Apart from using compelling content, to sell online courses, you first need to promote them. But do you know how to promote your online course effectively to attract more learners? Here is a small guide for all of you out there who look for simple course promotion ideas to support your eLearning activity.
Looking at the best practices used by our customers at TalentLMS, we notice that most eLearning developers invest in specific things in order to promote training courses.
So What Can You Do To Promote Your Online Course?
1. Make a blog
Creating a blog (and maintaining it) to support your eLearning activity as an eLearning developer is the best thing to do. Update it 2,3 times a week with engaging, useful and informative content (NOT boring advertising stuff).
This is one of the best ideas if you’re wondering how to market your online courses: Offering valuable information to your users will not only keep them coming back to your blog, but will also make them feel that you know what you’re talking about – so, it will be easier for them to trust you on the field you’re offering training for.
2. Social Media
If you’re looking into ideas as to how to promote a course, then social media is the place to be!
Οbviously using social media in order to communicate and connect with potential customers is crucial. What you should never forget is to always provide useful information and knowledge.
Also, keep this activity within reasonable limits. For example, post blog articles on Facebook not more often than 2, 3 times a week. Making “noise” in the social media will have a negative effect on your image.
3. Provide social proof
There’s probably nothing you can do to promote your online courses better, than having other people talk about you. And no, we’re not talking about random people you know, but people who can speak about the quality of the service you provide.
Make testimonials and small customer stories for specific people who enjoyed your courses recently. Publish these positive examples on your blog and social media pages. There’s probably no other best way to “advertise” a training course, than having people reassure your prospects that your course is the way to go!
4. Make short, free courses and share them
Why should you do that? It sounds rather harmful financially and it won’t do you any good. Or will it?
Giving things for free builds more engagement with existing and potential customers. It is an excellent way, not only to promote your courses, but also to grow your online community and generate new leads. But how do you go about sharing them?
Sharing is easy with TalentLMS and can be done just with the push of the relevant Share Button. First you need to log in as an instructor. Enter the Course and at the top of the content you will see the Share button. When you click on it a URL is automatically generated. You can then invite non registered users by entering their emails in the relevant form. By clicking on the URL users are redirected to the online course. They can view it and complete it. They can take tests, surveys etc. If they want to download the Certificate they must register. Of course, sharing the URL can be done by using the social media also.
5. Make a monthly newsletter
Need more ideas on how to promote training courses? It’s easy! Keep engaging your past, current and future potential learners with informative newsletters. Let them know about the latest on the industry, tell them about your content, interview industry opinion leaders etc. It all comes down to this thing: If you market your online course the right way, then you’ll be able to sell your courses online like hot cakes!
6. Run a forum
As an educator, you are also most probably an opinion leader yourself. Use this expertise and engage learners with a forum. Of course, it takes a lot of effort to properly administrate a forum but once you are up to it results will be fascinating. You can also use it in order to start discussions, get feedback and come up with new ideas just by listening to people.
7. Make an eBook
eBooks are used to provide information, engage online customers and provide the writer with an authoritarian role. You can make a new eBook every couple of months. They should be anything between 10-20 pages and they must share clear and useful information.
For example, if you are educating people on Spanish literature, you can make a 20 page eBook on Spanish language idioms in the 19th and 20th century. You can then upload it on your website or blog and allow people to download it for free, only by asking them to give their name and email. This way an eBook can also become a useful lead generator.
8. Use other opinion leaders
Ask opinion leaders in your market to become your advocates. Give them the chance to “host” a course (ie. make them admins) so that people recognize their expertise. Let them know that it will be nice of them to talk to others about you.
Selling your promoted courses with TalentLMS
Paypal is the popular way that TalentLMS is using in order to help you sell your courses online. Process is simple, rules are set… As an admin, simply go to the System Setting option and type your Paypal address. Select the currency and a price for each course. Learners can then browse the Course Catalogue, select a course and be re-directed to Paypal in order to make a payment.
Of course, it is clear that there is a huge number of things you can do in order to promote your eLearning activity and sell your courses. You can start by using the 8 tips we just gave you and make them part of your core strategy, before using more advanced processes.
Tell us what kind of strategy you prefer the most!
