How to sell your online course: instruction on promotion

March 20-21, Moscow will host the first conference on online education EdmarketConf-2018In which knowledge of the creation and promotion of training products will share the most famous Russian educational brands.

You may have read a step by step Launch guide its educational course from scratch, and this article offers practical advice on promoting the course.

Rate demand

Marketing your educational project begins at the stage of selecting a topic of study. If anyone does not want what you teach, then no promotion and advertising will not help you to sell the course. Who, for example, need courses on the use of mechanical of accounts? But 30-40 years ago it was a very useful skill for any salesperson in a store products.

Assess the demand, you can use several tools.

• Search Analytics volume on wordstat.yandex.ru. Specify which search term is most likely used by people who have the potential to have to learn. Check its frequency and seasonality vote.

• Analysis of the demand in social networks. Specify that written by people when looking for something to do with the training and ask about it from their friends and groups in social networks. Write this phrase in the search for and analyze the quantity and quality of displayed posts.

• Study. The preceding paragraphs make it possible to study the demand generated when a person already has a clear need, and it tries to satisfy it. But more often it happens that people would be happy to learn something, but does not conduct an active search. Then you can carry out a study. Create a profile in which you tell us about your educational products and place your pre-order form. Spread this profile for your friends and friends of friends. So you will understand whether there is a demand for such a product in your environment. It is important that such research will not have to create the content itself. You just pretend that you have it, and thereby check the real need.

That's right post information

If the demand is there and your expertise demanded by the market, then it is necessary to properly present to the potential audience. Make your site (or separate Landing) and describe the advantages of learning it from you.

Show that you are an expert

The most important competitive advantage in education - the expert's name and status. programming course from MIT (the largest US university) and the course of a talented self-taught from Voronezh perceived potential audience quite differently. Although it is not necessary that the terms of the effectiveness of a course of self-taught worse.

If you are a recognized expert on the market, do not hesitate to it. Specify their achievements, are associated with the policy and tell us about their audience.

If a big name yet, show their skills with the help of a portfolio, certificates, diplomas, introduce the relevant positions and experience.

Create a training program

The training program allows the audience to understand that if you are going to teach. The course is called "Analytics", but it is 100% composed of theory. A prospective buyer is waiting for practice. He comes for a solution to the problem, and he wants to learn how to work with databases.

Demonstrate that your training program will solve the customer problem.

The program is not only important to identify themes for the study, but also to show what skills will get the buyer at the output. You can go even further and to "pack" the skills to concrete benefits for the customer, for example, to show how it will look his resume after the course.

Show your course benefits

What is your rate will be different from the other ten? What is its uniqueness? If you can not move to answer these questions or talk about the quality of the program and class expert, then think again. All courses are good teachers are made and carried out effective programs. At least, all say about it. But buying courses with unique advantages. Think of them and create.

Find a cause you believe

The presentation of information is important, so she believed. Statements such as "146% of students were satisfied with the" long been no convincing. Give potential audience the reason you believe (Eng. reason to believe, RTB).

As an effective RTB may be:

• Reviews of real pupils on the site, which confirm that the training will help you achieve results. Increase confidence in the reviews themselves will help video format, placing them in the social networks of your students, call to ask details of the students and their contacts.

• Free Webinar where you will discover one of the training programs and demonstrate their teaching skills and expertise.
• Video (screen recording) from past sessions or webinars with a short story on the theme of the course.

• Promise to return the money if the program the student is not reached. Only an honest promise with transparent rules.

• Data on the number of the last course. This is social proof that a course should enroll. To believe you, not enough numbers, show your class and tell us what they have achieved.

How to start a course promotion

After quality packaging content is the time to start promoting it. In general, the work on the promotion of educational content is not very different from working with other products. Base checklist is as follows.

1. Identify your target audience

Make it is not obsolete categories of "Male or Female 30-45 years", and use cases categories: that is, to whom and where your content can be useful. For example, promoting courses for marketers, the following groups of Central Asia:

• young professionals who know the basics and want to improve their skills to get a raise;
• experienced professionals from related fields, who decided to change his profession;
• mothers on maternity leave who want to learn something completely new.

2. Configure analytics

It will allow to determine the efficiency of marketing channels and adjust promotion plan.

3. Define a set of channels for promotion

The main channels for promotion are usually:

• contextual advertising;
• SEO;
• Advertising in social networks;
• advertising on niche sites;
• publishing groups in social networks and thematic media;
• direct sales.

As a rule, when it comes to small, "kraft" to date, the main tool of promotion - is advertising on Facebook and "VKontakte".

4. Define test budget

Remember that your task - to pay for user involvement is less than what you get at the end of it. At this stage it is possible to work with two variables: the cost of paying users and price of the product.

• Determine the starting price for the course, based on the analysis of competitors' pricing policies.
• Run small advertising campaign.
• If the ratio of advertising expenses and income from the sale of suits you, fine.
• If not satisfied, try to raise the price and see if the sales volume decrease. Or try to reduce the price and see if the price decreases paying.
• If the ratio is still not satisfied, then Call an expert on advertising, which is to say, whether it is possible to reduce the cost by paying a user fine-tune advertising campaigns.
• If everything is configured correctly, and no sales and you are not willing to suffer losses, then return to the previous steps, once again we check the demand and are working on packaging.

5. Scale campaigns

If your content allows you to scale sales, after finding the first marketing arranging channel value you paying user, run the second channel, the third, and so Further.

Features promote educational course

Despite the fact that in general educational services promotion tools do not differ from the standard, there are a few features that are worth paying attention to.

1. It is very important from the early days of the product life to think about the so-called word of mouth, and more precisely, about your brand. If you pursue a course of a name, your name is your brand. Qualitative conducting classes, user happiness, educational outcomes - the minimum necessary to develop the brand. If the minimum necessary everything is in order, then ask to leave comments in social networks. Personally write to everyone who passed your training, ask for feedback and if all liked it, ask to write a review on social networks.

2. Develop referral program. Learn with fun! And your students can become your agents of influence.

3. Purchasing decision may take weeks or months. So the ads you have launched today, can give results only after several months. Be patient.

4. The educational content and marketing it is important to maintain motivation. Without motivation, the student will not be good results, but your product - a good reputation. To maintain motivation, implement positive reinforcement elements: motivational letter after homework, the success story of your students, bonuses to the best pupils. You can also work with negative reinforcement, for example, we call the parents of those students who miss school, and parents become effective learning motivators.

Use the check-list in Google Docs, you do not forget important items to promote their educational project.

Stories of people who have started their course and earn it

The course of the remote work with the employees →

A first flow came to 25 people, the second - 50. It is still not scalable as a business, rather just a way to bring some developments to the people. Yes, and salary - a nice addition.

I decided to run the course, because I always work available to explain different things. And all say that this is one of my strengths. I have long tried to develop their weaknesses, but then decided to try to do something using the strong. We can say that this is a hobby, I always try to do something beyond the basic work, but all of my hobbies are related to the business.

The course I promoted on a personal network of contacts in Facebook, plus advertising in the same place. Because there dwells a relevant topic of the course the audience. From the first year students, I received strong feedback, understand what to do if I want to scale the project.

Course analytics →

And I and many of my friends is difficult to hire good marketers and analysts. People with the required skill set is very small, because that no one teaches. I have over 12 years accumulated enough experience, I love and know how to share it. In the Internet enough materials design, CSS also HTML, working with advertising platforms instructions. Write and edit texts better than I taught Maxim Ilyahov. But analytics was nothing. So I decided to do this course.

For eighteen months he was held 471 people. It was included in the curriculum of several universities. People are beginning to specify it in the summary as an additional education. Periodically I get feedback from friends of entrepreneurs that my graduates actually work much better.

I basically satisfied, but now I see in the course of many shortcomings: some topics could reveal more fully or understand several important topics to be added. Very worried because Domashek. I want the students receive feedback as soon as possible, but I did not get to check work quickly enough.

I started with the creation of courses that wrote the first two lessons on the knee and made a page with a form of payment. After this, I wrote in Facebook: «Hello. Look, I've done a course... ". This gave the first 150 students. Everything was done so primitive that I signed each student hands: The "Yandex. Cashier ", copying email, went to Mailchimp, insert email, click" OK. "

After that I was not advancing: I have a head start - two weeks, and then every week you need to give a new lesson. If the topic was well understood by me and I have taught it before, writing, editing and design of the lesson went just a week. If at least something was not clear, it might take 2-3 weeks, because suddenly it turned out that the topic is more complicated than I thought.

In the course of 16 lessons on their writing took six months of work a week. When I finished the course, I have altered the landing page and again posted to Facebook: «Dude, I have finished the course and made a new Landing." Well, that's all. The more I did it not promoted.

The most important feedback: 150 sales for the two days after the launch. First, I realized that the course necessary and important. Secondly, I burned bridges. Money received, no way back. I have to write.

Course on creating landing pages →

My course, I think quite successful. I'll see it is not as often as we would like, but it starts have gone well. Operating expenses at least, I do everything myself, so I remain in the black. This year, I want to experiment with formats and packages of participation, it seems interesting scaling option.

The course ran for several reasons. First, I like to tell people that what I'm good and that will help in the work. I feel that I help them to develop. Secondly, as I pumped in developing and promoting your own product - stuffed cones on a small scale, then to avoid this in large projects. And thirdly, this extra money that I'm spending, including for charity.

Basically I dial participants announcements on their pages on social networks and user-friendly platforms. Sometimes I ask myself post office, sometimes someone is doing it on his own initiative. Often my announcements appear in social networking, "Tilda" comes out pretty good convertible traffic.

Good advertising works in Facebook, in "VKontakte" - worse. I tried to run newsletter, but whether it did well enough (not enough time), whether the base was small - did not work. Very quickly I closed it.

I do not want to do anyhow, but also to communicate daily with thirty students could not. Therefore, after the first startup realized that I would gain only small groups. This option will not please everyone, how are you would artificially limit yourself to certain ceiling, but I have so comfortable.

I also realized that people come not only for the knowledge and skills, as for the feedback. They are important to have someone who understands the subject better than they looked, he advised and directed.

One of the most important insights: the most time is spent in class, and to communicate with students.

Even if the webinar all explained in detail, definitely a lot of questions. So I advise patience. Well, eventually, it will go a lot more than you think.

---

If you understand that you want to run their own educational product, but you are missing Knowledge, come on EdmarketConf-2018 which will be held 20 and 21 April in Moscow, in the industrial park "Skolkovo". On this conference for online education of top managers of the leading educational companies will tell you how to scratch to create educational courses, market and sell them. Conference can be viewed online.

get on EdmarketSonf 2018