Effective and Proven Marketing Strategy for Selling Online Courses
Having a Marketing Strategy for Selling Online Courses is critical to your success as an entrepreneur. However, creating one can appear to be a daunting task. How do you determine which marketing strategy is best for your company? How do you know how to assess the effectiveness of your marketing efforts? Right, so we’re here to help you.
We’ll mention some helpful marketing strategies for selling online courses that you can use in the marketing of your courses. This post will teach you ways of doing marketing online courses to increase sales and customer satisfaction. Let’s get started.
Make the Most of Your Existing Audience
If you intend to create a course in a specific niche, there’s a good chance you already have a following or at least some traffic to an existing website or blog. The most obvious place to start marketing online courses is on your website, by announcing it to your audience and possibly offering special discounted pricing upon launch.
Begin Creating a List
No matter how many visitors come to your website, if you haven’t already started building an email list, start now! An email list is possibly the most effective way to market any online course. Consider this: you have permission to send emails to people who are already interested in your niche. What could be better than that?
Place an opt-in form on your website that offers a free ebook, or ask customers to sign up for the list in exchange for the chance to purchase your course at a significant discount when it launches. Use your imagination on this one. The more valuable your free lead magnet offer, the more subscribers you will acquire.
Publish Blog Posts regularly for Long-Tail Search Traffic
If you’re in a competitive niche, your chances of having your course appear on the first page of search results for popular search terms are slim. It’s not impossible, but ranking for competitive search terms is more difficult than ever.
However, there are almost certainly dozens (if not hundreds) of long-tail search terms in your niche that are not as competitive. While they may not receive 20,000 searches per month, appearing on the first page of search results for these terms can sometimes be as simple as including a few of those words in a blog post on your site. And the more frequently you blog about it, the better.
Make your YouTube Channel
YouTube is the world’s second most popular search engine (after Google). Daily, millions of people search YouTube for “how-to” videos. YouTube videos can even outrank websites in the search results of many search engines. Create a YouTube channel dedicated to your course topic and post helpful videos regularly. In your video descriptions, include a link to your website or course.
Create a YouTube course promotion video
Make a short promotional video for your course and upload it to YouTube. To increase exposure for your course, you could even create multiple promotional videos, each with a different title. Make sure to include popular keywords related to your topic in the titles and descriptions of your videos so that they rank high in search results for those terms.
Give free mini-course to subscribers
It can help you gauge interest in your course without having to create all of the content first. The idea is to create a short introductory course, or a sneak peek of a larger course and make it available to your email subscribers. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you where it goes from here. There are numerous resources available to assist you in developing a successful email campaign, so that I won’t go into detail here. Still, you’ll be communicating with these subscribers regularly in the hopes of selling them your premium course later on.
In your email signature, include a link to your course
You probably send and respond to a lot of emails every day, and some of those people might be interested in your course if they knew about it. Include a link to your course in a short sentence in your email signature. Even if the person who sees your email signature isn’t interested in your course, they might know someone who is and tell them about it.
Enhance your social media profiles
Your social media profiles are an excellent way to establish your brand and position yourself as an expert on the subject of your course. To reflect your area of expertise, update your bio on all social networks where you have a profile. Include a link to your main website (or even directly to your course) in your profiles so that people interested in your course topic can learn more.
Organize a live webinar
Hosting a live webinar for people who are interested in your topic is one of the best ways to sell online courses. Share some of your best content for free during the webinar. This positions you as an expert and helps to build trust before introducing your course and asking for the sale.
Promote webinar recording
After you’ve successfully hosted a live webinar, you can use the recording to sell more courses. Send an email to those who registered for your live webinar but did not attend with a link to the recording. You could even use the recording to create an automated webinar and then run ads to the webinar to generate ongoing sales.
Podcast
Starting a podcast about your course topic is a great way to build an audience of people who are interested in that topic. Everyone who listens to your podcast has the potential to enroll in your online course. On each podcast episode, share valuable tips related to your topic, and at the end of each episode, include a call-to-action to visit your website and/or learn more about your course.
Submitting your podcast to platforms could result in you reaching hundreds or even thousands of people for free monthly. It is excellent exposure for your online class advertisement.
Boost the effectiveness of your course sales page
Create a compelling course description that clearly articulates the benefits of taking your online course. Speak about the outcome you want to achieve and how it will benefit your target audience. You could even hire a professional copywriter to write your description for you. Additionally, include specific keywords throughout your description to help your course rank in search results for those keywords.
Speak in local events and Meet Up groups
Local events and Meetup groups are excellent ways to reach your target audience. Conduct some research to find local events related to your topic and contact the organizers. Mention that you have an online course and would love to speak to their audience. Offer to split the sales revenue with them if they allow their speakers to sell their product or service at the end of their presentation. Keep in mind that your entire presentation should not be a sales pitch.
Create a Meetup group in your area
Starting a local Meetup group about your topic is a great way to stay in front of your target audience regularly. It also helps to establish you as a community leader. You can also invite other speakers to come and share their knowledge with your audience. This strategy is undoubtedly time-consuming, but it can be very effective in the long run (as your Meetup group grows).
Request that your students review your course
Ask your students to leave you a review or testimonial for your course at some point during the course. This simple request will help to ensure that you continue to receive positive feedback from your students, which you can then use in your online marketing. If you receive any negative feedback from your students, use it to improve specific aspects of your course to provide a better learning experience for all future students.
Run a price reduction campaign
Running a limited-time price promotion is an excellent way to increase sales for your online course. You can even time your price promotions to coincide with well-known holidays like Boxing Day or Black Friday. Waiting for specific holidays to discount your course is more effective than discounting it randomly and without explanation.
Participate in other blogs and publications
Write articles about your topic and submit them to other blogs and online publications. Make certain that each website receives a unique article (they do not want articles that are also published on other sites). Spend some time researching popular websites related to your topic to ensure you submit an article that is appropriate for their audience. In your author bio at the end of your article, include a link to your website or course.
Organize a webinar in collaboration with a Joint Venture partner
Find people who your target market follows (but who are not direct competitors) and offer to host a webinar for their audience. A blogger who writes articles about your topic but does not have an online course, for example, would make an excellent joint venture partner because their audience would be interested in your course. Spend the majority of your time on the webinar sharing valuable tips about your topic for free, and split the sales revenue with the joint venture partner when you pitch your course at the end.
Now, you know the several ways of Marketing Strategy for Selling Online Courses, it’s time to put what you’ve learned into practice. However, keep in mind that each of the marketing tactics listed above takes time to implement and test.
Read Also: