One of the best things about selling online courses is that it is a product funnel that can be automated. It is really easy and simple to create an evergreen funnel to sell your online course. Your evergreen funnel could be tripwire, webinar, mini-course or any other kind of funnel you would like to build. I have multiple courses with evergreen funnels.
Evergreen Funnel for Course
Evergreen funnel is an automated system that runs in the background and automatically generates sales for your business. Once you set it up you could forget it, although in reality regular maintenance and A/B is required or recommended.
As an example of an evergreen funnel for a course could be something like this:
Facebook Ad/blog Post -> Landing page for webinar -> Thank you Page -> Email sequence -> Webinar page -> Sales page -> Check out -> Sign into course.
All above can be automated with right tools and apps. For above funnel at minimum you would require Email Service Provider, Webinar software (or Facebook live for free option), course hosting and checkout. Cheapest this could run with few dollars a month. Having said that I highly recommend investing into business tools that automate your business. It will always pay back many, many times over.
I’ll walk you through the core elements of an evergreen webinar funnel. I’ll show you step-by-step set up for webinar and tools you need to create one for your course.
Tools I Recommend Using
Clickfunnels (landing pages & webinar, or dedicated webinar software like Everwebinar – recommended if you plan on doing lot of webinars)
Activecampaign (email sequence and action based automations)
All this can be done without hiring a developer.
Evergreen Funnel Step-by-step
No matter how you drive traffic the first part of any funnel, it starts with a landing page. You could drive traffic from Pinterest, Facebook ad, SEO, blog post or any other way.
With webinar you’ll need a webinar landing page or sign up page. I’ve used Clickfunnels Hourly Webinar.
Reason why I have hourly webinar is that many people are lost if they have to wait for webinar to start more than day or two. The high they have at the sign up moment, will disappear pretty quickly. With hourly you can kinda keep them in the moment as they at most need to wait 59 minutes.
Downside is of course that viewers will most likely realize it is not a live webinar but having said that it is not a big deal as long as you do not promise a live webinar.
When someone signs up they are added to a webinar sequence, but with hourly webinar sequence is not that important as my thank you page asks people not to leave the page. The page will automatically re-direct to the webinar page when time is up.
Pitch Your course
Example funnel is just a free training webinar with not pitch. If you are pitching your course, you should add Buy Now – button to your webinar page. You can time your Buy button to appear anytime you want.
At this point you should definitely add email sequence that sends emails to people depending if they watches or missed the webinar. With dedicated webinar software you have way more high level options to target people depending on what action they took on the webinar – for example sending targeted message to those that left just before pitch, left after pitch but did not buy and so on.
From webinar page the next step is…
Sales Page or Check out
Depending on your pitch on the webinar itself, you might send viewers into sales page or check out page.
If you only give short into into course, sales page might be way to go. If you have full walkthrough, send directly to check out page.
I do recommend using shopping cart software that allows you to customize your check out experience (watch my webinar to learn how using Thrivecart could double your sales with few minutes of work!).
This step is only applicable to those that did stick around whole webinar and took action. If they did watch it all but did not take action, they should be taken into email sequence trying to convert them after. Activecampaign is awesome tool to customize your email sequence depending on prospects actions, Convertkit does pretty good job on this tool).
No matter how much we try so people will not show on the webinar or purchase immediately – these cases needs to be covered with your email sequence to try to get them back on board.
Sign Into Course Platform
Those that purchase your course, you should direct them automatically to your course platform where they can access the course. I personally use Teachable as my course host.
Did not Show Up for Webinar
Make sure you have multiple reminders going out! Even if you use hourly webinar, do send a reminder couple of minutes before webinar starts.
If you do not have hourly webinar but there’s at least few days before webinar, send multiple reminders. You should send reminder at least 24 hours, 1 hour before and preferable final reminder few minutes before webinar. All this can be automated fully.
If you are using Clickfunnels, you should use their email service for webinar as well. You do need STMP service, free options are available (including Gmail).
Watched webinar, did not buy
There are always going to people who do not buy immediately not matter how attractive your expiring bonuses are! Plan for these cases carefully.
You should create automated sequence that keeps reminding these prospects about you and your course. But do not just pitch on these emails! Do offer lot of value too.
Evergreen Funnel for Course
So there you go, that is a evergreen webinar funnel that allows you to sell your courses day and night. And we all love making money while we sleep! 🙂
*Disclaimer: I am Affiliate Partner and a user of above mentioned services – I only partner up with products that I’ve tested and tried myself. You pay nothing extra by clicking my links, but I am able to offer special offer for my readers.*
