Ways To Promote Your Courses

 

 

After creating our course content and hosting it on an appropriate Learning Management system (LMS), the next step is to promote your courses. Yes, before creating our course content, we had done preliminary research and survey on the markets and our competitors, and now it is time to explore those opportunities.

It’s highly unlikely that learners will randomly find our course and decide to register for it. With lots of competition all around, it takes time and a lot of effort to build trust and confidence among the learners, until they endorse your course. Providing a glowing testimonial on your site creates a good impression in the minds of learners about you and your course.

With digital marketing, you can build and scale up your brand across digital channels. With competition growing daily, you need to create a niche and bring innovativeness and uniqueness to the course i.e., provide something different from what others are providing.    Every business is dependent on online presence,  leads prospective customers, achieves the sales target, satisfies learners, reviews and feedback from learners, etc., in order to sustain itself in the market.

Looking for ideas to promote your courses?

 

Here are some effective ways to promote your  courses :

Webinars: Identify your target audience and markets, and host a webinar about the course topic, highlighting the prospects and providing valuable information about the course. This helps to position yourself as a person with the subject knowledge and skill in that field and enables you to create an impact on your course.   Send a link through social media or email to those who were unable to attend the webinar.  For instance, you could target students, employees, bloggers, online instructors, etc.,

Contribute to blogs and publications: Write articles related to your topic and publish them on blogs and publications. Spend quality time researching the topic before creating the blog, and ensure that the article is not plagiarized. The article should be compelling and it should clearly articulate the benefits of taking the course.  Also, include specific keywords in your article to rank higher on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) for organic search results.

Set up a Sales Funnel (ie., Sales Pipeline):  Sales Funnel is nothing but a tool used to track the sequence of steps a Lead Prospect takes as they progress to become the ultimate customer.    The key is moving the Lead Prospect through the various stages (viz., Awareness à  Interest à Decision à  Action ) until they purchase your course (ie., Action Stage).  By examining the Sales Funnel, the Sales and Marketing strategies can be optimized at various stages, by understand the learner’s course buying pattern, identifying the gaps if any, and implementing the best marketing strategy.   It also provides insights into what learners are thinking or doing at various stages of the sales funnel.

Content Marketing: By content marketing, we mean creating and sharing online content designed to generate interest in the brand.  It is a stand-out strategy you use to promote and sell your course. The goal of Content Marketing includes bringing brand awareness, fostering brand loyalty attracting new customers, engaging with customers, educating existing and potential customers, creating a good user experience, etc., For instance, Newsletters are emails that notify the learners and keep them posted with new and updated information about the course.  You can also share the news and events or blog post about the discounts and offers as well.     The overall relevance of the content is what prompts the potential learner to join and register for the course.   Examples of Content Marketing are newsletters, social media posts, audios, videos, etc.,

Create a Lead Magnet:  Lead Magnet is a marketing term for a free item or sample (ie., a sample bit of exclusive content), given away to potential learners in return for getting their contact details and promoting their brand image.  Marketers use Lead Magnet to create Sales Leads.  Examples  include a free consultation, Newsletter Trial Subscriptions, samples of products, etc.,

Harness the power of social media to promote the course: it makes sense to leverage the immense potential of social media to enhance the eLearning experience. It enables us to share information about the course, creates peer groups, discusses content and activities, responds to learners’ queries, and group discussion, promotes learning practices, etc, thus ensuring brand loyalty.

Build a phone/whatsapp/e-mail list:   Once you have the phone/WhatsApp/email list, you can communicate directly with the learners and drive messages and contents directly to them.  You can convince them about the course and its benefits, future prospects, the added value it will bring to them after the completion of the course, etc.

Online advertisement campaign:  For course creators, it makes sense to focus on a paid advertising campaign (ie., non-organic strategy) to promote the course quickly and to a larger audience with Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, Outbrain, etc.

Provide a price-promotion offer:  Price-Promotion Offers are a great way to drive sales for your course.  For instance, you can provide a discounted price for learners who join the course within say… 10 days, or for the first 25 learners who register. Also, some goodies/gifts can be provided as well to encourage learners to join the course.

Bundle your courses together and offer discounts: Once you have multiple courses in your portfolio, you can combine a few related courses and offer discounts to the learners.  Like with a series of books on Harry Potter, each course can help to promote other courses.   For instance, if you have two courses that sell for Rs. 145 individually, you can sell both combined at a discounted price of Rs. 250.

 Offer a satisfaction guarantee to the learner: it creates a sense of confidence and trust among the learners to try out the course.  Most commonly offered satisfaction guarantee offers are 15- days money-back guarantee offers where the learners will be provided a refund, in case they are not satisfied with the course within 15 days of registration.

In any industry, there are brands that are positioned as a knowledge hub.  If you are trying to become a knowledge hub, you need to monitor existing players, as to how they create content, how they engage with learners, and how they convert the potential leads into sales, etc.,  In our understanding, the points mentioned above are the best strategies to promote your courses.   It will enable them to reach the right people with the right message at the right time, with the right process,  hence, promoting our dual objective to promote the course, as well as garner trust and support from the learners to build a strong student base that will help you to stand out in the ever-competitive marketplace.