Deciding to build and launch an online course can be very lucrative, particularly if you plan to sell training online. There are certain best practices, tactics and strategies that go into the anatomy of a successful landing page to ensure that you capture the attention of the reader. You want to provide content that will keep bringing them back until they are ready to make their decision. 

With a potential global student base and countless ways to market your new online course,  you must make well-educated decisions that will provide your program with maximum conversion. A strong training course, combined with an effective marketing strategy, will drive traffic to your website. 

How do you optimize an online training course landing page for conversion? In this post, we will show you how to build an effective landing page to sell online courses, including all of the necessary elements. 

What is a landing page for Online Training Courses?

A landing page (often also called a sales page) is where you get to tell your story. It is the page that your prospect lands on before they are ready to enroll. This page has only one goal in mind, to persuade your prospect to enroll in your course, today. Everything else on the page is meant to support this. 

The reason that they landed on your page is likely because you have an effective SEO strategy and have filled your site with relevant content. If your prospect is just starting his or her search, then he is at the awareness stage and your goal is to build trust. Updating your content will give them a reason to return to sell themselves and eventually enroll.

Who is the course intended for?

You want to outline the types of people with whom this course targets, and align your message with their goals and values. Give them reasons for enrolling, which you can list on your page. What does it help them accomplish? Outline the specific results that they can expect to achieve by taking your course. 

Describe your target audience’s problem. If your prospect is looking for a training course that you are offering, then talk about the benefits and give them reasons to choose your training over the competition. Highlight the points on how your business model differs from the rest and will allow your target audience to fulfill their educational goals. You can offer additional value with further learning opportunities such as joining your program's Facebook group or providing weekly live calls to answer students’ questions. This is your chance to build a community.

Features of a Well-designed landing page

There are a variety of aspects that lead to great conversions for your online training course and include:

• A clear call to action
• SEO-enabled content 
• Graphics and Visual 
• Separation of Content by headers
• Interactive and engaging content

Your ultimate goal is to enroll students, therefore you require tactics and sales prompts on your site to engage your visitor. A call to action is any word or image on your website that prompts your user to take an action. This could be in the form of an appointment booking, taking a quiz or signing up for a newsletter. 

In addition to CTA, you must use keywords and content relevant to your target audience. By crafting emotive copy and seamlessly integrating keywords and phrases, along with structured content, you will catch Google’s web crawlers and draw prospects into your sales funnel. 

How to create a sales page

What is a sales page? It is your opportunity to speak directly to and connect with your prospects and expound on the reason why they should use your online training course. This all starts with a well-crafted value proposition. A value proposition tells your prospect why they should spend their hard-earned money on your course. Always keep your value proposition as simple as possible.

You do this by taking all of the benefits and features from your course and persuasively translating them online to create a sales page. By following SEO best practices and appropriately using relevant keywords, you will be rewarded with a landing page that is well-optimized for conversion. 

Your goal is to educate the prospect well enough to sign up for your training course at some point before he finishes reading the page. The alternative is to offer him reasons to return by using sales prompts such as a lead magnet.

Sales copywriting 

Writing exceptional content that appeals to the emotion of the reader in an attempt to persuade them to align with your message is your primary goal. There are many free courses and videos where you can learn sales copywriting, but if you lack the experience or brain trust, often it is best left to a third party. A simple Google search will also yield an array of offers for a free sales page template for your online training course landing page. 

By using anchor text in your keywords, you will better optimize your page for search results. This is anchor text. The same is true for internal links, that is links that appear on your page that link to similar, relevant topics throughout your website. External links will connect you to relevant sites that support your content and will also assist in your search ranking. 

Prompts, Actions and Tactics

In addition to strong, emotive sales copy, you want to include a content strategy that should feature Prompts, Actions and Tactics such as:

• CTAs (call to actions)
• Trial closes
• Pixels and Trackers
• Polls & Quizzes
• Tripwires
• Lead Magnets

Let us elaborate:

CTAs - Ask and it shall be given. What is the purpose of having a landing page without asking for the sale? Throughout your page, you want to include a variety of calls to action that prompt your user to take any number of actions at various strategic points on your page and throughout your sales copy. This could include ‘book your free consultation’, ‘get your free estimate’ or ‘send us an email’. 

Trial Close: A trial close is a form of CTA and occurs at a point in your copy where you feel that you have given enough value in your content where the prospect may be ready to make a decision. This can be achieved in any number of ways, including an anchor link that could say, “Take our Quiz to determine your skill level” (in your field of study).  At the end of the Quiz, you can make an offer. 

Pixels and Trackers: By placing Pixels and Trackers on your website will ensure that you stay in touch with your prospective student. By simply pasting some code on your site, combined with a Google or Facebook campaign, you can ensure that as they surf the web or log onto Facebook, that they will be subjected to your ad. Your ads will also ask for email addresses that are vital to keeping in touch with your prospective student by using an automated marketing or a drip campaign.

 Lead Magnets: often come in the form of the written word or an infographic. It is a prompt on your website, either through a pop-up window or a link that asks you if you want to download a free resource in return for the prospect’s email address. This could be a resource that you created. If for example, you are selling an online training course on how to learn SEO, then you can create a multi-page document called “The Complete Guide to SEO Marketing'', or a white paper on SEO trends. By creating a piece of content that is relevant to your prospect’s field of study will not only introduce them to your brand but will also endear them to you while capturing their email address.

Email Marketing: In return for the free resource, your prospect offers up their email address so that you can add them to their mailing list. It is vital to build out your email list. Email addresses are not just for sending newsletters but combined with trackers and pixels, you can create an automated marketing funnel that triggers emails as your prospect returns to your website, building that connection further. 

Design, Structure and Content

You want to ensure that when someone lands on your page that you are providing them the solution to their problem in as positive a way as possible. You wish to depict people who are experiencing what it is they wish to achieve from enrolling in your course, whether it be landing a job, starting a consulting company or learning a new skill. 

There are a variety of ways with which to design your online training course sales page. Oftentimes you will see simple text on a page with a video, other times it may look like an ordinary web page. You and your marketing team can decide which version is best for you, knowing that using rich, robust graphics and video relevant to your subject matter will work towards achieving the results you want. If you follow Google’s outline on how to structure data on your web page, you can’t go wrong. 

A strong landing page that converts will include the following:

• Identify the problem
• List the benefits (bullet points)
• A clear and captivating headline that sums up your offering
• Craft your story, supported by reasons for starting your course
• Offer social proof through (video) testimonials
• Explain the solution while offering value and a bonus for signing up today
• Show your credibility by describing your experience, what led you to this and any accreditations you may have achieved along the way. 
• Pricing details – always be clear and upfront with your offering, don’t be ambiguous or your prospects will choose your competition
• An FAQ section will go a long way in answering the most commonly asked questions and will help accelerate the sale
• By offering some type of customer satisfaction guarantee will make your prospect more comfortable in their decision. 
• Providing a ‘Certificate of Completion’ will incentivize your prospect to enroll in the course and then post it on their LinkedIn profile. 

Final Thoughts

Putting together an effective sales page to sell online training courses is a science unto itself and we hope that we were able to set you on a good start to launching your new venture. There are a few final housekeeping items that we should include. 

If you do not have Google Analytics set up on your website, then you are ignoring your most basic strategy. Imagine you were a brick-and-mortar shop owner and you didn’t know who your customers were? Without google analytics, your business is handicapped. 

Google gives preference to websites that are updated weekly, so have a content plan. Build out the topics and keywords that you wish to rank for and after you launch your landing page, start building out your content plan. Imagine your blog pages as branches of a fruit tree, as long as you keep watering them (with content), they will continue to bear fruit for years to come. 

Lambda Solution will help you sell any type of learning products including self-paced learning, physical products (textbooks, any kind of branded consumer product) , live and virtual events, or eDownloads. 

Have questions? Feel free to contact us, we will be happy to serve you!