How I'd grow Learn from a Chef

Learn from a Chef is a website that allows you to book remote cooking lessons with top chefs. You gather online and you cook together under their guidance.

There are a variety of classes you can choose from. Each one is around one hour long and has a 10 student cap.

The instructors’ bios make it clear that the line-up is exceptional. These aren’t just random chefs.

This is the real deal here, and the value proposition should be immediately clear. There are plenty of online cooking lessons, but how many are taught by Michelin-star chefs?

The homepage doesn’t do this line up justice. I’d absolutely add an explainer video that briefly introduces the chefs to communicate this superior value!

It’s also too short and lacks important sections: how it works, testimonials, some multimedia, etc.

First, I’d increase LTV. I’d create a guided path with a goal, not just a single lesson.

For example, a series of 5 lessons divided by topics (learn to cook desserts) or by levels (cooking for total beginners), or something else (best dishes with basic ingredients).

I’d also try to maximize the conversion rate of the existing traffic. It’ll likely be low since the website is new.

The visitor may not be ready to book the first time they land on the site. I’d get their email by offering a lead magnet before they leave and forget about it.

First, they should research their target personas and understand their needs.

Maybe it’s young professionals who haven’t cooked their own meals before? If so, a lead magnet could be: “3 easy video lessons to create delicious dishes for beginners stuck at home.”

Once when the audience has realized the lessons are useful, they’ll be warm enough to make an offer to.

With a simple funnel like this, the conversion rate will be much higher. It sure beats hoping that random visitors will convert straight away on their first visit.

For customer acquisition, I’d try to create a word-of-mouth campaign.

I’d invite participants to take a virtual selfie with the chef and their dish, and post it on social tagging or mentioning Learn from a Chef.

Posting a pic with a famous chef to brag? Of course they’d do it.

To take word of mouth further, I’d use micro influencers. They’re people with 5-25k followers and a passionate community who listens to them.

This is a good choice when you are on a budget. Unlike big ones, they often accept just free products (e.g. a series of lessons).

Pro tip: be careful. There are communities called “pods” where people exchange likes & comments to inflate their engagement rates.

How can you spot them? Check the profiles in the comments. If the vast majority of them are from other influencers, that’s a red flag.

Social media is one of the most important channels that Learn from a Chef could leverage to drive signups. But how to do it on a budget?

I’d implement this low effort/high impact solution: turn some cooking lessons into short clips, and post them on social as teasers.

These could do great on Instagram and YouTube. Why these 2 in particular? They have good organic reach, so you can get new followers without ads.

As long as you have good, engaging content, IG’s explore tab and YT’s recommended videos can drive a lot of free traffic.

SEO is a long play but it’s never too late to start. They lack content so priority #1 should be to add more pages targeting long tail keywords.

It’s a tough niche, but they have an advantage: they can add videos to content. Other blogs can’t do the same.

Priority #2 is link building. No matter how good your content is, you need links to stand a chance.

They have a big opportunity: it’s for a good cause, and a super newsworthy topic. Outreach to industry magazines and blogs using this angle could lead to great results.

These tactics cost 0. But if they have a budget, I recommend ads to scale things.

If I could only do 1 thing it’d be using FB ads to retarget. This is the low hanging fruit of online advertising, and it grants a good ROAS.

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