Kartra

The leads in your system don’t carry equal potential for a sale. Some leads line up with your ideal customer profile more than others or are more actively engaged with your brand. Lead scoring is an important process that categorizes these sales leads so you can manage your resources effectively and personalize buyer journeys. Read on for details about how lead scoring works and how to use it effectively in your business!

What is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is a way to measure lead quality — assigning a numerical value to a lead based on user characteristics and/or user behavior. A higher score indicates that a lead is a strong fit for your product or highly engaged with your brand, or both. A lower score indicates that someone is less likely to buy because they’re not the right fit or not interested in buying, or both.

While it’s possible to manually track and sort leads, automation has taken lead scoring to the next level. Website forms capture lead information, lead scoring software assigns point values based on your rules, and automated workflows integrate with your lead management software to nurture leads on autopilot.

Lead Scoring Criteria

The specific factors that indicate someone is a “good lead” will depend on your business and target audience. But two main types of criteria you’ll want to consider are user characteristics and user behavior.

User Characteristics

User characteristics include factors such as a lead’s job title, industry, location, age, or personal goals. Demographic data is a big part of this category of scoring factors. The lead capture form gathers these straightforward details that tell you something about who the prospect is and whether they’re a good fit for your products or services.

For example, a career coach could use lead scoring to prioritize leads with particular job titles, finding that people in certain roles tend to be the most eager learners. The coach’s inquiry form would need a field where the lead specifies their role, alongside any other relevant details — such as their industry.

User Behavior

Behavioral data includes a more complex set of lead-scoring criteria that tell you something about a lead’s level of interest in your brand and intent to buy. These factors include email open rates and click-through rates, content downloads, website visits, and any other type of action someone takes on your website or through other marketing channels.

For example, someone who signed up for a free trial on your pricing page is almost certainly a better lead than someone who signed up for a newsletter. And someone who attended an hour-long webinar is probably a better prospect than someone who downloaded a whitepaper. Certain actions indicate stronger intent than others — but you’ll have to track the conversion data to find out what those actions are!

How Do You Calculate Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring models vary from business to business — it’s important thing to set the rules and goals for your scoring model ahead of time so your methodology is consistent.

One of the simplest ways to calculate lead scores is to set a maximum score of 100 and divide up the points between each of the factors that contribute to the score. If you decide to score leads based on both user characteristics and user behavior signals, you could set a maximum of 50 points per category to account for both types of criteria.

If you’re wondering where to get started, analyze current conversion rates to determine the relative importance of each factor based on what you observe. You can also test factors that you have reason to believe are important from your own experience. And it’s a good idea to talk to or survey your customer base to understand more about your ideal customer and their buyer journey. There might be key behavior signals or shared characteristics of great leads that don’t show up in analytics reports.

Your scoring model will begin with educated guesses, and you will adapt your strategy over time. The first lead scoring model you try will inevitably need to be adjusted as you test different scoring factors, analyze ongoing conversion data, and learn more about your audience.

How to Use Lead Scoring Effectively

The most impactful uses of your lead scoring system will depend on your company size and structure, but there are some universal advantages to prioritizing your leads by their sale potential. Here are a few ideas on how to get the most value out of lead scoring:

Prioritize High-Quality Leads

Perhaps the most practical use for lead scoring is streamlining internal sales processes. This is particularly true for a business with a marketing and sales teams trying to work in alignment. Lead scoring helps make sure the sales reps focus on qualified leads who are worth their time.

Using your time effectively is essential no matter whether you have a dedicated sales team or run your own online business – and lead scoring is a key tool for resource allocation. This doesn’t mean you or your sales reps should only follow up with the potential customers most likely to convert. That’s up to you. However, lead scoring does help ensure that high-value leads are less likely to fall through the cracks.

Customize Lead Nurturing Sequences

Lead scoring isn’t just a practical necessity for pipeline management, it also opens many opportunities for personalized lead nurturing that boosts conversion rates. When you integrate lead scoring with sales funnel software, you can set up automated workflows that are triggered when a lead reaches a certain threshold.

For example, your most engaged leads could be sent down a marketing path where they receive conversion-focused content such as discounts, upsells, and cross-sell offers. Meanwhile, less invested leads would continue to receive primarily educational content that builds trust over time.

Use Scoring Insights to Improve Your Marketing Strategy

A lead scoring system will provide you with valuable insights about your customer base, your brand, and your marketing efforts. For example, if your highest-scoring leads consistently come from the same lead source, this tells you a lot about which lead generation tactics are working best. Or, you may identify common characteristics among people who resonate with your brand‚ — such as their job title or goals. Consider how you can put these insights to use as you update your ideal customer profile and optimize marketing campaigns at a higher level.

Lead Scoring Tools

For lead scoring to be a natural part of your business operations and not another manual task, you’ll need certain software applications. These tools save time and effort by automating lead management and marketing processes:

Comprehensive Data Analytics

Sales and marketing analytics are the foundation of any lead scoring system. Scoring is a data-driven method for sorting leads, requiring an accurate picture of the customer journey. You need to know who is interacting with your business (user characteristics), how they engage with your brand (user behavior), and how those factors relate to sales (conversion data).

If your business takes advantage of multiple marketing channels, you likely have a variety of analytics dashboards — covering website interactions, email engagement, and other key metrics. One of the best ways to integrate all this data is by using an all in one platform for marketing and lead management, such as Kartra.

Lead Management System

A lead management platform is the primary tool you’ll need to implement lead scoring. A quality lead management system will organize and segment your new leads, allow you to assign rules for lead scoring and tagging, and track your leads’ journey through the sales cycle.

This software should integrate with your email marketing platform, sales funnel builder, and any other tools you use to engage leads and customers. Or, choose an all in one platform like Kartra for native lead management tools and marketing automation tools that are designed to work together seamlessly.

Lead Capture Form Builder

A form builder is necessary for capturing lead information in the first place. From contact forms to email sign-up forms, opt-in forms are important touch points along the customer journey. A quality form-builder will feature professional templates, drag-and-drop functionality, and the ability to customize form fields to the level of detail that you need. It should also integrate seamlessly with your lead management platform so contact details stay accurate and organized.

Sales Funnel Integration

When choosing a lead scoring tool, it’s important to look beyond its immediate functionalities for sorting leads. How do you intend to use the details you’re gathering about those leads? If you want to set up automated sequences and customize buyer journeys according to lead scores, your lead management system will need to integrate well with your sales funnel builder.

For seamless integration, choose an all in one lead management and marketing platform like Kartra. Kartra’s full slate of native features — including a lead management system, form builder, and sales funnel builder — align marketing and sales activities so you can stay organized and optimize buyer journeys for higher conversion rates.

Coaches, consultants, and all types of content creators stand to gain a lot from investing in search engine optimization (SEO). Showing up on the first page of Google for relevant searches is a long-term marketing strategy that drives brand awareness, builds trust with your followers, and leverages the largest source of website traffic that exists today! Read on to learn about why SEO is valuable for content creators and how it works.

What is Content SEO?

Content SEO is the practice of developing digital content that ranks well on search engine result pages (SERPs) for key terms. Content SEO encompasses both content strategy and actual content development, and it applies to all types of web pages — product pages, blog posts, landing pages, and more.

SEO draws attention to the role of search engines (especially Google) in getting content in front of users, but remember that creating content for search engines is never the goal. Content SEO — like any content creation — is for the benefit of your audience! Keep reading for details on how SEO works and what it means to create SEO-friendly content.

Benefits of SEO for Content Creators

Many content creators use their website as a home base — somewhere people go to learn more about their brand after finding out about it from a different source (such as social media or a word-of-mouth referral). While this is an important use for certain website pages, it doesn’t leverage your website’s full potential. Optimizing your website for SEO offers some significant benefits.

SEO Boosts Brand Visibility

Even with the rising popularity of social media, Google is still the biggest driver of referral traffic by far. According to research conducted by Sparktoro, most websites get over 70% of their referral traffic from Google.

With millions of people searching for answers on Google every day, optimizing your website to be search engine friendly is an opportunity you can’t miss! SEO takes time and patience, but the return on investment is high — especially when you consider the costs of alternate marketing channels such as paid advertising. When a website is optimized to rank well in search engines, it becomes its own lead-generation tool.

Data source: research conducted by Sparktoro using Datos’ Clickstream Panel

SEO Brings in Targeted Traffic

One of the biggest difficulties when generating sales leads is controlling the quality of those leads. Brand visibility is most valuable when visitors align with your intended audience. Because the role of a search engine is to match online queries with highly relevant pages, this gives you a level of control over the types of visitors who discover your brand.

When the relevance of your website is clear to a search engine (and the user), you’ll be better positioned to appear in searches that reach the audience you want.

SEO Builds Long-Term Authority

Establishing trust with your audience is essential to sustainable brand growth. When your website consistently appears in relevant search results, you signal to your audience that you are an authority in your field and worth their attention.

And unlike a viral ad, for example, search engine optimization is a strategy with long-term benefits for your brand. When Google perceives that your website is highly valuable for users, there’s an increased likelihood of ranking well as you publish more pages with helpful content.

How SEO Works

Search engine software uses crawlers to index and rank website pages. The purpose of a search engine is simply to match an online search query with the best possible result — the one that will be most helpful to the user.

This means that writing content for a search engine is counterproductive. It’s also why keyword stuffing and other “black-hat” SEO tactics don’t work long-term — they don’t give users what they want.

Optimizing content for SEO isn’t about technical hacks or tricks for getting content to rank. It’s about making your website content as helpful as possible to your target audience. And remember that effective SEO content strategy is about the long game. It takes time to build authority in your industry and prove to people (and search engines) that you’re worth listening to!

There is no magic formula for getting content to rank, especially as search engine algorithms adapt and change over time. However, there are several fundamental SEO principles that will only help your content perform better:

1. Results are matched to specific questions

One of the most common SEO copywriting mistakes is trying to fit too much into one landing page or article. It’s tempting to want to share everything about a particular topic, but that isn’t how people consume information. And if it confuses the reader, it will confuse the search engine.

Each piece of content you publish online needs to answer a specific question. Not only will this be helpful to your reader, but it will show the search engine that your page is highly relevant for particular queries. If there’s more you want your reader to know, you can (and should) add strategic internal links to other website pages.

For example, if a fitness coach wants to publish an article on the best at-home workouts, it’s best if they don’t get sidetracked explaining the benefits of working out. They may have a lot of very helpful information on that subject, but it doesn’t answer the question! If the searcher feels that they’re not getting the information they wanted (and quickly), it will result in high bounce rates and low user satisfaction.

2. The way people search their questions determines results

This may sound obvious at first glance, but it’s crucial to pause and think about how people search. As a subject matter expert, you have a particular way of thinking about and understanding your area of expertise. But the content you develop has to align with the way your audience thinks about — and searches for — your topic. This is the fundamental principle behind keyword research.

To rank well, your content should align with the common search phrases people use (keywords), and match the intent behind their search.

Want to learn more about how to find relevant search terms? Check out this guide from Ahrefs on how to do keyword research.

What is search intent?

There are two main categories of search intent: educational and commercial. Generally speaking, searchers are either looking for information or to buy a product or service. It’s crucial to identify the reason someone would be searching a particular phrase, so your content is as helpful and relevant to them as possible.

How do you determine search intent?

The simplest way to determine search intent is by analyzing search result pages for a keyword. The pages that currently rank for a search query tell you what Google currently finds to be the most relevant content.

For example, if the search results are full of pages with product listings, this tells you the search intent is likely commercial, not informational. Or, if most of the results are “how-to” guides, the searcher is likely looking for step-by-step instructions — a very practical type of educational content.

Pay particular attention to any featured snippets and the “people also ask” section on Google to identify important angles to cover or questions to answer to match searchers’ intent.

3. SEO content needs to be expert and original

Google frequently releases algorithm updates to improve the user experience and discourage low-quality content. To stay ahead of these updates (and the competition), focus your efforts on giving the best possible answer to the questions your target audience is searching.

Pay attention to the pages that currently rank well in organic search results so that you have an idea of what readers want you to cover. But don’t just copy what’s already out there. Consider how you can create more helpful content than what currently exists — both in terms of the content itself and how you present it.

Do you bring a unique angle to your subject? Do you offer readers a more engaging experience? You want to prove to your readers—and by extension Google—that your content is most worth paying attention to.

For more of Google’s recommendations, check out their guide to SEO fundamentals.

4. Readability contributes to content quality

Expert, in-depth information isn’t the only component of high-quality content. It also matters how easy the content is to consume.

One of the most important parts of readability is following a clear heading structure so your topic and major points are evident at a glance. From the title of your page to the CTA, each major section and its heading should follow a clear, purposeful outline. This makes it easy for your reader to understand your message, and easier for a search engine to know what’s on the page. You don’t have to sacrifice creativity, but remember each heading and subheading serves a very practical purpose in digital content.

Another way to improve the user experience is to incorporate engaging visual elements. Infographics, for instance, help break up long blocks of text and give the user something they can understand at a glance.

And even if you don’t incorporate graphics, it’s still a good idea to break long paragraphs into short, easy-to-read sections to prevent walls of text that are tiring to read.

Remember that people consume content differently — some people skim, others read every word. Your page should accommodate both types of readers so that no one has to work too hard to get the details they want.

5. Existing content should be regularly updated and improved

Working on content SEO doesn’t always mean developing new content! Once you have a collection of web pages, be sure to update any outdated or irrelevant pages, analyze performance metrics, and find opportunities for improvement. For example, if you have a page that ranks 8-20 on Google, this is a good indication that your page has relevant content that would drive even more search traffic with a few more optimizations. Google Search Console is a great tool to use at this stage.

As you dig into the performance metrics of older content, use this time to identify any content gaps. Are there valuable subjects that your competitors continually outrank you on? (Tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush help with this analysis).

Do you have a lot of organic traffic but no conversions? (You may need to focus on bottom-of-funnel pages).

Search engine-optimized content takes time and effort, and you want to make sure that you spend your resources where they will have the biggest impact.

6. Good distribution helps content rank faster

Traffic to a page is one of the signals that a piece of content is valuable. If enough people are visiting that page and deriving value from it, the content gains authority. SEO content benefits from coordinated marketing channels that funnel interest surrounding your brand to pages on your website.

If you have a social media presence, for example, you can share some of that momentum with your website by steering followers to check out pages that are relevant to their interests. Email marketing is also a great source of referral traffic that can help your website gain more visibility.

And if you have the opportunity, acquiring quality backlinks (links from relevant websites) helps validate your authority on a particular subject and prove to a search engine that people find your website helpful.

How long does SEO take to see results?

As you might expect, it depends! Remember that SEO is a long-term digital marketing strategy that drives long-term results. SEO success is measured in terms of months and years, not days. You’ll discover what works best for your business through patience, consistency, and testing ideas. The good news is that you can start implementing SEO practices today and make improvements as you go.

SEO is about holistic business growth — establishing your brand as a trusted voice in your industry for years to come.

A lead management system is a must-have for any business that sells to an online audience. Even if you already have a compelling online presence that drives sales, you need some way of tracking your leads and where they are in the buyer journey — to improve conversion rates and cut down on manual tasks. Read on to discover the top lead management tools in 2024 and the most important lead management features to look for.

Kartra

Kartra is an all in one marketing and lead management platform that simplifies and streamlines all of your sales and marketing efforts — not just lead management processes. Kartra users get access to advanced functionalities that include:

• Customizable lead tagging, scoring, and segmentation
• Landing page and lead capture form templates
• Native sales funnel software
• Native email marketing automation
• Cross-channel marketing analytics

Kartra is designed to minimize third-party integrations, with a significant number of native features so you don’t have to stitch together multiple platforms. From lead generation to membership retention, Kartra makes it simple to manage each stage of the customer lifecycle. Instead of being yet another subscription in your software stack, Kartra is built to give you all you need to grow your online business, all in one place.

Hubspot CRM

HubSpot offers customer relationship management (CRM) software at a variety of levels, from a free plan to an enterprise plan depending on what functionalities you need. With sales management features that include meeting scheduling and sales forecasting, HubSpot’s CRM is geared toward sales teams who need a system that simplifies their processes and gets everyone on the same page.

The downside of HubSpot’s CRM is the high price point and level of complexity that come with upgraded subscriptions and add-ons. Small and medium-sized businesses who need higher-tiered plans or additional HubSpot sales and marketing tools may find that upgrading or adding on those plans requires paying for many advanced features that go unused.

Keap

Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) is a CRM software for small businesses that also includes basic marketing and sales functionalities. Users can create custom lead forms, keep track of contacts, and build automated workflows such as personalized follow-up sequences. Keap is known for its user-friendly CRM capabilities, but it’s missing the advanced marketing features and intuitive interface provided by more comprehensive platforms like Kartra.

For example, Keap’s sales funnel-building tools are not as robust as other all in one platforms. Keap is a great CRM system for small businesses, but users may find that Keap’s higher price tag doesn’t have the native capabilities they’d prefer from an all in one marketing platform.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a CRM and sales automation platform for small businesses. This software helps sales team members stay organized with sales activity tracking and lead management features. Pipedrive’s automation is geared towards sales processes (as opposed to marketing automation), simplifying tasks like email follow-ups and call scheduling.

Pipedrive is not an all in one solution, requiring API integrations to connect with an email marketing platform, membership management software, a website builder, and any other marketing and sales tools needed to run an online business.

Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the most popular CRMs for large businesses, with extensive capabilities for sales pipeline management and lead management. Users can find all in one marketing, sales, and CRM features on Salesforce, and they can choose from a variety of plans tailored for small businesses all the way to enterprise sales teams.

However, Salesforce is one of the most expensive solutions on the market — especially if it’s being used as an all in one marketing and sales platform. This software ultimately performs best for enterprise companies and is not a practical option for content creators, entrepreneurs, and other types of streamlined online businesses.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a “customer service solution” for businesses of all sizes. Businesses use Zendesk Suite for customer support, and Zendesk Sell for sales management. Features of Zendesk Sell include contact and deal management, sales activity tracking, and sales engagement tools such as automated email sequences.

Zendesk is all about the customer experience, giving businesses the software they need to build customer relationships and organize behind-the-scenes sales processes. The downside of this platform is that it doesn’t offer all in one marketing or website features that many online business owners, entrepreneurs, and digital creators rely on.

Zoho CRM

From customer relationship management to accounting, Zoho is a comprehensive software suite for all types of business processes. Zoho users can essentially build their own platform, selecting the Zoho products or plans that make the most sense for their business. Zoho CRM is highly rated for its lead management capabilities, and comes with a mobile app for on-the-go data access. Bigin by Zoho CRM is the recommended Zoho product for small businesses, offering simpler CRM features at a lower price.

While Zoho offers a wide range of customizable plans and products, some users find that integrating Zoho products with each other and with third-party applications can be a complicated and expensive process. It’s easy for subscriptions to add up as businesses upgrade their Zoho products for expanded features. Zoho isn’t as user-friendly and straightforward for smaller businesses as a true all in one platform like Kartra would be.

Comparing the Top Lead Management Platforms

See the main differences between 2024’s top lead management software in this chart so you can find the platform that best aligns with your business needs:

Each of the software options on this list comes with features for capturing new leads, tracking prospects’ progress through the buyer journey, and reporting lead conversion data. So how do you choose the best one? To get the most out of your lead management solution, we recommend choosing a platform with the following functionalities:

Custom Lead Scoring, Tagging, and Routing

The ability to tag and score leads is a standard feature of any CRM or lead management platform, but you’ll want to pay attention to the level of customization and ease of use that your software provides. Will you be able to easily assign the categories and values that you want to each prospect? Is this process simple or complicated? Can your software automatically route leads to the best sales and marketing path?

Built-In Sales Funnel Software

While it’s possible to build a sales funnel manually by combining miscellaneous digital tools like web page builders, email software, and lead management software, an all-in-one platform with native funnel-building software makes the process far more efficient and effective. It also gives you ultimate control over every touchpoint along the customer journey — from the first time someone fills out a web form to their most recent purchase.

With an integrated sequence builder, it’s easy to remove, or re-order events within automated workflows. Want to share a webinar on-demand to follow up on a white paper that a visitor downloaded? Sequence mapping makes it simple to add a trigger that automates the right sequence for that prospective customer. Lead management that integrates seamlessly with your sales funnel builder enables you to create, manage, and adjust workflows with minimal hassle.

Native Email Marketing Automation

Many CRM and lead management tools include basic email functionalities so that sales reps can send messages to leads and set up lead nurturing sequences. But these platforms often require additional subscriptions or integration with third-party apps for more complex email marketing campaigns.

An all in one lead management and marketing platform like Kartra makes it simple to set up all types of automated email campaigns that integrate with your sales funnels. Whether you’re just checking in with a lead or nurturing a sale with a complex email sequence, it’s helpful if your platform is built for both lead management and email marketing.

Comprehensive Data Analytics

Every lead management platform claims to offer data visibility and reports with key sales metrics. Consider what data matters the most to your business operations to make sure those reports include all the data points you need. You’ll also want to make sure those reports integrate well with your other analytics dashboards.

An all in one platform, for example, provides real-time data insights across multiple marketing channels with little to no third-party integrations — something a dedicated CRM wouldn’t be able to do.

Why Kartra is the Best Lead Management Software

Kartra enables business owners to generate, manage, and convert leads in one integrated platform. With a full slate of native sales and marketing features, Kartra users don’t have to pay for multiple subscriptions or piece together multiple software programs.

Instead, you get a bird’s eye view of the whole buyer journey and the ability to set up powerful, automated sales funnels that don’t need an entire sales team to convert leads. Already tracking leads somewhere else? Rest assured you can effortlessly import your contacts into Kartra’s system from various sources — ensuring a unified database for streamlined management.

Selling online courses is a lucrative opportunity for content creators, career educators, and field experts who wish to monetize their knowledge. Online courses are incredibly versatile digital products — able to be marketed as lead magnets, standalone products, or membership experiences. They can be as simple or complex as you want, ranging from evergreen video tutorials to live events for cohorts of students.

But how do you turn your idea into an online business that actually makes money? Find out by following this step-by-step guide on how to sell online courses:

Step 1: Set a Specific Goal

Before you do anything else, it’s imperative to start with the specific purpose you want your course to fulfill. There are a variety of ways for an online course to drive revenue. Courses can be…

• Standalone digital products that bring in passive income
• Lead magnets that introduce customers to a brand
• High-value content within a membership experience

The purpose of an online course drives both the content and the sales strategy. It should determine everything from the course topic to digital marketing tactics.

For example, some courses are sold as high-value, high-ticket experiences. The course creator won’t need thousands of sales to make a profit, just a few eager students who will be excited to give referrals to their network. However, the course will need to meet expectations and deliver significant value for the audience. Other online courses are low-cost, low-commitment digital products meant to raise brand awareness and build trust. This type of course can be more basic, but needs a significant number of sign-ups to accomplish its purpose.

Step 2: Decide on the Most Relevant Topic

Chances are, you have a few great course ideas you’re thinking about. To narrow in on the perfect course topic, ask these three questions:

1. Does this topic take advantage of my specific area of expertise?
2. Does this topic align well with the purpose of the course?
3. Will this topic be relevant to my audience’s needs?

It’s difficult to find success if any one of these elements is missing. For instance, there might be a topic that takes advantage of your expertise and is relevant to your audience, but it’s too basic to sell at a premium price. It won’t fulfill its purpose.

Conducting competitor research and audience research is crucial in this stage. Learn what resources already exist and analyze how you can bring something new to the table. Test topic ideas through surveys and quizzes if you have an existing email list or social media following. Some course creators even pre-sell their courses to validate their ideas and ensure they’ll have an engaged audience.

Step 3: Write Out Your Value Proposition

Your value proposition clearly states what your course does and for whom. While similar to the course topic and the course goal, the value proposition goes a step further. It requires you to know exactly who you want to teach and what your course will accomplish in your students’ lives. The value proposition is the selling point of your course. It’s what sets you apart from competitors and determines the quality of your course.

Step 4: Create & Repurpose Course Materials

Whether your course is simple and straightforward or involves a complex assortment of content types, you’ll want to approach online course creation with an eye toward your sales and marketing plan. Keep in mind how you can repurpose parts of your course to serve as lead magnets, giveaways, teasers, or other promotional content.

For example, the course’s introductory lesson could be repurposed as teaser content for your social media accounts or offered as a downloadable course sample on your website. It takes a lot of work to develop course modules, so take advantage of every opportunity to leverage the content you’re already creating. Forward-thinking will make marketing and selling the course a lot easier down the road!

Step 5: Choose a Strategic Price

How your course is packaged and priced is a significant part of your sales strategy. Not only is pricing about creating a profitable online course, but your choice will influence brand perception, the student experience, and marketing success.

Here are several pricing models for course creators:

• Fixed Price — sell course materials for a convenient, one-time fee
• Subscription — charge a recurring fee for ongoing education
• Membership — give students an exclusive experience, not just a product
• Tiered Pricing — provide multiple course options with varied pricing packages
• Build-Your-Own — let students customize their course experience
• Freemium — introduce prospects to your brand with a free mini-course

As you hone in on the price and pricing model, remember to go back to the course’s purpose. What do you need it to accomplish for your brand? What is it going to accomplish for your students? Conduct market research to analyze competitor pricing and do in-depth audience research to judge how much students will be willing to pay for your course. And always remember that the price of your online course needs to accurately reflect its value.

Want to avoid overpromising or underselling your course? Check out this guide on how to price an online course.

Step 6: Upload the Course to Your Website

To make real money from an online course, the best place to sell it is your own website. Selling courses on your website gives you exclusive ownership of your products and your audience — allowing you to take home the profits and build a scalable brand.

Course creators will need a membership site platform, or online course platform, that gates course content behind a paywall. Examples include Kartra, Kajabi, Thinkific, Teachable, and Podia. With intuitive membership software, it’s easy to upload video content, ebooks, downloadable PDFs, and any other course materials. You can even set membership tiers where paying customers only get access to the course materials that belong to their plan.

Step 7: Plan the Sales Funnel

A “sales funnel” simply refers to the multiple stages that prospects go through before they make a purchase decision. First, they have to become aware of your brand (top of the funnel), then prospects develop an interest in your brand (middle of the funnel), and finally, they decide they need your product or service (bottom of the funnel).

Course creators need to align their marketing and sales strategies with each stage of the funnel. Map out the buyer journey your ideal customer will take, from discovery to decision. Identify your audience’s values, needs, pain points, possible objections, gaps in information, and anything else that plays a role in their purchase decision. Your sales and marketing efforts should be aligned with this research — meeting your audience where they are and giving them all the information they need to purchase from you.

Step 8: Promote Your Online Course

Unless you’ve already amassed a brand following, the initial stage of the sales funnel can be intimidating. How do you get an audience to notice your first online course? The best marketing strategies for your specific course will depend on numerous factors — including the course price, the audience’s values and needs, and your budget.

Here are a few course promotional tactics to consider:

• Run paid ads on relevant online spaces such as Google, LinkedIn, or Facebook
• Grow your audience organically through social media marketing
• Leverage guest appearances on relevant websites, blog posts, or podcasts
• Incorporate incentives such as discounts, free trials, or giveaways, especially during the presell or launch phase
• Drive traffic to your website through content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) best practices
• Create automated email marketing campaigns, including upsell and cross-sell sequences if you have other products/services
• Sign up for an affiliate marketing program to have others promote your new course

Remember to focus on the quality of your leads and not the quantity. Based on the predicted conversion rate, determine your ideal number of purchases per month and then how many leads you’ll need to get those purchases. Pour your efforts into getting just those leads. Not everyone needs to know about your course — just your target audience!

Develop a holistic marketing plan with our guide: Everything You Need to Know to Market Your Online Course.

Other Places to Publish an Online Course

There are three main types of course publishing platforms in the e-learning world: independent membership sites, online course marketplaces, and learning management systems. Membership websites give content creators the most control over their products, but it’s important to understand the purposes of alternative platforms:

A massive open online course (MOOC) is a course marketplace that educates large numbers of online students on a wide range of subjects. Not intended for independent course creators, a MOOC (such as Udemy or Skillshare) is its own platform with its own member base. Educators upload either paid or free courses to these platforms for online learners to access.

A learning management system (LMS) is used primarily by schools or businesses to facilitate online classwork and training programs. It integrates more administrative tools than an online course platform and is not intended for independent course creators. Popular learning management systems include Canvas, Google Classroom, and WordPress LMS plugins like Learndash.

Create, Sell, and Manage Online Courses with Kartra

Kartra is the best online course software for content creators. This all-in-one membership and marketing platform gives you all the tools you need to build and sell a successful online course in a single subscription. Key Kartra features for creators include:

• Membership management platform
• Website builder with professional templates
• Intuitive form builder for growing your email list
• Drag-and-drop sales funnel builder
• Native video hosting and webinar capabilities
• Advanced email automation
• Cross-channel marketing analytics

A comprehensive platform like Kartra means you don’t have to stitch together multiple software subscriptions to sell your course. Instead, you can publish the materials, manage students, and market your course from the same place. Kartra empowers you to deliver a professional online learning experience — and gives you all the marketing tools you need to scale your course business!