Sales expert Jon Schumacher joins us in this episode of the LMScast podcast to discuss how online course creators can make more sales and convert more prospects into paying students. Jon specializes in sales in general, but also structuring around the sales conversion event. He shares insights into what needs to happen in order to generate sales in the current economy and time.
 
When it comes to success in sales, 80% of the campaign comes down to whether you’re matching the right person with the right offer in an offer that’s so good for their situation that they'd be stupid not to take it. That's 80% of the success of a selling or marketing campaign. The other 20% are aspects like your persuasion skills, your copy skills, the frosting on the cupcake, communication, and messaging. One of the largest mistakes we see is having the wrong offer in front of the wrong person will always leave you asking, "What happened?" That's the highest level as far as what to think about before you do any kind of sales or marketing campaign.
 
If you’d like to learn more about Jon Schumacher, be sure to head to JonSchumacher.com and WorkWithJon.co to see what he’s up to with his personal brand. You can Google “Jon Schumacher webinar” and you’ll find him there, too. Thanks for joining us!

344: How to Start Making Course Sales Now With Jon Schumacher

Join us on this episode of the LMScast podcast where WordPress training team member Courtney Robertson shares how she teaches people of all different languages, learning styles, and careers how to use WordPress and contribute in the WordPress ecosystem.
 
A common trend we see in online education is where the value is often not in information, but in the curation of information and the results people achieve. Courtney shares her experience with that in this LMScast where she breaks down how she and her team contribute to the WordPress core product, and what evolutions she’s seen in the space over time.
 
To learn about Courtney Robertson check out CourtneyEngle.com. She also does a lot of great work over at Learn.WordPress.org. You can also find Courtney on Twitter at @CourtneyR_dev. Thanks for joining us!

345: The WordPress Education Ecosystem Challenges and Opportunities with Courtney Robertson

We’re joined in this episode of the LMScast podcast by Nik Hawks and Lee Selman from Gristle King, where they teach people how to configure Helium rigs to provide coverage in their area for the Internet of Things and earn a tradable coin. Nik and Lee have been running a 1-1 consulting practice for a while and are now leveraging online courses in order to more broadly educate the market and leverage their time answering questions many people ask. They share the journey of how they got into Helium and into LifterLMS for their online course website in this episode.
 
Nik and Lee built their course because Helium is a big and complex environment and ecosystem, and as you get into Helium and you start to deploy hotspots, you've got to figure out where do you buy them, what do you do with them, how do you set them up, how do you know that you're in the right location, how does the whole thing work, what what's good what's bad, when they go down, how do you troubleshoot them, what's next on the horizon. There are so many things going on, and Helium itself is a really dynamic company. So they started with LORA and now they're pushing into 5G, which adds a totally different spectrum of the radio or set of frequencies on the radio, and so there's a whole new set of rules around that. That’s what Nik and Lee cover in their paid online course and coaching programs to students who are interested in being involved with the network, in addition to the intro and general overview they share in this episode.
 
Be sure to head to GristleKing.com, check it out, look around, see what you think. You can always look at Explore.Helium.com to look at the map and see what hotspots are out there. If you decide you want to get deeper, Nik and Lee have built the entire website for you, so check it out at GristleKing.com. Thanks for joining us!

346: Online Course on How to Make Money from HNT Cryptocurrency on Helium Blockchain via Hotspots

Podcast host and agency owner Jonathan Denwood joins us in this episode of the LMScast podcast to share how online course creators can make the process of launching easier by partnering with an agency that provides a full stack tech solution for WordPress site owners.
 
Jonathan shares industry insights into what makes WordPress a competitor in the eLearning ecosystem with platforms like Kajabi and Teachable. There have been some evolutions in WordPress that have made it able to outmatch those other platforms in terms of technical possibilities and customizations. Jonathan and his team have put together packages in order to allow you to leverage the power and flexibility of WordPress while also paying less than what Kajabi or Teachable offer.
 
If you’d like to learn more about Jonathan Denwood, head to WP-Tonic.com and check out his hosting options and the tools he offers. They have great pricing for what you can do with their packages. If you're looking for the simple path in the Goldilocks zone, as Jon describes it, you're getting the best, and you're not over-complicating it. Save yourself the months or years of shopping and trying all these different tools and just trying to figure it out and maybe 20 weeks of your life on YouTube trying to decide and just go with one of these plans. Thanks for joining us!

347: How to Create a Training Based Membership Site on WordPress the Easy Way with Jonathan Denwood

We’re joined by entrepreneur Craig Zingerline in this episode of the LMScast podcast where he shares insights about how he teaches startup founders high growth strategies for scaling their businesses.

Growth University is a website where startups and founders go to learn a lot of the holistic elements around growing their startups. Craig takes a very stage and industry agnostic approach and has put together a series of training programs that help startups across the board learn customer acquisition, activation, learn about how to measure and track retention, how to do product-led growth, and how to run experiments. Craig shares how he founded Growth University, and what challenges and opportunities he’s encountered in the process.
 
To learn more about Craig and his Free Growth 101 program, head to GrowthUniversity.io. And you can reach him by email at Craig@GrowthUniversity.io. If you have growth questions, Craig does 15 minute office hours all the time for free, so feel free to email him for more information about that. You can also find Craig on Twitter at @CraigZingerline, and you can see some of the fun stuff that he posts about everything from product-led growth, to activation, to entrepreneurship, founder struggles, and all that great stuff. He’s also on LinkedIn at @CraigZingerline. Thanks for joining us!

348: Teaching Startup Founders High Growth Strategies and Tactics Online at Growth University

Nonprofit niche website builder Carol Stambaugh joins us on this episode of the LMScast podcast to discuss how online course creators and website building freelancers can serve the nonprofit niche by understanding the needs, mission, and profitability options of nonprofit organizations.

Carol shares her story, along with some great community building tips she’s used over the years to build up WordPress communities and nonprofit groups. She shares insights into how she got started in the nonprofit space and building websites for nonprofit businesses, along with some industry insights you may want to consider when entering the space.

Growing a community and community marketing are two large and important areas to online course creation. Stability early on is important to fostering a growing community. Being overly accessible to everyone by having all different times available for meetings can actually end up with less community stability. The consistency really helps with scaling. If you’re doing live/online events that time or format can change, but having general inconsistency will often end up with high community churn.
 
To learn more about Carol Stambaugh be sure to head to RadiateForGood.com. She’s also on Twitter at @carolstambaugh, and her email is carol@radiatewp.com. Thanks for joining us!

349: Exploring the WordPress LMS for Non Profits Niche and Community Building with Carol Stambaugh

Advertising expert Liana Ling joins us in this LMScast episode to discuss ideas for how to market your online course and scale with Facebook ads. Liana is from Power Up Strategy, where she helps empower business owners to get as many clients or customers as their hearts desire.
 
Liana understands the overwhelm many entrepreneurs feel, and she’s really big on repurposing content. If you create something once, use that content as many times as you can, and do it intentionally. For example, if you record a podcast, take the transcript and summarize it into a blog post. Cut portions of the podcast into short videos to put on Facebook Reels, Instagram Reels, TikTok, and Pinterest. Put the full video onto your YouTube channel and on LinkedIn. And you can also use software to push these out and to schedule them ahead of time. And you can take quotes and soundbites and make images with the quotes on them and put those all over the place.

The most resilient and most sustainable type of the funnels that Liana has worked with are the ones starting with freebies to build up your audience, and then selling to them through your emails on the back end. Liana’s advice is to just jump in, test, and have fun. Show your joy. It comes through, and people will respond to it.

To learn more about Liana Ling check out her website at PowerUpStrategy.com. She’s also on Instagram as The Lead Gen Queen, so you can reach out to her there, too. Thanks for joining us!

350: 17 Ideas for How to Market Your Online Course and Scale with Facebook Ads with Liana Ling

We’re joined by Todd Brown in this episode of the LMScast podcast where he shares some expert strategies for growing your online course and membership website via marketing methods based on great ideas. Todd created a philosophy called the E5 Method, and he shares how you can use that to optimize your marketing and get on the right track for your online education website.
 
A marketing campaign's big idea is the message that underlies all elements of a campaign to resonate with the audience you’re going after. It is something that resonates with your audience and is the source or reference for the methods and messaging of your marketing campaign.
 
Every marketing campaign, promotion, and marketing message has an idea behind it. The copy, the words, the phrases, the message, and the headline of those marketing messages are just expressing the idea. But behind every message is the big idea. What ultimately determines the success of a marketing campaign is rooted in the people in your audience resonating with your idea or message emotionally.
 
You can learn more about Todd Brown and the E5 Method at E5Bundle.com. His best stuff is in there. The E5 bundle has a bunch of stuff that you can go through that will give you a really solid understanding of what Todd and Chris talked about in this episode, but is much more in depth in his book. Thanks for joining us!

351: Mastering Modern Marketing with Todd Brown's E5 Method

Join us for a discussion with Chris Badgett and Micah Mitchell about how Infusionsoft, Keap, and ActiveCampaign users create powerful automated WordPress based membership sites with Memberium and LifterLMS. Memberium is a WordPress plugin that is deeply integrated with your CRM and helps you build powerful, automated membership sites.
 
Memberium controls access to what pages and resources on a website are open to the public or are only available for certain members. The deep integration between Memberium and your CRM allows you to use the actions people take on your site to trigger actions from your system, like providing them with a discount.
 
Micah has a long history in the Infusionsoft community, and Memberium has a partner implementation program to help people build and automate all the different things on their sites. Working with an expert can help speed up the setup process that can be technical and complicated at times.
 
One strategy you can take with a membership site is if you have a free ebook on your web website as a lead magnet, you could make that into a free mini series that’s protected on your site. Protecting the content in that way with a membership can give it a higher perceived value.
 
You can learn more at Memberium.com. Their support is helpful, so feel free to reach out. Micah encourages people that if you have something to share, to please share it with the world. Make your course, and don't let anything stop you. Thank you for joining us!

352: How Keap and ActiveCampaign Users Create Powerful Membership Sites with Memberium and LifterLMS

In this episode of the LMScast podcast, we’re joined by Facebook Ads expert Shelby Fowler where she shares how online course creators can leverage outbound Facebook ads in their businesses in order to get more cold traffic to their websites.
 
The top mistake people make with Facebook ads is not spending enough money, especially if you are doing your own ads, and you don't have a background of advertising.
 
Shelby shares a great example that if you have a webinar or a presentation, a masterclass or a five day challenge, and your running ads right now, the average cost per registration is probably somewhere between $8 and $12.
 
The second common mistake is that the creative on the ads is not great. A lot of ads are just not catchy enough. Many people are constantly consuming content on Instagram and Facebook, and everybody is vying for your ideal client's attention. When creating ads, it’s important to understand that there are other people running ads and in addition to that, their family members are posting, their friends are posting, and celebrities are posting to get their attention.
 
To learn more about Shelby Fowler and the awesome work she does be sure to check out FempireMedia.com, and you can find her Fempire Ads Agency where you can learn how to leverage the power of Facebook ads for your online course or membership website. Thanks for joining us!

353: Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads For Course Creators with Shelby Fowler from Fempire Media

Kathy Zant from the Wordfence security plugin for WordPress joins us in this episode of the LMScast podcast to discuss ways online course creators and membership site owners can secure their sites to protect from hacking. Chris and Kathy cover why security is important for WordPress and some strategies hackers are currently using.

Wordfence is a security plugin for WordPress. One of the key features of Wordfence is the firewall that is going to look at traffic coming to your site and analyze whether it is malicious activity, and can block that activity from coming to your site. The premium Wordfence security plugin also has a real-time blacklist that can help block traffic coming to your site that has been identified to be malicious on someone else’s site that is using Wordfence.

WordPress sites are a large target for hacking online, because so many sites online are built on WordPress. This means that hacking tools are more advanced with finding vulnerabilities in WordPress. Kathy speaks to the importance of updating your themes and plugins as that is one common way bots can get into your site.

There are many things that hackers can do with your site once it is broken into. It is common for hackers to place an affiliate cookie on your visitors’ browsers when they view your site, so when your visitors purchase a product from an online marketplace such as Amazon, the hacker makes some illegitimate commissions on the sale. With cryptocurrencies becoming more popular in the past few years, they can use your computer to help mine for cryptocurrencies without your permission.

The free Wordfence plugin walks you through how to get set up with making your site more secure and informs you if there are any malicious files currently on your site. If you want to learn more about WordPress security and Kathy Zant, be sure to head to Wordfence.com and Zant.com. You can also connect with Kathy on Twitter at @KathyZant

220: Security for WordPress Websites with Kathy Zant from Wordfence Security Plugin

LMScast is a podcast for innovators like you in the WordPress LMS e-learning community. LMScast is produced by Chris Badgett, part of the team behind the #1 WordPress LMS plugin called LifterLMS. Each episode brings you valuable insights with one goal: to help you generate more income and impact through a learning management system built on WordPress. LMScast is for you the entrepreneur, the teacher, the expert, or the online marketer.

220: Security for WordPress Websites with Kathy Zant from Wordfence Security Plugin

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