As a course creator, you have completed the content creation process. That’s great! As a creator, teaching and creating content is something that comes naturally. Now the question is, what is the tricky part of creating an online course? The Ans: Figuring out how to promote your online course so that people buy from you – That’s truly the tricky bit.

An online course is something other than something that sells on its own. With many creators arriving on the scene, the competition is ramping up. With many creators catering to the same audience, what is it that can differentiate you from others?

And the answer is a promotional activity for your online course. To help you with this, here’s a look at some of the ways to promote your online course in 2020. We will share some intrinsic tips and tricks that can come in handy for creators deciding the strategy.

How to promote your online course?

The methods are simple, but deep thought must be given while implementing them. Creators can use a mix of these while selecting the ones that appeal to them the most and are in sync with their online academy. There is no harm in using all or even one among them.

Treat the course as a product

While your online course differs from other virtual products, it is still a product. It is something that you have created to sell, right?

So why not promote it the same way other digital products are promoted?

The first thing every digital product marketer does is create hype. You need to do just that. Reach out to the customers and learners before the course is live. What better way to do this other than creating a coming soon page? Using the Knorish website builder, you can select from a range of 10 different themes to start a coming soon page. Integrate call-to-action buttons to capture leads. For this, buttons like ‘Pre-Register Now’ work well.

This way, you will end up killing two birds with one stone. This will create hype around the product while generating crucial leads. Nothing can work well except hype to promote your online course in 2020. Learners would develop FOMO. This will work in your favour, and the learners will purchase it as soon as it is life.

Another advantage of a coming soon page is that it saves time. You can utilise this time to generate leads while testing the perfect promotional strategy for your course.

Run a weekly webinar

This is a great way to promote your online course once it is live. One great advantage? You don’t have to think and plan a lot for this webinar. A webinar, at most, is for 60 minutes, you just need to nail your script. You can tune it over time and even release it as a weekly session for your course content. But this doesn’t promote.

To utilise this webinar for promotional purposes, you only need to structure the content. Provide the viewers with relevant content during the 45 minutes time frame. In the next 15 minutes, indulge in your sales efforts. To promote the purchase decision, give exclusive coupons to the attendees. Use Knorish coupon creator to generate coupon basis percentages or price-based discounts.

Over this, with a larger target audience cropping up for the webinar, the size will add some social proof to your academy. Keep at it, bring celebrities, influencers, or friends who are popular on social media and try and use their influence on the topic. Look for speakers in similar domains, they are usually open to doing such sessions for free. Remember to boost the webinar promotion on FB and other social media to get maximum exposure.

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Use social media channels to convert

It is true, you need to spend money to make money. And promoting your online course takes a bit of the moolah.

Running online ads on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin can be a great promotional tool. The success of this promotional campaign depends upon the money you are willing to spend. But even a small amount, in the beginning, can go a long way.

Some of the benefits while using social media channels are:

1. Quicker results
2. Tracking the results become easier
3. Can be persona specific

The downside of this? It takes part in your overall budget. So when using ads to promote your online course make sure to be consistent while having a budget to support this activity.

Use testimonials on the landing page

Testimonials are great social proof. If your promotional activities don’t include social proof, you’re missing out on engagement and interaction for converting the target audience.

Social proof marketing is a great way to establish trust and credibility in your learners’ eyes. No one can establish credibility better than your existing customers. Therefore it becomes crucial to integrate testimonials within your landing page. Prospective customers can read those testimonials while validating the credibility of your online academy.

These even help in providing positive word of mouth across the internet.

This makes testimonials a great way to garner trust while using the page to promote your online course.

Guest blogging

Let’s focus on content marketing with blogs. This is where guest posts come into perspective. It is a powerful tool that can increase organic traffic to your website. It is a great way to create a permanent digital trail leading back to your website is a great way. This is not only great for SEO but establishes credibility as well.

With this, you even provide quality content to your readers while establishing trust. Further, if they wish to learn more about the topic, they will consider your product when on the buying spree.

Creating a mini-course

This might take a little effort, but it is well worth it. It is a great way to taste your product before the customer decides.

The ideal students will experience some of the product while deciding on the value they have generated from the mini-course. Mini-course enables the creator to show the depth of the topic. After ending the course, the learners should have learned just how little they know about the issue. This will create curiosity. And this is what you will be able to create. So creating this mini-course can work well to promote your online course.

Offer discounts

When new to the field, the customer seeks value when spending money. You cannot look away from the fact that there are countless creators just like you. And the product more or less is the same. Therefore the value is the same for the learner all across. What to do to give a bit more of that value quotient? The answer is discounted. When new in business, you will have to attract customers with discounts. While we don’t recommend constant discounts as they might dilute the brand.

Discounts even help in spreading FOMO and curiosity among customers. They wouldn’t want to lose such a mouth-watering deal with value. This way, they will even spread the word around, which would be a promotion for your course. All in all a win-win situation.

Establish thought leadership

Platforms like Quora, Pinterest, and Reddit can help establish thought leadership. Since these platforms are more problem-solving-oriented, thought leadership can be well-established while using them. Hearing the doubts, answering questions, and taking queries are some ways you can become an expert in the eyes of the user. With this, your brand will generate credibility and trust in the eyes of the user, thereby establishing thought leadership.

Create a killer course page

While we have discussed the importance of a coming soon page, you must create a course-specific landing page. To create an excellent course page, you need to identify the varied buyer personas and target them individually. We recommend you create course pages that are platform and persona specific.

Platform-specific means the leads diverted from a social media platform should have an entire page. This should be filled with the call to action buttons enabling you to capture leads. You should add some additional resources here to provide real value to these viewers. This will establish a relationship and help you in your conversion activity.

A persona-specific page means you should have a different page basis the requirements of the learner. A professional user would be more inclined toward the value-for-money element. While a hobbyist would be interested in his overall skill development. You cannot target these two buyers on a single page. Therefore, to promote your online course, creating different and varied pages for a certain audience is inevitable.

Convert content into other vernacular languages

This is one of the great ways to increase the reach of your course. Changing the language for the course can effectively reach a wider audience.

You need not open that English to French language dictionary. All you have to do is hire a translator. While it may seem resource-consuming, you must understand that every business expansion requires resources.

You might question what happens if I have video content. No worries, there are many tools online that can help in generating auto subtitles to your content. This means you need not record the entire content again in a new language. You only need quality subtitles that can push the customer towards the buy now button.

Build an email list

When it comes to digital marketing, nothing can beat the good old data. And that data can only be generated with an email address. An email campaign list to send out price reductions, discounts, newsletters, and webinar invitations can work well to promote your online course platform.

To build an email sequence list, you only need to create a call to action button. But what will these buttons consist of?

Just pure and simple value. Create resources in the form of PDFs, Ebooks, and Word Docs. Anyone who clicks can download that resource in return for their email. This will be great to add and expand your email list, helping lead generation. You can even reach out to these leads at a good time if they are different from your ideal persona.

Write blogs

Blogs are a great way to engage and interact with your audience while providing them with meaningful content. This helps in establishing thought leadership as well. You can even use blogs to add a call to action buttons to aid in lead capturing. Content marketing, lead capture, free content distribution, thought leadership enhancement and much more could be easily achieved with blogging as a tool for long-term, low-cost marketing for your academy.

Influencer marketing

Creators can even reach out to YouTubers, celebrities, and bloggers to influence marketing. Contacting the influencer and asking him to link your course with his Instagram bio and post stories concerning your course. This can get more current students on board, as Instagram is the favourite among the younger audience. Similarly, in the case of YouTube using “i” buttons to create the link to your course, sponsoring helpful videos in turn of a 10-second description slot in the entire video can also be used wisely to make viewers and learners.

Using industry bloggers to review your product to have an opinion on your course. Having great reviews from famous bloggers can create significant sales results. Connecting with such a blogger and offering them the product for free in return for a review post on their blog can build an audience for your online course. Not only will this generate traffic from the Influencer’s website, but it will even complete validation of the benefits and advantages of your product.

Offer various payment options

Everything will be fine; the promotion has attracted the viewer, the course benefits him, and he is ready to make the buying decision. And then all hell breaks loose. All your efforts are gone the second he realises he can’t make the payment with one of the payment mechanisms he wishes to. Knorish enables you to use great payment options, including EMIs, digital wallets, Internet Banking, etc. This allows the learner to buy with the payment option which suits his needs. This can be a great value addition and a selling point in your customer’s eyes.

Use Google AdWords and Analytics

We have some exciting tips and tricks to boost your promotional game if you have reached here.

• Engage with your audience– this is one of the ills among online course creators. They often fail to realise the importance of interaction. We recommend you reach out to your existing and past learners. Ask them for feedback, hear their suggestions, and implement them in your next course.
• Hear recommendations for future courses– create what the user wants. Talk to them, and hear what they say about your future products. Engage them in the course creation process. This will familiarise them with your brand while establishing a relationship. This way, they will return to repurchase from your academy. They will even spread positive word of mouth, which will help promote your online course.
• Don’t be too sales-oriented– while we agree the prime reason to enter the business is to make money. But you must first add real value to the learners’ life. During the first touch-point, don’t focus on selling. Establish a personal relationship with the learner, gain his trust, and add some value to his life. Following this, then, begin your sales effort.
• Continue the relationship even after the course ends–staying in touch with your past learners is crucial. If you aren’t, contact them. Reach them on their social media accounts, and learn what knowledge did they gain from your product. Take feedback and improve the product. With improvements, try to re-initiate the relationship.

Use all of these tips when on the job to promote your product. They may take effort and resources, but they will work out well for the success of your online academy.