5 Steps to Boost Online Course Sales
Meet Katie. She’s a content creator on personal finance, taxes, and investing who turned a $0 side hustle into a half-million venture in two years.
How?
Through grit, consistency, and a Value Ladder she didn’t even know she had.
Value Ladder Illustration
What’s a Value Ladder?
If you don’t have a Value Ladder, you don’t really have a business. You’re just selling a product.
But don’t get mad at me—that’s what Russel Brunson said in his book Dotcom Secrets:
“Your value ladder is your actual business plan.
It shows how you are going to acquire your customers, where you will make money as the business owner, and the result you are going to help your dream customers achieve.
If someone doesn’t have an actual value ladder, they don’t really have a business; they are just selling a product.”
— Russel Brunson, Dotcom Secrets
Simply put, a Value Ladder is an outline of your offers, whether they’re products or services. These offers increase in value and cost as they progress up the ladder, hence the name.
Without a Value Ladder, you might struggle to map out a precise, profitable buyer's journey. When you don't have another offer ready, your customer's journey ends after the first purchase, and you lose the opportunity to grow their customer lifetime value (CLV).
Worse, if your only product costs thousands, you drive away many prospects because you failed to prove the value you can give through your lower ticket items.
How the value ladder helps your online course sales grow
If you're a knowledge entrepreneur looking to sell your online courses, the Value Ladder makes it easier for you to:
Create a seamless customer journey. With a Value Ladder, you don't have to guess what's next for your customers. Here, you have a clear roadmap of when and how you can help them achieve their desired results.
Gather buyer insights. Which of your offers is popular? Which of your services has the lowest retention rate? By assessing your Value Ladder, you get insights into what your customers are really looking for and how you can delight them more.
Grow with your customers. By offering more value and charging more, you're not only increasing your customer lifetime value (CLV). You also expand your expertise and upgrade offers to better support your customer's growth.
Serve customers from different income brackets and levels of expertise. A well-thought-out Value Ladder enables you to meet your customers where they are. You can help beginners with offers at accessible prices while selling high-ticket programs to encourage advanced members to keep growing.
If you'd like to learn more, Mike Blankenship breaks down the core benefits of having a Value Ladder in detail in this article.
5 Steps of the Value Ladder to Boost Online Course Sales
Let's say you have a $2500 course—the highest ticket item you can offer.
Selling that course to someone who has never received any value from you in the past won't be easy. It's like pulling out a ring and asking someone to marry you on the first date.
That’s where Value Ladders come in.
A Value Ladder usually has five steps. Since we tend to look for more value from where we've received it before (Brunson, 2015), you must delight and satisfy the potential customer at each step of the Ladder. We want them to progress in their journey and eventually say yes to your core offers.
Like funnels, Value Ladders facilitate an actual exchange of value. When you give more value, your customers will be more willing to return the favor. It's the law of reciprocity at work.
A Value Ladder can help you build trust, prove your expertise, and grow your sales while your customers get more value. Here’s how you do it:
Free Offer — Delight new prospects with a free offer. But don't skimp on quality just because it’s free. The goal here is for your prospects to think: "If this is the value they give for FREE, how much more value can I get from their paid products?"
Front End — Nudge your prospects to buy from you for the first time. Front-end offers have four elements that make them irresistible: low risk, low commitment, low cost, and high value.
Middle — At this stage, your customers have received value through your free and front-end offers. Now it’s time to offer your main product. It could be a course, subscription, or another service.
Back End — These are the more expensive and valuable offers reserved for customers who strongly believe in you and are willing to shell out more to be able to work with you.
The Peak — When they see how integral you are to their business success, health, wellness, or journey, they'd want to keep you working with you regardless of the cost. The peak represents your most expensive and valuable offer, which usually requires more access to your time and expertise.
Note: Adding continuity programs to your value ladder helps bring in recurring income. These are services that customers can avail of as an ongoing service. Middle and Back End offers usually incorporate continuity through monthly memberships, exclusive access to a content library, and regular workshops.
For example, a Value Ladder for knowledge entrepreneurs, coaches, and course creators can look like this:
Do you have a value ladder in place?
If you don’t have one yet, don’t worry.
You don’t need to read a whole textbook, buy a thousand-dollar course, or spend a week creating one. In fact, you can sit down, start drafting one, and be finished in less than an hour—that is, if you know your target market and value proposition.
We promise it’s not rocket science. Here are three steps to get started today.
Get clarity on who, what, and how you are serving.
Russel Brunson calls this the “value ladder mission statement.” Here’s the formula he uses in Dotcom Secrets:
“We help (insert who) to (insert result they want to achieve) through (insert your new opportunity).”
This formula will help you get clear on your target market, their hopes and pain points, and the products or services that you can offer to help them achieve their desired state. It does this by answering the following questions:
Who do you want to work with?
What results can you help them achieve?
How will you serve them? How is your product or service different from what they’ve tried before?
Outline your current and future offers with their prices.
Before plotting anything on your Value Ladder, list all your current products and services and possible offers that can help solve your dream customer’s pain points.
Picking high-impact offers is a crucial step. It ensures that each offer plugged into your Value Ladder will benefit your customers and bring them value, not just grow your revenue.
Afterward, you can organize your offers into the steps of your value ladder.
Focus on your high-impact offer.
You don’t need to create all the offers at each step of the funnel at once.
Once you’ve mapped out your Value Ladder, focus on one offer first so you can start testing, get insights, and spend your resources on optimizing one offer until it brings in the results that can sustain your business. You can focus on the Front End or Middle offer first since they help generate revenue while you build your client base. Then, you can work your way up the ladder to keep growing your business.
By mapping out the steps of your Value Ladder, it becomes easier for you to create a seamless customer journey, attract your target audience, and grow your sales.
And it doesn’t end there. Once your Value Ladder is in place, you can build and optimize your funnels, serve your customers better, and climb your way to success.
So, are you ready to boost your online course sales?
Build your value ladder with our free template today: Get your FREE template.
