sell online services and digital courses

If you create your own online programs and courses or sell a service online, there are plenty of common mistakes entrepreneurs make that you can easily avoid.

Get Better Results When Selling Services Online

Here are three that will save you money and get you to your first sale faster.

Mistake #1: Not communicating with your audience

Before you start working on your signature program or online course, make sure you ask your audience what they want to learn about. What struggles do they have and what holds them back from achieving results?

Here are the tools you can use to communicate with your audience:

Step 1

✓ Visit Surveymonkey.com and draft questions to gain valuable customer insight. It is a free service.

✓ Utilize social media platforms that allow you to share your survey.

I prefer to use the social media channels where my clients spend the most time in order to get real-time feedback.
For example, if your ideal clients use Facebook, I would promote organically or using Facebook ads to position my survey in front of that audience. When I started my online coaching business, I joined Facebook groups where my ideal clients were and asked them to participate in my survey.

To motivate them to take action I created a unique freebie as a giveaway to those who helped me out with the survey. The results were excellent as I received a 64% response rate.

✓ Get up to 10 responses. Get more if you can.

✓ Summarize the main roadblocks for your ideal clients. List the top 3 pain points they cannot overcome on their own.

Here’s an example of a survey I created implementing this exact strategy: www.SurveyMonkey.com/r/

Step 2

✓ Now that you have all the information you need, start putting together your paid offer.

Mistake #2: Selling without warming up your audience

When you're working on your training you have to start building a “know, like, and trust factor” with your audience.
One big mistake I see entrepreneurs and online coaches make is that they create their product and go right into launching it. Well, developing a knowledge of and an appreciation and trust for your product or service doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and effort.

To avoid this mistake, build trust with your followers by showing up consistently, delivering great content and encouraging customer engagement. This is called a pre-launch. Depending on the price of your paid offer, testing your pre-launch strategy should take at least four weeks.

Use this pre-launch strategy for your paid offer or service

Download CalendarsThatWork.com or a similar editorial calendar and map out your visibility plan for four weeks ahead.

  • When are you going to show up?
  • What content will you be sharing?
  • What "call to action" will you have in order to prepare your audience to buy from you in the future?


For example, if I'm introducing my new paid offer, all my "free" content must be related to the offer. I would map out my visibility calendar for weeks ahead and show up in front of my audience consistently to prepare my audience for the sale.

Start growing your list

Your audience needs to see you in multiple places to build their know, like, and trust factor more quickly. In your email funnels, focus on delivering value but also remind them that they have problems and pain points that they cannot solve on their own. Repurpose your content and entice them with your upcoming offer.

Mistake #3: Not having a strategy behind the launch

The biggest mistake I see entrepreneurs make is that they introduce their paid offer a few times and then stop doing the work before they reach their income goals.

If you follow the four weeks to deliver value to your audience, your followers will see you as an expert in your niche. At that point it's time to be persistent with your launching strategy and start making a profit. For the next 2-3 weeks, you need to focus on positioning your paid offer as a solution to the problems of your ideal clients.

In the pre-launching phase, your call to action was focusing on growing your followers and your list. For example: "Join my list for more support from me!" or "Follow me on social media if you don't want to miss another great piece of content!"

In the launching phase, your call to action would focus on "buy from me." Each content offering that you share in the launching phase must focus on pushing your sales. Use webinars, challenges, video series, and email funnels to deliver your value and sell, sell, sell!

Remember those three top pain points your audience needs help with? You may choose one topic (pain point) and create your offer around it. Now, take the other two pain points and create mini bonuses that solve those problems. Add it to your paid offer. Your potential clients won't walk away from it.

Iryna-Shevchenko200Iryna Shevchenko is a Facebook group expert. She helps online coaches make money using Facebook groups at Build Your Business from Scratch.

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