How to Pre-Sell a Course: Essential Steps to Secure Sales Before You Launch

Tell me if this sounds familiar: you’ve spent hours (and lots of money) creating your course and perfecting your launch, and you’re hoping for a big splash to make it all worth it, right?

What if I told you that your next online course could make 5 figures before you press “Launch”? Or what if there were a way to find out if your next course topic won’t be the smash hit you were expecting it to be?

It's a not-so-well-kept secret on the internet: preselling. 

By selling spots in your course before you launch, you can ensure you provide exactly what your students want and drum up some sales before your big marketing push. 

In this article, I’ll walk you through the essential steps for how to presell a course so you can be confident that it will be an unrivaled success. So grab a cup of coffee and your notebook, and let’s get started!

What is Pre-Selling?

Preselling an online course means launching your course to a small, private audience to secure upfront sales and gather feedback before the big launch. This isn’t just a tactic for course creators. Many businesses presell to generate excitement and revenue before doing a more extensive public release of their products or services.

From software and gadgets to books, you are in good company by preselling your next online course! Preselling your next course will give you:

No matter what you’re preselling, there’s one universal guideline you need to follow:

Be transparent! Be clear with your audience that your course is not fully-created yet. You can position this as a perk to your students by offering a discount and giving them exclusive early access to your course.

So instead of throwing darts in the dark, follow the steps in this article and you’ll be a preselling pro in no time!

Why You Should Presell Your Online Course: 6 Key Benefits

Is preselling really worth the extra effort?

If you aren’t sold yet, here are six key benefits of preselling your online course:

Let’s walk through each of these in depth.

Create Buzz Around the Course

Preselling can help create a buzz about your course by generating excitement and anticipation among potential customers.

Ever heard of Amy Porterfield? She often presells her courses to her followers through social media, her website, affiliate partners, and webinars. For example, she had a pop-up on her site when she was about to release her newest list-building course. Anyone visiting her site was then enticed to learn more:

The word-of-mouth marketing she gets from preselling her course increases her fans’ excitement and interest, accelerating enrollments before the course goes live.

Generate Course Sales Upfront

Another advantage of preselling is that it brings in cash you can use to create your full-length course.

As a course creator, you may need to invest in things like video equipment, software, a good microphone, hosting, or outside help. These expenses add up quickly and can stop you from creating your course if you’re on a tight budget.

By preselling your course, you can manage your cash flow and only spend on the items you need once you have the funds.

Validate Your Course Idea

Building a comprehensive course is a big commitment that comes with a lot of risk if you haven’t fully tested the concept and curriculum.

You could end up spending weeks and months creating your course without any guarantee that it will sell.

Preselling helps you validate your course idea before you put in all that hard work. When you know people will pay for the course, you can sleep at night knowing your time will be well spent.

Pre-sales are a future forecast of the degree of success of your course. The more enrollments you get now, the more confident you can be about your course’s profitability in the future.

Get Immediate Feedback to Refine Your Course

Since you’ll be delivering your course before it’s entirely created, preselling allows you to tailor the content as you go. If you build interaction into all the elements of your course, you can get feedback about what’s working and what isn’t. Then, you can tweak any aspects for the larger launch.

The information you learn about your customers’ challenges will also help you when it comes to your marketing material. You’ll be able to use the same language and examples you now know will resonate with your target audience.

Gather Social Proof for Your Sales Pages

There is nothing (and I mean absolutely nothing) that sells a course better than testimonials from happy customers. 

Assuming your preselling strategy worked, your course sales page will be chock full of praise from your early-access students to warm up prospective students to buy. You can’t get these testimonials without offering that early access though, and that’s where preselling becomes mission critical. 

Gather up these testimonials and pepper your sales page with them. Make sure to display them on your sales page and give your visitors a better picture of what your product or service can do for them. When your prospects see that you provide proven results, they feel more confident about clicking that ‘buy’ button.

Consider using tools like Thrive Ovation (from Thrive Suite) in WordPress to show a variety of testimonials dynamically. In the following example, I have my plugin set to rotate through 4 different ones.

Not only will these testimonials add a splash of authenticity to your sales page, but they’ll also give you critical insights into what your customers find the most valuable about your course.

Hold Yourself Accountable and Take Action

Making sales gets all the glitz and glamor, but it’s not the only benefit of preselling. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from creating and launching hundreds of courses, it’s that when you get into the thick of it, you’ll be tempted to take a break - or maybe put your course on the shelf and finish it at a future date. 

Preselling a course means no excuses to procrastinate. You sold spots and must create that course for your eager audience! For course creators who are perfectionists, preselling also forces you to decide what is 'good enough' for the first delivery of your course.

Now that you know why to presell your course, let’s discuss the steps for doing it successfully.

How to Presell Your Course

It’s time to roll up your sleeves because I’m going to lay out a blueprint for you to follow to presell your next online course. 

I like to break preselling into the following steps:

Step 1: Create the Presell Version of Your Course

One of the significant benefits of preselling a course is that you don’t have to create all the course content in advance. However, you do need to create something for prospects to see what they’ll be getting. And you need to have enough materials ready so that you’re not scrambling on Day 1 to have something to send to your pre-paid students.

Start by creating a high-level outline for your course that answers questions like:

Once you know what you’ll cover in the course, decide on the amount of content you need to create for the presell version of the course. This is your ‘minimum viable course’ that has enough materials to get your students results but not so much that you end up defeating the purpose of preselling.

Ask yourself:

This outline and list of contents will help you create a presell sales page for your course. If people have enough information about the course and book spots during presell, it means there’s good potential for success when you do a bigger launch down the road.

Here’s an example of what your presell course outline might look like:

Step 2: Decide on a Strategy to Presell Your Course

Now that you know what your presell course will look like, it’s time to start thinking about how you’ll attract students. But before you can pick specific tactics for enrolling students during your preselling period, you need to make some decisions about key details included in any marketing strategy. These decisions will then impact the tactics you choose.

What to Include in Your Preselling Strategy

1. Set Your Target Market

Start by describing your target audience for your course. You should have done this before starting to outline, but it helps to write it down again to remind you who you’re creating your marketing content for.

For example, if you’re creating a course named Small Business Finances, you know small business owners (CFOs in some cases) would be the best people to advertise your course to.

2. Build a Presell Audience

Next, you need to decide who you want as students in the presell version of your course.

For example:

Often, your customers buy multiple courses from you. Those customers are the ones most likely to pre-purchase your new course, so it will be easiest to market to them.

If your course isn’t something you think your existing customers will be interested in, open the course to new customers. You can do this by giving beta access to people who want to be part of creating something unique.

When preselling a course, consider limiting the number of seats available to create a sense of exclusivity among potential buyers. This can help build urgency and scarcity, motivating individuals to act quickly to secure their spot in the course.

If you have a very small audience of your own, you could open it up to followers of people in your network, allowing them to earn commissions on both presells and later sales during the bigger launch.

3. Set Your Discounts and Sales Terms

When you get to the point of creating your sales page or other messaging for preselling, you’ll also need to include the details buyers will be looking for before they make a decision. Answer these questions so you have those ready:

Your goal is to anticipate questions and objections in advance so that you can add them to any place you’re persuading people to buy, whether it’s a sales page, webinar, or email. Make the enrollment decision as easy as possible.

Step 3: Determine Your Preselling Marketing and Promotion Tactics

Now that you have your general marketing strategy, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty of exactly how you’ll meet your preselling objectives.

Here are a few ideas to get you started. Be sure to check out my list of 19 course promotion tactics that you can try. These will be especially handy for your big launch!

Create Free Resources to Build an Email List

Free resources, AKA lead magnets, are the best way to attract customers during preselling, and you’ll have that list for when you do a larger launch too. Providing value to your prospects for free will help you ramp up presell course enrollments.

My top recommendations for simple lead magnets that will entice people to sign up for your email list. Just make sure that the one you choose is directly related to your course and leaves people with a quick win but also wanting to learn more:

Offer Early-Bird Discounts or Bonuses

The idea here is to offer a discounted price or extra content during your preselling period to encourage customers to commit early. Make it clear this early bird special is available for a short period so they book a seat in your preselling session.

I use the same concept when doing an ‘early bird launch’ of some of our courses:

Show People the Number of Spots Left and Enrolled

Showing people the number of spots left when preselling a course moves it to the top of their priority list. It gives them the urgency to stop procrastinating and act quickly to secure their place in the course before it fills up.

Plus, seeing that others have already enrolled creates a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) and confidence that they’ll be part of a group experience.

Create a Dedicated Facebook Group for Presell Students

Make your presell students feel like VIPs by creating a dedicated Facebook group just for them. This will give them exclusive access to you and other students, as well as a sense of community and support. You can use the group to answer questions, share resources, and provide extra value.

Run Webinars and Livestreams

Host webinars and live streams to give your prospective students a taste of what your course offers. This gives them a chance to get to know you and the expertise they’ll benefit from if they enroll in your course. Use these events to showcase your knowledge, answer questions, and provide such incredible value that your audience says, “Wow! If this is what she’s giving now, I can’t wait to see what’s in her course.”

Leverage Social Media to Get the Word Out

Get more visibility for your course by posting regularly on social media. But make sure to choose the right platform for your audience. For example, if you're targeting business professionals, LinkedIn may be more effective than Instagram.

Once you’ve decided where your target audience is on social media, consistently share valuable content and engage with your followers to build momentum. If you don’t already have an audience on social media, start building one immediately by participating in relevant groups and answering questions BEFORE you share anything about your course.

Publish Blog Posts Related to Your Course Topic

Show your audience that you're an expert in your field by creating high-quality blog posts related to your course topic.

Your blog posts can cover a variety of topics related to your course, such as:

Pro tip: Remember to include a CTA in your blog post, such as a link to your presell landing page or a signup form to join the waiting list.

Step 4: Gather your Preselling Sales and Marketing Collateral

When preselling a course, it’s essential to map out all of the marketing and sales collateral you need for a successful launch. 

Depending on which tactics you choose from the previous section, this collateral may change, but at a minimum, you will need:

Set Up a Waiting List

You can easily set up a waiting list through your email marketing platform with a simple landing page and opt-in form that offers first access to your course. By setting up a waiting list for your course, you can:

Here’s an example of a simple landing page and opt-in form for a waiting list for a course from Learn Digital:

Create a Presell Landing Page

A landing page is an easy way to lay out all the benefits, features, and other essential information about your course. You already have the information you need for the page from the steps where you outlined your course and decided on your preselling strategy. So now it’s just a matter of picking a suitable template from a landing page builder, adding the details, and linking your buy button to whatever checkout or payment system you’re using (such as Thrive Cart).

The key elements to include in your presell landing page are:

Check out my complete guide to creating a course sales page for more information!

Email Your Existing Customers

If you already have customers, emailing them is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to presell your course. They’ve already bought from you once, so they will most likely be interested in buying again.

Consider also giving your customers VIP first access or an ‘insider’ price for your new course to make them feel even more special.

Here’s a simple template you can use to email your existing customers about the course you’re preselling:

Step 5: Keep Enrolled Students Updated on the Course's ETA

Don’t leave your newly enrolled students twiddling their thumbs, wondering what happened to you. Use these tactics to keep them excited about your upcoming course and in a mindset that will have them ready to take action from day 1.

Embed a Countdown Timer on Your Website

Nothing creates urgency for buying like a countdown timer. Use that same concept to let your enrolled students know exactly when the course will be available, and they'll be motivated and eager to jump into action on Day 1.

Here’s an example of a countdown time on Dribble

Create an Email Series

Creating an email series to keep your students updated on your course's ETA can be a great way to keep them engaged.

Here are some tips to make the most of your email series:

If you want to avoid doing an email series, leverage your social media community to talk about the course and keep students updated on its progress.

Step 6: Deliver Your Course and Gather Feedback

Once you've finished preselling your course and enrollment is closed, it's time to start teaching your presell version and creating the materials you decided on.

You can also ask for feedback from students in your presell group as you teach each lesson. Then tweak the content as you go, based on that feedback. That’s another benefit of having only outlined the content in advance and not creating it all at once.

If you created a community for your new students, you can ask for feedback there and get a discussion going around what they’d like added or changed.

Once you’ve finished delivering your presell version of your course, be sure to collect testimonials that you can use for social proof for your next sales page and launch. Gather both written and video testimonials for greater credibility and impact if you can.

Lastly, ask people who were interested in the course but didn't buy in the presell about why they didn't enroll. This gives you more info about how you might adjust your messaging or the course itself when you do a full launch.

Step 7: Plan Your Full Online Course Launch

You’ve pre-sold your course to at least a small group, delivered it to them, and gathered their feedback and testimonials. Now it’s time to plan your full course launch. But before you start your launch to-do list, complete the following:

Ready to take the next step and do a full launch? Be sure to follow our Complete Online Course Launch Checklist: Your Blueprint for Success.

Want a copy of this post in a handy checklist?

Just click the image below to request you copy. 

Next Steps for Preselling a Course

Even if you’re just creating a minimum viable course for preselling, developing a course from scratch can be overwhelming, time-consuming, and expensive!

Rather than spend your energy and time creating a course, focus more on selling by purchasing a brandable, white-label course. Browse hundreds of ready-to-sell courses in our shop here:

You can use our done-for-you courses however you want. You can sell them as-is after personalizing the content with your name and branding. Or, use parts to create a minimum viable course for preselling.

Just follow the steps for preselling in this article, using your new white-label course to create a minimum viable course version to sell!