It’s one of the simplest ways to get consistent online course sales…
Hosting a live webinar once a month for your audience.
- You can reuse the same content
- It gives new email subscribers an opportunity to get to know you better
- You pitch your course (or coaching program) during the webinar
😫 “But Bryan, won’t my list get tired of hearing about the same webinar every month???” 😫
That was the exact challenge Susanna Lönnrot had…until she found an incredibly simple way to stock her monthly webinar with hundreds of fresh leads—without using Facebook ads.
In this interview + post, you’re going to see exactly how she did it so you can use the same approach to rapidly grow your email list and get your products in front of warm buyers month after month.
Watch and learn!
Check out Susanna’s business, Creator Akatemia, here.
Breaking Down Susanna’s Webinar Strategy
First, let’s take a closer look at Susanna’s business so we can understand why this strategy worked so well for her.
Her Company: Susanna is the co-founder of Creator Akatemia. She and her co-founder Viivi help small business owners take better photos for social media so they can get more customers.
Her Products: Susanna has two primary offers:
- Offer #1: An Online Photography Course: This 8-week course teaches people how to take great photos for social media and develop their own personal library of photos they can use. The course is currently priced at 650 euros.
- Offer #2: Custom Brand Photography. Susanna and Viivi also offer done-for-you photography for those who would rather hire professionals than go the DIY route.
How Susanna Drives Online Course Sales Year Round
While Susanna and Viivi have two “launch style” promo periods of their course every year, they also want to continue driving sales in between those launches.
That’s where their monthly live webinar comes in.
Every month, they host a webinar that teaches people how to take better photos for social media and pitches their course:
Since this is the exact topic their course expands on, anyone who signs up for this webinar is highly likely to be a good fit customer.
They’re able to get ~100 registrants per month for the webinar just by promoting it to their email list and social audiences. Not bad!
Since becoming a Growth University client, however, Susanna has used our BOPA strategy to blow those numbers out of the water.
What’s BOPA?
Borrow. Other. People’s. Audiences.
It’s simple—instead of only promoting the webinar to her own audience, Susanna identifies other people who have a similar audience and asks them to promote her webinar too.
That’s how she was recently able to 5x their typical results and get over 500 registrants for a monthly webinar.
As a bonus, that also means she gained hundreds of new email subscribers (since every webinar registrant gets added to the Creator Akatemia email list).
It’s an incredibly powerful strategy for getting warm leads in front of your product while also growing your audience.
“Cool, Bryan…but why would random people agree to promote my webinar to their audience?”
I’m glad you asked. 🙂
First of all, these aren’t just “random people” that Susanna got to promote her webinar. They’re people with overlapping audiences who aren’t directly competing with her. These people are in what we call “shoulder industries.”
For example, a shoulder industry for Susanna might be:
- A social media software company like Buffer — they help businesses post on social media, but they don’t sell products that teach them how to take great photos
- A web design agency for small businesses — they build websites for small businesses, but they’re not focused on helping them with social media content
- A content marketing blog — they teach businesses how to create blog content, but they don’t specialize in social media content creation
All of these examples serve the same type of customers as Susanna, but in non-competitive ways.
On top of that, their audiences are likely to be interested in how to take better photos for social media—a topic they probably don’t plan to ever cover.
This is called a “content gap,” and it’s exactly why they might be open to promoting Susanna’s webinar:
- It’s helpful content for their audience
- It’s outside their area of expertise
- They get to look like a hero for pointing their audience to a valuable free resource
On top of all that, Susanna was willing to sweeten the deal…
If they agreed to promote her webinar to their email list, she would promote their content to her email list.
“Sometimes it’s enough for them that they just get free content to share to their audience,” she said. “And sometimes we do an email swap…they have a webinar coming in six months or something and we promise to do the same thing for them.”
Once the partner agrees to promote her webinar, Susanna sends them a doc with email swipe copy they can easily tweak and adapt to fit their brand.
If you want to see the exact email templates Susanna gives to her partners, check them out here (note: these are translated from Finnish).
This is the blueprint Susanna has used to pull in wins like this month after month:
The first time she implemented this strategy, they went from making zero sales on their previous monthly webinar to 6 sales on the one that partners promoted.
But that hasn’t been the only benefit…
The Sales-Boosting Side Effect of This Strategy
When you have a steady stream of new email subscribers coming in week after week, new opportunities open for your business.
For Creator Akatemia, one of those opportunities was installing a low-ticket Welcome Offer (47 euros) in their automated email sequence for new subscribers.
More new subscribers = more consistent Welcome Offer conversions.
This became super apparent when Susanna and Viivi took 3 weeks off around Christmas.
No email. No projects. No business stuff.
During that time, they still brought in over 100 new email subscribers and 5 Welcome Offer sales.
Is 235 euros a game changing amount of revenue?
No, but here’s the thing—people who buy your Welcome Offer are WAY likelier to buy your course than people who have never bought anything from you.
So converting people with a low-ticket offer and building more trust with them can be super valuable down the line.
And in the meantime, getting a few hundred bucks with zero effort ain’t too bad. 🙂
As Susanna put it: “That was a huge thing for us…to actually see the business growing even though we were not working during that time.”
Want me to find the growth opportunities in your coaching or course business? Let’s talk.
I’d love to study your business and pinpoint the key strategies that can help you immediately increase sales (just like we did for Susanna).
Book a Strategy Call with my team and that’s exactly what we’ll do. Plus, if it’s a good fit, we’ll show you what it would look like for us to coach you.
Grab a spot on our calendar here to get started.
On the call, we’ll show you:
- Growth opportunities you’re currently overlooking in your business.
- The step-by-step process you can use to take advantage of those opportunities.
- What it would look like to have my team individually coach you through the entire process (like we’re coaching Susanna).