6 Tips To Promote Your Online Course Like A Pro

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If you’ve ever considered creating an online course to make money from your expertise, you’ll want to read this post. We have shown tips on making money from successful people by bringing courses online as passive income and a way to engage with students and grow their audience. This blog post will show you how to reach thousands of people, get more customers to your online course and ultimately, make thousands of dollars in sales.

If you are planning to create a course but haven’t started yet, check our blog “How to Sell Online Courses From Scratch” to begin with!

Promote Your Online Course Like A Pro

Now that you’ve created a course, it’s time to get the word out there. It would help if you started marketing your online course and driving traffic to your site so that you can start selling it. Here are six proven ways to get more students for your online course:

1- Make Your Course Visible

So, you’ve just launched your first online course. Congratulations! Now comes the hard part: making sure people find it!

Know Where to Distribute Your Online Course

If you want to build a successful online course business, it is also essential to know where to distribute it. You need to get the attention of your target audience and make sure that your course is available on the right platform where they frequently visit.

There are different websites for distributing online courses. Research the top sites that course creators like you use. If possible, put up a profile and promote your course there. Do not forget to include a link back to your website.

There are several platforms where you can distribute your online course, such as Skillshare, Thinkific or Teachable. These platforms have thousands of students who might be interested in taking your course too!

Use Landing Pages

Landing pages are a powerful tool for generating leads and converting them into sales. If you want to make sure that visitors become students, you need to create an effective landing page for your online course.

You need a website where you can direct potential students who want to learn more about what you’re offering. An easy-to-follow and interesting sales page would include:

• An introduction that explains what the course is and why it will help students achieve their goals.
• A summary of the key benefits of the course and how it works, including a list of modules or lessons covered and any supplementary materials.
• Information about you, including a photo, your bio, and why you’re qualified to teach this course. For example, if you created an online course on becoming a digital marketer, mention all the relevant professional qualifications that give you credibility as an instructor.
• Testimonials from former students or clients who can share their experiences with your online course and vouch for its quality. Use testimonials to catch their attention and convince them that they are making the right decision by choosing your course.
• FAQs to help your students find an answer to every question they might have. You may also provide an email address or contact information where they can ask questions if they have more queries.
• A call to action (CTA) could be a button that says “Sign up now” or “Add to cart.”

Pro Tip: Entice them with a free trial. Give your potential students a sneak peek of what they can expect when enrolling in your online course.

You can also ask for their email addresses to get the free trial, through which you can have an email list of quality leads. You can also use an email automation tool to send a follow-up email to an interested lead and stay connected with them until they buy your course.

2- Pricing

You’re looking to make money from your course. And why not? It’s a lot of work to create an online course, and it makes sense that you want to get paid for all your hard work. We think taking the right actions regarding pricing can boost your sales as nothing else can do!

Experiment with different pricing points

When you launch your course for the first time, most people price their course at $49-$99 (one-time payment). But there are many more options available to you. You can offer a monthly payment plan, for example. This can be an excellent way for students to try out your course without paying upfront. And if they like it, they will stay paying the monthly subscription fee.

You can increase or decrease the price depending on if you want to get in more students or offer them a discount. Or you could make the price of each lesson less than the price of the entire course — that way, people can see the value before they buy.

Offer special deals to get even more people to sign up

Your promotions page is a great place to offer promotions on your course, like free trials or discounts for new students. Make sure that if you offer a deal, you include a clear call to action to make it easy for students to purchase your course at the reduced price point.

A special deal can be an Early Bird offer or a Special Launch Price (50% OFF). These deals are very effective because customers feel that they are getting a good offer and will be much more likely to buy your course (even if they weren’t planning on it).

This is a great option for when you want to increase enrollment in your course. Add a deadline for when the deal expires, too — this will motivate people to act fast!

Create valuable bonuses that are relevant to the course

You might consider adding additional value for students by including bonuses relevant to your topic. For example, if you teach an English immersion course, maybe you can include an e-book about pronunciation rules for English learners!

Create an affiliate program

Some of the most successful online course creators earn six figures or more thanks to their ability to sell courses through affiliates. They can do this by having a healthy affiliate community and creating incentives for affiliates to promote their courses.

Affiliates can be a great way to boost your reach and how much money you make from your course. However, this is just one of the many reasons affiliates are great for your business. If someone you know has an engaged audience, why wouldn’t you want to tap into that audience?

Having someone enthusiastic about what you’re doing and promoting it can be a huge help. However, creating your affiliate program is a lot of work. You need to set up tracking for affiliates and pay them their commissions.

Here are some ways you can make your course attractive for affiliates if you decide to go on this path:

• Create a high-quality course that provides real value to students.
• Offer a commission of at least 30% on the sale price of your course.
• Provide bonuses for people who refer 5, 10, 20, etc., students. The more students they refer, the greater the reward.
• Make it easy for affiliates to share your course with their audience by providing quality materials (e.g., banners and email templates).
• Showcase your affiliates on your website and ask them to do the same (e.g., include affiliate links in emails or host webinars).

3- Engage With Your Students

Creating a course online is a great way to reach thousands of students and make money. After you’ve launched your course, there are many ways to continue engaging with your students, make more money, and become a reputable online teacher.

As an online instructor who wants to reach more students, it’s important to engage with your students and build a community. Here are some tips that will help you engage with your students before and after signing up for your course.

Run a webinar before you launch

Webinars are great ways to build excitement around your course, clarify any questions potential students might have, and provide valuable information to show that you’re an authority on the subject you’re teaching.

This will help you get initial exposure to your course and give potential students a taste of what they’ll learn in the course. You can also use this opportunity to see what questions students have about your topic, which will help you address common concerns in the course.

There are several benefits to this strategy:

• It allows you to establish your expertise in the field and build a relationship with potential students.
• It gives you an opportunity to test out a portion of your content to make sure it works before recording videos for all your lectures.
• You don’t have to use complicated software or pay for additional tools—you can use Google Hangouts or GoToMeeting and even live stream it on Facebook or YouTube.

Don’t require expensive equipment in your course

Many people are excited to take courses online that they can complete while they commute or relaxing at home, so avoid putting unnecessary requirements on what equipment they need to have to get the most out of your course.

Students want to be able to apply what they learn right away and may not have time to invest in fancy equipment or software.

While some hobbies or skills do require expensive equipment, try to focus on teaching something that doesn’t, so all students will be able to access the material quickly. For example, if you want to teach photography, consider focusing on composition instead of requiring an expensive camera. Or, if you’re going to teach graphic design, focus on principles like composition and color schemes rather than using specific software like Photoshop.

Start conversations in Facebook groups

Start conversations in Facebook groups relevant to your industry to engage with potential students. You don’t have to talk about your courses right away — start interacting in the group like everyone else and build relationships first!

As long as you’re not going in there trying to sell your course, sharing links and talking about what you teach is perfectly fine. You can even answer questions asked by group members, then link back to one of your lectures if it’s relevant.

Make yourself known by giving helpful feedback or starting a discussion in the group. This way, people will get more familiar with who you are, what kind of things you teach, and what value you can offer them.

Ask for feedback, learn from your students

Always ask for student feedback after the course becomes available online. Use the feedback to improve your course and stay connected with students by responding to reviews.

If you have a negative review, see if there’s something you can do to remedy the situation (like adjusting pricing or course content). If you can’t fix it, use that feedback as motivation to create an even better course next time!

Give certificates to award your students

An online certificate is another excellent tool for keeping your students engaged in the course material and encouraging them to continue until they’re finished.

It gives you credibility as an expert and helps students document their achievements and progress. For example, suppose a student wants to tell a potential employer about their new skills. In that case, they can easily do so with a certificate of completion from an online course relevant to the job they are applying for.

Your students will be more motivated and inspired to complete the course so they can show their certificates as proof of their knowledge. It also proves that they have completed the course and make them feel proud of themselves. Certificates help build trust and credibility between you, the instructor, and your student. They make future students more likely to trust you and sign up for your courses.

Provide an option for downloading materials

Ensure that whatever downloadable materials are included in your course are easily accessible by all of your students. If some PDFs or documents need to be downloaded, have a short email at the end of each lesson with a link to the files so that they can be accessed anytime during the course duration.

4- Marketing

To get people to take your course, they will first need to find out about it. One way to do that is by creating related content on your site, which will help you rank in search engines and drive traffic.

Let’s discuss some of the best ways to get started when promoting your course.

Create a blog

Blogging is an excellent way to get new people to find your course organically. You can create a blog to discuss topics related to the content in your course. You can show people that you are an expert on the subject matter and give them reasons why they should take your course.

If you don’t already have a blog, now’s the time to create one. You can write a post about why someone should take your course or dig into specific topics covered in the course and share valuable tips for people who work in that field. The next step is to embed marketing strategies into your blog that will drive traffic to your site if you want to generate more money from your course.

Let me tell you how it works: First, you create a blog that teaches people about the skills they need to learn to take your online course. For example, if I sell an online course on how to write children’s books, I might create a blog with writing tips that would be helpful for someone who wants to write a children’s book but isn’t sure where to start. I then run ads on my blog that point people back to my online course. This allows me to reach thousands of people who might be interested in my online course without having to spend any money on advertising at all.

Here’s how it works:

• Create a blog post that introduces your course and explains why it’s valuable. Tell interesting stories about why you created this course, which it will help and how it will improve their lives or businesses.
• When people visit your blog post, they’ll see an option to sign up for a free trial. You can add this call-to-action (CTA) at the top or bottom of your blog post at the end of each paragraph or create a “Buy Now” button.
• When someone clicks on the CTA, it will direct them to where they can sign up for a free trial. Signing up for a free trial is the first step toward becoming a paying student!

That being said, blogging isn’t enough to bring in many student sales. To make money from online courses, you have to use paid traffic. Most bloggers spend between $500 and $1,500 per month on Facebook ads alone! If you don’t have the budget for that marketing spend right now, we have you covered!

Be strategic with Facebook ads

Making an ad is easy enough, but you want to make sure you’re making the most of your budget. Facebook ads can be compelling for getting your course content in front of the right audience. But if you’re not using them correctly, it can be easy for your ad spending to spiral out of control. Whatever you do, make sure you’re targeting your ads to make sense of your course’s unique value proposition, who it’s intended for, what problems it solves, etc.

The first thing to consider is where to run those ads. You can run them on the main Facebook news feed, or run them on the sidebar (the column on the right-hand side of the page).

The sidebar makes sense if you’re hoping for a more targeted audience — people who are already looking for what you’re selling might be more likely to click on an ad there than someone scrolling through their main feed. The main feed is more expensive to reach people because it’s where everyone will be spending time. But it’s also where they’ll be more likely to see your ad in general.

It’s hard to say whether one is better than the other; your best bet is to try them both and see which gets you better results.

Use Organic Traffic

There are many ways to make money with a course, but organic traffic is often overlooked. Organic traffic won’t funnel in students as quickly as paid ads or affiliates might, but it is a long-term strategy that can pay off quickly.

It’s important not to discount the value of organic traffic. First, it’s free. Second, it’s often easier to convert people who discovered your course themselves rather than those who were referred by someone else.

To drive more organic traffic to your website, you should use your blog to raise your SEO rates. SEO can be daunting for many because it involves using keywords and getting into the mind of your potential students. The key is to think about what questions your students might have that require an answer from an online educator like you! What would they be searching for? You can use the Google Keyword Planner tool to find out what topics are being searched for — in other words, what people want to learn about — and then incorporate those topics into your course title, description and syllabus. This will help Google identify relevantly.

Reach out to influencers in your field

Cross-promote with others who teach similar topics. Consider collaborating with other course creators by promoting each other’s material to your respective student bases. You can also share resources for free to drive more continued engagement with students and leverage each other’s audience.

5- Use Social Proof to Establish Trust

There are several ways to establish your credibility as an online teacher; the social proof is one of the most effective ones. The key to building social proof is making it easy for people to trust you and see why they should take your course. If someone has already given their seal of approval, it is much easier for students to decide which course is right for them.

A significant component of any marketing campaign is building credibility and trust with your audience and potential students.

Build a community around your course

The most successful course creators know that it’s essential to focus on the long-term strategy of building a community and nurturing your students rather than just collecting course sales.

According to research by Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton, when people think they’re making a good decision, they feel better about themselves. You can leverage this “halo effect” by including social proof in your marketing materials. The first thing you can do to achieve this is to create a community where students can provide feedback on the course, engage with one another, and contribute ideas for future lessons or content.

You can create a Facebook group and invite your students in, which will enable you to showcase positive testimonials from your students and include links to your profile pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other networks. This will help you gain the trust of potential students who may be sceptical about taking an online course.

There are many ways to do this, including:

• Getting feedback from students and posting it on the course sales page
• Asking students to submit reviews on Facebook or other review sites
• Showing how many students have bought your course

You can offer incentives for your students to take action, including:

• Sharing the course on social media
• Writing a review for the course
• Inviting others to join
• Contributing ideas for future lessons or content

Get referrals for future courses

Once students complete your first course, be sure to provide them with referral opportunities or direct links to sign up for your next course. You can also offer discounts or freebies if they refer others who enrol in your class. 

You can use social media networks to share information about course launches or upcoming events.

You can also use your community as an avenue for cross-promotion with other businesses or organizations that are relevant to your audience. For example, if your course is about starting an online business, team up with a bank that offers small business products.

Team up with other online teachers/trainers

It’s not just about one course; think of yourself as an entrepreneur with multiple offerings. Aim to build a network of colleagues and past students so you can refer to each other’s courses and eventually cross-promote new courses.

Here’s how it works: you contact them about creating a bundle deal where you combine your course with theirs. This is good for both of you because you can share marketing costs and the workload, and your courses will benefit from cross-promotion. For example, some teachers offer bundle deals where they combine their course with someone else’s and have access to their mailing list so they can email them about it. This way, you’ll be able to reach thousands of new customers almost instantly.

6- Turn Students Into Raving Fans

If you want to increase your course sales, you need to do something that no one else is doing, putting your students first. The best way to sell more courses is to have a strong base of raving fans who can’t get enough of your content. These people will buy every course you make, sharing it with their friends. In this section, we will explore some tactics to build a stronger connection with your students.

Build a personal brand

Don’t just have a course; have a brand. Becoming a successful online course creator means becoming a personal brand. Create an avatar of your ideal student and spend time getting to know that person. Then, create all your content for that person and make sure every part of the experience is tailored to them. This helps you get more clarity on what your course should be (and whether it’s even the right thing for you to be creating right now).

If you haven’t built a personal brand, you’re missing out on a significant portion of the online education market. Your brand is not just for you. It’s for your students too. It’s a way for them to identify with you and remember you in the future. The stronger your brand, the easier it’ll be for them to sell your course to their friends and family and get more sales for you.

Be authentic, transparent, and honest

Let’s face it: many people online are trying to sell something—even if they say they’re not. This can put someone in buyer mode and make them sceptical of anything they’re presented with. So, don’t try to sell anything or prove yourself right away. Instead, build trust by being authentic, transparent, and honest with your audience.

As you create your courses, always be yourself. When you start out, you may be afraid that if your personality came through in your courses, you would lose credibility as an expert in the field. But the opposite turns out to be true: being yourself makes you more credible as an expert because it helps you show up consistently in all your videos, blog posts, and social media interactions.

Show your personality

If you’re goofy, make your course quirky and fun. If you’re serious and straight-to-business, make sure you set expectations. People will buy from you because they like you (not just because they need what you have).

Don’t pretend to be something you’re not. Use social media to let people know who you are and what makes you unique as a person and an instructor. You might even want to include details about your life outside of work-family, hobbies, etc.

Build Your Reputation and Start Answering Questions on Quora

One of the best ways to market yourself is by building a reputation for being an expert in your field. You can do this by answering questions on Quora.

Quora is like Reddit’s Q&A section, with one big difference: answers are written by experts in their fields. Unlike Reddit, there are no downvotes, so it’s much easier to get exposure for your content and make some noise as an authority figure in your niche.

To build your reputation on Quora, you should answer questions related to your course topic, share experiences and insights from your expertise, and offer helpful advice for students looking for answers. This helps boost your credibility with potential students for your course and establish yourself as an expert in the industry.

Having an excellent answer on Quora can bring tons of traffic to your website or course page (if people click on your name at the end of the answer). But remember: if you want to make it big on Quora, don’t try to sell anything or promote yourself — focus on creating value for the reader. If you do that, the referrals will come naturally.

You don’t need to wait for someone to ask about your course or topic on Quora. Do a little research and find out what questions people ask about your topic. Then give helpful answers.

If there isn’t a question that fits, create one of your own and answer it yourself. Then invite others to add their answers as well. Include your course link in the answer if it’s relevant but don’t be too promotional.

Build anticipation around your next course

Whether you’re launching a new course or creating an additional one, it’s important to build anticipation for your future courses by building a waitlist. You can do this simply by sending out an email blast or asking on social media if anyone wants to be added to the list. You can also offer pre-sale discounts or freebies for people who sign up early. It’s a great way to promote your course while building anticipation simultaneously!

You can also create buzz about your upcoming course by releasing snippets from the future course so that you have an audience ready when your new course comes out. This is way easier than starting from scratch with each new course you release. You can also use the teaser videos for marketing purposes, such as sharing them on YouTube and Facebook or paying for ads to get more views.

Offer a Free Mini-Course for your next course

Try offering a free mini-course as a taster for your next paid course. This is an easy way to gather feedback from potential students and refine your ideas before launching the course to the public.

It helps you build a strong relationship with your students by offering an exclusive free mini-course for those who enrol in your next paid course. This is an excellent way to stand out among the competition – make sure that the free content you offer is precious!

People love free stuff. And they also love trying something new before they buy it. By offering a free mini-course, you’ll be able to convert more students into paid customers and make more money in the long run.

Here are a few tips for creating a successful mini-course:

• Make sure your mini-course provides value
• Choose a topic that adds value to your existing course
• Provide an option to upgrade to the entire course after each lesson
• Promote the mini-course on social media, in emails, and in ads
• Send reminders when the students are halfway through the course
• Follow up with students who didn’t buy the full course

While creating an online course might seem intimidating, it is also a rewarding experience. You can teach others what you know best and receive payment for your expertise. Reaching thousands of people through your online course may seem like a lot, but the more you know about the process, the more apparent it will become that you can do this. Runners don’t do what they do because they finished a 5k on their first try. They get to the finish line because they stick with it and continue to run. In the same vein, landing thousands of new students takes persistence and drive—even if you’ve never created or sold an online course before!

We also recommend our blog “Create an Effective Course Plan with Digital Badge Maker” if you are interested in selling your course in the best way possible.