Most course creators are aware that social proof like testimonials and reviews can help them increase course sales. But how do you use it effectively?

This guide goes beyond testimonials on your course landing page, and shows you how to use your social proof at every stage of your buyer cycle. From course discovery all the way to happy-student word of mouth, here's how to do it:

TL;DR

Here's a summary of how to use social proof for your course. It's focused on 4 key areas. The key concepts are the same, whatever your course, and whatever course platform you use.

• Increasing awareness of your course

• Increasing sign ups for your course

• Increasing course completion rates

• Collecting more testimonials

When should course creators use social proof?

Leading course creators like Jay Clouse and Justin Welsh understand that using social proof like customer stories is one of the most powerful ways to promote your course. But when and where should you share and collect social proof? Here's a complete guide outlining what you need to do at each stage.

Prelaunch your course

You know you're going to need social proof to get more people to sign up for your course, but how do you have it ready for launch? A top tip to collect early social proof is to give free beta access to your course to your followers in return for a testimonial.

You can use a testimonial collection form to make it easy for your prelaunch students to leave you a testimonial.

Tip: Running a course beta also allows you to gather feedback to improve your course, build buzz, and engage influencers and experts who might later promote you.

Launch your course

You've launched your course course and want to drive as many sales as possible. That means:

• You need more people to hear about your course

• You need more visitors to your course page

• You need more visitors to sign up (known as increasing the conversion rate)

• You need higher course completion rates

The good news is social proof can help you achieve all these goals.

Tip: higher course completions means more word-of-mouth, new sales, and testimonials collected. Luckily we can use testimonials to increase course completion rates.

How to get more people to hear about your course and visit your course page

Share social proof as part of your email and social launch announcements. First you need to turn your testimonials into images and videos that you can share. You can use Senja to turn your testimonials into attention-grabbing images in seconds.

Ready to announce your course? Share images and videos of your testimonials from your previous courses, or beta students in your emails and on your social channels:

• In your marketing emails

  • Course launch emails

  • Nurture campaigns

  • Newsletter promotional slots

  
  

• On your social channels

  • Twitter

  • Facebook

  • LinkedIn

  • TikTok

  
  

• In your ad creative

  • Test ad creative with testimonials

Remember, testimonial images are a great way to inform and warm up your audience. You can also link to your Wall Of Love in your marketing emails.

Tip: read our guide with loads more ideas to promote your course.

How to convert more visitors on your course page

You have more people on your course page, awesome. Now let's get more of the people who visit your course page to buy your course. Here's how social proof can help:

First embed one or several social proof widgets on your course page. This should highlight stories from happy students, and the results they achieved. You can also add a social proof widget next to your key call-to-action.

You might also want to:

• Link to your Wall of Love on your course website's navigation

• Add a social proof widget on your checkout page

Tip: See how Jay Clouse uses social proof on his course pages.

How to get more people to complete your course

As mentioned, higher completion rates mean better word of mouth and upsells, so you need to get more people to complete your course. Using testimonials from happy students during the course process can help increase completion rates. Here's how to do it:

• Showcase success from previous students in one of your course lessons

• Share tips from previous students on how to get the most out of each lesson

Collect new testimonials in your course

Feeling fancy? Don't send a testimonial request email after people complete your course. Instead, embed your collection form directly into a lesson. That way collecting video and text testimonials runs on autopilot.

You can embed your testimonial collection form in platforms like Kajabi, Podia, Thinkific, Skool, Circle, Teachable and collect more video and text testimonials on autopilot.

Tip: These platforms don't have native testimonial collection, so integrate a free service like Senja.io.

Don't stop: sell to people who have completed your course

Don't stop here. Next up, you want to the people who’ve completed your course to buy another course from you, or book your more premium offerings, like one-on-one coaching or retainers. Social proof can help you do this:

• Automate an email to upsell into your premium products featuring social proof