Online courses have always been in the trend. A lot of people create their online course and serve their audience. This is also a good way to generate good revenue without having to invest in the classroom and other physical infrastructure.
Recently, after the covid-19 we have seen that the market size of online courses has become much bigger. Especially in India, one big positive impact that covid-19 gave us, is the digital revolution which should have happened in the next 2-3 years got preponed and now we are experiencing the same in this year i.e. 2021.
Well to understand the overall work, we are here with DP Vishwakarma. He says that we believe that If you are a course creator and planning to market your courses to get more eyeballs and leads. So, therefore here we have 6 possible ways to generate more leads for your courses.
1. Identify your target market
The first and one of the most important steps that you need to take even before creating your course is, identifying the target market. You should have a clear idea on whom you are educating and how much you know about them. If you can create a customer demographic in your mind, then probably it would make it more clear for you to create and develop a course that creates value for your audience.
For example if you are passionate about fitness and you like to help people become fit, then definitely you can choose fitness as your niche. Tools such as Google trends can give you a better idea of the niche market that you are planning to work on.
2. Have that one unique thing that no one else has
One of the biggest questions that you face while launching your course is why someone should buy it or why yours? There might be other creators too. So, here we need to differentiate us among other creators by offering something different, some value bombs, that others are unable to provide or difficult to provide as this can be one of your entry barriers for your competition.
So, if you are looking to create those value bombs, go ahead and learn more about your audience, your competitors, know your audience problems and identify how you can help them better through your course.
Say for example if we plan to work on a fitness niche. Then the first task is to join relevant facebook groups and observe the activities like the kind of questions they are asking, their specific pain points etc. Other than facebook you can also make use of quora to learn more about the problems that people are facing the most.
3. Prepare a Test Group
You might have heard about this, especially in the software industry, people do hire beta testers. Now, here you can apply the same thing. Once you have prepared your course, you can create a small test group consisting of few people who genuinely require your course. Now you can give your course for free or you can charge a very small amount. Reason being, once they complete your course, you can ask them regarding the experience, the problems that got solved with your course and some possible improvements that you can make.
This gives you more confidence about your course and you also have a handful of real testimonials which will help you build trust and authority.
One small tip if you are inside a facebook group, then try to build relation with consumers. Consumers are those people who ask more questions, the one facing fitness related issues. Talk to them, get 10-15 people inside your course.
4. Use an LMS Platform
An LMS (Learning Management System) is a platform that will help you host and distribute your course easily to people. You can also get it under your own brand name by connecting your domain with the platform. Spayee and Teachable are two platforms you can work with. They charge a small recurring amount, but if we think about the benefits then it is definitely worth paying for.
5. Prepare Your Assets
It is very important to have all our assets ready even before we step into actually promoting our courses. Usually a course creator should have the following assets ready in hand before generating leads :-a) Promotional Videosb) Social Media Postersc) Infographic Bannersd) Testimonial Videose) Landing Pagesf) Blog Postsg) Emailsh) Brochures
6. Structurize your marketing activities
The biggest mistake one course creator can make is not structuring their marketing efforts. We should plan our marketing activities in advance. This way we can make sure that we are allocating our resources in the best and most economical way.
Whenever you sit down to plan, always keep your objectives aligned with your marketing efforts. Also, try to have your entire marketing plan written on a piece of paper or in your computer in the form of a document. It helps to track your efforts much better and identify the areas which need more attention.
Bonus Tip: Keep an Eye on the Platforms you advertise
Now, whenever you start promoting your course, the first and probably the most important thing that you need is “Leads”. Whenever we look to generate leads there are two possible ways we can approach this — one is the organic approach i.e. SEO, next is the paid approach i.e. running ads on social media and search engines.
Since SEO is a very long term game, you need at least 3-6 months in order to start generating leads. But if we go for paid ads on social media and search engines, then we can expect leads from the very first day itself.
If you are running ads on search engines, then you can go for Google & Bing. But before you go for actually running your ad make sure to check your keyword search volume and CPC.
Running ads on search engines will definitely show your website on top for keywords you are targeting. The top 3 advertisements usually gets 41% of visitor clicks and 50% of people are more likely to buy through search ads.
On the other hand you can also run ads on different social media platforms like facebook, instagram, youtube, linkedin & twitter. Nowadays since people are more active on these platforms therefore it becomes easier for them to interact with your ads and make their purchasing decisions.
Do not just run for facebook or google ads. Check first, where your audience stays active. If they are more active on facebook, then definitely facebook ads are worth giving a try. But if your course is dedicated for B2B customers, then linkedin ads will give you more benefit.
This also depends upon the budget, if your budget is a bit less, then you can go for facebook and Instagram. But if your budget is a bit more then you should opt for google ads.
So, therefore if we can keep the above points in mind and make it a part of our venture, then definitely we can achieve a good number of leads and build a better brand.