Facebook, or more appropriately Meta (as it is now called), is one of the few places where you can befriend hundreds if not thousands of your audience members for free.
Facebook is home to billions of people, so this is seen as the digital equivalent of the California gold rush. Course creators and marketers are successfully leveraging the platform to make a killing.
If there is a course you want to sell, or maybe just curious as to how selling a course on Facebook will work, here is where we reveal everything. In a nutshell, the key is to grow your audience and authority, which will make it easier to sell courses. Let’s start…
Why Is Facebook Perfect For Selling Online Courses?
Now before you start investing time and possibly money into trying to sell your course on Facebook, here are a few reasons why it is a great idea:
3rd Most Popular Website – You’ve got Google on top, followed by another Google property, i.e., YouTube, and then there is Facebook. However, running ads on both those websites is expensive, and you can’t exactly build a community on them like you can with Facebook.
3X Revenue Per User – That’s right! In just a few short years, Facebook has been able to triple its revenue per user. What that means is every user is spending 100% more money, if not more, than they did back in 2015. Which, as an online business that translates to potentially more sales. Most Americans are On Facebook
– 68% of Americans today use Facebook. Even with competing social media platforms, Facebook has held its own. So, we roughly have nearly 200 million people using Facebook in the US. Regardless, of your industry, your target audience is using Facebook. Most Are Daily Facebook Users
– 66% of Facebook users are on it daily. Nearly An Hour Spent on the Platform
– The average person spends nearly an hour daily. A single visit lasts an average of 12 minutes.
8 Ad Clicks Per User – It is estimated that the average Facebook user is clicking on at least eight ads per month. That translates to a whopping 936 million clicks in the US alone. As an advertiser that wants to sell courses, that’s the type of news you want to hear. So, how do all these stats translate to selling your course(s) on Facebook? We’ll get into that in a second!
How To Use Facebook To Sell Courses?
Well, there are quite a few ways to sell online courses on Facebook. Here are some of the best ways to start doing it.Facebook Advertising
This happens to be one of the fastest and somewhat challenging ways to make money by selling your courses on the platform.
You can end up spending a lot of money and not seeing results if you don’t know who your audience is and how best to target them. Start by creating a customer persona, made easier with Facebook ads manager, that consists of features like language, demographics, and what problem they, aka your ideal customer, wants to solve.
Facebook’s granular targeting will help you create audiences based on demographic information, habits, and interests. Once you have dialed in your customer persona, the next step is building a few different ad types. Start with creating an image ad and a video ad to see how the audience responds.
Ideally, create 3x variations of each ad type, and use Facebook’s split test feature. You’d also want to experiment with sending people clicking on your ads to a Facebook page or the first step of your sales funnel. The first step is to collect their email address and nurture them before the final sale. The secret to running a successful Facebook marketing campaign is tracking and testing. So, you’ll want to start with a weeklong test. This will help you drive impressions and a couple of clicks, indicating which ads are the best performers.
Later you can set your budget at $100 a day for the best-performing ones.
After seven days of running these ads, review the information check the click-through rate (CTR), your return on ad spend (ROAS), and conversion rate. We assume that you never ran Facebook ads in the past, so you don’t know what a well-performing campaign looks like. Generally speaking, a conversion rate of around 9.21% on average is fine.
The click-through rate (CTR) is .90%, with the average cost hovering at around $1.72 per click. Ideally, it would help to shoot for a campaign that produces higher than these average figures. If you can't seem to wrap your head around it, it would probably be a good idea to hire Facebook advertising experts to manage the account.
Managing Facebook Groups
It is estimated that over 200 million people are active in Facebook groups. That means there are 200 million who have decided to tell you that they are interested in a specific topic or subject. Now there are two ways you can leverage the power of Facebook groups, depending on if you create the group yourself or if it was someone else.
Other People’s Groups
You can leverage other people’s groups to talk about your course right off the bat. Please think of the members as being part of your email list, and then drip feed the best content to them. However, the first step should be to find a group that allows members to post content every day. Most people have created Facebook groups to sell products or their own services.
You may want to avoid this type of group since they are highly restrictive. Instead, find more generalized groups. So, maybe join a group about teaching dog training instead of training coaches. Make sure to follow the group’s rules and don’t join ones where you can’t share videos or content. Nonspam content should be allowed. We’d also recommend you take part in the discussion on the group.
Related: Best Facebook Groups For Freelancers
Your Own Facebook Group
If you are serious about selling courses, it is worth putting in the time to build your own Facebook group.
So, the first thing you will want to do is choose if you want the group to be exclusively for paid members or anyone can join. If it’s free, give it a broad title or something generic that matches the search term. For instance, “local plumbing discussion” or maybe “local plumbing DIY.” A free group will mandate that you have as many members as possible, and the goal will be to prompt discussions to build a community. This can only be done by spending time in the group or hiring someone to manage it. If someone asks a question in the group, make sure to respond.
Once the free group has grown in value, you can start nurturing those in the group to buy your course. Maybe start with a weekly webinar.
Paid groups need to be a little more specific, like “German Shepard Training Enthusiasts” or “Preparing Show Dogs in 30 days.” The groups will function as a short-term coaching platform. You will create a coaching offer similar to how you'd create a blog post. You can make a decent amount of money using paid groups while also pushing a secondary course. It can also be a place where people who have purchased your course can share ideas.
Use Facebook Live to Sell Online Courses
The best time to host a Facebook live event is Sunday morning at around 10 am EST. It is said that Facebook has the least staff members on hand at that time, which means your organic reach isn’t throttled down. Also, many people get twice as many views on Facebook live compared to professionally produced pre-recorded videos.
One reason is that Facebook is heavily invested in making live videos a success. So, how do you sell more courses with Facebook Live?
Start with downloading the Facebook creators app, and use that instead of the regular Facebook app. Reason? We have it on good account that Facebook’s algorithm prefers the app. The app can be used on your phone which then doubles as your primary streaming device. But you will want to get the rig set up to ensure that the phone is established and attach a better microphone. Once everything is ready, you can go live regularly. However, there are three types of FB live video content that you should use to your advantage:
- Interviews – It is the most natural type of live content. Generally, an interview with your student is a good idea. That way, you can talk about the courses and their success.
- Masterclasses – This type of live video lasts around 30 minutes on average and teaches something that interests people in the group. For instance, how to teach your dog not to bite. This will be related to your main dog training course, which can be purchased at a discount at the end of the video.
- Social Proof – Show your audience what you are doing. Like meeting with a significant pet brand owner or a social media influencer.
Selling Your Online Course By Messaging People
Many studies have found that people are 3.5 times if not more likely to see a Facebook message or read it compared to regular email. So, the simplest way to sell your course is to manually message anyone who comments or maybe likes something related to your course. Yes, this is a time-consuming approach, but there are ways to automate it once you have figured out what resonates with prospects. The best way is to message people on Facebook is without spamming them or being salesy. The key is to come across as a friend giving good advice. After posting a piece of content that’s in some way related to your course, there will be people who like and comment on it.
You can message them saying, “Hey ! Thanks for commenting (or liking) my post. How is your dog training effort going?” Just about anyone will respond to this type of message with a brief response of what they are doing. The next step is to ask questions on what they find challenging and offer advice. These steps are essential because you don’t want to dive headfirst into pitching the course. After exchanging a few pleasantries, you can say something like, “You know my course covers this because this is a problem many dog owners have.” Seeing we are in the same group, I’ve offered you a discount. This sequence works remarkably well, but you may want to plan it ahead of time.
Conclusion
Creating a course for many people is the first step to making money. However, creation is only 50% of the work. Your success will essentially rely on how well you market the course. While there are many great online course platforms for you to choose from, Facebook makes it simpler for successful course creators to market their courses. If anything, there is more than one way to do it.
But why settle for one method when you can use all. You can start with Facebook advertising as a quick short-term strategy, create an open group to grow your audience, and follow that up with lots of Facebook live discussions. Finally, ensure that you are consistently building your brand on Facebook including a Facebook business page.
If you don’t have the time, hire someone to actively manage the group and ads. Fortunately, many people offer Facebook management as a service on Legiit, saving you time and effort.
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