Marketing An Online Course - Dos and Don'ts
If you create an online course for your business, you don’t want it to be the best kept secret. To sell spots in your course, you need to market it!
The right strategy for you can depend on the course content, who you have created it for and how you prefer to market yourself. But there are some simple things to keep in mind when it comes to marketing an online course.
How To Market An Online Course
Do:
Consider pre-selling or creating a waitlist
The best kind of course is the kind of course that starts to sell spots from the second that it opens. You can stack the odds in your favour by doing some marketing before you even create your course.
If you know there is decent demand or are confident, you can pre-sell spots. I did this with the first round of my Practitioner Marketing 101 course - I didn’t create a single piece of content for the course until 10 spots had already sold!
If that’s a little out of your comfort zone, look at creating a waitlist mailing list. That way, you can notify the interested parties when it opens and boost your odds of making sales straight off the bat. I had 75 people on the waitlist for my first round of Practitioner Marketing 101, and had nearly a 50% conversion rate from that list.
Focus on marketing it for several weeks
You can’t expect to do one promo post for a course and sell out. Even people with highly engaged audiences need to market for 4-12 weeks depending on the course and following.
Make sure that your course is the primary offer that you’re sharing. If you share the course one day, a program the next, then an ebook, people will feel overwhelmed with options.
On that note, make sure that your content and social media posts also support your course promotion. If you’ve created a course about natural ways to heal the thyroid, your social media, blogs, videos and so on should all be about the thyroid!
Boost your visibility while you’re launching and promoting
As we know, the majority of your sales are likely to come from the people who already know, like and trust you. But as courses are typically a lower cost point than 1:1 work and packages, you may get some conversions from newer audiences as well.
That’s why it’s a great idea to get more visible while you’re in launch mode.
This can mean being more consistent and visible on your own social media and marketing channels. But it’s also a great time to look at doing guest blogs, lives and podcasts. Reach out to complementary businesses and see how you can cross-promo and collaborate.
Hold onto your content and copy to repurpose
Your course should never be designed as a once-off - it’s something you can sell again and again. So why would you not have content and copy that can be reused as well?
Keep any of the promotional copy, social media posts and images to repurpose for the next round. I keep it simple and save them all in a Word document, so I can copy and paste the copy the next time around.
This keeps your promotions consistent, but also saves you an awful lot of energy in the future!
Ask for testimonials
When you run a course, you want to make sure you ask for a review or testimonial at the end. If you tend to be a bit awkward or shy about asking, set up something automated with an email or quiz in the course so you’re not asking over and over.
Of course, this needs to be done in the context of your modality, association, regulatory body and the like. That’s why I like to ask for them to provide me with the testimonial directly and I can use it if it’s appropriate.
It also makes the next round of promotion a breeze because I already have social proof of how awesome my course is!
Remember when the majority of sales are likely to occur
A good 80% of your sales will happen in the first and last 48 hours of a launch. You’ve got the people who have been waiting for it to open and hand their cash straight over. Then you have the last minute people who need to be reminded when spots are closing.
This is important to keep in mind because otherwise, you can freak yourself out prematurely.
For example, you might sell 4 spots in the first 24 hours, then only have one more sale for the rest of that week. You might start to think your course is a total flop - but this is not the time to panic!
Instead, you want to keep yourself distracted and make sure all of your marketing is already scheduled and ready to go. There’s a good chance a few more spots will sell when you put up a post reminding people that it’s their last chance to sign up.
Don’t:
Build it and then start to market it
This is a mistake that many health practitioners make. They dream up an amazing course idea, pay for a platform, record the content, create the bonus resources, set it all up - and then they start to market it.
But when you do this, you’re not checking to make sure your course and messaging is resonating. You could put dozens of hours into creating a course, only to find out it’s not connecting with your audience.
Often, this puts practitioners off creating any further courses, and so they miss out on a great option for an income stream.
Don’t be that person.
Make sure you have demand and a journey that resonates before you put too much time into it.
Think that courses are easier to market because they’re cheaper
This is a mistake that I see practitioners making when they struggle to fill their 1:1 appointments. They hope that courses are going to be easier to sell because they’re cheaper - so more people will buy it, right?
Wrong.
Courses are not ‘easier’ to market if you’re not comfortable with marketing.
You still need to be confident with sharing your offers.
You still need to be visible and consistent with your marketing to sell a course.
In fact, it will often take more marketing and energy to sell 10 spots at $50 each than it takes to sell a single $500 package.
So don’t use this as an easy way out. If you struggle to market yourself, you need to get to the root cause (just like we do with our clients!)
Neglect marketing a course if it’s always open
Some practitioners create a course that doesn’t close - anyone can purchase it and complete it at any stage. This can be a good option for someone who doesn’t want to go through the launch process, or if you have a course that is a great intro for your ideal peeps.
But just because it’s there 24-7 doesn’t mean that you don’t promote it at all!
It could be that you promote the course as an option when your 1:1 spots are booked up for a little while. Or it might be a good option to market it when you’re on break.
Don’t let your course just sit on your website in the hopes that someone will trip over it - people need you to tell them it’s there!
Freak out or cancel your course if you don’t fill all of the spots
I get it - you have this vision of delivering a course to 10, 20, 50+ people every time.
So when you only have 4 people signing up for the first time, it’s tempting to write it off and cancel or postpone it.
But the first round of a course is a great time to trouble-shoot and tweak. It’s an opportunity to gather testimonials and feedback to improve and market it for future rounds.
What if you don’t sell any spots at all?
It’s still not a failure. All it means is that you need to revisit one or more of:
The journey that your ideal client wants to take
The language you’re using to share your offer
Whether you’re actually reaching your ideal client with that message!
Is creating a course on your to-do list?
Want someone to hold your hand while you plan your course and marketing strategy?
I’m here to help. Click here to book a 1:1 appointment.
