But How to Use eLearning As a Marketing & Lead Generation Tool in 2023?

If your company is ready to increase the number of qualified leads, you should definitely give eLearning lead generation a try. From offering resources, they can’t resist promoting eLearning courses for lead generation and beyond; here’s all you need to know.

This Week Show’s Sponsors

Zoho: Zoho.com

Sensei LMS: Sensei LMS

BlogVault: BlogVault

LifterLMS: LifterLMS

LaunchFlows: LaunchFlows

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00.250] – Show Introduction

Welcome to the WP-Tonic this week in WordPress and SAS podcast, where Jonathan Denwood interviews the leading experts in WordPress, eLearning and online marketing to help WordPress professionals launch their own SAS.

[00:00:14.630] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the WP-Tonic. This week in WordPress and SAS, it’s episode 744. We have already had some slight technical issues use, folks, but we have overcome them. We are determined to give you a show, folks. We’re going to have an internal discussion with my new co-host Kirk and me, and we got a great subject this week. We’re going to be talking about how you can use eLearning as a marketing effective marketing tool in 2023. I think it’s going to be a really interesting discussion. I’m going to introduce Kurt to so Kirk, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?

[00:00:58.850] – Kurt Von Ahnen

Absolutely, Jonathan. My name is Kurt Von Ahnen. I have a company called Myanana Nomas. We’re known for being under budget and on time, and we do a lot of things in WordPress, a lot of membership, and learning websites.

[00:01:10.690] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s great. And it should be a great discussion. It’s, I think, a really important subject. And I think in the next couple of years, it’ll be one of the most effective ways you can market yourself to a niche audience. And as a small agency niche provider in WordPress or in web development and design in general, I think it’s one of the most effective tools you can utilize to promote yourself. But before we go into the main part of this show, I’ve got a couple of key messages from our major sponsors, which we’ll be back in a few moments. Folks, are you looking for ways to?

[00:01:53.040] – Sponsor

Make your content more engaging. Sensei LMS by Automatic is the original WordPress solution for creating and selling online courses. Sensei’s new interactive block can be added to any WordPress page or post. For example, interactive videos let you pause videos and display quizzes, lead generation forms, surveys, and more. For a 20% discount for the tribe, just use the code WP-Tonic all one word when checking out and give Sensei a tribe today.

[00:02:23.470] – Sponsor

The importance of backing up your WordPress website cannot be emphasized enough. We use Blog Vault to help us do this on a daily basis with free staging, migrations and on the pro plans, malware scanning, and auto fix. BlogVault is the professional’s choice when managing just one website or many. Go to blogvolt.com and see for yourself. You seriously won’t find a better, more complete solution than’s blogVaultcom. Blogvault.com.

 

[00:02:54.810] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back, folks. I also like to point out that if you’re a WordPress agency, a developer, a designer or a power implementer, and you’re looking for great partnership in WordPress and WordPress hosting and support in general, WP Tonic is a great partner. We specialize in the Elearning, membership and community side of WordPress websites from Learn to lifter LMS to Buddy Boss. But we also host large ecommerce solutions or any large website. And we are a great partner. We’re looking for great partnerships in the WordPress space. So if that is of interest, myself has over 15 years in the WordPress community. If that is of interest to you, go over to WP Tonic Partners. Like, again, go over to WP Tonicpartners, see the great packages we got to offer and the great partnership options we offer. We love you to come on board. So how would you like to introduce this discussion, Kirk, because I know recently you’ve done an online presentation about this subject. What are some of the things that you would like to point out to start off this conversation?

 

[00:04:33.630] – Kurt Von Ahnen

Curt I think the biggest thing to remember when we have these conversations, Jonathan, is that we have to remember where the audience is. Like, I think I did this public talk on Tuesday for a marketing group, and it was how to use Elearning as a marketing tool. And this marketing group that they kind of went a little crazy. They were like, how does this work? How do we do this? I thought a learning management system was hundreds of thousands of dollars because in in marketing speak, in speaking to corporate marketing people, they’re used to hearing learning management systems being these proprietary, big, bulky score systems that cost a small fortune in custom development. And you and I have been working with Lifter, LMS, Learn Sensei, other branded LMS systems that are much more affordable. And I think it comes down to communication and education from our standpoint, just to make people recognize that this stuff is readily available. It’s not the easiest thing to use. There’s a little onboarding, but you can teach yourself how to be efficient and effective with these tools for a very little investment, and it’s such a great way to market yourself.

 

[00:05:47.390] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, well, that’s the technology side of it. But what I’m interested in is how you can utilize learning as an effective marketing tool to generate leads and interest in your agency in the WordPress space. So one of the people that I’ve seen online that I respect and have read a few of these books has also talked about how this can be used, is Seth Gordon. One of his famous books on marketing is The Purple Cow, which I think I don’t know if you’ve read it at all. I’ve read it a couple of times where he talks about and the way I see Elearning and using learning is a way of making yourself a purple cow is being able to stick out from the crowd. Because we got to be frank here, being a WordPress developer or WordPress agency, you’ve got a lot of competition out there, and you’ve got to be able to market yourself and be slightly different to the herd to be that purple cow. And I see eLearning as a method. What’s your thoughts about what I’ve just outlined?

 

[00:07:28.810] – Kurt Von Ahnen

Kirk I couldn’t agree more, to be honest with you, Jonathan. In fact, I go a little bit deeper when I talk to clients or when I talk to other agencies about selling eLearning as part of their package to increase the revenue. I’m like anybody that has a consumer product, anyone that sells a product that makes them eligible for the Magnus and Moss Act. The Magnus and Moss Act deals with warranties and stuff. But if you have any consumer product with any complication whatsoever, you automatically have three courses that need to be done for any one of those products. One is features and benefits. So you do a features and benefits course that helps your salespeople and your retailers be able to sell the product. Then you have a course on how to use the product, and then you need a third course that’s what does the consumer do when the product fails to operate correctly or doesn’t meet expectations? And so right out of the shoot, I look at all these companies that should have eLearning, they should have public facing eLearning properties that would help them with their brand. And to me, branding is so integral with marketing and some people like to separate it.

 

[00:08:37.290] – Kurt Von Ahnen

But the more information and the more transparency a corporation can offer their forward facing channels, the better their brand is perceived and the more value it adds to their messaging. So I’m really big on it.

 

[00:08:51.770] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think over the last few years, a lot of people to some degree in the WordPress, but definitely in the start up SAS world, have utilized paid advertising to attract customers. It’s been we pay so much to Facebook and Google and we get a certain amount of traffic to a landing page. And as long as the offering is being worded and worked on, we will turn so much of that traffic into paying customers. And as long as the economics work out, or they don’t, because especially if we’re financed, obviously if it’s bootstrapped, you got to get that economics much more dialed in. But if you’re taking external investment, you can pay to attract a client and have a longer payback period before you get into profit. But that model, I feel recently has been breaking down partially about the woes of Facebook around privacy and about the app, which really came to a head with the changes that Apple introduced in their OS operating system around. Privacy and basically shutting the door on the analytical data that Facebook could obtain from Apple and then how much it became around getting auction pain for Google advertising.

 

[00:11:03.570] – Jonathan Denwood

And now you’ve had AI rearing its head and maybe the dominance of Google is going to be effectively challenged. So I just think in the past year, this whole model of utilizing paid traffic to generate new clientele and customers is breaking down. So people are having to re look at blogging, about email marketing, about offering value, and these forms of marketing which for the time. A lot of people said that email newsletters and emailing was finished. And also what’s happened on Twitter and social media in general. People are realizing that relying on organic social media to generate traffic to their websites or leads can’t be relied on as much as possible. I’ve gone through quite a few feeds there as quickly as possible. What’s your general response to some of the feeds I’ve outlined?

 

[00:12:30.750] – Kurt Von Ahnen

When I focus on it from an elearning perspective, I look at it like what’s my depth of content? Is my content going to help my SEO? What’s going to help drive my visibility? How can I give people the perception of added value? And I think to a certain extent I think you’re correct in that you still have to have a real viable business. You’re still going to have to pay for some eyes to get to see that content. But I think if you display the quality content and the depth of content, I think you do a better job of reducing that user churn so you’re not constantly looking for new eyes if you are hedging your bets and adding value to the existing eyes that are there. You know what I’m saying?

 

[00:13:17.550] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I do. I think the other factor is what I call the buyers journey. That’s how I explain it into my own mind is that the buyer journey is much more consumer to business or business to business has changed over the last few years. And what I mean by that is that people are doing a lot more research in general before they purchase. They are to some extent trying to find out, or they have found out what are the key features or things that they need to know to make a more informed decision about a product, a plug in an agency or a product that they are thinking of purchasing. So they really self select and then they approach the agency and then it’s up to the product, the service provider, the digital agency, the WordPress agency to fail at the discovery or the initial sales discussion. What’s your reaction to what I’ve just outlined?

 

[00:14:57.870] – Kurt Von Ahnen

Actually kind of got a little bit lost on you, Jonathan.

 

[00:15:03.090] – Jonathan Denwood

A lot of people have said that.

 

[00:15:07.010] – Kurt Von Ahnen

You caught me here live going I’m not sure where Jonathan is going with this one. We’re talking about using the learning management material, right? And then you were talking about the agency having something.

 

[00:15:24.070] – Jonathan Denwood

They are looking for you, the vendor, either the WordPress agency or the SAS company. They are searching online, they are looking at YouTube, they are listening to podcasts, they are out there doing at different stages, provisionally, looking at maybe a product or service that can help them either as a consumer to business or business to business that can help them in some way or help their business in some way. They’re on that kind of provisional and then as they get, they can get more and more serious about a purchase and do more research. But they are generally doing more searches in YouTube, online, through Google, listening to podcasts, just basically getting educated about what they might be looking to purchase than ever before.

 

[00:16:29.530] – Kurt Von Ahnen

Got you. I’m full circle, I’m caught up now I remember back, believe it or not, I used to sell cars when I was a young man and they used to tell us it would take on average five touch points with a customer along their buyer journey to get them to make a buying decision. And as the internet has evolved and as businesses continue to change the way that it communicates, now they’re saying it takes 12, 13, 15 touches with a customer before they’re in a buying position. To your point, podcasts and different commercial points, phone calls, surveys, all kinds of things. But I think it’s important when we consider that the Elearning is part of the tool. We have to understand again, considering the buyer’s journey and what the customer using the learning management system wants. Is the course their end goal? Is the course what they’re trying to sell? Or is the course a tool that leads the customer and the buyer’s journey to a different product, to something that’s different? And that’s the fun part about working with agencies and different web customers is figuring out what’s your use case and how are you trying to employ this course.

 

[00:17:42.680] – Kurt Von Ahnen

Is it a lead magnet? Is it a free course? It’s a lead magnet that leads to some high priced widget you want to sell for their house or is the course the product you’re selling to hopefully upsell in a good, better, best model for consulting and training and stuff like that?

 

[00:17:57.930] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, and I think that course people got the feeling that it’s going to be like a 16 lesson. What I’m talking about is having structured to the information that you could offer for free to a consumer through podcasting, but then offer more detailed training which can be utilized as an effective lead magnet to get those people’s contact information. And then through Elearning platform, you can see if they’re progressing through that course and if they’re progressing through those lessons, you can then through optimization or the signs, because the platform will tell you if they’re finishing lessons that will give you an indication that they are ready for you to be more proactive about contacting that potential individual and getting them on board for Zoom. Depending on the price point of your product or service. But that’s why I think people are not understanding how valuable this methodology is as a lead generation, sales generation, because traditionally there’s been a big gap between the marketing and the sales department, and but utilizing the elearning, I think you get much more synergy between a marketing and a sales department. To some extent. That was another big statement. We’re going to go for a break and then I’m going to see Kirk’s response to what I’ve just said, see if I made myself understandable, or was I going off on a bigger game?

 

[00:19:57.580] – Jonathan Denwood

We will be back in a few moments, folks.

 

[00:20:03.790] – Speaker 5

Hey, it’s Spence from Launchflows.com. If you’ve been looking for a fast and easy way to create powerful sales funnels on WordPress, then look no further than Launch Flows. In just minutes, you can easily create instant registration upsells, downsells, order bumps, one click checkouts, one time offers custom thank you pages. And best of all, no coding is required. For as little as $50 per year, you can own and control your entire sales funnel machine with Launch Flows. Get your copy today.

 

[00:20:35.930] – Speaker 6

This podcast episode is brought to you by Lifter LMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any kind of online course, training based membership, website, or any type of elearning project, lifter LMS is the most secure, stable, well supported solution on the market. Go to Lifterlms.com and save 20% at checkout with Coupon code Podcast 20. That’s podcast 20. Enjoy the rest of your show.

 

[00:21:13.590] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back. Folks, I just want to point out we got a great new sponsor on the show, a major sponsor, and that is Zolo. zolo.com. Zolo offers almost 50 plus different online services and apps from Bookkeeping, to a competitor, to Google Analytics, to email marketing, to Zolo CRM. And they are looking for WordPress partners to work with them. They are interested in being an active supporter of Open source and the WordPress community. And they’re actively looking for partners in the WordPress community, agency partners. And they have become a major sponsor of this show. So, if that’s of interest, wptonic is a part of Zolo, it’s been great to work with them. And I suggest that you should become a partner with Zoho. To find out more, go over to zolo.com, look at their section partners, and sign up. And there are great benefits at different levels for our agency to actively work with zolo, which I like to point out has over 5000 employees and last year done a billion dollars in turnover. So it’s a major company to be a partner with. So that last bit before the break, was he bringing any bills review?

 

[00:23:04.090] – Jonathan Denwood

Do you think I was on the right track?

 

[00:23:06.650] – Kurt Von Ahnen

You’re absolutely on the right track. That particular statement and trail that you went down was ding, ding, ding in my brain the whole way. When I speak to people in their marketing companies and stuff, and they’re talking about their lead scoring or their pipeline, whether you use an active campaign or groundhog or some kind of other CRM tool, maybe something through Zoho, they’ve got a way that they have their salespeople track their lead. Like what’s the score of the lead? Is the lead, like if it’s one through 100, is it a 50% lead, an 80% lead, 90% lead? And what you just described is perfect way to put that to make sense. So if I have a user that enrolls in a course, their lead score might be a 25. But if I have a user that enrolls in a course that finishes five lessons, their lead score might go up to 62 or 65. And then if I have one that finishes the whole course and earns the certification, they might be a 75 or 80. And then if they partake in another course, or if they get involved in some other kind of social interaction within my web infrastructure, whatever I’ve got set up for my site, I can increase the value of that lead.

 

[00:24:21.800] – Kurt Von Ahnen

Score. And then I can look at those leads and I can assign my salespeople or assign my sales energy and budget to the highest scores for the highest closing ratios. So it’s a really smart way to go.

 

[00:24:36.470] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I think it’s relevant. If you’re a WordPress agency or a freelancer developer and you’re listening or you’re running a bootstrap SAS company business startup, is that if you’re looking? You can do this yourself for your own agency. Providing, of course, aimed at a particular niche, vertical. Or if you’ve got medium clients that are looking, that got some kind of budget and they’re looking, they’ve become a bit cynical about paid advertisement and they’re coming for you. For ideas is to put this to them about developing Elearning Elearning education as a lead magnet and then by utilizing a learning management system to organize that course and utilize in something like WP Fusion with Active Campaign or utilize Influence CRM with WPF Fusion you can link trigger automatic marketing but also the learning management system. And one of our great partners is Lifter LMS is that that provides a great platform that can show the progress. And if somebody is consuming all the lessons and coming back multiple times to view lessons which Lifter LMS. Can monitor that is a great trigger that shows that the client, the possible prospect is really interesting and consuming the content you’re providing and gives you because it’s all about contacting and doing that outreach at the right time with the right message.

 

[00:26:34.670] – Jonathan Denwood

Marketing can seem a bit mystical but really the fundamentals of successful marketing, even though it’s very difficult, is putting the right message at the right time. What do you reckon about that, Kirk?

 

[00:26:51.170] – Kurt Von Ahnen

It’s correct, absolutely correct. And then the other segment that I wanted to kind of touch on Jonathan with LMS work and using it for branding is when I think about the great resignation and these companies losing employees and having to go to a remote workforce and things like that. One of the areas that I’ve been able to make a lot of great strides in for developing my products for companies is if you think about it, they advertise, they have a remote position but then the first thing that new employee has to do is fly to the office to onboard with HR, right? And so if we could take our elearning tools and make a virtual onboarding platform that they can then promote and say, a remote position with us is remote, we onboard remote, you work remote, blah, blah, blah, it lends them more credibility from an employer standpoint. And so these larger companies that are still trying to do in person onboarding are having a lot of hiccups and trying to hire folks. And so it’s another layer of branding and marketing that goes with the company, but from the internal perspective, not a.

 

[00:27:57.830] – Jonathan Denwood

Customer facing that is the more traditional model. Traditional probably is not the right word, but what learning management systems internal HR training, I think where a lot of companies and when it comes to the Bootstrap SAS, is that this new kind of lead magnet utilizing training courses inside a learning management system that can show you if a prospect is really a strong candidate for outreach. It can be also utilized for reducing churn of new customers. Because one of the biggest problems any Bootstrap SAS has is not only getting new possible clients, but keeping the existing clientele. And one of the biggest problems is getting people to not bail out on your service because they’re not utilizing it enough and they haven’t invested and so they don’t see the value of the product. And you’re getting new clients into on the platform, but it’s a bucket with a load of holes in it and you’re losing as many client customers as you’re getting new customers. And investing in a learning management system is you’re killing two birds with 1 st is that you can utilize it as a way of attracting new clients and also use at the same time it’s utilized so it reduces the amount of churn you’re getting.

 

[00:30:09.440] – Jonathan Denwood

What do you think of what I’ve just outlined there?

 

[00:30:12.930] – Kurt Von Ahnen

No, again, I agree that the reducing the churn to me is huge, because, again, I do a lot of work with companies that have a high cost of customer acquisition. And so a lot of times you’ll hear, well, each customer costs one $200 to get each customer. And I’m like, well, it’d be easier to keep them if you gave them some information. People just want to be acknowledged and recognized and having an elearning system with the automations you spoke of earlier is a great way to give them that recognition and that engagement that makes them feel like they’re part of the family when they sign up with you.

 

[00:30:50.290] – Jonathan Denwood

So I think what we’ve outlined here is why you should be looking at utilizing a WordPress learning management system and also trying to market it to your customer base with a new way of looking at how a learning management system can be utilized not just for a platform for internal training, but as a lead generating tool and a churn reduction tool that can be utilized by a number of companies. And the reality of what we’re entering in 2023, people will be looking at new, affordable methods to attract new clients and to keep those clients. Because, like what I stated that I think agreed is the cost and also the effectiveness of utilizing just paid traffic and then trying to convert them. But even with the paid thing, utilizing either Facebook or Google paid adverts and then offering a microcosm, I call it as your lead magnet, and then observing if they finish that and then doing one to one or if it’s at a certain price point. Triggering marketing optimization is a great way of increasing the amount, increasing leads that come to your website and actually turning them into clientele, either for your own agency or probably more for your medium to larger clients where you’re offering more value, more possible solutions.

 

[00:32:51.410] – Jonathan Denwood

What do you reckon about that?

 

[00:32:52.630] – Kurt Von Ahnen

Cook yeah, no it’s all that together and on top of you’re talking about reducing churn and nurturing clients and customers and users, and it lends itself towards revenue expansion as well. If you have a company and you’re introducing new markets or new services or new skills, you add that to your elearning and then people see that you have expertise that’s beyond what they originally sourced you for. And so it’s just a great way to expand and grow and communicate with people.

 

[00:33:23.040] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s great. Southeast I was going to say, I’m.

 

[00:33:27.590] – Kurt Von Ahnen

Sorry, but it’s an evergreen type of product, right? You’re not picking up the phone and Burning Man hours, just calling people, dialing for dollars. You make the product, you expose people to the product, and the product keeps going. So you make that investment upfront and it does the work for you as long as you have those automation triggers and you’re able to follow up on the data.

 

[00:33:51.050] – Jonathan Denwood

I think if you’re interested in this, you can approach me at WP Tonic or you can approach Kirk. We got extensive knowledge in learning management systems, but we’re more than happy to give you advice if you think you got clientele in your agency. It’s just a new service, a new way of looking at something. And I think a lot of people haven’t really worked out that this is a new territory and a new effective way of utilizing courses and learning management systems to really be effectively market in the next couple of years or more. So, Kirk, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you? And if people want to contact you and get some great advice from you, what’s the best way? Kirk.

 

[00:34:48.890] – Kurt Von Ahnen

Thanks, Jonathan. Manjana Nomas is my company name and everything? Manjana Nomas online pretty much leads to me. I’ve been working with that name for a long time. The other thing is LinkedIn. If you’re watching this on one of our stream channels, you’ll see my name written out Kurt Von on, and I’m the only Curt Von on LinkedIn. And I’m on there for a couple of hours every day, so if you look me up on LinkedIn, hit Connection, send me a message and we’ll connect.

 

[00:35:13.860] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, and if you’re interested to talk to me, you can always book straight by going to the WP Tonic website. There’s a button right in the main navigation that says book a chat, and that’s with me. So if you’re listening to this podcast and there’s any additional questions, or you’re interested in becoming a partner with WP Tonic, just book a session with me and I’ll be more than happy to give you any advice. We got some great guests coming up in the rest of January and in March we got some great discussions. I’m really looking forward as Kirk being my co host. And we’ll be back next week folks. We see you soon. Bye.

 

[00:35:58.090] – Ending

Hey, thanks for listening, we really do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group? And also to keep up with the latest news, click WP Tonic.com newsletter. We’ll see you next time.

Sign-up For The WP-Tonic’s Weekly Newsletter

Sign up For WP-Tonic’s Weekly Newsletter, Where You Read The Latest WordPress News & The Best Deals! Join The Tribe?

NEWSLETTER