Episode #085: The 2025 Trends for Course Creators To Watch For...
The 2025 Trends for Course Creators To Watch For...
In this episode of Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast I'm talking about (5) major trends that we're seeing in the online course, membership and coaching space that YOU need to be aware of.
I'm sure I don't have to tell you that things have have shifted in recent years and as the online learning market has become increasingly saturated we have to stay "in front" of these shifts to keep our businesses thriving.
When you tune into this weeks episode you'll discover..
Why the big, content heavy, digital course days might just be coming to an end
Why having a single core offer might not be the way to go
The importance of "net expansion" for your business - and how to make sure it's happening
I'm not a psychic, but we've seen great engagement, sales, and growth in our business - and I truly believe it's the result of these trends.
Links Mentioned
Full Transcript
Zach Spuckler:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing podcast, episode number 85. And in this episode, we're talking about the big trends we're seeing in the online course creator space and what it means for you. So as we go into 2025, if you're wondering, what do I need to think about? What do I need to focus on? This episode is for you, so stay tuned. Hey. Hey. Hey. Not so average marketer. Welcome back to the podcast.
Zach Spuckler:
I am so excited to be talking to you today about some of the really cool trends that I'm seeing really over the last several months that I see continuing into 2025. Now for context, I always like to lead in. I am not, you know, a psychic. I can't guarantee that these things are gonna happen. But what I can tell you is that in 2024, we had a really successful year in business in terms of revenue, in terms of expansion of our membership, in terms of course sales. And I really want to share with you the things that have been working well for us that I see carrying over into 2025. So this episode isn't just, like, here's things that might happen. It's really an evaluation of the last 6 to 12 months and what I see moving forward into 2025.
Zach Spuckler:
My goal for you is that you listen to this and you really get to understand where things are going, and you can use that information to improve your business. So in total, I've seen about 5 major trends. And just to clarify, these really are specific for, like, courses, membership, coaching, the online education and elearning space. Whether you're b2b or b2c, I really am seeing these trends. So let's get into it. The first trend that I'm seeing is what I have dubbed the slow burn. If you were to go back to, say, 2017, 2018, even earlier than that too, but you used to be able to just kinda be, like, I'm gonna launch a course. Right? And you could decide on, you know, Friday that you're gonna launch a course the following week.
Zach Spuckler:
You'd wake up early morning Monday. You'd set up some ads for your webinar. You do your webinar 10, 14 days later, and you just convert. Right? You would kinda get this 2 to 4x return on ad spend on your Facebook ads. And I truly think that those days are slowly tapering off, maybe even fastly tapering off. Because creating this, like, 2 to 4x instant return on your ad spend with, like, a simple webinar, like, just do your webinar, sell your thing, and everyone will love you. Like, we're not seeing that as much. Right? For those of you who don't know, I work with several clients inside of our ads management agency, and I'm seeing this trend that when we go all in on a launch and we haven't done the work leading up to the launch, the launches are smaller.
Zach Spuckler:
And so the trend that we're seeing now is it's more about connecting with your audience, building that audience, nurturing the audience as it's growing, and actually building relationships and trust before you make an offer. What does this ultimately mean? Well, from a more market-y perspective, it means that the lead to close cycle is getting longer. And so from the time somebody joins your business as a lead, whether that be by buying a low ticket product or just joining your email list, the time from that initial contact to you closing them into a buyer or an ongoing customer or moving them into, like, a higher ticket product that's not just a quick low ticket impulse, it's taking longer. Right? And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I I tell my students all the time, like, you didn't start this business because you thought you'd make $1,000,000 in 2 weeks. You started this business because for most people, they're craving something deeper. Yes. The money is nice.
Zach Spuckler:
Yes. The freedom is great. But you probably don't wanna do this for a year. You wanna be doing this, like, ongoing. Right? The the reality is in a capitalistic society, most of us, if not all of us who are listening, are going to have to maintain an income of some kind, and my goal with this is that I enjoy the work I'm doing. I build long term relationships. And so even though it can be daunting to be, like, it's gonna take longer to get sales now, technically, yes, but also this means that you have the opportunity to really grow a connection with your audience. And I think this comes down to a couple different things.
Zach Spuckler:
Number 1 is that I think regular communication is gonna be more important than ever. And for me, in 2025, the way that I'm doing that is at least an email once a week. Plus, I know I say this way too often, but we've actually mapped out several episodes of the podcast coming out in 2025. We're recording them in advance now. We've got a process that we use to get them out, and so I wanna also be creating content on the blog that benefits my audience. Right? But and I still think email is king. We got our wrap up for 2024, and we released a total of, if you count this week's podcast and and the next week's podcast, we'll have released 14 episodes this year. And I don't share that with you as, like, oh my gosh.
Zach Spuckler:
Like, look at us. We're, like, you know, totally dropping the ball. And and conversely, I'm not dropping it to be, like, you don't need to podcast. I think there needs to be more of a middle ground for us to be candid, and we had our biggest year yet. Right? So I still think that email is gonna be king. I think that blogs, podcast, video content is definitely supportive content and it can help make your emails easier and it definitely deepens the relationship. But if you're like, I'm behind on my blog and my podcast and my video, I just wanna offer you up that the big trend is communication via email. Okay? So that slow burn is about building a connection with people.
Zach Spuckler:
People wanna buy from people. They don't wanna buy from the sexiest sales page anymore. The second trend that I'm noticing is what I'm calling the ecosystem. And there's kind of this nebulousness, if that's a word, where we hear all kinds of things in the online world, like high ticket is in, low ticket is in, mid ticket is in, offer suite is in, low ticket to high ticket is in. And I think that what I'm seeing more and more and more is that having a healthy mix of offers and price points is really beneficial. And this doesn't mean you need to go create a 1000000 offers. Right? I I really we're really clear about this. When I say a mix of offer and offer prices, I like to have a low ticket offer, a mid ticket offer, and a high ticket offer.
Zach Spuckler:
And that is gonna be subjective to you and your niche, but for us to give you really specific context, our low ticket offer was, like, our live boot camps that we sell, for Facebook and Instagram ads for $25. Mid ticket would be our membership, which is $67 a month up to $670 a year. And then high ticket would be, like, working with me 1 on 1, or working in our agency. Right? What I'm seeing is that depending on how deep of a connection my audience has with me, they may or may not want to be at those different price points. And I think that it's easier in 2025 to get low ticket sales than high ticket sales. And that's kinda controversial because we hear a lot of the advice out there that's like whether it's a $100 or $1,000, you still have to sell it. And that's true. What I am seeing that this trend really speaks to is that people have been burned.
Zach Spuckler:
You know, the online course space, like 10 years ago was like this, like, you can make money selling courses online. Now, I just saw an ad last night from somebody who's like a blogger that has a course which I wanna buy. It looks really good. But that's somebody who I would have never anticipated a course from, not because they don't deserve it, not because they shouldn't, just because it was very niche, it was very unique. I didn't think that was part of their model. And yet, it tells me that these courses are becoming more mainstream. And so the more content there is in the marketplace, the more flooded the marketplace is with options and ways to buy and ways to work with you. People want to be able to make a decision that aligns with their values and their wallets.
Zach Spuckler:
What feels good and what can I afford? And what what do I want to spend my money on right now in addition to that slow burn trust that you're building. Right? Because what we found this year was we were selling boot camps really well. We we sold a lot of boot camps this year. And what I noticed the most was that the mid and high ticket sales were people who had bought my boot camp. Now does that mean everybody who joined our agency or joined the membership bought the boot camp? No. But a healthy amount were kind of, like, I don't even wanna say ascending. I wanna say they were trusting. They were able to get in with me at the low ticket to see what we're about.
Zach Spuckler:
And then at higher price points, they're like, I know this guy's legit because of what I've done. And this really segues really beautifully into the 3rd trend that I'm seeing, which is what I'm calling the trend of specificity. This is gonna be, I don't wanna say controversial, but but but a stance for sure is that I think in 2025 and beyond, people are starting to burn out on these, like, encyclopedic courses. People don't wanna spend $2, $3, $4, $5,000 for someone who's like I can solve your life, especially in the b2b space. You cannot solve everyone's problems. And there there's a couple of reasons that I say that. One is that attention span is low. So when you create these 60, 70, 80 hour courses, people just aren't going through them.
Zach Spuckler:
The completion rate is low. The engagement rate is is low. And if completion and engagement is low, guess what? So are results. And if your results are low, it's harder to get testimonials and feedback and support and give your audience what they need. What I have found, not just as a creator but as a consumer, is that I am in this season of my life where I want to solve specific problems. There's a really specific example. We launched our new newer program, the Challenge Launch Engine in July of this year. And I've taught challenges for years, but I really wanted to make this a more robust, condensed, engaging training with everything you would need to be successful and just kind of improve it.
Zach Spuckler:
It hadn't been updated in a couple years from from its previous iteration, and I was like, I don't wanna do a big launch. Right? I I just don't have a big launch in me in July. And I said I should do a wait list. I should, like, do a wait list promotion. And there's a really awesome program called Waitlist Magic by Kate McKibbin of Hello Funnels. I will link that up in the chat for you guys or...the chat. Geeze, can you tell I've been doing a lot of live trainings lately? I'll link that up for you in the show notes. But here's the thing. I really liked Waitlist Magic as a program.
Zach Spuckler:
Not because it was like, I think at the time it was like $50. I think it's like $97 now. But here's what was so cool about it. I had a specific problem. Kate had a specific solution, and I didn't need to spend $2,000 on a course to get my answer. Now does that mean $2,000 courses aren't selling? Does it mean people won't buy them? No. But what I am saying is that for me as a consumer and with what I'm seeing with my students, when I don't promise the world but I promise a very specific outcome, our conversions go up. For us, an example would be our Facebook and Instagram Ads Bootcamp again.
Zach Spuckler:
Right? When we say we'll help you add a 100 leads to your list in in 7 to 10 days. That's very specific. We're not saying you'll learn everything you ever needed to know about Facebook ads in 5 days or less and then bam, buy my next thing. Right? Because what I'm noticing is that when I have a specific outcome, like add a 100 leads to your list, If I can achieve that outcome, I build trust with people, and then I can offer them additional training or next steps or continuing education that doesn't feel cannibalizing. So let's use Kate as an example to go even deeper. She has this program, Waitlist Magic. I loved it. We did our wait list, very successful launch, and then I noticed that Kate on Instagram was using ManyChat, and I thought she was doing it really well.
Zach Spuckler:
Like, I was just intrigued by it. Right? And so the next thing I did was I bought her training on Instagram and Instagram engagement strategy, specifically for ManyChat. Right? It wasn't like how to grow your Instagram account. It was how to make sales via Instagram with many chat and strategic reels. And I was like, that's exactly what I'm looking for. And here's the nuance of all of this. Because I had done Waitlist Magic, I knew I could trust Kate's content. And 2, they didn't, like there there was no there was no feeling of, I can't believe I also need this.
Zach Spuckler:
Right? Because it was a different problem. Kate hadn't said, like, let me solve your entire world of problems. She said, here's Waitlist Magic. Great. Here's another thing you can do. And so even though they're very interconnected, they're very independent. And that's a big trend that I'm seeing. Also, kudos to Kate because those trainings, you can get through them in, like, a couple hours, which I also love.
Zach Spuckler:
Just like a side note within this trend is that I don't think people are craving content, content, content. They're craving access and results. Right? And we'll talk a little bit more about that as we continue, but people really don't want 40 hours of training. They wanna get the info, the action, and the outcome. All of this really ties into trend number 4, which is what I'm calling true value based support and acknowledgment. So 2020 to 2024 really saw the rise of online one to many education. Right? Especially with what happened, you know, with the the pandemic 2020 to 2021. Everybody was online.
Zach Spuckler:
There was so much opportunity about, like, there was this massive influx of just awareness and and people and consumption of online content. And what I noticed happening is that people were not getting, in some of the programs that they were joining, the level of support that they craved. And one thing that we've done with our membership that I'm I'm really proud of, to be honest, is we've got it down to a system where every morning in our membership, one of our team members goes in and catalogs everything that needs engagement from myself. And then also, we hired a support person, who's an expert in copywriting, Facebook advertising, and marketing, and they come in and answer questions too. And we've also kind of done our best to raise them to a status of expert in the group as well. Right? And what that means is that if you are in our membership and you ask a question, you will have a response, at least an initial response. Maybe we have to go back and forth for a little while, but to get to get clarity, but you will have an initial response within 24 to 48 business hours or less. Typically closer to the 24 hour mark or less.
Zach Spuckler:
And I think that a lot of creators were so excited by the idea of scalability. Oh, I wanna scale. I wanna scale. I wanna scale. That we forget that there's people on the other side of the computer or phone or iPad or tablet or whatever that actually have genuine questions and crave connection with us as the program leader. And so I think that true value based support and acknowledgment is gonna be key. We want people to feel seen, feel heard, and get acknowledged when they ask questions. I'm in a lot of big communities for high ticket, higher ticket, all subjective, I know, but higher ticket courses where I don't see the creator in there a lot.
Zach Spuckler:
I don't see the people getting the support that they need. And I'm gonna even go a step further and say, people are often setting their boundaries in a way that serves them without thinking about their audience. And I know boundaries are important, and I have them. But let me give you a really specific example. I see a lot of people moving over to platforms that don't support their members or students, community platforms or content platforms that are not designed to support people. And I and listen, I'm not saying you need to go out tomorrow and buy all the software to, like, make your products perfect and high touch. And I do think the trend is once you get a couple 100 people into your programs, there's an expectation that it's gonna be quality. So for us, with our membership, we invested in a new membership platform, in the last, 12 to 14 months.
Zach Spuckler:
I don't remember the exact date, but we invested in a new membership platform because a lot of our members were like, there's so much content. It's getting hard to navigate. It's getting hard to search. It's getting hard to use. And so we took that feedback and we acknowledged it, and we upgraded our platform and it cost us a little more, but it creates a better experience. We hired that support person for our membership because people were saying, like, I really need you know, not that anybody actually said this to us, but I could sense and so could my team members that we were going to be overrun with with help requests pretty soon. I also wanna throw this out there that not everything is a pause for coaching in our programs. Now if you run a coaching program, absolutely, fully coach.
Zach Spuckler:
But the other trend that I've seen that I think is is dying off that is part of this new trend is people say things like, my Facebook ad is not working. Why? And the first thing that a lot of people do is they go, well, what's your mindset? Why do you think it's not working? What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? And listen, is there a time and a place to give people the opportunity to self reflect and self coach and get coaching and be coached? Absolutely. What I have noticed is that coaching in the form of asking open ended questions has replaced critical feedback that people need in some in some places. And so when I say true value based support and acknowledgement, it really is 3 pronged. It's when someone needs help, are you actually reaching out and helping them because they're proactively paying for that help? Are you acknowledging them in the way that they need acknowledge? And are you supporting in a way that makes them feel seen and heard? Because if you're not doing those three things, what I truly believe is going to happen is people will just stop seeing value in what you offer. They'll go somewhere else where someone is willing to answer their questions or show up for them or respond to their feedback. Right? So the last trend that I wanna talk about is what I'm calling the trend of net expansion. I'm biased, and I should lead with that.
Zach Spuckler:
I think that in 2025, organic is only gonna get harder. Now there's some weird stuff happening with, like, TikTok and Instagram Reels where it's like, we may see an organic bounce back a little bit on Instagram if video content becomes paramount there. And I think it's getting harder to grow organically. Like, you really have to be intentional with how you grow organically. And what I mean by that is, like, posting on Instagram 5 times a day, making reels, posting on Facebook, sending email. Like, that's not gonna be enough anymore. You're gonna need to do strategic partnerships, content that you maybe pay to play to grow in terms of advertising or sponsorship. You need targeted growth, you need the right people joining your audience.
Zach Spuckler:
It's not just about virality or awareness. And so this trend that I refer to as net expansion is essentially saying your audience needs to always be on the incline. And so if you go into, say, your email CRM system and you look at your subscribers over the time, you want it to be an upward trend. Because all of these other things that we're talking about are directly influenced by is your audience growing. Right? The slow burn. If you don't have the audience growing, who are you building the relationship with? The ecosystem. If you don't have multiple ways to to support people, and that's great, or I'm sorry. If you have multiple ways to support people, that's great.
Zach Spuckler:
But if you don't have the new people coming in, how do you continue to support the ecosystem? If you solve specific problems, that's gonna help you see net growth. But if you don't put those specific problem solving in front of new people, people can't buy from you. Your your value based content, maybe that's a little more ancillary, but the big thing is that you need to be growing all the time. I am a firm believer that in 2025, if your audience growth is not a net positive, if you're stagnant, you will fizzle. You will burn that audience out. You will tap out your warm audience faster in 2025 than you have in years past. And so my solution for that is to be totally candid. You're gonna be shocked by this if you're a listener of the show.
Zach Spuckler:
Facebook and Instagram ads, you need to grow your audience. For me, it's Facebook and Instagram ads because it's predictable and it's manageable. I'm recording this on Monday, December 16th, and over the last week, we've added over 750 leads to our CRM, which is Kit. I should say ESP, email service provider, which is Kit, through Facebook ads over the last week. And that's the last 7 days. Over the last 14 days, we've done about 1400 new subscribers. And I share those numbers with you not to be like, you need to go out there and add a 1,000 people to your list, you know, every 2 weeks. I just want you to understand that I'm not saying this like, hey, I teach Facebook ads.
Zach Spuckler:
You should do it. Like, this is what we're doing. This is where I see the industry going. It's like, you've gotta be willing to put a little resource into it. And I'm not gonna lie. Maybe you don't have a big budget to run ads. Maybe it's only $5 or $10 a day. But I am a firm believer that if you're seeing net growth of your email list specifically, you're going to see net growth of everything.
Zach Spuckler:
And and I feel that because I'm seeing net growth of everything. I'm seeing my students seeing net growth, and it is a process that growing your audience only benefits you. Right? Reaching new people is only a benefit to you. Okay? So these are the big trends that we're seeing. Trend number 1 is that slow burn. You gotta create that long term relationship. Trend number 2, the ecosystem. Having a mix of offer prices and entry points is gonna support your business as a whole.
Zach Spuckler:
Trend number 3 is specific problem solving. Don't especially if you're just getting started, try to make the $3,000 Everything But the Kitchen Sink course. Trend number 4 is true value pay support and acknowledgement, so your students feel seen, heard, and supported. And trend number 5 is net expansion. You've gotta always be growing the audience. And and I truly believe if you're not growing, you're you're fizzling. So I hope you got a lot of value from this episode. I'd love to hear from you what you're most excited about in 2025.
Zach Spuckler:
If you want to message me over on Instagram, I'm @zachspuckler. I'll also link that up in the show notes if you wanna check it out. But, yeah, I I just see so much potential in 2025. These are not things to be scared of. These are things to embrace and be excited for. If you want a recap of the show, you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com/nyap058. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyp058. For Not Your Average Podcast, episode number 85. We'll have a transcript over there, show notes, recap.
Zach Spuckler:
And I wanna leave you with this, things change. Things ebb and flow. Business is not static. It is ever changing. And so if you feel a little daunted or overwhelmed, you're like, oh my gosh, these are so many moving pieces. That's okay. That's okay. It's okay to feel that way.
Zach Spuckler:
But and let's pay attention to the trends, lean into them, leverage them, and get the best results we can for ourselves and our customers. I hope you have an incredible rest of your day, week, month, and safe to say year as we close out the year. And, yeah, I know this is gonna be a big year for us, and I'm excited for it to be a big year for you too. So until next time, stay not so average.
