least scalable thing, right? And so any time that you put into that is time you're not putting into building your audience, which long term is going to build your, you know, build your revenue um higher. So it has to be that it's it's worth it enough to you that it okay, I need that cash now, and but that if I have that much more money, then I don't need to go do this show that I didn't want to go do or whatever else it is, and therefore I can afford to, you know, spend this this one day a week on on um building out my YouTube channel. YouTube and or creating another course or whatever else it is that you you you might be doing. So overall it's quite important to make sure that that money does add up. And when you're you know got a smaller audience like you've got at the moment, then it's it is a bit harder because you don't have enough people maybe who would pay tons of money for it. But the kind of amounts of money that I'm seeing people being able to charge in the music space when it's a uh you know, teaching it as a hobby to people is something in the um like a couple of hundred pounds at least per session for one to one, you know. Whereas normally, like I I have a bass teacher, right? And he comes around and it's fifty quid and Hour I pay. But when you're the celebrity, you know, to a certain extent, you're the one who's oh, they've found your YouTube videos, they're following along with everything. So I think that that's like a and and then you take someone like we talked about Scott before, weren't we? From Scott's uh Scott's Base Lessons. Well, he's got someone else teaching it, right? It's not even him teaching it anymore. He's got he's got teachers who are teaching his program, and they're teach they're charging like a thousand dollars a month-ish, like maybe eight hundred dollars a month. Um, I don't know exact I can't remember exactly what's included, it's probably like it might be weekly sessions, maybe. So um, plus access to all of the the materials and maybe some other things as well. But that kind of gives you an idea of the amounts that other people are charging for this. Yeah. Um, Jack, my mate, who runs uh um Banjo Skills, who's a similar-ish kind of audience size to you, he's a bit bigger, he's like 7,500 subscribers now on YouTube. He's run uh promotion recently for doing like one-to-one sessions and access to everything for like six months, and it was five thousand dollars for access for six months, so similar-ish kind of price, that's like 800-ish a month, right? But that's in dollars, I suppose. And then he all they also got lifetime access to all of his courses, and then he's recently sold another one that was the same price, but a lesson every two weeks instead. So that's just hopefully that kind of gives you a range to see, well, what are is anybody else selling this for? And you can possibly like use that as a way to to figure out your pricing. You don't have to jump it up all in one go, but like you maybe you've sold a few at that price, you go, okay, well, if I'm gonna sell any more, those are gonna be now whatever, the full price of that 595, and then you know, kind of go from there. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I do. Um, okay. So talk me through a bit more about Black Friday then. So you've you've reached out, you've had people reply and say they're interested. What's your plan with those people? Have you sent them through the the the you sent them through the VSL straight away, or they go onto the wait list? Because I know you mentioned you'd sent it to some couple of people.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh yeah, I try I try to strike up a conversation and send them the VSL and just see if I can get them across the line. So this is our our first move really. I'm gonna be um doing an email sequence uh and possibly offering some more downsell options as we as we go through the month. Because uh as I think you've discussed on the show before, with the hobby market where they don't have the the option to make money back on what they're buying, it yeah, they're less likely to necessarily pay uh pay out a big amount straight up, you know. Um and I'm noticing that if I can sell them something cheaper first and then work them up the up the value chain, it it tends to be working a little bit better. So I have a plan for a um a membership option, um, which I'm gonna call Slide Success Academy, which I want to offer to them later in the month. I'm gonna try and sign up a f you know a few on my higher ticket element first and then break it down into this membership option, which is gonna be a monthly subscription, which doesn't include any one-to-ones, or community access on the lower tier, and possibly add a community access tier to that. So maybe forty-seven dollars on and ninety-seven dollars or something like that for those two tiers. So um yeah, that that's that's one of the plans. Um because as I said, I only have the one course really, it's a big course. So I've kind of maybe built things, you may think, slightly upside down by having that big ticket, high ticket thing and just push that for two years. So I'm kind of trying to pivot out of that and have something that there's a lot of money being left on the table when people are interested, but they don't want to just shell out a thousand pounds straight away. They want to you know, they want to buy a few modules or they want to buy a short course and that kind of stuff. So it's getting all that in place and all the you know the sales pages and checkout pages to go with all of that. Um because I've always just sold it to them on on the phone, you know, uh taken a card payment over the phone or sent them a payment link, a stripe link. So it's never really been coming through those those kind of channels, so that all needs sorting out as well. So that's the plan.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think it's totally reasonable to start with the high ticket thing. Like to a certain extent, that's what we did in in my business, is we started out doing the most high ticket, which was done for you for our clients, and then we started doing one-to-one coaching, and then we started doing group coaching, and then eventually we sold the course separately. Um and I think the benefit to that is that you you get to have the one-to-one experience of teaching the thing to people. So you learn, okay, I need to tweak the course in this way and that way, because people aren't understanding these concepts. But also because you make more money from a small audience from selling a high-ticket offer with coaching, like far more money. And I'm thinking there's so many people who are selling just courses who are leaving so much money on the table by not having a high-ticket offer as well. And I I think that's a loss of people listening to this podcast could could grow their revenue significantly by including that. The downside to doing it is sometimes you can get like so used to like, oh, it's not worth selling anything that's that's less money than that because my audience is small, but then you don't put the time into making the audience bigger. Yeah. Because you're like, well, I can I can make money from these exist this exhausting, sorry, this existing small audience, and growing an audience takes bloody ages. Well, it does, but once you've done it, as you as you start to grow it, long term that compounds way, way, way more than selling a couple more, you know, higher ticket offers this month. So I think it's it's a tricky balance, but when you're getting going, you've done it the right way around to sell the higher ticket thing first. It's just if you sell if you sell it too cheap, then you don't have enough time left to work on growing the audience in order to then be able to sell more of the low-ticket things. Like I was chatting with someone the other day, she's selling um is it violin courses? Uh hey Jessica. Um she was saying that her her conversion rate on her the number of sales that she'd made from selling her course, she was like a bit disappointed. And I went to her and looked on the numbers, I was like, your conversion rate is fine. The problem is just your email list is too small. And the reason your email list is too small is because of two things. You haven't built enough big enough audience on YouTube, and your conversion rate from your YouTube views to opt-ins is too low. So the problem's not the email promotion, that was good. The problem's not the course, that was good. The problem is these other things. But if you don't know where to look, then it can get you can get frustrated by it. And I I think that that's the thing that if you can put more time into growing the audience, then you're just gonna I know I've said this five times already, but like I just think it's such a big deal. In a year's time, you're gonna be thank fuck I I'd spent the time doing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's a realization that I've come to recently. Um, it's been a yeah, a few weeks of mind mindset adjustments and uh like, oh no, what have I done? Kind of thing. Um but yeah, a plan, a plan is forming now and it's very much that. Need to build the audience up and uh yeah, diversify on the offerings as well uh in the process, I think. But um yeah, yeah, really good, really good.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice. I think your membership idea is good. I think having a membership as an option is I think the pr the mistake I see people make is they make a membership and then they stop selling the courses individually. And I think that's a mistake because some people want to buy courses individually and some people want to pay for it as a membership and let people do both, like sell them differently. Because if you have a membership, you can only really promote it effectively about every three months, three or four months. Because if you're doing it as a discount, what's different next month to doing it as a discount this month? You've got to have a different, you know, a different thing, a different offer. Whereas if you also sell the courses individually, then you can sell the membership this month, course next month, coaching the month after, membership again the month after that, and kind of rotate through them that way. And that's then it's not too often, and therefore your audience doesn't get to um uh that don't just think, oh fuck it, I'll just wait till next month, it'll be on sale again. Yeah, three months off is long enough time. And you might then do it, you might come up with another offer or you break out a module from your course and have sell that separately. And now it's four months instead of three, you know. You mentioned that you've got like one big course. What's the do you ever sell parts of that separately? Do you ever break that out?

SPEAKER_01:

I haven't done I've I've I've been looking into that. Um the the thing with it is they all kind of help each other out, the five there's five main pillars in there. Um and taken individually, they don't stand up on their own so well. They've the the music's a funny thing. It's you can't really separate it out into elements. They all feed into into each other, which is you know it's been a real headache. How do you how do you do that? But what I'm actually putting together is um some some other options that are more more targeted, like say learn to play these five great swampy slide blues riffs in a weekend kind of offering as a as a s as a kind of a way in, and then you know, why don't you add on this, take those riffs into the OpenG tuning add-on package, so take it up to the next little thing, and then why not get me to coach you for um you know a month or thirty days or something on that to take it up to like a mid-ticket bracket?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's that's something I'm thinking about. The the course itself is so unwieldy, it's yeah, improving hard to break it down, but um I think it can be done.

SPEAKER_00:

Um Yeah, I think one of the things I see sometimes with the course creators is is like a desire to create for each thing that they create to be like perfect and just exactly right. And I I see a lot more benefit, especially when you're getting going, in being like, right, I'm gonna create something this month to sell, and I've got whatever it is, three days or something to to do it, and I'm gonna make something, right? Okay, which of my ideas do I think is the best? You know, survey the audience, find out what they want, see what's what's desired, but then be like, right, well I'm fucking making something, you know. And so just a few a few different uh uh there's an interesting idea there. You said if I heard you write swampy, swampy slide mute, could you tell us what that is?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I always wondered, my people say to me all the time, Oh, I want to learn to do the swampy stuff. But you know, I um I think it just means a kind of like slightly old school, grungy s uh you know what you would play out in the swamps in um in the deep South of America kind of sound. Oh no, okay. Very specific old school blues sound, back porch. I'm I'm actually gonna call it back porch blues riffs. So it paints like a picture, you sit there when you're in the rocking chair and knock out these riffs. So you kind of sell in that um image, that kind of almost lifestyle image of being able to put your Czech shirt on, have your have your guitar and uh the clientele are very much in that kind of bracket, you know. They like to wear leather jackets, buy motorbikes, buy resonator guitars like like this one, and um and it's you know it's it's a nice kind of midlife hobby, really, for a lot of them.

SPEAKER_00:

Where are your where are your audience? Do they tend to be in the UK, America, like what whereabouts?

SPEAKER_01:

I've got people all over the place. I've I've obviously got a lot in the UK. Um I ran most of my Google ads to the UK audience first of all while I was launching it, and my approach is very, you know, appealing to the the UK audience. Uh but I've got Americans, Canadians, Australians, lots in Northern Europe, uh, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, and one in Malaysia. Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. So all over the show, really. I was just thinking about for as a name, this is a friend of mine who was selling guitar courses. I don't think he sells them anymore, but he was selling them for many years. Um did a a blues course, uh, like American blues, he was teaching, and he called it uh Red, White, and Blues. And I thought that was such a great name. I like your backyard blues. It reminds me of what's that guy? What's that film, uh Deliverance, the guy sat on the porch with the banjo, right? It's that kind of being in the swamp. Yeah. Okay, cool. So you're thinking of maybe having a course around that. That sounds cool. One thing that I've said, what do you use as your lead magnets on your YouTube videos? Do you do like, is it it can't be tabs, can it?

SPEAKER_01:

On if there's no frets or no, you can tab it out, yeah, because it it still it does still align with the frets, essentially what you're doing. Okay. But what the lead magnet, the main one is the I call it the get going with slide guide. So it's like a quick start guide to you know understanding the tune-ins very quickly, what what equipment you need, a few basic tips on how to get started, because a lot of people are head scratching thinking, how do I get going with this? It's kind of you know a starter pack, if you will.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, nice. One of the things so what I see in the music space is that people tend to be able to get a higher opt-in rate from their YouTube channel than, for example, the language learning space. And it tends to be about two percent of YouTube views can convert to uh email opt-ins. And one of the things that works really well for that is especially like on so if you if it's teaching um piano, it would be sheet music. If you're teaching a stringed instrument, then generally uh tabs. And just could you could you just briefly explain for everybody what tabs are for anybody who doesn't play any stringed instrument?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's it's just a way of telling you where to put your fingers, or in my case, where to put the slide. It's like almost like a picture of the guitar. So you've got six lines that that denote the six strings, and then the numbers that you'll see on those lines tell you which fret you then need to place your finger or slide.

SPEAKER_00:

So so what I've seen work particularly well is if you're teaching, if you're playing a song on the and you're teaching a song on the video, and say if you want to get the the tabs or the sheet music or whatever for this, then you can download that at the link below and put it in the description and the pinned comment and make sure it's above the folder in there. And that tends to get that's actually generally above a 2% opt-in rate. But that's obviously not every single video is teaching a song. Uh so that's one that if and I don't know how that might fit, because you maybe your current opt-in is is working great. You know, I don't know. Do you know what your your opt-in rate is from through YouTube? No, I'm not too sure now. No. So if you looked at that and you go, well, I'm already getting two percent opt-in rate, well then it's you're great. You don't need to worry about any of this. But like if you found you're getting a 0.5% opt-in rate, then it might be worth looking at, okay, we'll get the starter pack and the tabs for this, you know, whatever. And and I think that might it's certainly a good option to look at in terms of opt-ins.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um do you have a tripwire set up at the moment once when somebody's opting into your email list? Just a way to think what that means. So somebody opts into your tripwire, sorry, somebody opts into your lead magnet. Often what people have as the next thing that somebody sees, the next page, is it just says, thank you for opting in, or it's actually got whatever the the PDF um available straight away for them. A tripwire is where you have an offer for them, generally pretty cheap, normally about$27. That's like our starting place with that, of something that they can buy immediately that's great value. You know, maybe normally it would be$97 or something, but they can buy it straight away. And the conversion rate on that tripwire offer tends to be very high. The price is quite low, so you're not making tons from it, but it's a decent amount, you know, like it's three to ten percent opt-in rate. Uh sorry conversion rate from opt-ins to buying normally. Yeah. Um, and so some examples are if somebody opted in and they got tabs for one song, if you then said, Do you want my full pack of every every set of tabs I've ever made for every song? And that was fifty songs or something, for twenty-seven dollars, then that kind of thing tends to convert really well because it's aligned with the thing they just opted in for. You know the kind of people who opted in for this, tabs for one song are likely to want tabs for more songs. And so that that kind of thing tends to convert quite well. So that's what it that was the that's the explanation of what it is. Do you have anything like that in place at the moment? Or if you uh what's what's the current next step?

SPEAKER_01:

I don't uh technically have that in place. I was in the process of setting up a a split test on that Facebook funnel. Yeah. Because what what it does on that thank you page rather than give them an offer is it it redirects them to the Facebook group and we get them we get them in there basically. Um so I could I was thinking of split test there and offer them to buy something instead of being redirected to the Facebook group because I can always send them to the Facebook group through the emails later on anyway.

SPEAKER_00:

So how's the Facebook group doing in terms of does that is it very active? Does it tend to lead to people buying from directly in there? How does that work for you?

SPEAKER_01:

I think I think the engagement's pretty good. It's a nice community atmosphere. People, you know, talk to each other about gear and stuff. Um I get what I've what I've always seen from it is it builds trust and authority, which definitely feeds into when I've met people on calls. They've been watching my videos on Facebook and you know, they've been or they've been to some of the free workshops I've done on there. So it definitely feeds into what I've been doing in terms of selling through calls, but that through di direct sales, um not sure really. Uh I occasionally do uh like a a key a keyword um you know, comment the words slide, and I'll send you a a a direct message and have a chat and then send them a VSL or something like that, and sometimes that's converted as well. I've actually signed up quite a few. Um yeah, when they're com first coming into the group, just chatting to them, you know, what where are you at? Where do you want to get to, yeah, get a bit of rapport and then send them a VSL and often I've signed them up to the full coaching program like that as well.

SPEAKER_00:

So nice. Okay, yeah, I think that's that sounds strong. I think that that we call that sell by chat, that kind of approach that you're using there. Um we do uh much the same thing because I think a lot of people when they're buying, especially buying something more expensive from us, they want to have talked to us a little bit first before they kind of moved on to that next stage and want to be like, well, how can you help? Is this the right fit? And if someone's new to, you know, they haven't listened to the podcast for a long time or anything, then they're like, Well, do you guys know what you're talking about? You know, are you trustworthy? Do I like you? All these kind of things. And so I think that that process really helps. Sounds like that's working really great for you. Okay. So you'd have to kind of figure out so you've already got something that's working to an extent with the Facebook group, so redirecting straight into that. So it might or might not be worth switching to a paid offer on that on that page instead. Okay, that's probably not the thing to focus on then because you've got something already, even if it it might or might not be perfect, but it's like it's time consuming.

SPEAKER_01:

It's time consuming though, isn't it? Chatting to people and um you you have to be prepared to be ghosted by a hundred people every week, you know, which is uh not exactly the best feeling in the world either. So um yeah, I I I quite like to move away from having to harass people in in Messenger, you know, to be honest. Yeah. Is that how you're doing it in Facebook Messenger? Yeah, I tend to, yeah, because they're coming into the Facebook group. I also chat to people on in Instagram and um also in WhatsApp as well. I take WhatsApp numbers when people are opting in.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm happy to chat with people as long as they are replying back to me. What I don't want to do is I don't want to chase somebody and then be like, and then they're not replying, and then they email them again or or WhatsApp message them again on. I feel like what Why am I this is I feel like an idiot here, you know? So I totally hit feel you on that one.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a strange feeling, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um okay, cool.

SPEAKER_01:

So And I use oh sorry, I use group I use group kit to kind of organise what's going on in there as well. So it's like an add-on a Facebook add-on that uh it it syncs with my email list. So I if I approve them through groupkit into the group, it takes their information and sends it across to my um email autoresponder and so on. It sends the email across and it also collates the information, the answers they gave to the questions on the way in and so on. So you can go back in there and and look. So if someone pops up in a comment, you go back in there and say, Oh, this guy said this when he was coming in. I've got his email. So you know a bit about them to for the conversation as well. So it's it's thirty dollars a month or something. Probably worth it.

SPEAKER_00:

Um Yeah, sounds good. Okay. I'd never not heard of that before. That's interesting. Okay. One more question. I think we're gonna wrap up shortly after that. But like how often are you doing promotions at the moment, email promotions?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, yeah, that's the the million dollar question, isn't it? We're going to be doing going forward one a month. That's man, alright. Starting this month is our first, you know. Um what I was doing uh was a basically an endless chain of emails from one people opt-in uh rather than a set campaign. But what I've done is I've switched that to a weekly newsletter, which is really high quality, good teaching material in there. Uh, and then we're gonna run campaigns uh so we know where we're at then because this endless email chain was was becoming unwieldy, hard to know where people were with it and all that kind of stuff. So we're just broadcasting once a week and then we're gonna run monthly um yeah campaigns, like you say, starting this month with Black Friday.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice, nice. Yeah, I mean that's what I find after lots of testing, it just seems to work much better than having a long auto as well. I know some people really like that approach, but um, that's definitely kind of what I found works better to do the monthly campaigns. Okay, cool. I got an overall suggestion for you. Is that all right? Hit me. Okay. So I think if you take all these things that you're doing, you've got your coaching, you've got your sales calls, you've got your email chat or Facebook Messenger chat, what have you with people, you've got uh writing email promotions, you've got making content, what have you. If you write out about how long you think you're spending on each of those, and then figure out what would it take, what needs cutting back or batching or doing every only every two days instead of every day, or whatever it is, so that you could spend like one day a week on creating YouTube videos. And then still you're like, okay, well, I still need to do this much of each of those, but no more. I've only got this two-hour slot for doing that on a on a Tuesday morning or whatever it is, so that every whatever, Friday, I'm gonna spend the whole day working on that, on building out that next YouTube video and doing the best job I possibly can on it. And if it doesn't go well and I'm pissed off with it, next Friday I'm still doing another one and I'm trying to do it better, you know, and doing that like every single week, then I think that you will uh be delighted that you did that in you know, six months, a year's time, especially if you if you combine that with like a a really good quality course or coaching on how to grow that YouTube audience. Um because I think that the potential there is is really high, and it means you'll kind of find it easier to increase your pricing on all of the other things, you'll find it easier to be able to grow the email list to sell other stuff as well, you know. That's my that's my suggestion based on what I've seen work for other people. Yeah, it sounds like a really good plan.

SPEAKER_01:

Um yeah. It and it kind of chimes in with what we've we've been thinking ourselves perfectly, really. It's uh yeah, and I'm I'm open to getting help, coaching with that type of stuff. I definitely it's worth it, isn't it? It's an investment.

SPEAKER_00:

Totally. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, and there's some there's some people who've got like uh you know very reasonably priced programs for helping with with growing your YouTube audience as well. Phil, this has been a fucking delight. I am very excited for you. I think that you are doing great and that you are gonna absolutely smash it with this over the next kind of year or two. I I really feel like you've got so much of this this right things in place, you know, to be able to take this course business to the next level. I think um I think that's stay in touch because I think you're gonna do you're gonna do great with it. Yeah, let's talk again in a couple of years when it's gone skyrocket. Yeah, come back on and tell us how you smashed it and how you're now making whatever, thirty, fifty thousand dollars a month or something. Yeah. That's good. Phil, if people want to go check you out and they wanna they want to learn slide guitar or they just want to go see what you're doing and kind of what you've got in place, where should they go?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh they can find me on uh YouTube, Philip.henry, or Instagram the same, or Facebook. The Facebook group is called Learn Slide Guitar. If they want to join that, that'd be a good place to be. And I've also got my website, which is members.slidesuccess.co.uk. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. If you enjoyed this episode and you want to listen to some more like it, obviously subscribe if you're not already. But I also want to point you to another couple of episodes that you might particularly enjoy that are in the kind of the music space. So we talked about Scott briefly in there. That's episode 117 with Scott Devine, who is running a uh a fantastic five million dollars a year music education business. Um, and then Jack, I mentioned from um Banjo Skills. Let me find the episode number for that one. So 172. And that one, if you want to see it uh on YouTube, uh, was actually done in person as well. So it's quite uh quite a nice one to watch. And that is with uh Jack Gowski, who's doing about 5,000 a month, it's probably a little bit more now teaching banjo. And uh another one then would be Christopher Sutton, um, which is episode 14, right way back in the day. Uh and he runs Musical U. If you want to learn more about any of the techniques that we talked about on the uh episode today, so about tripwire funnels or running email promotions, go to datadrivenmarketing.co slash resources and I have got guides there about each of these different things. So how to improve your order bumps or improve your email list faster or uh better lead magnets or how to create a tripwire funnel, etc. So that's data drivenmarketing.co slash resources. As always, thanks so much for listening. Really, really appreciate you. Uh Phil, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks, John.