Creating online courses allows you to teach people around the world and get compensated for it at the same time. This is why it’s not surprising that so many content creators want to give it a shot. However, a lot of them are unsure where to begin or how to market an online course when it’s launched.
Like any other service or product, your online course has a target audience it would address. You can develop, expand, and maintain your marketing campaign across all relevant digital platforms.
Channels like social media, online directories, and even paid ads can help you boost your online visibility and significantly grow the reach of your course.
Selling online courses is not as daunting as you’d think, especially if you have the right tools and know the best practices.
In this article, we will teach you how to market online courses and how to boost your sales through the next year and beyond!
What to consider before making an online course
Before you even start making course content, it’s important to consider things that will make it easier to market your online class.
Course topic
You’ll need to start by considering what your course is about. It can be helpful to look at current trends in both the education and business worlds. For example, if you’re a web developer, you might want to make a course teaching people how to use ReactJS.
However, don’t just choose a topic because it’s popular. You’ll also want to make sure you’re knowledgeable and passionate about the subject. This will come across when you’re marketing your course and make it more likely that people will buy from you.
Course format
It’s also a good idea to consider the format of your online courses. For example, do you want to use video, audio, or text? Or a combination of all three? Each has its benefits and drawbacks.
For example, video courses are great for showing off your personality and engaging with your audience. However, they can be more expensive to produce than audio or text-based courses.
Additional things to consider before creating an online course:
What to remember when creating an online course?
Do market research – is there a demand for the content you’re offering?
Check out the competition – are there aspects of your topic that competition didn’t cover?
Audience research – who would be interested in the knowledge you convey in your course?
A solution to the problem – what kind of pain points does your course address?
You should have those questions hammered out before creating your online course curriculum. You don’t have to change your entire course, just make some little changes. Once you’ve considered all of these factors, you’ll be ready to launch your online course!
How to promote an online course
With your online course ready, we can move on to creating the possible marketing strategy for launch of your product!
Promoting an online course is easier than you would expect. You can use a mix of digital marketing techniques to generate leads and increase conversions.
The important thing is to be creative, personalize your content, focus on the audience’s needs, and establish trust with potential students.
Below you’ll find a list of the best ways to promote your online class:
1. Create a course sales page
There are many ways to promote an online course. One way is to create a landing page for the course that includes information about the benefits of taking the course.
You can also include a sign-up form on the landing page so that people can register for the course.
The landing page is the most important part of your online course marketing strategy.
Having a simple but aesthetically pleasing sales page is where you direct everyone interested in your class.
Your sales page should include:
- online course title
- online course description
A catchy title is important for any product, including an online course. The name of your course should be short but tell exactly what the course content will be.
Remember to use keywords that people would search for when looking for an online course like yours. It will help your course website appear higher in search engines.
In the search engine, such as Google, you would enter the keywords “how to design logos in Adobe Photoshop” or something similar.
Write a compelling course description that clearly expresses the advantages of taking your online course. Speak to the result you want your target audience to attain and how it will benefit them.
You may want to pay a professional copywriter to write your description. Also, make sure that your description contains relevant keywords and phrases to rank higher in search results for those terms.
Other important parts of a great course page are:
About page: Go into more detail about who you are and how you can help your prospective students solve their problems. Describe your mission and your goals. You can also add your credentials and achievements to support your mission description.
Contact page: For a great contact page:
- Make sure the target audience can get in touch with you.
- If possible, offer multiple methods of reaching you, such as a contact form and email address.
- Don’t forget to add your social media handles to establish your social media presence.
Product pages: If you decide to create multiple online courses, you’ll need a product page for every product you offer. Eventually, you can also use product pages to sell courses online in bundles. So having sales pages ready for them will pay out big time!
After setting up your page, you should link it everywhere you can. You can even set up a blog and track website visitors for further marketing actions with your website.
2. Add your course page to your website
If you already have a website, make sure to promote your course there. Chances are your website already has some organic traffic and authority you can leverage.
Place a link to that page on your website’s main menu so that people can quickly locate it and learn more about your course.
Include a link to your course’s sales page on that page, or else include a link to your course’s purchase page so they may learn more about it and consider whether they want to buy it.
3. Start a blog
When you set up a website and have your course page, you should add a blog.
Regularly publishing free content related to your course topic makes your blog a great place to promote your course.
If you write about the same subject as the topic of your course, every person who reads your blog is a prospective student for your class.
Plus, if you’ve already created an online course you won’t run out of blog post ideas!
Blogging about your online course topic can also make your website more discoverable through organic search.
With a few SEO marketing strategies, you can rank higher in search engines with keywords related to your course’s topic.
A blog post has more written content than a course description; hence its SEO value is higher.
Consider writing a few blog posts connected to your course, and don’t forget about a Call to Action. Link your course sales page to direct people the right way.
4. Offer free resources to generate leads for your course
Setting up a blog or a YouTube channel is a great way to give people some free educational recourses.
It will provide an overview of your online course, and it can encourage your audience to make a purchase.
Free recourses are great lead magnets. Lead magnets are used to attract the attention of prospects and get them to sign up for your email list. Then, you can send them emails about your online course once they’ve signed up.
Resources such as white papers, exclusive webinars, and e-books are great samples of what your course includes and make great lead magnets.
Conversion rates from direct traffic to your website won’t be that high. Sometimes as little as 1% of website visitors convert into paying customers.
However, with the right lead magnet, you can not only convert those 20 leads a month but also any other leads that sign up for your email list.
The best lead magnet is created specifically for your audience. Lead magnets should be simple, specific, and offer value to prospects.
To create a great lead magnet, you’ll need to go back to audience research and what your prospective customers want. What kind of solution to their problems can you offer?
Then you come up with a lead-generating system. But, again, it’s crucial to remember that each group of customers will have its own set of concerns.
Be sure to cater to each audience segment and develop multiple lead magnets.
When people see the value of your knowledge, they will be more likely to purchase a full product.
You can even create a free mini-course that will offer a teaser of the topics you would further expand in your online class. Creating a mini-course can also be a great way to pre-sell your online course.
If you plan the mini-course the right way, you will convince students that there’s still a lot to learn from them. And from there, selling your online course will be easy!
5. Use email marketing
Most consumers require multiple interactions with a business before making a purchase. This is why having an email list is so important.
You may build trust with your audience by offering them helpful tips and advice on your topic over time if they are subscribed to your email newsletter.
Eventually, promoting your course to them, they’re more likely to buy it because you’ve already given them value before asking for the sale.
You’ll need to send timely emails to keep engaged with your email subscribers until they buy your course if you use email automation.
You may build an email flow that sends emails based on various events depending on your email marketing campaign.
6. Create a free email course
As a part of your email marketing strategy, you can take one of the lessons from your online course. Then, turn it into a free mini-course as a series of emails.
You can use this tactic to expand your main course’s email list of potential students.
Encourage your students to register for your course by directing them to your sales page after your free email course. You may also send them to a webinar where you advertise your primary course.
7. Set up an affiliate program
Having an affiliate program is a fantastic marketing tactic, especially for online courses.
When you approach prominent bloggers in your field, ask them if they would review your course. A positive review from a well-known blog connected to your topic might significantly boost the number of people who enroll in it.
If you want a blogger to review your course, offer them free access for a public review on their blog.
Then, you can offer to include them in your affiliate program. They will earn a commission whenever someone reads their review and decides to purchase your course through their affiliate link.
However, you shouldn’t leave things up to fate and hope that affiliates will find you. You should be proactive.
If you know of any bloggers who have audiences that would likely purchase your course reach out to them. Ask them if they would like to check out your course and promote it as an affiliate.
8. Start a YouTube channel
YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the entire world. There are millions of people searching for tutorials on YouTube daily. Sometimes, videos can even rank higher than websites in the search results of numerous search engines.
If you feel like you’re up to it, you can start a YouTube channel dedicated to your course topic and produce useful videos regularly. In the description area of your video, include a link to your website or course.
When you already have your YouTube channel, create a short video to promote your course and publish it on YouTube. You may also make many promotional videos with distinct titles to enhance your course’s visibility.
Include relevant keywords in your video titles and descriptions to help them rank highly for those phrases.
Include a link to your course in the description. Consider placing advertisements for your promotional videos on Facebook or Google if it performs well.
9. Make webinars
Running a regular webinar eliminates the need to search for fresh material all of the time. This is an excellent option for people who dislike podcasts.
You can use your social media channels like Facebook page or group, or YouTube channel to run a webinar.
A webinar usually takes 45-60 minutes with an organized structure. The only thing you have to do is execute your webinar script properly and then ride the wave for a long time afterward.
You might always adjust it over time, increasing its value. You need to cover the subject comprehensively and address pain spots by including a call to action near the conclusion of your online course. You may even use your webinar to promote your product and see how quickly it sells.
You may use the recording of a successful live webinar to sell additional courses after it’s completed. Send an email to those who signed up for your live webinar but didn’t attend, including a link to view the recording.
You may also utilize the recording to create an automated webinar and then sell tickets for recurring payments.
10. Take advantage of social media
Your social media presence is crucial if you want to create awareness about your online course.
You can leverage social media channels in various ways. That’s why we divided them into several segments:
Start and join Facebook groups
Starting a Facebook group devoted to your topic is an excellent method to create a community of individuals who may be potential students for your course.
Running a Facebook group is also beneficial for personal branding since it shows that you are an expert on the subject.
Participating in the discussions on other Facebook groups related to your niche is also important if you want to create awareness around your product.
Create a Facebook page
Maybe you already have a Facebook Page dedicated to your educational actions. You can also set up a separate page for your online course.
Having a Facebook Page can improve your Facebook Page’s search results. You may use a Facebook Page to attract fans to your page so you can share material related to your area of study with them.
Consider hiring a graphic designer to design a professional cover image for your page and include a link to your course in the description. You may also utilize Facebook Ads on your Facebook Page.
Start a LinkedIn group
Similar to a Facebook group, starting a LinkedIn Group centered on your topic is another great way to build a community. Especially if your target audience is professionals, LinkedIn will be a great platform.
It’s also a great platform for professional networking in general. It can lead to speaking engagements, partnership opportunities, client referrals, and more.
As a highly visual social media space, Instagram is less about what you say and more about showcasing your creativity. This doesn’t mean it’s not useful for business purposes; it has a constantly growing user base and a highly engaged community.
Visuals that are bold and can be quickly consumed have become essential marketing weapons, catching your audience’s attention. Instagram is a wonderful platform for demonstrating how to market an internet course for social customers.
Share images and Instagram stories relevant to your course, conduct surveys and Q&A sessions, and link directly to your goods from your photographs and videos.
Consider Twitter to be a sort of blogging. You have only 140 characters with which to express a thought, so you must cut down your phrases to the essential ones.
If you want to build a big audience while interacting with individuals who share your interests and hobbies, you may use Twitter to market your online course.
Buy tweets or Facebook posts
On Fiverr, many sellers will promote your course to their Twitter followers or Facebook fans. You can find sellers with many followers and high ratings from previous clients.
They should ideally have a following that is interested in your course. Ensure they know exactly what to write and include in their blog post. You may even provide them with a specific photograph to use in their article.
Live streams on social media
Live videos are becoming increasingly popular on social media, with Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube making live streams possible. You may utilize these platforms to broadcast live presentations with your fans.
A live video presentation can also be conducted in the same manner that a webinar may be hosted. Plan ahead of time to broadcast a live stream and share some of your greatest material at the end of your presentation.
Live video is a fantastic alternative to webinars, which need additional software.
11. Post your presentation on SlideShare
If you’ve ever used PowerPoint presentations, here comes the next best thing. On SlideShare, you can create more attractive slides and share them with your audience.
SlideShare is presentation software that’s similar to PowerPoint, but it’s hosted on the internet and resembles a flipbook.
Use it to share chunks of information grouped by the same idea, such as listicles, for example, “10 easy ways to boost your content marketing strategy”.
12. Create a sales funnel
A sales funnel directs your target audience from informing them about the product to persuading them to purchase it.
People you’ve never met before are at the top of the funnel. You attract them to your online course through social media, email marketing, blogging, and other internet activities.
The closer a prospect gets to making a purchase, the more likely he or she is to buy. So the next step in the funnel might be impressing prospects with your breadth of knowledge and offering them a free sample to obtain their email addresses.
The shopping cart lies at the bottom of the funnel—the moment of purchase. Email campaigns and calls to action best encourage prospects to buy your course.
Your sales funnel and how you market your online curriculum should be built around the marketing channels that are most effective for your product and audience information.
13. Ask your students for testimonials
If you see other people doing something, you are more inclined to do that yourself. Why? Because of social poof!
Social proof is an important element in a buyer’s decision-making process. People are more likely to buy the product if someone else purchases it.
Prospects want to know if others have bought your course and had a positive experience. That is why testimonials and positive reviews carry so much weight.
Add a few positive reviews to your course sales page from people who have taken your course. If no one has enrolled in your course yet, offer it free to a few people in exchange for a testimonial.
14. Use paid ads
If you can spend money on your marketing strategies, paid ads are a way to go.
There are several major advantages of paid ads:
- you can see results come faster,
- it’s easier to track the success rate of the campaign,
- the ads are targeted at the right audience.
There are several platforms where you can market your online course through paid advertisement:
YouTube Ads
You know it’s filled with ads if you’ve ever used YouTube. It is a great way to promote your online course to people subscribed to your YouTube channel or watch videos related to your course topic. In addition, the ads can target specific geographic areas and demographic criteria.
Facebook Ads
When you create a Facebook page, you can create ads that target people based on their specific demographics, interests, behaviors, and affiliations.
It’s important to remember that Facebook is a social network, so people don’t come there to buy things. If you want to sell them your course, you have to get those people off Facebook and onto your website.
Google Ads
Google Ads are probably the most popular form of paid advertising. The ads can come up in search results for specific keywords related to your topic. So, you just need to know what keywords your target audience uses to search for your topic. This way, you can get your course in front of people as they are searching for similar things.
15. Team up with bloggers and YouTubers
Collaborating with other online instructors is a great marketing move. It opens your product to a new audience and adds educational value.
Find other online instructors who have a similar target audience to yours and cake courses that complement your own.
Consider becoming an affiliate for them, and they can do the same for you. Alternatively, you can create a course together.
16. Guest blogging
When it comes to marketing your online course, guest blogs are underutilized. You’re usually writing a guest post for someone else to publish. The goal here is to get more eyes on your product; therefore, this free content creation is well worth it.
Create and submit articles to other blogs and publications on the internet relevant to your topic. Make sure each website gets a unique piece of work. They don’t want material from other sources, especially not if you already published it elsewhere.
Spend some time learning about popular websites connected to your topic so you may ensure that your work is a suitable fit for the audience. Then, after your essay, include a link to your website or course.
You can usually link to two or more locations, such as your social media accounts, blogs, and sales page. In addition, you may interact with the publisher’s audience in the comments area and build your relationships.
This gets your product in front of audiences that may not have known about your product before.
17. Offer discounts
Who doesn’t love a great discount?
Temporary price promotion is a wonderful way to boost sales for your online course. You may also set your price reductions to coincide with popular holidays like Boxing Day or Black Friday.
It’s more effective to wait for special holidays to reduce your course than to discount it at random and with no apparent cause.
Aside from being a successful digital marketing approach, providing a discount on your online course accomplishes two more goals:
- it generates revenue
- It sets up a mechanism for collecting feedback and testimonials.
These fundamental components may greatly impact the success of your online course. The money earned through this technique can be spent effectively while also learning how to promote your online course.
You may give discounts to customers who join up during your pre-launch period. Getting kids to enroll in this stage aids in generating testimonials that may be used to convert naysayers.
18. Write a press release
After your internet course is complete and ready to use, the objective is to get the word out. A press release is one of the most efficient methods for doing so. In addition, your comments may be used by journalists as source material.
If you take advantage of this chance and target your audience, you’ll be able to pique their interest in your online course. Make sure your press release is compelling enough to stand out among the hundreds of news articles.
19. Participate in forum discussions
To discover forums about your course subject, use Google. Forums are internet communities where people with comparable interests gather and interact with one another.
Participate in the discussions. Be helpful and respond to questions. Pay attention to the questions people ask about your topic regarding their interests.
This is an excellent approach to coming up with course material ideas. However, don’t advertise your course unless you can add value to the forum.
20. Translate your online course to another language
This is a really useful hint that few course creators use. You may efficiently expand your market to millions of other people by adapting your course to another language.
And it’s much easier than you think.
Hire a translator to get your courses operating in a different language rather than sweeping out the old English – Spanish dictionary from high school.
Sites like Upwork or Fiverr let you hire fantastic freelancers who can translate your course for a lower price if you’re working on a budget.
There are also plugins like TranslatePress that may handle the majority of the translation work in a matter of minutes.
Most internet platforms allow you to auto-generate or add custom subtitles for video content. That means you won’t have to record your online course again in a new language.
You simply need to make good subtitles that allow native speakers in other languages the opportunity to enroll in your wonderful course.
21. Create a shorter course and publish it in an online course marketplace
Because of the exposure to hundreds of thousands of possible consumers that already buy courses from online course marketplaces, publishing a class on one can be quite helpful.
However, you’re not limited to selling courses on your own site. You may link to your main website on most online course marketplaces, which is an advantage because they limit you from promoting items and services that sell outside of their marketplace.
A shorter version of your main course may be a fantastic approach to expose you to your target audience and direct visitors to your website, where they can learn more about your main course.
22. Sell online courses using course platforms
The best place to sell your online course is the right course platform.
Selling online courses can be challenging especially with so many platforms available on the market. That’s why we made a list to help you narrow down your choices:
Teachable
With its ease of use and low barrier to entry, Teachable has long been a favorite among online course creators.
An entire course, branding, student data, and course pricing are all up to you.
Teachable pricing starts at $39 per month and includes unlimited courses and students.
Udemy
The Udemy motto is to make education accessible to everyone, and they’re doing a great job of it.
The platform allows you to combine content such as PDF files, PPP slides, and YouTube videos into a holistic and coherent experience.
You can use Udemy’s tools for marketing your course and then having it listed in the Udemy marketplace.
Podia
Podia allows you to create your own digital store for all of your digital content. You may use Podia to build a single digital storefront that offers courses, membership sites, and downloadable products.
The storefront templates are comparable, which is beneficial if you’re feeling confused by a lot of alternatives. You can publish your online course right away or pre-launch to create an email list before releasing it.
Skillshare
With Skillshare, you can make video lectures and class projects for a fee. The classes are recorded ahead of time, with most ranging from 10-15 minutes long.
When you have more than 25 students in your course, you can join the Partner Program and earn cash.
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is an interactive course platform that can make your course even more engaging. In LearnWorlds, you can create an engaging course with quizzes, interactive videos, surveys, and certificates.
You can also easily create a mobile app for your courses with our Mobile App Builder.
Pathwright
Pathwright enables you to create actionable courses to make your content more engaging. The Pathwritgth course creator is also fluid and intuitive.
You can start by building out the outline of your course syllabus, then add specific actions for students to complete.
Uscreen
Uscreen is a great option If you want to organize, brand, publish, monetize and upload your videos in one place.
You may launch your branded apps without any technical skills once you’ve uploaded them. Uscreen also provides live HD streaming and other services that can help you create a community of your own.
Conclusion
There are many ways to promote your online course. For example, you can translate your courses into different languages, add subtitles to videos, publish shorter courses on online course marketplaces, or sell through course platforms.
The most important thing is to make sure your courses are high-quality and offer value to your students. Then, you can create a successful online course that sells itself with little effort.
Don’t forget to include a call-to-action at the end of your blog post, encouraging readers to check out your online course!
Now that you know how to promote your online course, it’s time to get started! If you need help creating or marketing your course, contact our
Whichever way you choose, make sure you consider how your target audience thinks and what will appeal to them most. After all, you want to make sure that your courses sell!
With the right approach, you can succeed in promoting and selling your online courses.
