As a Moodlepreneur, strategies to grow your business is an ever-evolving thought. The golden formula that every company, big or small, follows is this:
Increase Traffic > Increase Conversions > Increase Sales
A steady increase in course sales guarantees stable income and of course is an indication of your growing popularity.
However, we understand it’s not always easy to focus on growing sales, when you’re concerned with updating course content, handling student queries and managing routine LMS administration activities.
But hey! If you had all the answers, you wouldn’t be reading this post in the first place :-p
So, without further ado let’s get straight to the topic.
Increasing Sales of Your Moodle™ Courses
When it comes to increasing course sales, there needn’t be guesswork involved. There are proven methods which can help. Most are inexpensive; all you need is a bit of effort.
Let’s take a look at a few options.
#1 Creating a Foundation for $0
When it comes to marketing, the most popular buzzword today is “content marketing”.
Content marketing uses content- in the form of articles, infographics, videos– to promote your website and in turn increase conversions.
And the simplest form on content marketing is blogging. Maintaining a regular blog about topics relevant to the courses you’re selling helps drive traffic to your eLearning website.
For Example
If you sell language courses, you will write about the benefits of polyglotism- how it opens doors for interesting career choices and gives you an edge over people applying for the same job. This will definitely spike reader interest and lead to sign-ups.
The Big But
Now, Moodle is not for bloggers.
You can certainly add articles and maintain a blog. But it’s limited when it comes to promoting blog content. The lack of SEO tools doesn’t help either.
Now when you say ‘blogging’, the first word that comes to my mind is- WORDPRESS! What’s a better way to create, edit and promote your courses than a free WordPress sign-up?
Okay, but these two are vaguely related.
Not, when you have Edwiser Bridge.
Using Edwiser Bridge (the WordPress-Moodle integration plugin) you can, not only promote your Moodle website, but sell your courses on WordPress too. Quite useful if you want to reduce the steps for course signup.
#2 Growing Signups for less than $59
Sales implies that you’re wandering into the domain of “e-commerce“.
Moodle is at best a learning management system with the option to sell courses. There are two things we need to keep in mind:
- It does not have e-commerce capabilities.
- It is not an e-commerce platform.
But yes, it CAN BE integrated with an e-commerce platform.
Now, the advantage that an e-commerce platform brings are umpteen:
- You can schedule sales (an age-old technique to increase sales),
- Add discount prices or offer coupons,
- Display student ratings and reviews to drive conversions
…….to name a few.
A bespoke integration with an e-commerce platform might cost you thousands of dollars, but with WooCommerce Integration Plugin, you can get all of these options for less than $59.
#3 Boosting Course Sales for less than $119
Increasing course sales is a matter of converting visitors into customers. Once you’ve set up your e-commerce platform. You can extend it’s capabilities to capture leads, and direct conversions using digital marketing.
For example, a simple but effective lead capturing tool you can use, is an inquiry plugin. Think about an inquiry plugin as a sales rep you hire.
Recommended plugin: Product Enquiry Pro for WooCommerce – $39
Email Marketing is a time-tested strategy to drive conversions. An email marketing plugin can be employed to send out offers, market content, and increase repeat customers.
Recommended plugin: Newsletter Subscription – $49
Going the Whole Nine Yards?
Well, once you get the right foundation set up, there’s a lot you can do. From using lead generation software for A/B testing, capturing visitors using exit pop-ups, abandoned cart marketing, to analysing search terms on your LMS.
Surely the marketing cost would increase with better tools, but the results would be worth it!
Spill Your Beans
What tools do you use to increase Moodle course sales? What are your thoughts or concerns with using an independent e-commerce and blogging platform like WordPress?
Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below!