55 Ways To Market Your Online Course & Increase Sales
An analysis of a listicle article, with commentary from a veteran author and course creator who's made a living writing and self-publishing for over a decade.
Now, in general, I hold Thinkific up to be a very good source of training for making courses. And their interface is top-notch. They came out with an article that has winners and losers in it.
Here's the bottom line:
Courses are idea-containers that have a built in funnel when you publish the other versions of it. (See my "Backwards Book Publishing")
Marketing is to find where your readers (and students) aggregate, and then promote to them there - targeted, simple. Or: promote widely and let your readers find you from your promotions - expensive. Either way, the goal needs to be that you maintain a livable income from your sales (minus the overhead of that promotion.)
Book publishing succeeds when you routinely add to your backlist and produce even more. So your marketing has to align to getting your next book-as-a-course out, and promoting the new - which then promotes the older.
Note: On Social Media - don't. Just don't. See Tim Grahl's workout on this. Promoting to social media gets less than 1% booksales - or actual interaction of any kind. It's imploding. Skip anything like that.
What does work? Guest posting and guest interviews. Find people with their own audience (who need more content) and help them out. Get their audience to also join yours.
This Thinkific article is a nice little listicle. Has nice keyword in the title. And like most readers, when I find anything more than ten items, my first response is "OK, fine." But enough of these were applicable to what I'm doing that it's worth using this as a checklist - to see what needs to be done, what is already done, and what is just fluff or a misdirection. Key point is to work from your strengths, your passions. (Each of these points on Thinkific was an article on it’s own - so it was really more of a table of contents.)
My review of these ideas:
1. Craft your ideal student avatar - not vital These don't work. Sure, write to one person out in front of you. And that can be your younger self. Do your market research and see what demographics going through your own site by various means. But those work to the degree you have decent traffic. Working to get traffic is just time you should be producing your current or next book. Decent books, decently promoted, drive traffic. Or that’s the theory.
2. Identify your unique value proposition - one and done Rosser Reese's book is over-rated. It's just one of your tools. Work out what you're good at and what you exclusively do - then write it down and post it next to your mission statement above your monitor. (You do have one of those, don't you? See Covey’s “7 Habits” if not.)
3. Survey your audience before you create your course - nice to have You have to have an audience first. Which is produced by generating content (and material) without surveys at first. Like number 1 - you are writing for your ideal self as an audience at first. Write the books you want to read, the courses you'd recommend to your younger self. Build audience every week.
4. Create a compelling course title based on keyword research - not vital. Use your headline savvy from studying copywriting books. Yes, the words you use will show up in searches. But the push to get your books into Google's standings is way overrated. Keywords are just one of many parts to making your course title useful. Word of mouth from an engaging, riveting book is better.
5. Promote your course on your blog - do this. Again, how much traffic do you get? Don't race for traffic just to get traffic. It has to convert to be meaningful. Conversion means sales.
6. Start a YouTube channel - not vital. Syndicate there. But spend no time. Like Amazon, and Google, you're quickly buried there.
7. Publish a course promotion video on YouTube - nope. See above.
8. Add student testimonials to your course sales page - nice to have. You have to have students get through your course to get testimonials. Put nice pull quotes from historical authorities to get started. And if you don’t read testimonials, then you’ll see their usefulness already.
9. Include a link to your course in your email signature - yes! Make this a redirect link to your main page where all your courses are listed by subject.
10. Add a course page to your main website - yes! See 9. above.
11. Build an email list - YES!
12. Start a podcast - not worth the investment (unless you already have).
13. Get interviewed on podcasts - yes!
14. Optimize your social media profiles - not vital. Social media is the world's worst time suck. Spend as little time there as possible. This area is imploding.
15. Create a free mini-course - yes! Also known as a subscriber-magnet. Big courses should have small versions for free or cheap.
16. Host a live webinar - not vital. Better - become a guest on someone else's webinar. Who gets paid from affiliate sales (see below). Look to your strengths.
17. Promote your webinar recording - duh. Of course, this means you have a list...
18. Create multiple courses and cross promote - yes! This is the concept that every book has a built-in funnel. And they cross promote each other, just like you put "related books of interest" in the back of your ebooks.
19. Bundle your course and offer discounts - yes! This is in the backmatter of your all your book-containers.
20. Publish a book on Amazon - duh. But also publish it everywhere else - the ebook version, print version, audiobook, course...
21. Improve your course sales page - yes! Regularly. Do A/B tests.
22. Speak at local events and Meet Up groups - nice to have
23. Start a local Meetup group - nope. Like social media - a time suck.
24. Ask your students to review your course - yes! Always.
25. Run a price promotion - yes! KISS, though.
26. Contribute to other blogs and publications - yes! Called guest posting. This and podcast interviews are the most effective promotion.
27. Become a HARO source - not so much
28. Partner with other online instructors - as possible.
29. Host a webinar with a Joint Venture partner - see above. Similar to guest interview, but you split the revenues.
30. Offer a satisfaction guarantee - yes!
31. Offer a payment plan - yes!
32. Answer relevant questions on Quora - same as social media.
33. Use Google Adwords - time and money suck.
34. Use Facebook Ads - contribute to their privacy thievery? Nope.
35. Get bloggers to review your course - like guest blogging and guest interviews.
36. Promote your course on other YouTube channels - nice to have
37. Start a Facebook Group - nope
38. Start a LinkedIn Group - nope
39. Write a Press Release - nope
40. Create a free email course - goes with having email
41. Create a Facebook Page - nope
42. Publish a shorter course in an online course marketplace - yes!
43. Comment in Facebook Groups - nope
44. Share infographics on Pinterest - nope
45. Participate in Forum discussions - most are time sucks.
46. Create an affiliate program - yes! But don't spend a lot of time on this. Invest in it for future use - put a link on your page to sign up and post into the major affiliate networks. Your priority is publishing more books.
47. Translate your course into another language - later. (And don’t trust the AI versions unless you can speak that language.)
48. Buy Tweets or Facebook Posts on Fiverr - no!
49. Buy shoutouts on Instagram accounts - no!
50. Record a Google Hangout - nope. (Better: record an hour recording on Zoom and cut it into 5-minute pieces - instant mini-course.)
51. Live video on social media - nope
52. Buy YouTube ads - nope
53. Buy banner ads - no!!! They never worked.
54. Post a slideshow on SlideShare - yup Use your existing content with links to your course.
55. Create a sales funnel for your online course - yes! This and your email list should be first actions.
Go through and pull out all the "yes!"'es and then you'll have the basics you need. Avoid the no's, nope's, and "not so much", etc. Let's look at the yes's...
9. Include a link to your course in your email signature - yes!
10. Add a course page to your main website - yes!
11. Build an email list - yes! 13. Get interviewed on podcasts - yes!
15. Create a free mini-course - yes!
18. Create multiple courses and cross promote - yes!
19. Bundle your course and offer discounts - yes!
21. Improve your course sales page - yes!
24. Ask your students to review your course - yes!
26. Contribute to other blogs and publications - yes!
30. Offer a satisfaction guarantee - yes!
31. Offer a payment plan - yes!
42. Publish a shorter course in an online course marketplace - yes!
46. Create an affiliate program - yes!
55. Create a sales funnel for your online course - yes!
And while those are out of sequence, you can see a pattern there. Many of these are done through your course services provider (Thinkific, Teachable) or your own on-site LMS.
Having an inexpensive site hosting where you can host opt-in's for your email list, and have sales pages - that's a first few efforts.
The recurring successful actions are to do guest posts, and guest interviews. And always give special offers along with your content when you do.
Meanwhile, follow Sturgeon's Law and figure that "90% of everything out there is crud."
Luck to us all.