How to sell online courses even before you have created one?

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How to sell your course even before creating content

Creating content for your online courses can be time-consuming for online course creators. In fact, it can take a lot of money, time, and effort. Plus, there’s no guarantee that this is, in fact, the content that your audience wants.

 One way that this issue can be resolved is to use a strategy called Pre-Selling. Pre-selling your online course can be started at any point, irrespective of your stage in the course creation journey.

Thousands of products are announced each year. Many of them get listed on crowdfunding sources like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Innovators and entrepreneurs present their ideas for a product and raise money from people to fund their creation. 

This is an excellent way of validating your product Idea. Get enough funding, and create the course; if you don’t get enough funding, tweak the idea and retry.

WHY PRE-SELLING YOUR ONLINE COURSE MAKES SENSE

It’s not really a new concept. Think about the car and gadget news blogs that relentlessly discuss upcoming products. Leaked renders’ news of different products comes out almost a year before the products are finally released.

Product pre-orders are a huge business for the gaming, auto, and tech industry. So why not your Knorish online course? When marketed well, with the right mix of exclusivity and innovation, your customers should be lining up to pre-order your courses online.

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Pre-Selling Shows Market Potential

If the course idea is in demand, you know you are on the right path. If it fails, you know you need to tweak your offering based on the needs of the audience.

You Save Precious Time

Instead of creating a course, launching it, marketing it, and then finding out the areas that need improvement, by pre-selling the course, the audience will share feedback about what more could be tweaked, thereby preventing many problems and headaches later on.

Essentially, by announcing a ‘coming soon’ course online, you can get people to pay for course creation, validate your idea, and would also figure out your ideal customers.

So Here Are 05 Steps To Pre-Selling Your Knorish Online Course

STEP 1: DETERMINE THE TOPIC OF YOUR ONLINE COURSE

Based on your expertise, figure out the online course ideas. You could look at popular knowledge chat forums and social media platforms, or ask peers, family, or friends as well to get a feel of what is in demand right now. 

The key thing is to be able to identify the audience for it. The right fit is critical to the success of the audience. For example, selling a course online on typography or cursive writing may not be the best fit for teachers. 

They may be in need of it, but it’s not something that would appeal to them immediately. You probably are better off marketing your course to prospective students and artists.

Step 2: Put Together A Basic Course Outline

In order to sell something, even if it’s digital, there has to be something tangible. What this means is that the user should see value in it for them to be persuaded to make a purchase. 

This means that not only do you have to put together a well-thought course outline, but you would also need to think through details of the course such as course curriculum, timeline, contents, course methodology, why people should be interested in your course, and ultimately why should they buy the course. 

When you finally decide to pre-sell your online course ideas, details like these allow the audience to make a better-informed decision about your course and, most importantly, share feedback about what they like and what they don’t. 

We believe this feedback is the most important result of the activity, more than the money you may get as part of the pre-sell, as this gives insight into the kind of success your course will have and what course corrections are required to achieve success.

Step 3: Give Your Pre-Sell A Look, Design A Landing Page Using Knorish

Now that the course idea and outline is also ready, you need to create a perfect landing page that does the “pre-selling” for you. Using the course details from step 2, you would now have enough data to create a knorish landing page for your online course marketplace. Knorish’s online course platform allows you to:

  • Pre-sell and sell your course online with your branding
  • Showcase your expertise and skillset as the course creator
  • Share an overview and benefits of the course for the course participants
  • Give a well-defined Call-to-Action
  • Share testimonials about your course derived from feedback gathered earlier which could be in text or video format.
  • State FAQs that answer most commonly asked questions

Do remind people it’s a pre-sell and to pay only if they want to take up the course upon launch.

Remember, a pre-sell is an indicator of whether it is worth working on the full-fledged course or not. In case if the pre-sell doesn’t work even after multiple tweaks, there is no point putting in all the effort towards creating the course or marketing it. 

Therefore, it is imperative that if you do end up with a few sales in the pre-sell stage, you must refund the money if you do not plan to launch the course.

 

Step 4: Launch Your ‘Limited Access’ Offer

Now that the landing page is in place, all you need to do is to market your course. Social media channels and groups, popular knowledge chat forums, and all the places you researched for the course feedback initially become the same places where you market your course pre-sell.

You could also look at email marketing like product launch emails, discount emails, pre-order now emails, is the product really for your emails, relevant clickbait emails that encourage email clicks, and finally, last chance emails that promote audience to open email addresses and reach your landing page for details on the course.

Additionally, YouTube video content, blog posts, and popular podcast interviews are a great way of ensuring outreach. Of course, Ads run on social media allow target market demand for your specific audience types.

Make sure to share details of payment options like popular digital wallets, PayPal, etc.

Step 5: All Good Things Come To An End. So Should Your Pre-Sell

Your pre-sell can’t be a forever project. There has to be a clear end date listed on your landing page and all marketing collateral. Only then does it add value to your coaching sessions.

Once you reach the end date, the noble and logical thing to do is to close your pre – sales, irrespective of the size of the success. Don’t fall prey to greed and extend the date, which in many ways would be unethical.

Finally, once the launch has been closed, send out a thank-you note to the target audience for their interest, even if they didn’t show any, with a detailed note on the timeline of the launch of your actual course.

Preselling is not a new concept; however, as an e-learning course, preselling is a technique that helps brands find out what’s working and what needs to be changed. This is a great hack to hone your offering to ensure that your end product is a great success. With a total of 7.5 B people on planet earth and instant learning access via mobile guarantees maximum exposure, which, when done right, will result in maximum profits.

Read to Get More Info:-

13 Steps On How To Sell Online Courses – The Complete Guide


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