7 online sales strategies for creators who hate selling

You love coming up with new ideas. Creating new products fires you up. The idea of growing your own business gets you out of bed in the morning.

But then you remember you have to actually sell what you create. You deflate, and self-doubt creeps in.

“Sure, they can effortlessly promote their products, but I just come across as annoying and salesy.”

We’ve all been there. Selling is hard.

But the truth is that you can find ways to sell products without feeling like a sell-out. There are online sales strategies that feel more subtle and relaxed without compromising on sales or your brand ethos.

Don’t believe us?

Follow along as we share sales insights from real creators and show you a 7-step formula to become more confident with your online sales strategy.

1. Educate your audience

Show don’t tell. We’ve heard the advice before, but it doesn’t hurt to hear it again. If you’re uncomfortable telling people about your amazing product, show them what you know and how you teach it.

Educating your audience makes you an authority on a topic in their eyes, and the key to making this strategy work for sales is subtly working your products or services in.

For example, when you share a tip on social media, you can mention that it’s a step you use all the time with clients.

Or, your educational blog posts can link to your paid products. Letting the promotion be an accessory to your message—instead of the main event—lowers the pressure for everyone.

Automated email sequences are a great place to educate your audience, but there are plenty of ways to do it, like:

• Adding your most popular blog posts to your welcome emails
• Creating a series of blog posts for a deep dive into a topic
• Recording a podcast or video sharing your experience or how you solved a problem
• Offering quick tips on social media

Example of Marie Poulin’s educational welcome email

Use welcome emails to share your best content since they’re the first impression for new subscribers.

Marie Poulin, a Notion pro who teaches digital business owners, includes links to free templates in her welcome email. Sharing free resources lets Marie help new subscribers right away, and it ties in perfectly with her paid Notion templates.

2. Leverage social proof

Another way to sell without feeling salesy is to let others promote them for you through social proof.

Sharing customer testimonials helps potential customers feel good about choosing you. According to Wyzowl, “9 out of 10 people say they trust what a customer says about a business more than what that business says about itself.”

If you have permission to share about past clients, you can also include their names or logos as credentials.

Another way to add credibility to your content is by sharing the publications that featured your work. You can add social proof to your website, landing pages, sales pages, pop-ups, social media profiles, and newsletters.

Example of Jay Clouse’s social proof

Adding social proof to your sales pitches can help you feel less alone in your claims. It’s a bit like saying, “See, it isn’t just me that thinks this is great!”

Jay Clouse, a content creator who helps professional creators through courses and a community, includes social proof in sales pitch messages.

A customer quote and picture helps people connect to their peers, and stats about how many people have already bought give you a little bit of FOMO.

Use Senja with Kit to display testimonials like Jay

If you like how Jay Clouse embedded social proof into a sales email, you can do the same thing with Senja and Kit. Senja helps you collect, manage, and showcase social proof to wow your audience.

Senja and Kit seamlessly integrate to help you start collecting social proof from your subscribers:

• Log into your Senja and Kit accounts
• Install your Senja app to connect Senja to Kit
• Select testimonials to embed directly into your Kit email broadcasts
• Automate social proof collection and management, which is ready for use in your Kit email campaigns

Add Senja to your Kit and let your testimonials shine.

3. Provide consistent value

It takes time to build relationships with subscribers, but when you do, you’ll be able to promote products without being pushy.

Providing consistent value pays off in the long run, and it feels more organic along the way.

I would love my email subscribers to buy things from me, but I would rather them respect me and three years from now buy a $2,500 product three years from now rather than harass them today so they spend $50 and then immediately unsubscribe.

– Dorie Clark

You can provide consistent value by creating relevant content upgrades for popular blog posts, providing free templates and guides for subscribers, running an email list challenge, and maintaining an engaging newsletter.

Example of Dorie Clark’s evergreen newsletter

Dorie Clark, an author and coach who teaches more than 70,000 people how to advance their careers, uses an evergreen newsletter to connect with subscribers consistently.

An evergreen newsletter is a sequence you set up once and continually add onto instead of creating a new newsletter each week.

Evergreen newsletters take the pressure off you to create new emails all the time, let every subscriber get the same great content, and deliver value before you pitch a high-ticket offer.

4. Emphasize storytelling

People have been sharing stories for tens of thousands of years, and it’s one the most ‘tried and true’ ways to connect that there is.

In creator businesses, storytelling is a way to frame information to draw people in and make your content engaging.

For example, instead of simply sharing what strategy you use, you can add how you came up with it and why you keep going back to it. Storytelling is a skill you can improve with practice (like with these writing exercises) and then use in your client success stories, ‘about me’ page, newsletters, and blog posts.

Example of Katelyn Bourgoin’s storytelling

Katelyn Bourgoin, founder of the Why We Buy newsletter and co-author of Wallet-Opening Words, is all about storytelling. More specifically, she’s all about buyer psychology, which goes hand-in-hand with storytelling.

Rather than just sharing the principles behind successful marketing, she sets them up with a story that draws readers in while giving a practical example of the strategy.

Use Lex to improve your writing process

If you want a little help during the writing process, Lex, an AI writing assistant, can help.

Instead of run-of-the-mill ideas or drafts from other AI tools, Lex studies your past Kit newsletters and subject lines to learn your style. That way, you can quickly whip up an email draft or subject line ideas that sound like something you would have written from scratch.

Here’s how Lex works seamlessly with Kit:

• Connect Lex to your Kit account for a clean, distraction-free writing space
• Feed Lex the key points for your next newsletter
• Watch as it crafts a draft in your voice, based on your writing history

Once the draft is ready, Lex sends it back to your Kit account so you can polish it and hit send.

Add Lex to your Kit and start creating content that’s unmistakably you.

 

 

5. Incorporate CTAs naturally in your content

Call-to-action (CTAs) don’t always have to be a grand and obvious finale. Instead, you can sprinkle them naturally throughout your newsletters or blog posts.

For example, you can mention an upcoming webinar and link the text to the signup page instead of using a bold CTA button. Or, you can reference your coaching community in passing while sharing a story in your newsletter.

Even if you’re upfront about the CTA, you can try different language to feel less salesy, like:

• ‘Get started’ instead of ‘Sign up now’
• ‘Claim your spot’ instead of ‘Buy a membership’
• ‘Start learning’ instead of ‘Download the guide’

Example of Carrie Olsen’s CTA placements

Carrie Olsen, a voice actor and voiceover coach, uses conversational emails to help students and promote paid products.

In an email about paid group coaching sessions, she takes on the role of helpful coach instead of salesperson by asking people to ‘let her know which session(s)’ they want to attend.

The natural CTA is linked in the text and used in the CTA button, and she lets them know that once they choose, she’ll send them all the details.

6. Cultivate relationships and a feeling of community

People may prefer supporting and working with people they know and like over total strangers, so work to build relationships.

Respond to comments, ask subscribers to respond to emails with questions, and poll them about their interests and goals. The more trust and goodwill you build, the less it’ll feel like you’re pushing them to buy.

Example of Amanda Goetz’s relationship-building

Amanda Goetz, a high-performance coach and creator of the Life’s a Game newsletter, regularly asks subscribers to reply to the email with questions.

Letting subscribers know you’re available to answer questions or hear ideas lets them know you want to help them—not just sell to them.

Use Thermostat to get to know your audience better

Asking your audience to respond to emails and social posts starts conversations, but you need surveys to quantify how your community feels overall.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys gauge audience satisfaction, and you can easily poll your audience with Thermostat.

Here’s how to integrate Thermostat with Kit and start collecting audience feedback today:

• Log in to Thermostat and Kit accounts
• Install the Thermostat app
• Embed NPS surveys in your Kit emails by syncing both platforms
• Track survey responses and analyze audience sentiment directly from your Kit account

Take your audience’s temperature with the Thermostat app.

7. Use email marketing strategically

Email marketing is the ultimate online sales strategy for people who hate selling because you can be intentional about who receives which messages and at what time.

Instead of pushing your new course over and over on social media, you can pick and choose who gets the message with email automations.

For example, you could offer a pre-sale discount to people who have already bought something in exchange for a review. Then, you can turn those reviews into social proof you embed in pitch emails to subscribers who have shown interest in the course topic.

If someone checks out the sales page from your email but doesn’t buy, you can follow up with another email automation.

Add Kitboard to expand your sales strategy even further

The more relevant your sales emails are, the less they feel like sales emails.

Kitboard helps you make sense of your sales process so you can create emails that fit with your subscribers’ journeys. It’s a CRM extension that lets you see your entire sales journey at a glance, track conversions, jot down key details for each prospect, and send follow-up emails that keep the conversation flowing and deals closing.

Here’s how to integrate Kitboard with Kit and start managing your client / customer relationships like a creator who means business:

• Log in to both Kitboard and Kit accounts.
• Install the Kitboard app.
• Sync your Kit tags to visualize the sales journey through Kitboard.
• Use Kitboard to track customer interactions and improve follow-ups within your Kit workflows.

Add Kitboard to your Kit and scale your sales.

Make sales without the guilt with Kit

Putting yourself out there can be scary, but online sales strategies focusing on connection and relevance make it feel more natural for everyone involved.

When you bring the ideas, Kit can help you sell with:

• Features like landing pages, email automations, and payment processing to create a sales process that’s easy to use (and looks professional)
• Integrations with apps like Mighty Networks, Teachable, and Shopify to make managing your business and content simple
• Apps like Senja, Lex, and Kitboard that help you learn about and connect with your audience so selling feels casual