How to Boost Sales Online
Sarah has a new coaching offer. She charges £500 for several sessions and offers an opportunity to change over to a more healthy diet. How can she boost sales?
If this were an online course, Sarah could try a product launch. She could aim for huge numbers of clients and manage them through a members area on her website or through a service provider such as Kojabi.
However, Sarah has capacity for a limited number of coaching clients. She could sign up 10 – 15 and realistically, if successful, allow a steady trickle of clients climb to her maximum capacity. She could try an Evergreen launch, where people access her site any time and make contact. They negotiate a start date, so Sarah has control over numbers who sign up.
Bigger Offers Require More Promotion
Sarah’s offer occupies middle ground. It is a bigger commitment than attending a workshop and for many a substantial financial commitment. The key is to prepare through an email strategy. Sarah should consider three strands:
- A sequence of emails introduce the coaching topic without making an offer. She sends emails to people who opt into her list. They include valuable information readers easily implement. Typically, she sends a sequence of 4 emails and the fifth carries her call to action, which might be a link to a page on her website that makes her offer.
- The website carries more information and valuable teaching. Typically, this is a video or a long sales letter. The call to action is to book a telephone conversation with Sarah.
- This enables her to complete the sale and fix a regular day and time for the coaching. It’s important to sort out payment at this stage. It should be understood coaching starts once payment is complete. It should be a single payment for the whole coaching programme.
Product Launches
So far I’ve described an intermediate sale. If you have capacity to offer something online for unlimited numbers, try a product launch.
The product launch has two aims. Make as many sales as possible and grow your list, through referrals and affiliates.
Prepare a sequence of four emails. The first three contain high quality teaching, in the email or on a webpage. Send this to your list and encourage people to read or watch the teaching and forward the email to others who may be interested. Anyone new, signs up to your list and then receives all the emails in the series.
The emails also go out to the lists of others prepared to collaborate. Offer them a percentage of what members of their lists actually purchase. There are ways to tag new list members so you know who they come from.
The sequence of emails / videos are together similar to a sales letter. Great teaching with an offer to follow up with in-depth teaching. The fourth email should be highly anticipated, with a call to action to sign up for the offer.
Squeeze Pages
Squeeze pages are landing pages with a single link. They include no distractions, such as navigation to other parts of your site.
If you use a long sales letter, use a title, text and images and a call to action. Usually, the CTA appears in several places on the page. Some people want to buy before they get to the end
A video is possibly more effective. Here use a title, the video, possibly a brief summary of its content and a call to action.
If this works, you may find your list grows rapidly. So, it is worth thinking about the implications for your business.