Strategies for Selling Digital Teacher Professional Development

Starting an education consulting business is not easy. You have worked hard to start your consulting business, you’ve taken risks, and you’ve learned so many new things.

But after the excitement of traveling all of the time for clients wears off, you’re stuck trading time for money and now it’s wearing on you because you want to be home and present with your family, you want to monetize the digital PD library you’ve already created, and most of all you want to have some income coming in consistently.

How do I know all this? Because I am exactly where you are too.

I was a high school math intervention teacher, Algebra 1 teacher, and a district instructional coach before founding my own consulting business, CollaboratEd Consulting. Since 2018, I have loved working with schools, districts, and state departments of education across the US, but I lost the desire to travel out of state for my consulting clients after my daughters were born. Over the years I have grown more and more determined to figure out how to sell my digital PD courses directly to teachers through funnels in order to give myself more freedom and flexibility. 

Now I have grown my email list to over 17,000 engaged secondary math teachers, have sold over $180k in digital professional development, and haven’t traveled for a client out of state in over two years. It’s time to share my secrets and help other education consultants achieve more freedom and flexibility. 

I’ve been getting serious about sales funnels to sell my digital PD courses since 2022 and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve spent $51,623.57 on Facebook Ads. I’ve spent over $7,164 on my marketing coaching for me and my business. But I’ve also made over $181,634 with my digital PD sales. Without traveling out of state and without constantly trading time for money.

So how did I do it? How do I sell my digital teacher professional development? Let’s dig in.

Four Part Strategy For Selling Digital Teacher Professional Development

Think of selling your digital teacher PD course as a giant puzzle. Now I know there are four pieces of the digital PD puzzle:

• Part 1: Your Mini Workshop
• Part 2: Your Facebook Ads
• Part 3: Your Offer
• Part 4: Your Evergreen Funnel

The most successful way to market and sell your digital PD is by using a sales funnel. If you don’t know what a sales funnel is, you now have some required reading: Expert Secrets, by Russel Brunson. This book combined with my business and marketing coach taught me everything I needed to know to get my digital teacher PD course profitable. Expert Secrets is a foundational text for this whole process, but let’s dig in a bit more to each part.

Part 1: Your Mini Workshop

You need a free mini workshop to share with teachers so that others can know, like, and trust you. In Expert Secrets this is called the “Perfect Webinar.” I have followed the outline from the book to a T and it has made for a successful launch of my digital teacher PD workshops every single time. Here's the gist, but you really need to read the whole book: identify three "secrets" you can share that will help people learn about you, your workshop, and walk away with some tangible tips. After you reveal your three secrets you will offer the audience a chance to register for your paid digital teacher PD. The key with a free mini-workshop is that you need to provide value, but you can’t overwhelm the teachers watching. As former teachers we love to give, give, give and we shy away from selling. But giving a ton of information or resources on a free 45 minute mini-workshop isn’t actually helpful, it’s just overwhelming for the teachers watching. You’ll need to find the balance between giving value and not overwhelming your audience. It’s a delicate balance, but with practice, you’ll find your groove.  

Part 2: Your Facebook Ads

Education consultants often ask me if Facebook ads are essential for a successful sales funnel and to sell digital Professional Development. The answer is yes. If you build it, they will NOT come. You must advertise your free mini workshop to as many teachers as possible and that means you need paid ads. Sure you can post on social media, but unless you already have 10k instagram followers, you need paid ads. If you choose to skip paid ads you can absolutely still launch your digital PD courses for teachers, however you have to lower your expectations of how much money you’ll actually make. 

With a live launch you can expect a conversion rate of turning registrants into paid customers at 5-10%

• Registrants for free mini workshop: 1,000 
• Cost of digital PD workshop: $97
• 5%-10% = 50-100 teachers will register
• $4,850 - $9,700 during your open cart period

So the question is how do you fill up your sales funnel (your free mini workshop) with 1,000 teachers? I’ll tell you right now, instagram alone won’t do it. You need paid ads. Make sure you download my FREE guide: 10 Strategies to Start or Scale Your Digital PD Business to get more specifics on getting started with Facebook ads! Many of my education consultant friends have launched their digital PD exactly as I laid out here, but skipped the facebook ads. Did they sell some workshops? Yes! Did they sell as many as they’d hoped? Sadly, no. It’s extremely difficult to create a profitable digital PD biz without Facebook ads.

I also realize Facebook ads are scary. They are overwhelming, the ads manage page looks like the worst excel spreadsheet ever, and there always seem to be little red and yellow alerts popping up at you all the time. Like I said earlier, I’ve spent $51,623.57 on Facebook Ads over the last five years and I’ve learned a thing or two. If you want to walk through Facebook Ads together, add a time to my calendar for a one on one biz coaching call. You can totally do this.

Part 3: Your Offer

Learn what to focus on and what to avoid so that your sales page and sales emails convert free mini-workshop participants into paid PD registrants. At the end of your mini-workshop you will present your offer or your registration page for your digital PD. The world of education is used to really boring workshop registration forms, but if you’re looking to grow and scale your digital PD business by marketing directly to teachers, boring workshop registration forms is not going to cut it. You need to lead with emotion even though we’re talking about professional development. Make sure you’ve checked out my blog post, 3 Marketing Strategies for Education Consultants, for helpful tips on what to include and what to skip with your offer positioning. 

Also part of your offer are your sales emails and “open cart” registration period. I highly recommend your open cart period is 3-7 days and that you send at least one email a day during that period. Yes, you should open and close your registration period or incentivize registration during a specific period with a discount or bonus. People need a reason to make a purchase decision, it’s just the way we humans operate. 

I know many education consultants have a library of recorded teacher PD just waiting to be sold. You already have the offer done, you’re so close to monetizing it. Make sure your sales page is leading with emotion and make sure you’re following the 4 part process laid out in this post. 

Part 4: Your Evergreen Funnel

Lastly, education consultants are seeking some consistent income. The consistent income from digital teacher PD comes when you master the sales funnel then run it 24/7 with an evergreen funnel. Yes, it requires one additional tech piece (I share all the tech you need in the FREE guide: 10 Strategies to Start or Scale Your Digital PD Business), but it is so worth it. Mastering an evergreen funnel is what allowed me to make $22,230 over the summer while I played full time with my daughters (to be transparent I spent $6,559.87 on facebook ads too). But consistent income over the summer, when that is a time education consultants typically make $0 because we’re not getting hired for PD at that time, takes a huge load off financially. 

You’ll take your same mini-workshop, but record it with evergreen urgency, the same sales page, the same sales emails, and watch your evergreen funnel come to life! You’ll need to fuel the funnel with Facebook ads, blog posts, social media, and more, but this is where consistency becomes a reality. 

Next Steps

There is no doubt that it takes time to learn and set up your funnel. However, the payoff is so worth it in my opinion. For the 23-24 school year (roughly August 13 to May 18) I made $54,417.60 from my digital products alone. 

That’s about $500 shy of what I was making my final year in the classroom in Colorado (in 2018) and doesn't include my actual consulting, speaking, or purchase order income! This graph is JUST my digital PD and digital products that I sell on my website. This particular school year (23-24) I had just had a baby in May of 2023 and she was home with me full time until she started daycare in April 2024. I am forever grateful for the time I had at home with my daughter and not traveling out of state for clients while still bringing in this consistent income for my family. The spikes you see are live launches, which follow the Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 plan in this post, but the rest is all evergreen (Part 4). 

If you're ready to start or scale your digital PD courses, download my FREE guide, 10 Strategies for Starting & Scaling Your Digital PD Business. It's literally my blueprint for how I've monetized my online teacher trainings.