Congratulations! You’ve decided to create an online course and sell it on a course-selling platform. That’s great news! But now you need to promote your product and market it so people will buy it from you. In this article, we’ll cover everything from analyzing competitive products to better understanding what works and doesn’t work within different areas of course marketing:
- Creating a social media strategy
- Optimizing copywriting elements like titles and descriptions
- Writing killer lessons/videos
- Creating infographics
- Using user-generated content (UGC) within marketing strategies
- Starting up wait lists
- Launching pre-launch campaigns
- …And much more
1. Outline your target audience
Creating a target audience is an essential part of marketing your online course. It allows you to show what you think will appeal to those interested in taking your course.
Working with data and defining who will be interested in your course can help you find your target audience. There are many ways to do this:
- Using surveys or polls (Google Forms) with questions like “What topics interest you?” or “How long have you been studying [topic]?” You can also use these findings to define further what topics could interest them.
- Reviewing social media accounts or websites where students typically post their work or share their passions; will give insight into what they’re interested in learning about!
2. Start a waitlist and create anticipation.
Once you’ve published your course, create a waitlist to generate interest and get people excited about the launch date. People interested in taking the course can sign up for the waitlist, but they won’t be able to purchase it until the launch date. This is a great way to engage in course marketing and build anticipation! You can use social media posts and other marketing channels to let potential students know there is an option for them if they want to access it immediately after launch day.
3. Analyze the competition
There are a few ways you can do this. First, look at your competition’s homepage and landing pages. What is the flow of their website? What information do they include on those pages? Are there any holes in their content that you could fill?
Next, check out what courses other instructors have taught similar subject matter to yours.
- How many students have enrolled in those courses?
- What percentage of students completed the course successfully (and what were the completion rates)?
- Do they have testimonials or reviews from past students?
If so, read through them carefully and see if these would make good additions to your own course marketing website. If you find something interesting about one of your competitors’ websites or marketing techniques (good or bad), consider incorporating it into your own site design and sales copy!
4. Optimize your course title and description
The title and description of your course are the first things potential students will see, so they’re worth considering.
Your title should be catchy and descriptive, but don’t go overboard with keywords or phrases. Using too many keywords can look spammy and turn people off from buying your course.
The description should be short enough to be easily read at a glance but detailed enough to understand the value of what you’re offering. Include a call-to-action phrase like “buy now” in bold text somewhere near the end of it so that anyone interested knows exactly what he or she needs to do next (or else risk losing them).
While it doesn’t have to appear on all platforms, mentioning monetary value has been shown by studies such as this one conducted by Hubspot to convert potential customers into sales.
5. Write a killer course summary
A course summary is a brief description of your online course. It should include the topic, target audience, and main learning outcomes of your course.
A great way to start writing a killer summary is by developing an elevator pitch. This will help you create a clear message that summarizes what you’re teaching and why someone should take it. Since you get only a few seconds during an elevator ride to impress someone enough so they buy into what you’re offering, keep this in mind when creating your elevator pitch.
- Don’t overcomplicate things
- Focus on benefits instead of features (what will it do for them?)
- Use language familiar to their industry
6. Include a well-written course curriculum
The course curriculum is a great place to start when writing your course description. This section should include an overview of the topics covered in the course and how they relate to each other. It’s also essential to give students an idea of what they can expect from your course; this includes what time commitment is involved, whether or not there are prerequisites for taking the class, and other information that can help them decide if it’s right for them.
Suppose you have created or purchased any supporting materials for your online course (which we highly recommend). In that case, it may be useful to link directly to those documents here so that students can download or read through them before deciding whether or not this class is right for them.
7. Include a demo lesson/video
A preview lesson is a video or text, usually about two to four minutes long, that gives potential students an overview of your course. A good preview lesson should answer the following questions:
- What will I learn from this course?
- How is it different from other courses?
- Why should I take this course instead of or in addition to others?
- What teaching techniques are incorporated?
8. Add an online course marketing infographic to your page.
This is a great way to summarize your course and give an overview of what your students will learn. You can include a link to your course landing page or make it easy for people to learn more about your online course’s content.
It’s also a good idea to include a call-to-action in this section, such as “Sign up today!” or “Learn more about our courses here.”
You should also try adding an infographic that visually summarizes all the key points from your product page. This can help make it easier for visitors who only scan through content on their phone or tablet screen.
9. Incorporate user-generated content into your marketing strategy
User-generated content is the best kind of content. It’s authentic, helpful, and reinforces your audience’s trust in your brand. That being said, there are a few ways to incorporate user-generated content into your marketing strategy.
For example, if you’ve ever seen an Instagram account that has an extensive list of users who made their following up by tagging themselves or sharing their own posts from other people’s accounts, then you’ve already seen how user-generated content can be used in marketing!
User-generated content is also great for engaging with your community on social media channels like Facebook or Instagram. You could ask people to share pictures of themselves learning from your course or doing something fun related to it (like having lunch together). Or you could even run a contest where users win prizes for creating the most entertaining video about using what they learned from taking one of your courses!
10. Create a social media strategy
Social media is an excellent way to build your brand, drive traffic to your website and promote your courses. Social media is the perfect platform for you if you want a personal brand around your niche and to sell courses related to that niche.
Next, create a course marketing strategy for using social media to promote and market your online course on a course-selling platform. For instance:
- Create a Facebook page or group so that people can subscribe, share or comment on what they see as valuable information related to the topic of the online course (e.g., ‘Learn how I grew my Instagram following by 500% in one month.’
- Create profiles on Instagram and Twitter so that people who like/follow them will know when they release new content explicitly related to their audience’s needs (e.g., ‘Check out our latest video where we show exactly how easy it was for us!’).
With these tips, you can make your course more visible and promote it on a course-selling platform. The more effort you put into marketing your online course, the better your chance of getting sales. Start building and promoting your course on Wise today!
