3 Heartbreaking Reasons Nobody's Buying Your Digital Course
Nov 05, 2020
Your new digital course is brilliant … so why the heck isn’t anybody buying it?
I see this All The Time with new entrepreneurs. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it drives me bonkers to see you investing your money into courses that promise to make you a six-figure earner in six months or less with your own digital course when you don’t have the whole picture of what it really takes to create and launch a successful digital course.
If we haven’t met yet, my name is Lindsay Johnson, The Radical Connector, and I’ve got a reputation for being tough-love wrapped in sugar … and today, friends, you’re going to get some tough love from me.
Here are my top 3 heartbreaking reasons nobody’s buying your digital course.
1. Straight Up … You’re Not Ready to Create a Course
The Sucky News
Ok, this is hands down the hardest pill to swallow and where your inner child wants to kick and scream and throw a wee bit of a tantrum.
“But Lindsayyyyyy, I want to make a lot of money selling digital products without having to actually wooooork”
LOL. Ok, I know you’re probably not going to say that to me, but admit it, it’s what you’re thinking.
Heck, it’s what we’re ALL thinking. This is the entrepreneurial dream.
And this can absolutely be your reality … passive, self-generating revenue with a fully automated sales funnel and self-guided courses or once a year launches with a team doing all the boring work while you get to play on social media and create kickass content.
You CAN have this.
But … and this is a very important but … you can NOT skip the most important years in your business; the getting your hands dirty, up close and personal with your market, face-to-virtual-face, scary, frustrating, hard af W.O.R.K. that you must do first.
Friends, you do not graduate high school and then get given a scalpel to perform your first brain surgery as soon as you toss your graduation cap in the air.
You have to get more education, practice a lot, intern, learn, make mistakes, fall on your face once or twice, do the scary things outside your comfort zone and spend many years along a very precise journey before you’ll ever perform your first solo brain surgery.
Ok, I’m not a brain surgeon. I don’t know the exact steps … but you get my point.
This is no different in business and anyone who tells you they went from earning $0 to $100,000 in their first six months is not telling you the whole story and doing you a huge disservice.
Odds are they’ve been at it a lot longer ... years longer ... and have been building their list, getting to know their market, trying and failing with a few different ideas, and have now applied all their learning, new skills, previous assets, research, large audience, engaged email list and the help of digital marketing and sales funnel experts to create their “zero to 100K in six months” launch.
As Tom Clancy says, “An overnight success is ten years in the making.”
The Great News
The digital world and access to oodles of free resources and well-worth-the-investment business development experts have made it possible to become an overnight success a lot sooner.
Do yourself and your business a favour and let go of the pressure to be an overnight success in six months. It’ll probably be closer to five years if you’re doing a lot of things right.
Hunker down and get to work … your dream deserves your hard work and the freedom to go on the journey it needs to rise to its full, glorious, potential!
2. You Haven’t Spent Enough Time Doing Market Research and Validation
The Sucky News
Listen … I am not disagreeing with the fact that you are brilliant and have a fabulous idea to change the world and help support a ton of people.
If you’ve done the work to create and launch a course you are probably picking up on a big problem people are having that you want to solve.
Kudos to you, radical entrepreneur, you’re a legend in the making. (Seriously.)
Buuuuuut … if no one is buying your course one of the reasons may be that you didn’t spend enough time researching your market to understand their problem and whether or not they would actually pay you for your solution.
There’s a lot of problems in our lives. Some big. Some small. Some we will live with forever and some we’ll fix ourselves.
It’s not enough to recognize a problem your target market is experiencing and getting them to agree with you in a survey or a phone call.
You NEED to get proof that they will actually give you money to solve their problem.
How do you get that proof?
You literally create a service that you can do one-on-one or in a small group and get them to give you their money for that service.
“But Lindsayyyyy I don’t want to work one-on-one or in small groups.”
But … but … but …
- How will you know if what you’re selling actually works?
- How will you know if people want what you’re selling and will actually pay for it
- How will you know if you’re even solving the right problem and actually giving your market what they want?
You NEED to validate your course idea by first spending some time up close and personal with your market to make sure you’re creating a digital product that is not only effective but is needed, wanted, and something people will pay for.
The Great News
Working one-on-one and in small groups with your target market is the BEST market research you will ever do.
It will become the backbone of your:
- Marketing messages and strategy
- Source for content, future programs, and cool new products
- Your email marketing sequence and sales funnel
- Your stellar reputation as an expert and fabulous person to know
- Referrals and introductions to new opportunities
- Your badass confidence as someone who is dayum good at what they do
Hint: It’s also the quickest and least expensive way to generate revenue that is a heck of a lot easier than creating and launching an entire course.
Don’t run away from working WITH people first. It is an important step along your journey to automated, passive revenue streams.
3. Your Sales Funnel Has a Leak
The Sucky News
At this point, if you have validated your course idea and that people will, in fact, pay you for what you’ve got … and … you’ve spent enough time working closely with your market to understand exactly what they need and how to communicate and sell it with kickass marketing messages that speak directly to the heart of your target market … and still nobody’s buying your course …
It might be your sales funnel flow … you’ve got a leak that needs to be plugged!
It could be:
- The emails in your email sequences aren’t being opened or clicked (we can fix that!)
- Your funnel entry point isn’t wide enough or niched enough
- The journey from funnel entry to final sale isn’t smooth, clear, or effective (people are falling through the cracks)
- Your marketing or advertising messaging isn’t hitting the mark with your target market
- Your automations aren’t working together to create a delightful journey for your subscriber
- Your sales pitch isn’t clear, dynamic, and attractive enough (this could be a confidence issue)
- Your sales funnel leads aren’t warm enough … this is the MOST common reason!
The Great News
It takes an average of two years for most entrepreneurs to optimize their sales funnels and then streamline the journey from new lead to a happy customer.
Don’t sweat it if your very first launch didn’t rock your world … there’s a LOT of moving parts to a sales funnel and digital course launch and it takes a lot of A/B testing and trial and error to figure it out and perfect it.
You’ll get there!
TL;DR
If you’ve created a brilliant digital course and nobody is buying it make sure that:
- You’re not rushing to become an overnight success by bypassing the up close and personal, hard af, out of your comfort zone WORK you need to put in to understand your target market and your role in their lives
- You are validating your digital course idea with market research and real-life, one-on-one or group work to work out all the kinks, confirm your promise of transformation actually works and that people will pay you for it
- Your sales funnel isn’t leaking with leads you’ve not spent time warming up or you're using ineffective or unengaging emails, content, and marketing messages.
If you need a dose of inspiration be sure to read my Top 20 Books to Read in 2020 to Help You Think Like an Entrepreneur
If you need a wee bit of hand-holding for your sales funnel, marketing, or digital course validation contact me here.
Until next time, friends, I’ll see you online,
Lindsay 😘
